With no recognized central and ruling see with which all, in order to be in unity, must commune, and with only particular, or rather independent and isolated, churches in existence, without any intercommunion one with another, and all of which, as separate and independent churches, have failed, how can those several branches, which are only trunkless, be restored, "unity evolved from multiplexity," and intercommunion re-established? If there is an organic see, the centre of unity, mother and mistress of all the churches, particular churches that have failed can easily be restored if they wish. They have only to abjure their schism or heresy, be reconciled with that see, submit to its authority, and receive its teaching. They are thus reincorporated by the mercy of God into the church organism, and participate in its unity and the life that flows from it. But on the author's church theory, we can see no possible way in which the separate bodies can be restored to the unity of the church. Unity cannot be constructed or reconstructed from multiplicity; for there can be no multiplicity where there is no unity. Multiplicity depends on unity, which creates or generates and sustains it. Suppose we grant for the moment the Catholic Church is no one of the three churches, yet is not separable from or independent of them, and, in fact, underlies them, but inorganic, or having only these for its organs. How shall they be brought into organic unity? By a General Council? Where is the authority to convoke it, to determine who may or who may not sit in it, and to confirm its acts? You say, Summon all the bishops of the Roman, the Greek, and the Anglican bodies. But who has authority to summon them, and why summon these and no others? Who shall say? It is the same question we have had up before. Why extend or why confine the Catholic Church to the three churches named? Where there is no recognized centre of authority, that is to say, no recognized authority, there is authority to admit or to exclude. It is necessary that authority define which is the Catholic Church, before you can say what organizations it includes or excludes, or what prelates or ministers have the right to be summoned as Catholic prelates or ministers, and what not.
A nation disorganized, as the author assumes the church now is, though he trusts only temporarily, can reorganize itself; for the political sovereignty resides always in the nation, or, as we say, in modern times, in the people. The people, as the nation, possess, under God, or rather from him, the sovereign power to govern themselves, which they can neither alienate nor be deprived of so long as they exist as an independent nation or sovereign political community. When the old government which, as legal, held from them, is broken up or dissolved, they have the inherent right to come together in such way as they choose or can, and reconstitute government or power in such manner and vest it in such hands as they judge best. But the church disorganized cannot reorganize itself; for the organic power does not vest in the church as the faithful or the Christian people. Authority in the church is not created, constituted, or delegated by the Christian people, nor does it in any sense hold from them. Church power or authority comes immediately from God to the central see, and from that see radiates through the whole body; for the author agrees with us that the church is an organism. Hence we recognize the Council of Constance as a General Council only after it was convoked by Gregory XII., who was, in our judgment, the true Bishop of the Apostolic See, and hold legal only the acts confirmed by Martin V. The disorganization of the church is, then, its dissolution or death. It has no power to raise itself from the dead. If the central see could really fail, the whole organism would fail. The church is indefectible through the indefectibility of the Holy See, and that is indefectible because it is Peter's See, and our Lord promised Peter that, however Satan might try him, his faith should not fail: "Satan has desired to sift thee as wheat; but I have prayed the Father that thy faith fail not." The prayer of Christ cannot be unanswered, and is a promise. The attacks on the Holy See have been violent and continual, but they have never been successful. Our Lord's prayer has been effective, and Peter's faith has never failed. No doubt there is the full authority to teach and to govern in the church; but this authority is not derived from the faithful nor distributed equally among them, but resides primarily and in its plenitude in the Holy See, and therefore in the bishop of that see, or the pope, Peter's successor, in whom Peter lives and continues to teach and govern the whole church. All Catholic bishops depend on him, and receive from him their jurisdiction, and by authority from God through him govern their respective dioceses. The church is papal in its essential constitution, not simply episcopal; for we have seen that it is an organism, and can be an organism only as proceeding from an organic centre, or central see, on which its