In conclusion, we desire to correct an error into which the author of "Vox Ecclesiae" has fallen, concerning the view of this same question taken by Catholics. On page 57, he says:
"The exaggerated or Romish theory is, that the possession of the Apostolical Constitution and a properly transmitted succession is enough to constitute a true and perfect church. Thus succession is held to be everything," etc.
In one sense of these words, namely, that to be the actual organization founded by Christ and constituted, as he left it, in the hands of the apostles, is to be a true and perfect church; they are the faith of Catholics. But this is not the sense in which the author uses them. The idea he thus expresses is, that we regard an external succession in the line of apostolic orders as sufficient to make a man a priest or bishop, as the case may be, and that such a succession constitutes a church. This is a very prevalent, but very thoughtless, error. It is true that we believe apostolic orders, in the apostolic line, to be so absolutely necessary that no man, under any circumstances, can perform any I without them. But we do not believe, that the possession of such orders by any organization makes it a true church. Cranmer was lawfully ordained as priest and bishop of the Catholic Church, and, whether as a schismatic under Henry, or a heretic under Edward, his orders went with him and rendered every act in pursuance of them valid. The bishops he consecrated were bishops, the priests he ordained were priests, and if Archbishop Parker were in fact consecrated by Barlow and Hodgkins, and either of them were consecrated by Cranmer, and if the English succession be otherwise unbroken, then every priest of that succession is a true priest, and every bishop a true bishop. Their acts are valid acts, whatever their doctrine or their schism.
But this does not make the Church of England "a true and perfect church." If the fact of her full apostolical succession were established to-day, beyond the shadow of a doubt, and we would it could be, her position would differ nothing, in our view, from that of the Arian and Donatist churches of the fourth century, or of the Greek Church for the past nine hundred years, churches whose orders were all valid, whose doctrines were more or less at variance with Catholic truth, whose sacraments conferred grace, but who were cut off from the body of Christ's Church by their state of schism.
The Catholic test of Catholicity is short and simple, "Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesiae," said Ambrose of Milan, (Comm. in Ps. xl.,) and wherever Peter is, Peter, who, "like an immovable rock, holds together the structure and mass of the whole Christian fabric," (Ambrosii serm. xlvii.,) and "who, down to the present time and forever, in his successors lives and judges," (Care Eph. A.D. 431, serm. Phil.,) wherever Peter is, there, and there only, do we see the church. Catholics, collectively and individually, say with St. Jerome, "Whoever is united with the See of Peter is mine," and, throughout the world, whatever church, society or man is joined by the bonds of visible communion with the Roman See, is in and of the body of the Catholic Church, they and none others. No union with that See is possible to those who do not profess, at least implicitly, the entire Catholic doctrine, and submit to the legitimate discipline of the church. No validity of orders without true doctrine, no truth of doctrine and validity of orders without union with the Apostolic See, can remedy the evil. To all outside that unity, however similar to us in one point or another, we must repeat the words which St. Optatus of Mela wrote to the African Donatists about A.D. 384:
"You know that the Episcopal See was first established for Peter at the city of Rome, in which See Peter, the head of all the apostles, sat, and with which one See unity must be maintained by all; that the apostles might not each defend before you his own see, but that he should be both a schismatic and a sinner who should set up any other against that one See." (Adr. Donat. ii.) Would that, of all who know the truth of that which Optatus has written, and whom a thousand hindrances are keeping from that rock of unity, we might say, as St. Cyprian wrote of Antonianus, in the first ages, to the Holy Pope Cornelius, (ad auton,) "He is in communion with you, that is, with the Catholic Church."