The third, that the keys of the kingdom of heaven, that is, supreme power in the Lord"s house, guardianship of the Lord"s city, are committed to him alone.
The fourth, that the power of binding and loosing whatsoever shall be bound or loosed in earth and in heaven is committed to him singly.
The fifth, the power to confirm his brethren, in which name the Apostles are specially indicated, because his own faith shall never fail.
The sixth, the supreme Pastorship of the whole flock of Christ.
Comparing carefully together what is said to the Apostles as a body with what is said to Peter singly, we cannot but be struck with the fact that while they received nothing without him, he received a power including and crowning theirs. The terms of conveyance in the two cases are indeed of similar majesty and simplicity, being the language of G.o.d in the sovereign disposition of His gifts; but in the case of Peter there is greater definiteness, and to him our Lord employs constantly the parabolic form of expression, calling him the Rock, giving him the Keys, committing to him singly the binding and loosing, and the confirmation of the brethren, which is the image of a tower or structure held together in one ma.s.s, charging him finally with the Pastorship of the flock of Christ. This imagery is capable of wider application than any other form of speaking, and as we know by the instance of the parables, contains in it an amount of instruction which direct language can only convey at a much greater length. None of it is given to any Apostle by himself, except Peter; what the rest receive of it together, as in the case of the power of binding and loosing, first promised and then given to them collectively, is greatly exceeded by what he receives alone. And besides, their commission and his throw light upon each other. The Papacy and the Episcopate are their joint result. Give its full force to the Apostolic commission, and Christ is with the one universal Episcopate all days to the consummation of the world. Give the same full force to the words bestowed upon Peter, and he feeds the flock of Christ until the second coming of the Great Shepherd. Perpetuity enters equally into both.
There is thus accordance in the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles as to the persons to whom transmission of spiritual power in the Church was made. The Gospels and the Acts record in the form of narrative the inst.i.tution of the divine kingdom from its beginning and before it was carried into effect. But there is another inspired writer who speaks of it incidentally in his Epistles after it had been in operation between twenty and forty years. The eminence of St. Paul as the Preacher of the Gentiles is so great that we may endeavour to put together his testimony concerning the const.i.tution of that Church which he loved so well, and for which he gave his life.
And, first, it is from him we derive that name of the Church which, more perhaps than any other, expresses her nature, and identifies her with our Lord. The Church to St. Paul is "the Body of Christ." "As the human body," he says, "is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body, so also is Christ. For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free; and in one Spirit we have all been made to drink."
"There are," he says, "diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord; and diversities of operations, but the same G.o.d who worketh all in all;" and saying this to the Corinthian disciples he well-nigh repeats it to the Roman. To him, therefore, the whole structure of the Church"s government is divine, as drawn from Christ"s Person, as animated by His Spirit, as the work of the Eternal Father in and through the Son whom He has sent, and by the Spirit whom He has also sent. And again, as he thus wrote in the middle of his course to his Corinthian converts, so nearly at the end of it he expressed to the beloved Church of Ephesus, the fruit of so many toils, the same doctrine. This pa.s.sage is sufficient of itself to give the complete Pauline conception of the Church as it was present to his mind in the whole range of time, stretching from the first to the second coming of our Lord. "I therefore, a prisoner in the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called, with all humility and mildness, with patience, supporting one another in charity, careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. One Body and one Spirit: as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One G.o.d and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all. But to every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the giving of Christ. Wherefore He saith: Ascending on high He led captivity captive; He gave gifts to men. Now that He ascended, what is it, but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth. He that descended is the same also that ascended above all the heavens, that He might fill all things. And He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and other some evangelists, and other some pastors and doctors for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the edifying of the Body of Christ: until we all meet into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of G.o.d, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ: that henceforth we be no more children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive: but doing the truth in charity, we may in all things grow up in Him who is the Head, even Christ: from whom the whole Body, being compacted and fitly joined together, by what every joint supplieth, according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in charity."
Are not these words a divine comment from the Apostle himself upon what he means by the Body of Christ? It is no figure of speech, but the grandest reality in the universe. The words contain the beginning, middle, and end of his belief concerning the instrument of our salvation.
