The Formation of Christendom, Volume II

by T. W. Allies

The second succession is that of the Truth itself committed to these men. For that plenitude of teaching which the Apostles delivered orally to the Church has never ceased to rest in her, and out of it she dispenses to all the ages her divine message. But part of this teaching by the further ordering of the Spirit of Truth has been incorporated in writing. And no one can doubt that this incorporation has given a firmness and stability to the teaching which we do not see how it could otherwise have possessed. Thus the great Tradition of the Truth poured out upon the Church has been partly written and partly unwritten; not as if there were two teachings separable from each other, but one and the same which runs in a perpetual blending. Through the written teaching we receive the very words consecrated by our Lord's use: we have the priceless privilege of knowing how he spoke; of catching the accents of His voice, and the look of His eyes, and the gestures of His body, portrayed in that narrative. The words of Him who spake as never man spake live and sound for ever in our ears; and we recognise in the structure of His sentences, which convey in a clause principles of endless application, [pg 159] forces on which a universe can be built, the Father's Word, and the world's Creator, and the Church's Head. Parable and apophthegm and answer, metaphor and plain speech, when used by Him, are all impregnated with this power. And now that we possess this peculiar language of the Word Incarnate, embodied and fixed for ever to our senses as well as our affections, it seems as if we could not have done without it. Then the mode in which His own Apostles apply and illustrate His doctrines, and exhibit to us the formation of the society which He came to institute, possesses a value only subordinate to His own words. The written word, it has been said,[129] gives to the whole Church through all times a sense of the truth and consistency of her teaching like that which the sense of personal identity gives to the individual respecting his own being. And again, what memory is to the single man, such is the whole tradition of the Truth in the bosom of the Church. But it is through the unwritten teaching deposited in her by the Apostles that she possesses the key to the true understanding of that which is written. The one in her practice has never been severed from the other. So dear has the written word been to her that almost the blackest epithet in language, “traitor,” is derived from the name which she gave to those who, under fear of persecution, surrendered to the heathen her sacred [pg 160] books. With these in her hand, or rather in her heart, she has directed and carried out that great system of instruction which the Apostles laid down and established by their acts. For to her what they did was as sacred as what they said, or what they wrote; and numberless acts of theirs constituted her teaching originally, and have prolonged and continued it on since.

For, besides the succession of men and the succession of doctrine, there is in her likewise the succession of institutions. As chief of these, but involving a number of subordinate rites, the Apostles with their first oral teaching delivered likewise to the Church sacraments, instituted, not by them, but by their Lord Himself, which at once embodied the truth taught by them, and conveyed the grace by which that truth was to find a home in men's heart and mind. No sooner was the first teaching of Peter at the head of the Apostles uttered, and the gift of forgiveness of sins and of adoption disclosed, than three thousand persons received the double gift by the baptism which followed. Thus they established in the Church seven great rites, encompassing the whole of human life. The regenerating power which was the beginning of the whole change that they sought to work in man was stored up in one; the confirming and developing it in a second; the feeding and increasing it in a third; the removal of obstacles to it in a fourth; the supporting and restoring the [pg 161] human nature so elevated, when under pressure of sickness and in fear of death, in a fifth; the blessing and consecrating the union of the species in a sixth; and, finally, the conferring that distinctive power which transmitted through all ages her Lord's gift to the Church in a seventh. This is that great and marvellous sacramental system by which the Church, dowered, as we have said, in her quality of Bride with her Lord's blood, applies that blood to His members, according to their needs. This is the perpetual consecration of matter to a supernatural end, of which the highest example is found in the Body of the Head Himself, and so it is an enfolding of human nature with the Incarnation, and a transforming it into the image of its Head. But such, likewise, is the summary of the whole written and unwritten teaching of the Church; such also, in few and brief words, the perpetual work of the succession of men whom we have described.

Thus the three successions, of men, of doctrines, and of institutions, are woven by the Holy Spirit together as three strands of a rope which cannot be broken: in the union of these three His perpetual presence dwells; and this is the spinal cord whereby He joins the Body with the Head.

Let us take instances wherein the force of this union is seen.

