The principle of the unity of the Church is very similar. That, again, is primarily and essentially a spiritual unity. The ultimate source is, according to the Lord's own teaching, the unity of the Godhead: 'that they may be one, even as we are one.' The effect of the outpouring of the Spirit is to make the multitude of them that believed 'of one heart and one soul.' Baptism becomes the source of unity, 'In one Spirit were we all baptized into one body:' the 'one bread' becomes the security of union. 'We who are many are one bread, one body, for we all partake of the one bread.' More fully still is the unity drawn out in the Epistle to the Ephesians. 'There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.' The unity starts with being spiritual; it is the power of the One God drawing men together by His action upon their spirits; uniting them in the service of one Lord who has redeemed them, but it issues in 'one body.' Nothing can be stronger than the assertion of such unity. But in what does this unity lie, and what is to be the safeguard of it? No one answer is possible to this question. Clearly, one part of the answer is, a unity of spiritual aim, 'one hope of your calling:' another answer is, a common basis of belief, common trust in the same Lord, 'one faith;' a further answer is, common social sacraments, 'one baptism,' 'one bread.' All these lie on the face of these passages of S. Paul. Are we to add to them 'a common government,' 'an apostolical succession?' Was this of the essence or a late addition, a result of subsequent confederation intended to guarantee the permanence of dogma? No doubt, the circumstances of subsequent history moulded the exact form of the ministry, and emphasized the importance of external organization under particular circumstances; but this is no less true of the other points of unity; the unity of spiritual life was worked out in one way in the times of public discipline and penance, in another way when these fell into disuse: the unity of faith was brought into prominence in the times of the formulating of the Creeds. So the unity of external organization was emphasized when it was threatened by the Gnostic, Novatian, and Donatist controversies. But the germ of it is there from the first, and it was no later addition. The spiritual unity derived from the Lord is imparted through Sacraments; but this at once links the inward life and spiritual unity with some form of external organization. And so the writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians after his great description of Christian unity, goes on at once to speak of the ministry. The apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, these are special gifts of the ascended Lord to the Church; and they are given for the very purpose of securing unity, 'for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ, till we all attain unto the unity of the faith.' No less significantly, when S. Paul is applying to the Church the metaphor of the body and its members in order to emphasize the unity of the whole, does he rank apostles, prophets, teachers, as the most important members of the body[350].
The history of the early Church, so far as it can be traced, points the same way. The Lord appointed His body of twelve: He gave them the power to bind and to loose, the power to exercise discipline over offending members of the Church. At first, the Christian Church is a purely Jewish body; it continues in the Apostles' fellowship as well as doctrine; they distribute its alms; they punish unworthy members; they arrange its differences; they appoint subordinate officers; they ratify their actions, and sanction the admission of Samaritans and proselytes to the Church; but the various members throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, are embraced in the single conception of one Church[351]. Then under the guidance of Paul and Barnabas, the Gentiles are brought in and formed into churches; the danger to unity becomes acute. According to the Acts of the Apostles, it is surmounted by reference to the Church at Jerusalem; the Apostles and Elders there decide the question, and the Gentile Churches are thus kept in communion with it. S. Paul's letters, with all the difficulty there is of reconciling every detail with the historian's account, present us with essentially the same picture. In dealing with his own Churches, he claims absolute right, as apostle, to hand on and lay down traditions, to punish, to forgive, to govern: he leaves some class of ministers in every Church under his guidance; each Church is to administer discipline over unworthy members. But the Churches cannot act independently: the Church at Corinth is not to act as though it were the fountain head of Christianity, or the only Gentile Church; it is to remember the customs in other Churches. Further than this, above 'all the Churches,' appears already as one body 'the Church,' in which God has set apostles[352]; within it there are separate spheres of work, Paul and Barnabas are to go to the Gentiles, the leading Jewish apostles to the Jews; S. Paul will not intrude beyond the province assigned to him; he makes his Gentile Churches to contribute to the needs of the Jewish Church, and realize the debt which they owe to them. Any divisions in a local Church cannot be tolerated, as being inconsistent with the unity of Christ, with His cross, and with the significance of baptism. Peter stands condemned when he wishes to separate himself and so causes division between Jew and Gentile.
The importance attached to external organization is surely implied in all of this, and the circumstances of the second century forced out into clearness what was so implied. Gnosticism, Montanism, Novatianism all tended to found new bodies, which claimed to be the true Church. How was the individual Christian to test their claims? It was in the face of this question that Church writers, notably S. Cyprian and S. Irenaeus, emphasized the importance of historical continuity in the Church as secured by the apostolical succession of the episcopate. The unity of the Church came primarily, they urged, from God, from heaven, from the Father; it was secured by the foundation of the Church upon the Apostles; the bishops have succeeded to the Apostles and so become the guardians of the unity of the Church. As soon then as we find the Christian episcopate universally organized, we find it treated as an institution received from the Apostles and as carrying with it the principle of historic continuity. So it has remained ever since, side by side with the other safeguards of unity, the sacraments and the common faith. The Roman Church has added to it what seemed a further safeguard of unity, the test of communion with itself; but this was a later claim, a claim which was persistently resented, and which was urged with disastrous results. The Reformed Churches of the Continent, in their protest against that additional test, have rejected the whole principle of historic continuity; they have remained satisfied with the bond of a common faith and of common sacraments: but the result can scarcely be said to be as yet a securer unity. Even an Unitarian historian recognises heartily that the characteristic of the Church in England is this continuity. 'There is no point,' urges Mr. Beard[353], 'at which it can be said, here the old Church ends, here the new begins.... The retention of the Episcopate by the English Reformers at once helped to preserve this continuity and marked it in the distinctest way.... It is an obvious historical fact that Parker was the successor of Augustine, just as clearly as Lanfranc and Becket.'
