It is not possible from existing documents to form a continuous and detailed history of the ante-nicene Church. Thus, if any will not accept the Church at the Nicene Council as an evidence of what the Church was in preceding times as to its constitution, principles of action, and faith, it is possible, through the mere absence of written proof, to make denials of those very things without which the Nicene Council could never have come together. The spirit of negation luxuriates in that absence of documents which more than anything else the state of persecution caused. On the other hand, to the eyes of faith the grain of mustard seed planted by our Lord on Calvary is become, at the end of three hundred years, a tree which covers the Roman world, and gives its fruits for the healing of the nations.
The writer just quoted says elsewhere, in treating the point how far an accurate presentation of the doctrine respecting the Holy Trinity is found in the apologists of those times, that “it is a great misfortune to us that we have not had preserved to us the dogmatic utterances of the ante-nicene Popes.”[179] But I would draw attention to a remarkable proof actually existing of the completeness with which the hierarchic principle had worked itself out in the days of persecution. This testimony is the more valuable because it belongs to the very first year of the Church’s freedom, the year 314. In that year, at the instance of the Emperor Constantine, the Council of Arles was convoked as a representative Council of all the West. Up to this time the Council of Antioch, which deposed Paul of Samosata, had been the most important and general. That of Arles was in a much greater degree a Council in which the bishops who sat represented their respective provinces, as, for instance, from the remote Britain the bishops of York and London and another British See were present.
The Council of Arles then addresses in these terms Pope Sylvester:—“We who, by the desire of the most religious Emperor, have been assembled in the city of Arles, bound together by the common bond of charity and the unity of the Church our Mother, salute you, most glorious Pope, with the befitting reverence. We have endured here men grievous and pernicious to our law and tradition, men of unbridled mind. Both the present authority of our God, and the tradition and rule of the truth have rejected them, for there was in them no reasonable ground for pleading, no limit or proof for their accusations. Therefore, by the judgment of God and our Mother the Church, who knows and approves her own, they have either been condemned or repudiated; and would, most beloved brother, that you could have been present at so great a spectacle; we believe, indeed, that our sentence would then have been more severe, and had your judgment been united with ours, our assembly would have rejoiced with a greater joy. But you were not able to leave that place in which the Apostles daily sit, and their blood without intermission testifies the glory of God.” Then sending to him the subjects of their decrees, they preface them with the words, “It was our pleasure that knowledge of this should be communicated to all by you who hold the greater dioceses. What we have decreed by common counsel we signify to your charity, that all may know what in future they are bound to observe. And, first, as to the observation of the Lord’s Pasch, that it may be kept on one day and at one time through the whole world, and that according to custom you direct letters to all to this effect.”
But the Emperor, neither a Christian nor a catechumen for many long years to come, writes to the Fathers of the Council: “They (the Donatists) ask for my judgment, who am myself awaiting the judgment of Christ. For I say, as the truth is, the judgment of bishops ought to be considered as if the Lord Himself were present and judging. For these may have no other mind and no other judgment but what they have been taught by the teaching of Christ.[180] What, then, do those malignant men want, instruments, us I truly call them, of the devil? They desert heavenly in their search for earthly things. Oh, the rabid audacity of maniacs! they interpose an appeal, as is customary in secular matters.”[181]
The Council recognised the authority of the Apostles Peter and Paul ruling for ever in the See of Rome, as the Pope at the present day attests in solemn documents that same rule when he uses the words, “By the authority of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul,” adding to them, “and by our own;” and the Emperor clearly understands the distinction between secular and ecclesiastical judgments. In the former he knows himself to be the judge of ultimate appeal. In the latter he recognises the bishops as holding the magisterium of Christ Himself, and that their judgments are His, as if He were present among them. What stronger attestation of the Church’s freedom in her ecclesiastical and dogmatic judgments from the State’s control could be given than this spontaneous declaration by the head of the Roman empire? And it is to be noted that he places the ground of that freedom and the force of its authority in the magisterium of Christ transmitted to the rulers of the Church.
How did the successor of Nero, Domitian, Trajan, and Decius come to this knowledge? That is a subject which requires special consideration.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ACTUAL RELATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE FROM THE DAY OF PENTECOST TO CONSTANTINE.
The Church’s Battle for Independence over against the Roman Empire.