The first gift He bestowed upon men when the [pg 162] gospel of the kingdom approached them was the forgiveness of sins. This is a power belonging to God alone, as sin is an offence against His majesty. The conferring of this power upon the Apostles by our Lord Himself is explicitly recorded. But then two sacraments exhibit the application of this power, first that of baptism, where it is given plenarily; secondly that of penance, where it is given under restriction. And further, an order of men is instituted for this perpetual application. Here, then, we see the force of the triple cord carrying on through all ages this great truth of the forgiveness of sins in and by the Church of God. The very definite mention of the grant of this power in the written tradition is not left exposed by itself to the action of unbelieving reason. It has a double bulwark in the two institutions which assert its perpetual exercise as a matter of history, and in the order of men established to carry it out.

Take again the doctrine of the Real Presence, upon which infidelity falls as being a proof charge of human credulity,[130] on which faith and love rest as the sovereign gift of God. The recorded words of our Lord Himself express it distinctly and emphatically; further words of His in the sixth chapter of S. John allude to it with equal force, and S. Paul repeatedly refers to it. But this is not enough for the solicitude with which the Holy Spirit has [pg 163] guarded it against all attack. As the great central rite of Christian worship it is presented day after day, in myriads of churches, from age to age, to the eyes and hearts of men. The act in which Christians assemble, in which they offer up at once their repentance and their requests, their thanksgivings and their praises, to Him who has formed them into one Body, lives upon this truth. And further, the order of men which is the backbone of the Church, the great Christian priesthood, made by our Lord in instituting the rite and conferring the gift, exists for its continuance. Against such a truth, defended with such bulwarks, both infidelity and heresy dash themselves with impotent rage in vain.

Thirdly, we have in the epistles of S. Paul a mention of the bishop's office and the duties belonging to it. The mention is incidental, and the words not so determinate as in the former instances given. Those who are outside the Body, in their attack upon the necessity of episcopacy, thought that they could cut through these words so as to make it doubtful whether the office of bishop, as distinguished from that of priest, was of original institution. But then history disclosed the fact that when the last apostle was taken from the earth not a church existed which was not under episcopal jurisdiction, and through the whole world, by the institution of bishops, was fulfilled the prediction,—Instead of thy fathers [pg 164] thou shalt have children, whom thou mayest make princes in all lands. Thus, while the written record was interpreted, the unwritten teaching of the Church found a plain and unanswerable proof in her invariable practice. All through her long history she is seen to be governed by bishops; and the words of S. Paul, flanked by the institution and the practice, are more than sufficient to maintain the truth.

Once more let us take the primacy of S. Peter's see in the Church. This, as is well known, rests in the written word mainly on three great passages of S. Matthew, S. Luke, and S. John. These, indeed, are so specific and definite that they convey the dignity intended as clearly as the passages above referred to convey the forgiveness of sins or the Real Presence. But over and above these, what an overwhelming proof in the unbroken succession of those who exercised the primacy from the beginning, and are referred to from age to age by the doctors, fathers, and historians of the Church. Beside the charter of institution stands the long record of the work wrought in virtue of it, the witness of the Church to it in councils, the obedience to it in fact. As the priesthood exists in attestation of the Real Presence, so the primacy stands beside our Lord's words, first promising and then conferring it, like the comment of eighteen hundred years, uniform and consistent.

What we have here applied in the case of the forgiveness of sins, the Real Presence, episcopacy, and the primacy of the Church, might be carried out in the case of many more doctrines forming a part of the great deposit. But it may be well to cite one instance of a truth not contained in the written word at all, which through the unwritten teaching of the Church has passed into universal practice. This is not the abolition only of the Jewish Sabbath, constituted as it was by the most express divine command, for to that abolition there is a passing reference in an epistle of S. Paul, but the further substitution of the day of the resurrection, the first day of the week for the seventh, with a modified observance. This rests solely upon the deposit of the Church's unwritten teaching, corroborated by universal practice from the apostolic times.

Viewing, then, the transmission of the Truth as a whole, and the creation of the mystical Body of Christ as its home, and the Holy Spirit as the perpetual Indweller who fills that treasure-house of Truth and Grace, we may consider its maintenance as secured by the triple succession or tradition of men, of doctrine, and of institutions which are inseparably joined together in that its home. But there are some words of our Lord so distinctly and translucently expressing all this statement respecting the mode in which His Truth was first and is ever to be transmitted, and the conditions [pg 166] to which His perpetual presence is attached, that we cannot forbear to adduce them.