unity and catholicity depend. The Apostolic See cannot be separated from the Sedens; for without him it is empty, incapable of thinking, speaking, or acting. It is, then, it seems to us, as utterly impossible to assert the church as really one and catholic, without asserting the pope, or supreme pastor, as it would be to assert an organism without asserting a central organic cell. The failure of the pope would be the failure of the whole church organism, with no power of reorganization or reconstruction left—an important point in which the church and the nation differ. The overlooking of this point of difference is the reason why our catholicizing Anglicans suppose that the church, though disorganized, is able to reorganize herself. The reorganized church, if effected, would be a human organization, not a divine organism as created by our Lord himself. But the church, as we have seen, has never been disorganized, and could not be without ceasing to exist, and cease to exist it cannot, if catholic. The organic centre from which the whole organism is evolved and directed has remained at Rome ever since Peter transferred thither his chair from Antioch, and the particular churches holding from it and continuing subject to it are integral elements of the catholic organism, which is as perfect, as complete, and as entire as it was when the Oriental churches acknowledged and submitted to the supremacy of the successor of Peter, or when the church in England was in full communion with the Apostolic See of Rome. The separation of these from the Roman communion, though it destroyed their unity and catholicity, did not break the unity and catholicity of the organism; it only placed them outside of that organism, and cut them off from the central see, the source of all organic church life. The revolt of the Anglo-American Colonies from Great Britain, in 1776, and the Declaration of their Independence of the mother-country, did not break her unity or authority as a nation, and indeed did not even deprive her of any of her rights over them, though it enfeebled her power to govern them, till she herself acknowledged them to be independent states.
The author seems to suppose that the Greeks and Anglicans, in separating from Rome, broke the unity of the church, and carried away with them each a portion of her catholicity, so that there now can be no One Catholic Church existing in organic unity and catholicity, save in reminiscence and in potentia, unless these two bodies are reunited with Rome in one and the same communion. But the Greeks and Anglicans had both for centuries recognized the authority of the Apostolic See, as the centre of unity and source of jurisdiction. When the Greeks separated from that see and refused to obey it, they took from it neither its organic unity nor its catholicity; they only cut themselves off and deprived themselves of both. The same may be said of Anglicans in separating from Rome and declaring themselves independent. They deprived themselves of unity and catholicity, but left the original church organism in all its integrity, and only placed themselves outside of it. The separation in both cases deprived the church of a portion of her population, and diminished her external power and grandeur, but took away none of her rights and prerogatives, and in no respect impaired, as we have already said, the unity or catholicity of her internal organism. All that can be said is that the separated Oriental churches and Anglicans, not the church, have lost unity and catholicity, and have ceased to be Catholics, even when agreeing with the church in her dogmas and her external rites and ceremonies.
There is, then, on the side of the church, no broken unity to be healed, or lost catholicity to be restored. If the Oriental churches wish to regain unity and catholicity, all they have to do is to submit to the jurisdiction of the Apostolic See, and renew their communion with the mother and mistress of all the churches. Not having lost their church organization, and having retained valid orders or the priesthood and the august sacrifice, they can return in their corporate capacity. There is in their case only a schism to be healed. The Anglicans and Episcopalians stand on a different footing; for they have not even so much as a schismatic church, since the Episcopalians hold from the Anglicans, and the Anglicans from the state. They have no orders, no priesthood, no sacrifice, no sacraments—except baptism, and even pagans can administer that—no church character at all, if we look at the facts in the case, and therefore, like all Protestants, can be admitted to the unity of the church only on individual profession and submission. There is much for those out of unity to do to recover it and to effect the union in the Catholic communion of all who profess to be Christians, but nothing to render the church herself one and catholic. Her unity and catholicity are already established and unalterable, and so are the terms of communion and the conditions of church life. No grand combination, then, is needed to restore a divided and disorganized church.
