Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom

by T. W. Allies

The commemoration in which they earned out their Lord’s command was contained in words, and rites, and vestments illustrating those words, and making up together an act, a permanent act, going through all the life of the Church from end to end. This act in the present day, as in every past age, is not derived from any written authority, though the Gospels and Epistles of the Apostles, and, as we have seen, the Apocalypse, bear witness to it, but from the authority of the Church, immanent in her from the beginning by perpetual descent from the Apostles.

Another instance of the like kind is scarcely inferior in its force. The Apostles, in passing from city to city in the course of their preaching, selected those in whom they would deposit a portion of their power. But this they did by the imposition of their hands, accompanied by a certain rite, which, like the Eucharistic rite in the beginning, was not written, but conveyed by word of mouth. But the life of the Church depended upon this transmission of spiritual power. The conveying of this power was an act of authority similar in character to the institution of worship, with which indeed it was closely allied. Part of the power which they conveyed by their act was the right to celebrate this very worship. The pastoral Epistles of St. Paul speak of the grace and gift bestowed upon Timotheus by the imposition of hands, as well as of the power given both to Timotheus and to Titus to impart these gifts to others, accompanied with advice as to the quality of persons whom they should select. But the Scriptures of the New Testament do not contain the rite itself, than which nothing could be more necessary to the continued existence of the Church.

No acts could possibly exhibit the teaching office of the Church in greater perfection and fulness than the exercise of the rite which admitted men into her fold; of the rite, again, which communicated to them daily the divine life of the Saviour indwelling in her; and thirdly, of the rite which propagated the whole of that hierarchy by the descent of which from our Lord Himself her existence was secured and perpetuated. The immense authority which documents such as these possess is mentioned in a letter of Pope St. Celestine in the year 431 to the Gallic bishops. “Let us have regard,” he says, “to the sacred rites used in sacerdotal supplications, which, having been handed down from the Apostles, are celebrated uniformly in the whole world and in every Catholic Church, wherein the law of supplication establishes the law of belief. For when those who preside over the holy people in various places exercise the office of ambassadors committed to them, they plead the cause of the human race before the divine mercy, and offer their requests and their prayers while the whole Church joins with them in urgent entreaty.”[139] It is sufficient to mention these several public and official acts without going on to dwell upon the system of penance in its doctrinal aspect, which has been described above in another aspect, that of government. Such a system, it is evident, existed from the beginning, and the act of St. Paul in reference to the incestuous person at Corinth bears witness to it. The society possessing and exercising these rites, and forming a people upon their discipline, had a complete rule of inward life. Such was the Christian society in the first forty years following the day of Pentecost. And this whole life rested upon the personal authority of its teachers, which they exercised in the name of Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit continually attending upon their ministry, and attesting His presence as well by the perpetual operation of His grace as by the extraordinary and visible action of spiritual gifts. That authority was complete before the sacred writings of the New Testament were made public, and without their attestation.

The authority divinely instituted[140] to preserve and propagate the doctrine preached by the Apostles was neither changed in character nor diminished by the writing of the books of the New Testament and by their delivery to the several churches. The proof of this is twofold. First, the nature of the teaching office itself, placed by Christ in the Apostles and their perpetual succession, to which He promised His own ever-abiding assistance, with the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in them. For these two things were not accidental or temporary, but the cause for ever of the Christian profession’s continuance.

Secondly, the consideration of all the circumstances which surround the writings themselves corroborates this conclusion.

