Again, how could Peter be a sign and type of apostolic unity or his see the sign and type of apostolic authority, if he, Peter, had no relation, and his see none, to that authority not held equally by all the apostles and their sees? In the church of God there are and can be no shams, no make-believes, no false signs or types, no unrealities, no calling things which are not as if they were. Signs which signify nothing are not signs, and types which represent nothing are simply no types at all. The real apostolic unity and authority are internal, invisible in Jesus Christ himself, who, in the primary and absolute sense, as we have seen, is the rock on which the church is founded, the sole basis of its solidity and permanence, the sole ground of its existence and fountain of its life, unity, and authority. Peter and Peter's see, if the sign and type of this invisible unity, must represent it or show it forth in the visible order. But how can Peter represent that unity, unless he is in the visible order its real centre and source, in which it begins and from which it emanates? Or how can the see or chair of Peter be the sign and type of the invisible apostolic authority, unless it really be its source and centre in the visible order? The external can represent the internal, the visible the invisible, only in so far as it copies or imitates it. In calling Peter the sign and type of apostolic unity, the author then concedes that Peter represents our Lord, and that he is, as the council of Florence defines, "the true vicar of Christ;" and in making Peter's see the sign and type of apostolic authority, he makes it the real centre in the visible order of that authority, and consequently concedes the very points which he rejects, and undertakes to prove from St. Cyprian are only the unfounded pretensions of the bishop of Rome.
That the primacy here unwittingly conceded by the author is not that absolute and isolated sovereignty which the author accuses Catholic theologians of asserting for Peter and for the bishop of Rome as his successor, we readily admit, but we have already shown that such a sovereignty is not claimed. The pope is not the sovereign, but the vicar or chief minister of the sovereign. He governs the church in apostolic unity, not as isolated from the episcopal body, but as its real head or supreme chief. His authority is said to be loquens ex cathedra, speaking from the seat of apostolic and episcopal unity and authority. He is the chief or supreme pastor, not the only pastor, nor pastor at all regarded as separate from the church. He is the visible head of the church united by a living union with the body; for it is as necessary to the head to be in living union with the body, as it is to the body to be in living union with the head. Neither can live and perform its functions without the other; but the directing, controlling, or governing power is in the head. St. Ambrose says, "Where Peter is, there is the church;" but he does not say Peter is the church, nor does the pope say, "L'Eglise, c'est moi," I am the church. Succeeding to Peter as chief of the apostolic college, he is the chief or head of the church. The author's theory makes the church in the visible order as a whole, acephalous, headless, and therefore brainless.
The author bases his assertion that St. Cyprian denies the primacy of Peter on the fact that he says, "All the other apostles had what he had, the same honor and the same power." This is with Mr. Guettée a capital point. His doctrine, so far as doctrine he has, is that the church has no visible chief; that all the apostles had equal honor and authority; that all bishops as successors of the apostles are equal; that one bishop has by divine right no pre-eminence above another; and that, if one is more influential than another, he owes it to his personal character or to the external importance of his see. And this he contends is the doctrine of St. Cyprian. But, if he had understood St. Cyprian's argument, he would have never done that great saint such flagrant injustice. St. Cyprian's argument is, as is evident from the passage we have cited at length, that, although all the apostles received the same gift, the same honor, and the same power, yet, for the sake of manifesting unity, our Lord constituted one chair from which unity should begin, and gave the primacy to Peter, that the unity of the apostolic or episcopal body and of the whole church of Christ might be shown. The author himself contends that the apostolate, and by succession the episcopate, is one and indivisible, and held by the apostles or bishops in solido. Then, if all the other apostles had the apostolate, they must have had precisely what Peter had, and if the other bishops have the episcopate at all, they must have precisely what the Roman pontiff has, yet without having another apostolate or another episcopate than that which they all equally receive and hold in its invisible unity, or anything in addition thereto. He may, nevertheless, be the head or chief of the episcopal body and the centre in which episcopal unity and authority in the visible order originate, and from which they radiate through the body, and from the bishops to their respective flocks, and bind them and the whole church together in one, which, as we understand it, is the precise doctrine of St. Cyprian, and certainly is the doctrine of the Roman and Catholic Church.
The author, even if a learned man, does not appear to be much of a philosopher or much of a theologian. There are depths in St. Cyprian's philosophy and theology which he seems unable to sound, and heights which are certainly above his flight. He is, we should judge, utterly unaware of the real constitution of the church, the profound significance of the gospel, the vast reach of the Christian system, its relation to the universal system of creation, or the reasons in the very nature of things there are for its existence, and for the existence and constitution of the church. All the works of the Creator are strictly logical, and together form but one dialectic whole, are but the expression of one divine Thought. Nothing can appear more petty or worthless than the author's shallow cavils to a man who has a little real theological science.
The author cites the controversy on the baptism of heretics, in proof that St. Cyprian denied the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome, or his authority to govern as supreme pontiff the whole church, but unsuccessfully. St. Cyprian found the custom established in Carthage, as it was also in certain churches in Asia, to rebaptize persons who had been baptized by heretics, and he insisted on observing the custom. He complained, therefore, of St. Stephen, the Roman pontiff, who wrote to him to conform to the ancient and general custom of the church. Whether he conformed or not is uncertain, but there is no evidence that he denied the authority of the Roman pontiff, and he certainly did not break communion with him, though he may have regarded his exercise of his authority in that particular case as oppressive and tyranical. It would seem from the letter of St. Firmilianus to St. Cyprian, if genuine, of which there is some doubt, as there is of several letters ascribed to Cyprian, and from the address of St. Cyprian to the last council he held on the subject, which Mr. Guettée cites at some length, that the question was regarded as one of discipline, or as coming within the category of those matters on which diversity of usage in different churches and countries is allowable or can be tolerated, and on which uniformity has never been exacted. He insisted not that all the world should conform to the custom he observed, but defended, as our bishops would to-day, what he believed to be the customary rights of his church or province. That he was wrong we know, for the universal church has sustained the Roman pontiff.
