This alone is enough for us, and renders any further discussion of the first proposition unnecessary. After the testimony of St. Cyprian, who is his own witness, the author really has nothing more to say. He has lost his case. But, ignorant of this, he proceeds in the fourth division of his work to interrogate the fathers and councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, but even less successfully, as we now proceed to show. We only beg the reader to bear in mind that we are not adducing our proofs of the papacy by divine right, but are simply examining the proofs the author adduces against it. We do not put forth the strength of our cause, which is not necessary in the present argument; we are only showing the weakness of the case the author makes against us.
The author attempts to devise an argument against the papal authority from the sixth canon of the council of Nicaea. This canon, as he cites it, reads: "Let the ancient custom be preserved that exists in Egypt, Lybia, and Pentapolis, that the bishop of Alexandria have authority in all these countries, since that has also passed into a custom for the bishop of Rome. Let the churches at Antioch and in the other provinces preserve also their privileges." It must not be supposed that the author cites the canon with any degree of exactness, or faithfully renders it; but let that pass. From this canon two consequences, he contends, necessarily follow: first, That "the council declared that the authority of the bishop of Rome extended over a limited district, like that of the bishop of Alexandria; and second, That this authority was only based on usage," (p. 95.)
But the authority of the bishop of Rome was not in question before the council, for that nobody disputed. "The object of the canon," the author himself says, pp. 93, 94, "was to defend the authority of the bishop of Alexandria against the partisans of Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, who refused to recognize it in episcopal ordinations; .... therefore was merely to confirm the ancient customs respecting these ordinations, and, in general, the privileges consecrated by ancient usages. Now, according to an ancient custom Rome enjoyed certain prerogatives that no one contested. The council makes use of this fact in order to confirm the similar prerogatives of Alexandria, Antioch, and other churches."
The question before the council, and which it met by this canon, evidently was not the primacy of the see of Rome—although it would seem from the form in which the papal legate, Paschasinus, quoted it, without contradiction, in the council of Chalcedon, that the council of Nicaea took care to reserve that primacy—but certain customary rights, privileges, and dignities which the bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, and some other churches held in common with the bishop of Rome. As the ancient custom was preserved in the Roman Church, the council says, so let it be in Alexandria, Antioch, and other churches. The council refers to the custom in Rome as a reason for confirming the similar custom which had obtained elsewhere, and which had been violated by Meletius of Lycopolis in Egypt, and by his partisans.
To understand this, we must recollect that prior to the fall of the great patriarchates of Alexandria and the East, the administration of ecclesiastical affairs was less centralized than at present. Now nearly all, if not all bishops depend immediately on the Holy See, but in the early ages they depended on it only mediately. The bishops of a province or of a patriarchate depended immediately on their exarch, metropolitan, or patriarch, and only mediately through him on the bishop of Rome. The appointment or election of the patriarch, and of the exarch or metropolitan of a church independent of any patriarch, as were the churches of Asia Minor, Pontus, and Thrace, needed the papal confirmation, but not their suffragans, or the bishops subject to their immediate jurisdiction. The patriarch or metropolitan confirmed their election, ordained or deposed them by his own authority, subject of course to appeal to Rome. Lycopolis, by ancient custom or canons of the fathers, depended on the bishop of Alexandria, who was its bishop's immediate superior. For some reason, Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, had been deposed by the bishop of Alexandria, and deprived of his functions; but he refused to submit, ordained bishops by his own authority, contrary to the ancient custom, and created a schism, was to meet this case, and others like it, that the council decreed the sixth canon.
The authority confirmed by that canon was the authority of patriarchs, as they were subsequently called, and of metropolitans by usage independent of any patriarchal jurisdiction, and therefore the authority of the bishop of Rome which it recognized as derived from usage, could have been only his authority as metropolitan of the Suburbicarian churches, called the Roman territory, or as patriarch of the West. That this authority was limited, and dependent on ancient usage or custom, nobody disputes; but this is distinct from his authority as supreme pontiff or governor of the whole church. There are instances enough on record of metropolitan churches, like Aquileia, and those of Illyrium and Bulgaria, disputing their immediate dependence on the bishop of Rome, that never dreamed of calling in question his authority as supreme pontiff, or governor of the whole church. The schismatic Armenians do not deny and never have denied the supreme authority in the whole church of the bishop of Rome; they only assert that the pope gave to their apostle, Gregory the Illuminator, and to his successors, the independent government of the church in Armenia. St. Cyprian depended on the bishop of Rome, and acknowledged the papal authority, but it is questionable if he depended on him as patriarch of the West. We suspect Carthage was independent of patriarchal jurisdiction, and that St. Cyprian had no superior but the pope. However this may have been, the fact that churches did not depend immediately on the bishop of Rome did not in any sense deny or impair his universal authority as supreme pontiff. So the argument against the papacy from the sixth canon of the council of Nicaea, like the author's other arguments, proves nothing to his purpose.