This, then, is what the Church claims to be as the home of grace, the channel of spiritual life. It claims to be a body of living persons who have given themselves up to the call of Christ to carry on His work in the world; a body which was organized by Himself thus far that the Apostles were put in sole authority over it; a body which received the Spirit to dwell within it at Pentecost; a body which propagated itself by spiritual birth; a body in which the ministerial power was handed on by the Apostles to their successors, which has remained so organized till the present day, and has moved on through the world, sometimes allied with, sometimes in separation from the State, always independent of it; a body which lays on each of its members the duty of holiness, and the obligation of love, and trains them in both.
But two objections arise here, which must be dealt with shortly. It is urged first, this is an unworthy limitation: we ought to love all men; to treat all men as brothers; why limit this love, this feeling of brotherhood to the baptized, to the Church? True, we ought to love and honour all men, to do good to all men. The love of the Christian, like the love of Christ, knows no limits; but the limitations are in man himself. All human nature is not lovable: all men are not love-worthy. Love must, at least, mean a different thing; it must weaken its connotation if applied to all men; there may be pity, there may be faith, there may be a prophetic anticipating love for the sinner and the criminal, as we recall their origin and forecast the possibilities of their future; but love in the highest sense, love that delights in and admires its object, love that is sure of a response, the sense of brotherhood which knows that it can trust a brother—these are not possible with the wanton, the selfish, the hypocrite. Though man has social instincts which draw him into co-operation with others; he has also tendencies to selfishness and impurity which work against the spirit of brotherhood and make it impossible. Not till we have some security that the man's real self is on the side of unselfishness, can we trust him; and baptism with its gifts of grace, baptism with its death to the selfish nature, baptism with its profession of allegiance to the leadership of Christ, this, at least, gives us some security. Even Comte, with his longing for brotherhood, tells us that in forming our conception of humanity we must not take in all men, but those only who are really assimilable, in virtue of a real co-operation towards the common existence, and Mr. Cotter Morison would eliminate and suppress those who have no altruistic affection. We limit, then, only so far as seems necessary to gain reality; we train men in the narrower circle of brotherhood, that they may become enthusiasts for it, and go forth as missionaries to raise others to their own level. As for those who lie outside Christianity, the Church, like our Lord Himself in the parable of the sheep and the goats, like S. Paul in his anticipation of the judgment day, recognises all the good there is in them; like Justin Martyr and many of the early Fathers, it traces in them the work of the Divine Word; and yet none the less did these writers claim and does the Church still claim for itself the conscious gift of spiritual life, in a sense higher than anything that lies outside itself.
But many, who would follow thus far, would draw another line, and would include within the Church all the baptized, whether professing churchmen or not. Once more, so far as we draw any distinction within the limits of the baptized, it is for the sake of reality. We recognise that every atom of their faith is genuine, that so far as they have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, they are true members of the Church; that so far as they have banded themselves together into a society, they have something akin to the reality of the Church, and gain some of its social blessings. But then it is they who have banded themselves together into a society: and that means they have done it at their own risk. We rest upon the validity of our sacraments, because they were founded by the Lord Himself, because they have His special promises, because they have been handed down in regular and valid channels to us. Have they equal security that their sacraments are valid? Again, we must hold that schism means something of evil: that it causes weakness: that it thus prevents the full work of brotherhood, of knitting Christian with Christian in common worship: that so it prevents the complete witness of the Church in the world; that in so far as such Christians are schismatic, they are untrue and harmful members of the Church. The full complete claim of the Church is that it is a body visibly meeting together in a common life, and forming by historical continuity a part of the actual body founded by our Lord Himself. It would be unreal to apply this conception of a complete historic brotherhood to those who have separated themselves from the Church's worship, and whose boast is that they were founded by Wesley, or Luther, or Calvin. A Church so founded is not historically founded by Christ. It may have been founded to carry on the work of Christ, it may have been founded in imitation of Him, and with the sincerest loyalty to His person, but it cannot be said to have been founded by Him. Even if circumstances have justified it, it is at any rate not the ideal; and whatever confessions the historic Church may have to make of its own shortcomings, it still must witness to the ideal of a visible unity and historical continuity. Amid the divisions of Christendom, and in face of her own shortcomings, the Church of England does not claim to be the full complete representation of the Church of Christ. She is only one national expression of the Catholic Church: she feels that 'it is safer for us to widen the pale of the kingdom of God, than to deny the fruits of the Spirit[354];' she has ever on her lips the prayer, 'Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers, neither take vengeance of our sins,' and yet she must make her claim boldly and fearlessly to have retained the true ideal of the Church; to be loyal to the essential principle that her life comes historically from Christ and not from man.