We do not think the author has been very happy in placing St. Cyprian on the stand against the primacy of the holy apostolic see and the Roman pontiff. The saint is a much better witness for us than for him.
The author, unable to deny the preponderating influence of the Roman pontiff and his see in the government of the church, and the importance everywhere attached to being in communion with the bishop of Rome, seeks to evade the force of the fact by attributing it not to the belief in the primacy of the Church of Rome, but to the superior importance of the city of Rome as the capital of the empire, as if the Catholic Church were merely a Roman Church, and not founded for the whole world. We, indeed hear something of this when Constantinople, the New Rome, became the rival of Old Rome, and its bishop, on account of the civil and political importance of the city, set up to be oecumenical bishop, and claimed the first place after the bishop of Rome; but we hear nothing of it during the first three centuries, and the author adduces nothing to justify his assumption. All the fathers, alike in the East and the West, attribute the primacy held by the Church of Rome not to the importance of the city of Rome in the empire, but to the fact that she is "the church that presides," is "the principal" or governing "church," is "the see of Peter," holds the chair of Peter, "prince of the apostles," is "the root and matrix of the Catholic Church," and that Peter "lives" and "speaks" in its bishops. Now, whatever our learned author may say, we think these great fathers, some of whom were only one remove from the apostles themselves, and nearly all of whom gained the crown of martyrdom, knew the facts in the case as well as he knows them, and that there is every probability that they meant what they said and wrote.
"We see," says the author, p. 48, "that as early as the third century the bishops of Rome, because St. Peter had been one of the founders of that see, claimed to exercise a certain authority over the rest of the church, giving themselves sometimes the title of 'bishop of bishops'; but we also see that the whole church protested against these ambitious pretensions, and held them of no account." That the bishop of Rome was accused by those whom the exercise of his authority offended of assuming the title of bishop of bishops, by way of a sneer, may be very true, but that he ever gave himself that title, there is, so far as we are aware, no trustworthy evidence.
"The church protested against these ambitious pretensions." Where is that protest recorded? That bishops were then as now jealous of their real or supposed rights, and ever well disposed to resist any encroachment upon them, is by no means improbable; and this, if the bishops generally held that the Roman pontiff had no more authority by divine right over the church than any other bishop, must have made it exceedingly difficult for him to grasp the primacy of jurisdiction over them. Their power to resist, in case they believed they could resist with a good conscience, must have been, being, as they were in the fourth century, eighteen hundred to one, somewhat greater than his to encroach. That the bishops or simple priests whom the Roman pontiff admonished or censured protested sometimes, not against his authority, but against what they regarded as its unjust, arbitrary, or tyrannical exercise, is no doubt true, and the same thing happens still, even with those who have no doubt of the papal authority; but that the whole church protested is not proven; and in all the instances in which protests were offered on the part of individual bishops that came before an ecclesiastical council, the universal church uniformly sustained the Roman pontiff. When St. Victor excommunicated the Quartodecimans, some bishops remonstrated with him as being too severe, and others opposed his act, but the council of Nicaea sustained it. Even before that council, the author of the Philosophumena, whose work must have been composed in the early part of the third century, treats the Quartodecimans as heretics, although, except as to the time of keeping Easter, their faith was irreproachable. So on the question of the baptism of heretics, the whole church, instead of protesting against the decision of St. Stephen, approved it, and follows it to this day. It will not do to say the whole church treated the acts of these popes "as of no account."
The writers of the letters attributed to St. Cyprian and Firmilianus are good evidence that the popes claimed and exercised jurisdiction over the whole church in the controversy on the baptism of heretics, and Tertullian affords no mean proof of the same fact at a yet earlier date. In a work written after he had fallen into some of the heresies of the Montanists, he writes, as cited by our author, p. 78, "I learn that a new edict has been given, a peremptory edict. The sovereign pontiff, that is, the bishop of bishops, has said: 'I remit the sins of impurity and fornication.' O edict! not less can be done than to ticket it—GOOD WORK! But where shall such an edict be posted? Surely, I think, upon the doors of the houses of prostitution." This passage undoubtedly proves that Tertullian himself, fallen into heresy, did not relish the papal decision that condemned him, and perhaps that he was disposed to deny the authority of the Roman pontiff; but if it had been generally held that the Roman pontiff was no more in the church than any other bishop, and therefore that his decision could have no authority out of his diocese or province, would his decision have so deeply moved him, and called forth such an outburst of wrath? If the claim to the primacy of authority in the whole church, and therefore to jurisdiction over all bishops, was not generally recognized and held, what occasion was there for so much indignation? What point would there have been in the sneer, or force in the irony, of calling him the sovereign pontiff, or the bishop of bishops? Tertullian's language, which was evidently intended to exaggerate the authority claimed by the Roman pontiff, plainly enough implies that he was generally held to have authority to make decisions in doctrine and discipline for the whole church, and that a censure from him was something of far more importance than that from any other bishop or patriarch.