But if the church were disorganized and a restoration needed, no possible combination of the several disorganized parts would or could effect it. The disorganization could not take place without the loss by the whole organism of the organic centre, and that, once lost, can be recovered only by an original creation, by our Lord, of a new church organism, which, even if it were done, would not restore us the Catholic Church; for it would not be a church existing uninterruptedly from the beginning, and there would be a time since the Incarnation when it did not subsist, and when there was no church. The author assumes that unity may be evolved from "multiplexity," which is Protestant, not Catholic philosophy; without unity there can be, as we have said, no multiplicity, as without the universal there can be no particulars. The universal precedes the particulars and generates them, and when it goes they go with it. Unity precedes multiplicity, and produces, sustains, and directs it. This is implied in every argument used, or that can be used, by philosophers and theologians, to prove the existence of God and his providence. Atheism results from the assumption that multiplicity may exist by itself, independently of unity; pantheism, from the assumption that unity is a dead, abstract unity, like that of the old Eleatics, not a concrete, living, and effective unity, and the denial that unity creates multiplicity. Physiology is refuting both by its discoveries, confirming what has always been affirmed in principle by traditional science, the fact that there is no organism or living body, in either the animal or vegetable world, without the original central cell, born of ancestors, which creates or generates and directs all the vital phenomena, normal or abnormal, of the organism, as has already been stated, thus placing science and the teaching of the church in harmony.
Dr. Ewer probably does not in his own mind absolutely deny the present unity on which depends the catholicity of the church; but he supposes it is in some way involved in multiplicity, so that it needs not to be created, but to be evoked from the existing "multiplexity" which now obscures it and prevents its effectiveness. But this we have shown is not and cannot be the case, because the unity not only produces, but directs or governs the manifold phenomena of the church, and must therefore be always distinct from and independent of them. Also, because so long as unity and catholicity remain, no disorganization or confusion requiring their evolution can take place, except in the parts exuded or thrown off by the organism, severed or exscinded from it, that is, only in what is outside of the One Catholic Church, and forming no part of the catholic body. That schismatics and heretics lack unity and catholicity, is, of course, true; but they cannot obtain either by an evolution from such organization as they may have retained when the separation took place, or may have subsequently formed for themselves, but must do it, if at all, by a return to the organic centre, where both are and have never ceased to be, on the terms and conditions the Holy See prescribes.
Dr. Ewer maintains that the Catholic Church is restricted to the Roman, Greek, and Anglican Churches, and consists in what these have in common or agree in holding. These, he maintains, have all failed, have taught and still teach grievous errors, set up false claims, and one or more of them at least have fallen into superstitious practices; yet he contends that the universal church has not failed. But as the universal church has no organic existence independent of these, has no organs of speech or action, no personality but in them, how, if he is right in his theory, can he maintain that the whole church has not failed? If he held that the unity and catholicity of the church were in the central or organic see, he might hold that particular churches have failed, and that the One Catholic Church has not failed. Then he could assert, as we do, that the organism remains, acts, teaches, and governs through its own infallible organs, in its own individuality, or the supreme pontiff who is its personality or person. But on his theory, the failure of each of the three parts which comprise the whole church, it seems to us, must carry with it the failure of the whole.
Dr. Ewer's difficulty would seem to grow out of his wish to be a Catholic and remain in the Anglican or Episcopalian communion in which he is a minister, or to return from Protestantism to Catholicity without any change of position. This would be possible, if holding, on private judgment, Catholic dogmas, and observing, on no authority, Catholic forms of worship, constituted one a member of the Catholic Church. But he should understand that what he wishes is impracticable, and that all his efforts are labor lost. So long as a man is in a communion separated from the present actual living unity of the church, he can become a Catholic only by leaving it, or by its corporate return to the Holy See and submission to the supreme pontiff.
A corporate return is practicable in the case of the Eastern churches; but even in them the individual who is personally aware of the schismatic character of his church should abandon it for unity at once without waiting for its corporate return; but in the case of Anglicans and Episcopalians, as in the case of all Protestant communions, the return must be individual and personal.
We are surprised at Dr. Ewer's statement that the Greek Church has no cultus of St. Mary ever-Virgin, as we are that many Anglicans, like Dr. Pusey, who object to the Roman Church on account of that cultus, should seek communion with the schismatic Greeks, with whom that cultus is pushed to an extreme far beyond anything in the Latin Church. The truth is, that all that offends Protestants in the Church of Rome, except the papacy, exists in even a more offensive form in the Greek schismatic Church. The schismatic Greek bishops exercise over their flocks a tyranny which is impracticable in the Roman Church, where the papal authority restricts that of bishops and tempers their administration of their dioceses.