The Formation of Christendom, Volume II

by T. W. Allies

And he is more specific still; for this “one Church is founded by the Lord Christ upon Peter, [pg 332] having its source and its principle in unity,” “on whose person He built the Church, and in whom He began and exhibited the source of unity.”[283]

Certainly if any idea has ever been put forth clearly and definitely, it would seem to be the idea of organic unity here delineated by Cyprian, as necessary not merely to the well-being but to the essence of the Church. Nor does one see what words he could have found more expressly to reject the notion that the individual bishop in his diocese was the unit on the aggregation of which the Church was built, and to assert in contradiction that the Church was built on the Primacy of Peter as its generative, formative, controlling, and unifying power. According to him the whole order and government of the Church are bound up in the Lord's words to Peter: while as to the Church herself three ideas are in his mind so compacted together, so running into and pervading each other, that they cannot be severed; and these ideas are Unity, Grace, and Truth. The symbols of the Sun, the Tree, and the Fountain, the Lord's Coat, the one Flock tethered in one Fold under one Shepherd, the one House as opposed to sundry self-chosen domiciles, the Mother embracing her whole progeny in her womb, illustrate and enforce each other, and all contain the three ideas, of which Grace and Truth are as the warp and woof in which the substance of the [pg 333] one web consists. For Unity, Truth, and Grace, viewed as attributes of the Church, are blended together in the light and warmth of the sun, in the sap which vivifies every branch of the tree, and gives it fruitfulness from the root, in the fountain of water, under which image our Lord has so often summed up His whole gift to man, in the flock which the Shepherd has chosen, and for which He cares, in the house where the master dwells and collects his family, in the one robe which encompassed and contained the virtue of the Wearer, in the prolific womb which gives birth to the whole sacred race. The force of all these images lies in their unicity: plurality would not modify, but destroy them. Yet even these symbols are surpassed by that argument from the divine Unity which he sets forth as the type and cause of the Church's unity. From created likenesses—the fairest and choicest which the world presents—he passes to the uncreated nature, and from the divine immutability, wherewith these three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the divine Exemplar of Unity, Truth, and Grace, are one, deduces the Unity of the Church their dwelling-place.

Cyprian, then, cannot sever the Church of his heart, the Church for which he lived and died, from Unity, or from Truth, or from Grace: and this Church is to him founded on the Primacy of Peter, and developed from his person. The one [pg 334] Episcopate, whose golden chain he looks upon as surrounding the earth in its embrace, “of which a part is held by each without division of the whole,” wherein therefore joint possession is dependent on unity, would have no existence without the bond of the Primacy, from which it was developed and which keeps it one. Take away this, and the office of each bishop is crystallised into a separate mass, having no coherence or impact with its like: bishops so conceived would hold indeed a similar office, but being detached from each other would not hold joint possession of one Episcopate. Separate crystals do not make one body; nor a heap of pebbles a rock. But it was a Rock on which Christ built and builds His Church, that Rock being His own Person, from which He communicated this virtue, wherein the cohesion and impact of the whole Episcopate lies, to the See of him whom He constituted His Vicar. Finally, Cyprian contrasts pointedly the people of Christ which cannot be rent with the twelve tribes of Israel, which were torn asunder: as if he would beforehand repudiate that parallel between the Synagogue and the Church, in the question of unity, which has before now been resorted to as a refuge by minds in distress, who failed to see the tokens of the Bride of Christ in the community to which they belonged.