It is an inspired summary of the record in the Gospels which we have been so long considering. Its compa.s.s reaches from the ascension above the heavens to the completion "of the perfect man" in the fulness of the mystical Body, when all the labours and sufferings of earth are at an end. It places the security against error of doctrine, as well as the growth of charity in the working together of one ministry through the whole Church, and through all time, not only drawn from the inst.i.tution of Christ, but enclosed in the sacred structure of His Body; nor can we conceive of any preaching of the Gospel without a divine mission derived from Christ through this ministry, as he elsewhere wrote to the Roman Church: "How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe Him of whom they have not heard? or how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent?"
There is, in his conception, one mission only in the Body of Christ. The splitting of this Body of Christ into two or three parts would be simply the destruction of St. Paul"s conception, not an atom of it would remain.
There is, in his conception, but one ministry, in unity and harmony with itself, the guardian and the propagator of the truth-Bishops existing outside this one divine ministry and exercising authority are a complete denial of the whole idea.
It is in exact accordance with these pa.s.sages that St. Paul, in his pastoral letter to his disciple St. Timotheus, reminds him of the grace of G.o.d derived to him by the imposition of the Apostle"s hands, and the hands of the Presbytery. He speaks manifestly of a divine gift descending through the hands of men from Christ, "who, ascending up on high, gave some apostles, some prophets," and the rest.
Again, it is after a strict and precise charge to St. Timotheus respecting the quality of the persons whom he should choose for the office of the episcopate that St. Paul winds up with the words: "These things I write to thee, hoping that I shall come to thee shortly, but if I tarry long that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of G.o.d, which is the Church of the living G.o.d, the pillar and ground of the truth." Here then, also, as in the letter to the Ephesians, he describes the divinely appointed ministry as bearing and upholding the truth which it is charged to impart; so that St. Augustine was putting St. Paul"s doctrine forth when he wrote, "I should not believe the Gospel unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me thereto."[30]
According to St. Paul"s mind, it is the living ministry which carries to the world the knowledge "of the living G.o.d," a knowledge which dwells in "the house of G.o.d" alone. Outside the house the truth is corrupted, and the ministry loses its gift.
From the union of these pa.s.sages, to which many more of like import might be added, we learn that the unity of the Church, in St. Paul"s idea and expression, rests upon the very deepest foundation, the unity of Christ"s Person as receiving a mission from the Father, which He accomplishes in His own Body, and by the working of His Spirit. If the promise to St.
Peter and its fulfilment were for a moment put out of sight, yet this divine unity testified in St. Paul"s letters would still remain in all its force, and could not be disregarded without giving up St. Paul"s mind altogether. How can it be accomplished except by means of the promises given and the charge imposed on St. Peter? Thus St. Paul, in testifying directly to the unity, a witness the depth, precision, force, and tenderness of which no one can deny, testifies indirectly to the means by which it is obtained. If there be one ministry discharging in the Body of Christ the functions which St. Paul a.s.signs to it, there must be the organ also by which that ministry remains one. Nor does it follow less that, as the ministry is visible and permanent, so likewise must the organ of its unity be visible and permanent. And if St. John records, in the most emphatic manner, the universal pastorship bestowed on Peter by his Lord, St. Paul sets forth as a reality the unity thus created in a symbol more striking, if possible, than the flock of the One Shepherd, for it is the Body of the One Lord. If the Apostle who lay on our Lord"s breast and heard Him declare Himself to be the good Shepherd who gives His life for His sheep, recorded the transmission of that charge to St.
Peter under that same figure of the Shepherd in the injunction to feed the lambs and the sheep of Christ, St. Paul, who was carried up to heaven and heard unspeakable words, saw from his prison in Rome, through the whole vast period from our Lord"s first to His second coming, the growth of that sacred Body which was to fill all in all, compacted together of the apostles, doctors, and pastors, whom at the beginning Christ gave, whom He would continue to the end to give; for does it not run, "until we all meet into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of G.o.d, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ." In all this St. Paul declares that, so long as the Church is militant, her ministry is the organ of truth, and this because the Church is the Body of Christ.
