And now we may let Protestantism go. Its votaries are loud in exhorting us to return with them to the purity of primitive Christianity. But when we take them back with us over the centuries to the very cradle of Christianity—to the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem—and enter that sanctuary on the first Christmas morning, are they or we more at home there, in the presence of the Madonna-and-Child? So far, then, from establishing its clamorous pretensions to be the only unalloyed Christianity, Protestantism is ruled out of court by our test-symbol, as neither the kingdom of the Incarnation nor any part of that kingdom, and therefore—virtually and logically—not Christianity at all.
The Catholic Church, however, has not the field all to herself yet. There is the Russo-Greek, including some half-dozen independent communions. Is not she in harmony with our test-symbol?
While on the road to Rome we were much attached to the Greek Church. Most Anglicans of the “High” school are—because they know very little about her. (A case where “distance lends enchantment”—and a very hazy distance, to boot.) There is one thing, though, which Anglicans ought to know about the Greek Church, and which we did know: the fact that her worship of the Blessed Virgin is more “excessive” (to use their own phrase) than that of the Roman Church. We say we knew this, and confess that, instead of being repelled by it, we were the more attracted. So far, therefore, the writer was consistent, at least—unlike other Anglicans, who protest especially against our “Marian system” (as they call it), and at the same time babble and dream (for dream it is) of union with the Greek Church. What we were afraid of in the Roman Church was not the Blessed Virgin, but the Pope. We had been so thoroughly imbued from boyhood with the notion that the Pope was “Antichrist” and the “Man of Sin,” that the influence of this monstrous superstition haunted us, in some shape, to the very eve of our conversion. We say in some shape. We had come, since a Ritualist, to believe that Antichrist was yet to appear, and that the Pope could not possibly be he. Nevertheless, we took it for unquestionable that the Papacy was a usurpation; had caused the separation of the Greek Church from the Latin; and was also to blame, in a great degree, for England being out of communion with the other western churches. While under instruction for reception into the church we read Mr. Allies’ See of Peter; and our amazement at the evidence for the Papacy was only equalled by our indignation at the unblushing impudence which had assured us, and with such pretence of patristic learning, that there was not a single proof from the first six centuries for the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.
Well, then, the Greek Church is in harmony with our test-symbol to a certain and considerable extent. In the first place, she holds the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, and by no means keeps it in the background, but gives it due prominence in her catechism and liturgy. And since she teaches the devotional use of representations, particularly of pictures, her people are no less familiar than we are with the Madonna-and-Child as the symbol of the Incarnation. Secondly, although (as must be the case) they have not the same tender mother in their church that we have in ours, still, all who are in good faith being by intention Catholics, they can speak, with us, of “our mother the church.” And, again, though they are made much less familiar with the Blessed Sacrament than we are, yet, having a true priesthood (not a sham one like the Anglican), a true altar, and a true Mass, the Real Presence is a living fact with them. So that they may see in the Madonna-and-Child the church and the Blessed Sacrament as we do.
The Madonna-and-Child, however, being, as we have said, the mould upon which the church is cast, makes a law which must not be violated in any single particular. If, therefore, this self-styled “orthodox” Greek Church be found out of harmony with our test-symbol in even one point, she is no more the kingdom of the Incarnation than if she were in harmony with it at no point.
Now, she does fail to correspond with it in one most important point: viz., in her theory of the church as a whole. She holds, like the Anglican Ritualists, the theory of a divided church. But the Madonna can no more represent a divided than an invisible church, and those who say, with us, in the Nicene Creed, “I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church,” yet maintain that she need not be visibly “one,” are more illogical than those who use the words in the sense of an invisible church. That a visible church, of which oneness is a mark, need not be visibly one!—could absurdity, in the shape of theory, go further?
Again, if this theory of the church as a whole—that she is no longer visibly one as her divine Author made her—renders it impossible to see the type of such a church in the Madonna separately, what meaning will it find in the Madonna-and-Child together? It beholds in the Madonna a unity which it denies; and in the Child—either nothing at all, or something which it consciously rejects.
What makes a church, according to the apostolic constitution? All churches which have that constitution agree that the essentials of a church are a bishop with a clergy and laity in his communion. The bishop is its nucleus, and makes the church in the sense in which the head makes the body. A bishopless church is a headless body. We say this is what all Christians agree upon who believe in apostolical succession. So that even the recent contemptible sect calling themselves “Old Catholics” were bound to procure a bishop for their schism, albeit they set at defiance both authority and logic.
A bishop, then, and the church in his communion are the normal or representative church. Now, we see in this representative church the form of the Madonna-and-Child. To some this may seem fanciful. It is not. Every priest is “another Christ”—in the celebrated words of St. Bernard; and the bishop is the complete priest, as having the power to confer the priesthood. If, then, the Madonna typifies the church, the Christ-child typifies the priesthood, and, if the priesthood, still more the episcopate. Again, as Christ has in Mary not only a Mother, but a Daughter and a Spouse—for he is her Father by creation (whence Chaucer and Dante exclaim, “Daughter of thy Son!”) and her Spouse as the Spouse of all elect souls, among whom she is “as the lily among thorns”—so, too, has the priest in the church at once a mother, a daughter, and a spouse; and therefore still more does the bishop stand in this threefold relation to the church. And, once more, as Christ is “the first-born among many brethren,” his Mother being ours also, so is the priest an elder brother, ruling his brethren from the arms of their common mother; and, if the priest, much more the bishop.