In Origen and in Cyprian we put ourselves back into the middle of the third century. In the [pg 335] words of the latter we see portrayed to the life that idea which had filled the hearts of Christians through seven generations of labours and sorrows from the day of Pentecost down to his time. But whence arose this perfect union of all hearts and minds in the early Christians, who were penetrated with the conviction that the Church was the home of truth and grace? We may answer this question thus: No catechumen was received into the fold without a clear and distinct belief in that article of the earliest creed, and part of the baptismal profession, “the Holy Catholic Church.” A new word was made to express a new idea, the glorious and unique work of that ever-blessed Trinity whom the creed recited: the Home and House in which the Triune God, whom the Christian glorified, by indwelling made the fountain of that grace and that truth which God had become Man in order to communicate. The catechumen's baptism into the one Body was the foundation of all the hope in which his life consisted;[284] the integrity, duration, sanctity of that Body being component parts of the hope. And with regard at least to all gentile converts this precise and definite catechetical instruction was reinforced by the new sense which at their conversion was impressed on them of the heathenism out of which they were then taken. In how many of them was the remembrance of their past life connected with the guilt of deeds [pg 336] and habits which their new Christian conscience taught them to regard as fearful sins. Nay, the notion of sin itself—as a transgression of the eternal law and an offence against the personal Majesty of God—was a Christian acquisition to the corrupted heathen. Thus the passage into the one Body and the divine Kingdom was contemporaneous in their case with a total change of the moral life. It is Cyprian, again, who has given us a vivid account of this change, which took place at a time of mature manhood in his own life, and which will serve as a graphic sketch of what had happened to the great mass of adult converts besides himself.

Let us suppose a man forty-five years of age speaking: “For me, while I yet lay in darkness and bewildering night, and was tossed to and fro on the billows of this troublesome world, ignorant of my true life, an outcast from light and truth, I used to think that second birth, which divine mercy promised for my salvation, a hard saying according to the life I then led: as if a man could be so quickened to a new life in the laver of healing water as to put off his natural self, and keep his former tabernacle, yet be changed in heart and soul. How is it possible, said I, for so great a conversion to be accomplished, so that both the obstinate defilement of our natural substance, and old and ingrained habits, should suddenly and rapidly be put off; evils whose roots are deeply [pg 337] seated within? When does he learn frugality, to whom fine feasts and rich banquets have become a habit? Or he who in gay sumptuous robes glisters with gold and purple, when does he reduce himself to ordinary and simple raiment? Another whose bent is to public distinctions and honours cannot bear to become a private and unnoticed man; while one who is thronged by a phalanx of dependents, and retinued by the overflowing attendance of an obsequious host, thinks it punishment to be alone. The temptation still unrelaxed, need is it that, as before, wine should entice, pride inflate, anger inflame, covetousness disquiet, cruelty stimulate, ambition delight, and lust lead headlong.

“Such were my frequent musings; for whereas I was encumbered with the many sins of my past life, which it seemed impossible to be rid of, so I had used myself to give way to my clinging infirmities, and, from despair of better things, to humour the evils of my heart, as slaves born in my house and my proper offspring. But after that life-giving water succoured me, washing away the stain of former years, and pouring into my cleansed and hallowed breast the light which comes from heaven, after that I drank in the heavenly Spirit, and was created into a new man by a second birth, then marvellously what before was doubtful became plain to me, what was hidden was revealed, what was dark began to shine, what was difficult now had a way and means, what had seemed [pg 338] impossible now could be achieved, what was in me of the guilty flesh now confessed that it was earthy, what was quickened in me by the Holy Ghost now had a growth according to God. Thou knowest well, thou canst recollect as well as I, what was then taken from me, and what was given by that death of sin, that quickening power of holiness. Thou knowest, I name it not; over my own praises it were unwelcome to boast, though that is ground never for boasting but for gratitude, which is not ascribed to man's virtue but is confessed to be God's bounty; so that to sin no more has come of faith, as heretofore to sin had come of human error. From God, I say, from God is all we can be; from Him we live, from Him we grow, and by that strength which is from Him accepted and ingathered we learn beforehand, even in this present state, the foretokens of what is yet to be. Let only fear be a guard upon innocency, that that Lord who by the influence of His heavenly mercy has graciously shone into our hearts, may be detained by righteous obedience in the hostelry of a mind that pleases Him; that the security imparted to us may not beget slothfulness, nor the former enemy steal upon us anew.”[285]

