That which had existed from the beginning by the institution of Christ, and that which was to last unaltered to the end, was an apostolic succession of men, in whom He put His power and presence, to whom He promised the perpetual assistance of His Holy Spirit, and to whom He committed the propagation of His faith. It was impossible that this principle of action, the living personal authority, which, as we have seen, did everything in the first two generations of the Christian people, should ever be changed, because Christ appointed it to bear His Word, the Word of God, whether oral or written, to every succeeding generation.
Among the things which preceded in time the publication of the writings of the New Testament, and which, therefore, were not derived from them, were these: The hierarchy, including therein the election, ordination, and jurisdiction of bishops throughout the world, and of the ministers inferior to them; the several sacraments, with the rites which conveyed them; the worship, and herein especially the Eucharist, and all which belongs to it; and fourthly, that daily discipline of life which received men into the Christian body, numbered them in it, imposed penance for faults committed, restored the fallen, and, in fact, which was that atmosphere by breathing which the Christian lived. All this the living succession of men, instinct with the power and presence of the Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier and the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, originally conveyed, as the living succession of men perpetuates it from age to age. These things, the writings of the New Testament, as they were gradually, first one and then another, given to particular churches, or intended for classes of believers, and finally collected in one and made the heirloom of the whole body, found in existence and in full operation. With all the instruments of the divine life thus enumerated these writings did not meddle, except that they alluded to them more or less, usually in few words, attesting them, it is true, but in a manner which those only who were in possession of them would understand aright. The action of the Church as a living Body consisted very largely in these things, and this action, at least in all its details, the Apostles were not directed by any charge of their Lord, nor inspired by the Holy Ghost, to commit to a book. These things, from their nature, formed an essential part of the ecclesiastical tradition; in fact, the Church as a society could not exist without them.
Another part of the ecclesiastical tradition was the announcing to men the words and the acts of Christ. The Christian character was to be formed upon the living example of the Shepherd who had gone before His sheep. For this task men were chosen who had been with Him during the whole time of His ministry. So long as they were on earth they would speak with all the authority of those who had seen what they witnessed; but it is not apparent how an accurate account of our Lord’s words and acts could be transmitted to succeeding generations except by writing. Thus it pleased the Holy Spirit to inspire some of the Apostles and some of their disciples to commit to writing that record of our Lord’s words and actions which we possess in the four Gospels. Inexpressibly dear, indeed, and precious to every Christian, must be the words of the Word; like nothing else upon earth, the sounds which came from the lips of God manifest in the flesh; of untold depth His utterances; of inexhaustible fruitfulness His teaching. And the same may be said of His acts. As a single parable would disclose the nature of His kingdom, so a single act might be rich in endless application to the history of His Church and to the heart of every believer. This most precious part of the ecclesiastical tradition the Evangelists deposited in the bosom of the Church, to be communicated, guarded, interpreted by her for ever to the end of time. It was not the creation of one power to balance another, for a book and a society do not come into competition; it was endowing the society which Christ had created with the breath of His mouth, and investing it with a permanent knowledge of His words and acts—a knowledge to be transmitted under its keeping to all times.
As the Gospels contained words and acts of our Lord, so the Apostolic Epistles contained comments, illustrations, and developments of their personal teaching, bearing witness everywhere to that teaching, and to the society which their own labours had constructed under their Lord’s direction, and only by the power of His Spirit working in themselves who preached, and in the hearers who accepted the faith which they preached. These writings the Church collected and placed in her treasury; they became part of that deposit which St. Irenæus[143] celebrates “as being new and fresh in an excellent vessel, and giving perpetual youth to that vessel, which is the divine office intrusted to the Church, as life is given to the body to vivify all the limbs belonging to it.”
If we put together that large mass of teaching above described, which consisted in the government everywhere set up by the Apostles, in the sacraments which they carried into effect according to their Lord’s instructions, in the worship which they established, in the life of faith, the daily discipline of which they set on foot, with that written mass of documents of which by the end of the first century the Church was in possession, we can form an approximate notion of the written and unwritten tradition which it was her abiding office to expound.
That which is primary and essential,[144] the very substance of God’s institution, is the perpetual succession of living men from the Apostles. All the rest are means by which that succession acts. These means the providence of God has placed round His own central creation. Such means are the word contained in the Divine Scriptures, the word contained in sacraments, the word contained in worship, the word contained in the most various ecclesiastical monuments, which exhibit the consent and definitive judgment of the successors of the Apostles in past time.
These were the various means which the apostolic succession itself used, under the assistance of the Holy Spirit, to maintain and expound and preserve from error that whole tradition of the truth which Christ in the beginning committed to it. But the subject requires further illustration.
CHAPTER VII.
THE ACTUAL RELATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE FROM THE DAY OF PENTECOST TO CONSTANTINE.