II. But the Church is the school of truth as well as the school of virtue. Its ministers form a priesthood of truth as well as a priesthood of sacrifice. Its priests' lips have 'to keep knowledge.' Christianity is, as the School of Alexandria loved to represent it, a Divine philosophy, and the Church its school.
This conception of the Church starts from our Lord's own words. His Apostles are to be as scribes instructed unto the kingdom of Heaven; they are to have the scribes' power to decide what is and what is not binding in the kingdom; the Spirit is to lead them into all truth; they are to make disciples of all the nations, 'teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you.' The function of the Church then with regard to truth is primarily to bear witness to that which has been revealed. It does not primarily reveal, it tells of the truths which have been embodied in the historic life of Jesus Christ or explained in His teaching. 'One is its teacher; One is its master, even the Christ.' It holds a 'faith once delivered to the saints.' Hence, from the first, there grew up some quasi-authoritative formula, in which we can see the germ of the later Creeds, which each Christian Missionary would teach to his converts. S. Paul himself received from others and handed on to the Corinthians, as his first message to them, some such half-stereotyped Creed, narrating the central facts of the Death and Resurrection of the Lord; his teaching was as a mould which shaped the lives of the converts as they were poured, like so much molten metal, into it. It was authoritative, not even an angel from heaven could preach another gospel. As time went on and false teaching spread, this side of the Church's work is emphasized more and more. The Church is to be the pillar and ground-work of the truth. Timothy and Titus are to hold fast the deposit, to prevent false teaching, to secure wholesomeness of doctrine no less than sobriety of life.
The contests of the next centuries bring out this idea of witness into clearer prominence, and the Episcopate, as it had been the guarantee of unity, becomes now the guarantee of truth. Thus, S. Ignatius is face to face with Docetic and Gnostic teaching; with him the bishops are 'in the mind of Jesus Christ;' they are to be treated 'as the Lord;' to avoid heresy, it is necessary to avoid 'separation from the God of Jesus Christ, from the Bishop and the ordinances of the Apostles;' the one bishop is ranked with the one Eucharist, the one flesh of Jesus Christ, the one cup, the one altar, as the source of unity; submission to the Bishop and the Presbyters is a means towards holiness, towards spiritual strength and spiritual joy[355]. These are incidental expressions in letters written at a moment of spiritual excitement: but the same appeal reappears in calmer controversial treatises. S. Irenaeus argues against Gnosticism on exactly the same grounds. Truth is essentially a thing received; it was received by the Apostles from Christ. He was the truth Himself; He revealed it to His Apostles; they embodied it in their writings and handed it on to the Bishops and Presbyters who succeeded them; hence the test of truth is to be sought in Holy Scripture and in the teaching of those Churches which were founded directly by the Apostles[356]. With equal strength Tertullian urges that the truth was received by the churches from the Apostles, by the Apostles from Christ, by Christ from God; it is therefore independent of individuals; it must be sought for in Holy Scripture, but as the canon of that is not fixed, and its interpretation is at times doubtful, it must be supplemented by the evidence of the apostolic Churches; and he challenges the heretics to produce the origin of their churches and shew that the series of bishops runs back to some Apostle or apostolic man[357].
The Church is thus primarily a witness: the strength of its authority lies in the many sides from which the witness comes; but the exigencies of controversy, and indeed of thought even apart from controversy, rendered necessary another function in respect to truth. The Church was compelled to formulate, to express its witness in relation to the intellectual difficulties of the time. Christianity is indeed essentially a matter not of the intellect, but of the will, a personal relation of trust in a personal God. Its first instinct is, as the first instinct of friendship would be, to resent intellectual analysis and dogmatic definition. But as the need of telling others about a friend, or defending him against slander, would compel us to analyse his qualities and define his attractiveness; so it was with the Church's relation to the Lord. It bore witness to the impression which His life had made upon His followers that He was Divine; it bore witness to the facts of the life that attested it and to His own statements. But the claim was denied; it needed justifying; it needed to be shewn to be consistent with other truths, such as the unity of God, and the reality of His own human nature, and so definition was forced upon the Church. The germ of such definitions is found in the New Testament; the deeper Christological teaching of the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians, and of the prologue of S. John are instances of such intellectual analysis and formulation, and were evidently written in the face of controversy. The technical decisions of the great councils of the fourth and fifth centuries and their expression in the Nicene and 'Athanasian' Creeds are the outcome of the same tendency. Yet even in them, the Church acts, in a sense, as a witness; the Scriptures are appealed to as the ultimate authority; the Creed is the summary of its chief doctrines: the one aim is to secure and express the truth witnessed to by churches throughout the world, to eliminate novelty and caprice; the new definitions are accepted, because they alone are felt to express the instinct of the Church's worship. By this time the canon of Holy Scripture was fixed. It becomes thenceforth an undying fountain of life from which the water of pure doctrine can be drawn. Tradition and development can always be checked by that.