Add to this that Christians were marked out as one Body by the Jewish and heathen persecution which tracked them everywhere. But the sects were not persecuted. The various schools of [pg 339] the Gnostics all agreed in this, that it was not necessary or desirable to suffer martyrdom for the faith. Their view was, that they could believe with their minds whatever they pleased, though an enemy might force them by threats of suffering to utter with the mouth what they abhorred; and with this convenient distinction they escaped imprisonment, poverty, bereavement, and death. But the Christian was bound—when the fitting circumstances came—to repeat the confession of his Lord before Pilate. Joined therefore to his baptismal belief, and to the utter change of life involved in his conversion, was the bond of common suffering which held together Christians as one Body throughout the world: whence an old martyr bishop said: “The Church, for that love which she bears to God, in every place and at every time sends forward a multitude of martyrs to the Father, whereas all the rest not only have no such thing among themselves to show, but deem not even such a witness necessary.”[286]

Moreover, as a fourth cause, the historic origin of their name and belief led them up to that day of Pentecost when the descent of the Spirit of God constituted the formation of that body in belonging to which was all their hope and trust; with the existence of which their faith was identified; in the communion of which their charity was engendered. As the birth and the life and the passion [pg 340] of Christ were that subject-matter on which their whole faith grew, so the creation of their existence as a people was a definite act in which the Redeemer showed Himself the Father of His Race, creating them as His children and generating them by His Spirit. The loving thought of Christians in every age ran along this line to its source. Nature herself presents us with an image of what this idea of the Church was to them. As the great river whose water is the symbol of blessing and the bearer of fertility leaps down a giant birth from its parent lake, ever blazing under the splendour of a tropical sun, yet ever fed by sources springing from snow-crowned mountains, and changes in its course the desert into earth's fruitfulest region, so the river of God, welling forth on the day of Pentecost from the central abyss of the divine love, bore down to all the nations the one water of salvation, and wheresoever it spread, the desert retreated, and the earth brought forth corn and wine in abundance. And the idea of this divine stream was from the beginning as deep as it was clear in every Christian heart. It is one of a very few doctrines, such as the unity of the Godhead, whereof indeed it is the image and the result, of which there is not only an implicit belief but a definite consciousness from the first. For the thought of the kingdom is inseparable from that of the king: and he could be no divine Sovereign whose realm was not one and indivisible: and that [pg 341] this realm should break in pieces and consume all other kingdoms,[287] but itself stand for ever, was the trust on which the whole Christian life of endurance and hope was built.

The Christian society through its whole structure was marked with the seal of that great act on which it grew, the assumption of human nature by a divine Person. Its whole government, its whole worship, and the whole moral and spiritual being of its people radiate from that Person as King, as Priest, and as Prophet. Take first the character of the individual Christian. It is in all its gradations, in that marvellous range of the same being which stretches from the highest saint matured in acting and suffering to the most imperfect penitent received into the bosom of the one mother, a copy, more or less resembling, of our Lord Himself. He, the divine Image, is the original from which every Christian lineament is traced, and every one of His race repeats Him in some degree. Every virtue is such as a transcript of some portion of His character; and the whole life of the individual resolves itself into an imitation of Him. Thus He is the Prophet not only declaring the whole divine will to men, but leading them in it by His own example. The divine Painter is but representing in every one of His children a copy in some sort of that life, which He set forth in [pg 342] full in the thirty-three years: a thought which we have seen Origen expressing in the chrism which descended from the head of Aaron to the utmost skirt of his raiment.

But likewise in His Priesthood a parallel derivation ensues. First He multiplies Himself in His Apostles: they again in the Bishops whom they create; while each of these communicates himself in his priests. A triple transfusion suffices to form the whole hierarchical order. Nothing can be conceived more simple, yet nothing more efficient supposing that He is what He proclaimed Himself to be. The victim which He appoints to be offered by this priesthood is Himself, and His Body so offered is the food, the life, and the bond of the whole spiritual Body thus created. That Person with which He took the manhood is the centre of all this worship, of which the manhood so taken is the instrument. Thus it is that His second office of Priest, bound up so entirely with Himself, is yet communicated through His divine manhood to the whole Body which He forms. And this order remains through all ages, as intimately connected with his Person now, as eighteen centuries ago, and as it will be when all the centuries to come are evolved.