The unity and indefectibility of the church of Christ are essential doctrines, most clearly and distinctly embodied in the sacred Scriptures. But Janus no longer admits them, as the following passages will show:
"The previously united church has been split up into three great ecclesiastical bodies, divided and at enmity with each other.... When the presidency in the church became an empire, ... then the unity of the church, so firmly secured before, was broken up." (P. 21.)
According to Janus, a "great and searching reformation of the church is necessary;" and, let it be understood, not in matters of discipline, which can vary, but in matters of faith—yes! in the most important points touching the divine constitution of the church.
"The popes possessed none of the three powers which are the proper attributes of sovereignty; neither the legislative, the administrative, nor the judicial."
"For a long time nothing was known in Rome of definite rights bequeathed by Peter to his successors."
"The bishops of Rome could neither exclude individuals nor churches from the church universal." (Pp. 64, 66.)
Confront these assertions with the few but remarkable facts already given from history, and what becomes of them?
"There are many national churches which were never under Rome, and never even had any intercourse with Rome." (P. 68.)
Janus then proceeds to give examples of such autonomous churches, and we confess that it has seldom been our lot to see any thing more vague and evasive.
In the first place, we refer to the letter of the Syrian bishops, which was read in the fifth session of the synod held in Constantinople in the year 536, by the Patriarch Mennas; moreover, the profession which the Archimandrites and other Syrian monks sent to Pope Hormisdas, in which they plainly acknowledge and invoke the Bishop of Rome as supreme guardian of the entire flock of Christ.
If the churches in Persia, in Armenia, and in Abyssinia, before they were commingled and entangled with the different Gnostic sects and Monophysites, or Jacobites, were in union with the churches of Alexandria, of Antioch, and Constantinople, who, in their turn, recognized the supremacy of the see of Rome, in what possible sense can they be called autonomous? Frumentius had been ordained Bishop of Axuma, in Abyssinia, by St. Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, toward the year 326.[82] Will Janus claim St. Athanasius as his partisan respecting this autonomy? His attempt to claim the same autonomy for the early Irish and British churches is no less hazardous, and we refer to Dr. Döllinger's history[83] for a refutation of such claims. In this connection, however, it was only our purpose to prove from Janus's own admission that the "unity of the church was broken up." Quite natural, too, since the "centre of unity" no longer preserved its divine mission and character!
We hasten to another grave charge against the orthodoxy of Janus, namely, that he denies the primacy both in its divine institution and in its rights. The true primacy he reviles as "papalism," and would substitute a mere primacy of honor or "presidency." For it was only during a few centuries that the primacy had a sound and natural development; since then it has become disfigured by human "fabrications," and consequently exists no longer. Such being the case, we are unable to discover even a supremacy of honor, lawfully exercised by the pope. We solicit a careful examination of the primacy as it appears in the Ancient Constitution of the Church, and in the Teachings of the Fathers, (pp. 63-75,) and the inevitable conclusion derived from those assumptions, sounding like oracles of Delphi, will be this, the plenitude of power assumed and exercised by the Bishop of Rome over the whole church has no foundation whatsoever, neither in the Scriptures, as interpreted by the fathers, nor in ancient tradition, but has been and still is an encroachment on the privileges of the particular churches, a usurpation exercised by force and oppression—in fine, an innovation on the divine constitution given to the church by Christ. Every thing that is advanced by Janus purporting to trace historically the origin and causes of papal power and its "unnatural development," even with that illustrious pontiff St. Leo the Great, (p. 67,) taking up nearly two thirds of the volume, proves, if any thing, that no special prerogative was given to St. Peter by Christ, and hence could not, of course, be "hereditary in the line of Roman bishops." (P. 74.) The great nightmare of Janus is, indeed, the pope's infallibility, or the supremacy of the Roman see in doctrinal decisions; but while assaulting the former in a pêle-mêle warfare, he utterly destroys the primacy itself; though it would seem that infallibility properly understood is but a corollary of the primacy itself. While professing to reject the doctrine of the "papacy," Janus discards a truly apostolic doctrine of the Catholic Church, and we cannot but suspect him of well-calculated dissimulation when he says that the "authors of the book profess their adherence to the conviction that the primacy rests on divine appointment." Contrast this with the statements quoted, and we can hardly refrain from sentiments of abhorrence and indignation at such duplicity, as, on the one hand, we find it stated that "the ancient church found the need of a bishop possessed of primatial authority," and, on the other hand, "nothing was known of definite rights," and the "same powers were exercised by the bishop of Antioch, Jerusalem, or Alexandria."