Before these books were written,[141] and much more before they were all collected and read in all churches, these churches themselves had been arranged by the teaching and ordering of the Apostles according to the charge they had received from Christ; bishops had been appointed in them by imposition of the Apostles’ hands; the doctrine delivered to them by the Apostles had been committed to them as a deposit to be faithfully guarded through the gift of the Holy Spirit: they had been charged to appoint successors in every place, endowed with the like authority and the same gift. Thus the faithful everywhere depended, with the obedience of faith, upon the authority of the apostolic successors as God’s messengers, from whom they were to receive Christian doctrine and discipline. This was not a mere dependence of those who were learning upon the knowledge of those who were teaching, because as yet there were no books from which each individual might learn for himself, but it was a proper office of teaching upon which the obedience of faith depended by Christ’s institution, and by which the unity of the churches was maintained. When, therefore, inspired books containing revealed doctrine were gradually delivered by the Apostles to the churches, the ecclesiastical constitution already existing was not destroyed, but documents were added to be used in accordance with that constitution, to be preserved by those same bishops as successors of the Apostles and guardians of the deposit, and to be explained by them should doubt arise as to the meaning.

Further, it is an historical fact, and is evident from the internal arrangement of the books, that each one of them was written on some particular occasion and necessity for some particular end. No one of the sacred writers had the intention to give complete instruction as to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Christian religion. Accordingly in no one of them is the whole Christian doctrine found set out in catechetical order and connection; and in each one many most important points are either omitted, or merely alluded to, or can only be deduced from it, if otherwise known. Now such an origin of the books from particular occasions and for a particular scope, and such an internal arrangement, make it evident that it was not the Holy Spirit’s design in writing any particular book, or the whole together, nor any purpose of the Apostles, to substitute books so composed for the ministry of those pastors and doctors whom Christ had appointed to teach all nations to the end of the world. It was not meant to abolish the constitution of a teaching office by which, up to the moment when these books appeared, every one had, in virtue of Christ’s institution, been taught by the acknowledged messengers of God, in order that he might teach himself from a written book. This would be plain even were it to be granted that the whole revealed doctrine was contained in those books; for the argument holds not so much from deficiency of matter as from the form of teaching, and the manner of proposing and explaining doctrine.

But when we have stated the historical origin of the books, and their internal arrangement which corresponds to their origin, it is a mere gratuitous assertion that all revealed doctrine is contained in them. For as neither the sacred writers, each taken by himself, intended to comprehend the whole Christian doctrine in his own books, nor concerted together to contribute each his portion to make up one whole, but as each wrote on the most diverse occasions what was necessary or opportune for the particular circumstances, the Holy Spirit indeed, who is the chief Author of the Scriptures, might direct everything, so as to form a complete body of doctrine without the knowledge and beyond the intention of the writers, but that He did so can in nowise be shown. For this the supposition is required that it was the will of God that Scripture should be the sole source, or at least the complete code, from which the entire revelation might be acquired. We have certain evidence from the charge of Christ that the Apostles and their successors should teach to the end of the world all nations to observe whatever He had commanded them, and from the promise of the Spirit of truth teaching all truth and remaining with them for ever, by whom Christ’s witnesses are ordered to go to the end of the earth, that the whole revelation was to be preached by an authentic office of teaching in perpetual succession. On the other hand, there is not a vestige of a charge that this revelation should be committed entire to writing, either in the words of Christ or in the sayings of the Apostles, or in the manner of acting and writing of the Apostles or of the other sacred writers, or in the arrangement, scope, and occasion of the books, or in the persuasion of Christians down to the sixteenth century. How, then, is this to be maintained unless you first lay down not to believe the word propagated by preaching which Christ appointed by charges and promises distinct and irrefragable, and enjoined to comprehend the whole revealed truth, but to believe only the word in Scripture, which He did indeed superadd to preaching, but never either enjoined or promised that all revealed truth should be contained in it?

But whatever be the fact as to the material fulness of Scripture, the form of the books, each and all, is such that they evidently are not written for the purpose of teaching the whole Christian religion to each of the faithful independently of the teaching office.

It must be added that these books were addressed to those who were already Christians, and give directions and advice which could not be rightly understood save by those who had been previously instructed, and, moreover, refer the faithful in express words to the preaching which they had heard and received, and in which they are exhorted to abide. They further also refer to guardians of the deposit, and to a line of authentic teachers who shall continue to hand it on from generation to generation.[142]