M. Guettée, in his blind hatred of Rome, after having alleged the authority of the council of Nicaea in his own favor, undertakes to prove that it was no council of the church at all, but merely a council of the empire. He labors hard to prove that it was convoked by the Emperor Constantine by virtue of his imperial authority alone, that the emperor presided in its sessions, and confirmed and promulgated its acts. Does he not see that if it was so, the council had no ecclesiastical authority, and therefore that its acts have no bearing on the question before us? If anything is certain, it is that the church, as a polity, is independent of the state, and that civil rulers or magistrates, as such, have no authority in her government. Civil rulers have often usurped authority over the church and oppressed her: they did so at Constantinople, as Gregory III. complains; they attempted to do so all through the middle ages in the West, and they do so now to a most fearful extent in the Russian empire, as in all European Protestant states; but the authority they exercise is usurped, and is repugnant to the very nature and constitution of the church. Our Lord said, "My kingdom is not of this world." The Non-united Greeks as well as Catholics hold that there is and can be no oecumenical council without the bishop of Rome to convoke it, preside over it, and to confirm and promulgate its acts; and hence they confess their inability to hold an oecumenical council, and therefore really acknowledge that they are not the Catholic Church in its integrity though they claim to hold the orthodox faith. They admit the Roman Church is the primatial see, and that the presidency of a general council belongs to the bishop of Rome by the right and dignity of his see. If he did not preside in the council of Nicaea in person or by his legates or representatives, and approve formally or virtually its acts, it could not, by their own doctrine, have the authority of a general council. The confirmation and promulgation of its canons by the emperor might make them laws or edicts of the empire, but could not make them canons of the church.
It would be no difficult matter to prove that the author is as much out in his facts as in his inferences. The universal church has recognized the council of Nicaea as a legitimate council, and there are ample authorities to prove that its convocation and indiction were at the request or with the assent of the Roman pontiff, that he presided over it by his legates, Osius, bishop of Cordova, and Vitus and Vincentius, two Roman presbyters; that he virtually, if not formally, confirmed and published its acts; and that whatever the emperor did was merely executory; but the question is foreign to our present argument, and we have no space to indulge in extraneous or irrelevant discussions. If we were endeavoring to prove the papacy, we should adduce the proofs; but our line of argument requires us only to refute the reasons the author alleges for asserting that the papacy is schismatic. If the council of Nicaea was simply an imperial council, we have nothing to do with it; if it was a true general council of the church, it makes nothing for the author, for the sixth canon, the only one relied on, has, as the author cites it, no reference to the jurisdiction of the Holy Apostolic See of Rome.
M. Guettée pretends that the third canon of the second general council, the first of Constantinople, contains a denial of the papal authority by divine right. The canon, as he cites it, which is only the concluding part of it, says: "Let the bishop of Constantinople have the primacy of honor (priores honoris partes) after the bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is the new Rome." Hence he concludes that as the primacy conferred on the bishop of Constantinople was only a primacy of honor, the bishop of Rome had only a primacy of honor; and as the primacy of honor was conferred on the bishop of Constantinople because that city was the new Rome, so the primacy of the bishop of Rome was conferred because he was the bishop of old Rome, or the capital of the empire. The reasoning, which is Guettéean, if we may coin a word, is admirable, and we shall soon see what St. Leo the Great thinks of it. But the canon does not affect the authority, rank, or dignity of the bishop of Rome; it simply gives the bishop of Constantinople the precedence of the bishop of Alexandria, who had hitherto held the first rank after the bishop of Rome. It conferred on him no power, and took nothing from the authority of any one else. It was simply a matter of politeness. Besides, the canon remained without effect.
From the second general council the author rushes, pp. 96, 97, to the fourth, the council of Chalcedon, held under the pontificate of St. Leo Magnus, in 451, and lights upon the twenty-eighth canon of that council, which, as he gives it, reads: "In all things following the decrees of the holy fathers, and recognizing the canon just read (the third of the second council) by the one hundred and fifty bishops well beloved of God, we decree and establish the same thing touching the most holy church of Constantinople, the new Rome. Most justly did the fathers grant privileges to the see of ancient Rome, because she was the reigning (capital) city. Moved by the same motive the one hundred and fifty bishops well beloved of God grant equal privileges to the most holy see of the new Rome, thinking, very properly, that the city that has the honor to be the seat of the empire and the senate should enjoy in ecclesiastical things the same privileges as Rome, the ancient queen city, since the former, although of later origin, has been raised and honored as much as the former. In consequence of this decree the council subjected the dioceses of Pontus, Asia, (Asia Minor,) and Thrace to the jurisdiction of Constantinople."