Thus it is a great and striking harmony with the witness of the Gospels and of the Acts to the transmission of Spiritual Power in the Church which the vessel of election, the Preacher of the Gentiles, contributes.
Thus the figure of St. Peter stands in the New Testament between St.
Matthew and St. John, supporting him on one side, and St. Paul and St.
Luke on the other.
Nothing can be clearer than the mind of St. Paul in these pa.s.sages. To him the fabric of government is inseparably united with the fabric of doctrine. It is one and the same inst.i.tution which is indivisible in its organic structure and infallible in the truth which it upbears and expounds. He sets forth a Creed at the same moment that he describes a Body. The Creed and the Body make one thing. St. Paul"s doctrine of unity is part of his conception of truth. The Church, the Body of Christ, is as completely possessed by all the truth which came by Jesus Christ as it is dowered with the grace which also came by Him. And the Christian ministry, viewed as a whole, as the mantle dropped by Him who, ascending up on high, led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men, is that wherein the double gift of truth and grace resides indefeasibly.
I pa.s.s to another point in St. Paul"s teaching. Do the recipients of the government which in general and in particular he thus describes receive it from above or below? Does the magistracy draw its authority from a charge which the community bestows, or from a power which creates the community itself? Which is first both in principle and in time, the magistracy or the community?
There are six names by which, in various parts of his epistles, St. Paul describes the commission in virtue of which he spent his life and finally poured forth his blood in preaching the Gospel. These six names are apostle, minister, doctor, steward, amba.s.sador, and herald. Sometimes they are mentioned singly, sometimes they are blended with each other in a way which sheds light upon them reciprocally. He terms himself an amba.s.sador, when he says, "for Christ, therefore, we are amba.s.sadors, G.o.d as it were exhorting by us." And he beseeches his converts to pray for him "that speech may be given me that I may open my mouth with confidence, to make known the mystery of the Gospel, for which I am an amba.s.sador in a chain."[31] He refers all his power back to G.o.d when he says, "Our sufficiency is from G.o.d, who also has made us fit ministers of the New Testament," for this word, the original of deacons, signifies here a ministry to G.o.d, not a service of men. The sufficiency was that G.o.d had accredited certain men to bear to their fellow-men a certain doc.u.ment, a new covenant. They stood in the relation of ministers to Him who appointed them; to those to whom they came they were the commissioned agents of a sovereign. He calls himself also a steward,[32] where he says, "Let a man so account of us as the servants of Christ, and the dispensers of the mysteries of G.o.d. Here now it is required in dispensers that a man be found faithful; but to me it is a very small thing to be judged by you, or by man"s day,-but He that judgeth me is the Lord." And in another place he very remarkably joins together three terms which he applies to himself, while he specially connects them with the source and head of all power in that work of the dispensation which He became man to accomplish. St. Paul breaks into a sort of creed, which is like a summary of his whole message, in these most solemn words which he addresses to the archbishop whom he had himself set in the great see of Ephesus: "There is one G.o.d and one Mediator of G.o.d and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a redemption for all, a testimony in due times.
Whereunto I am appointed a herald and an apostle (I say the truth, I lie not), a doctor of the Gentiles, in faith and truth." And he joins the same three names together in another letter to the same Bishop, "The Gospel whereunto I am appointed a herald and an apostle and a doctor of the Gentiles."[33] The original word herald was rendered by preacher; and the term Apostle has become so fixed as the name of those to whom our Lord committed His Church in chief, that the lesson as to the source of the authority which it bears in its meaning of "the sent," has been impaired to many minds. A mult.i.tude of men preach in these days without any notion that a preacher is a man who bears a divine commission from a Sovereign to announce pardon to His people, and that a man who chooses himself for such a function is an impostor. Now what I wish to remark of these six terms, by which St. Paul expresses his own authority and that of the brethren who held the like rank with himself, is that they all concur in deriving the power and the commission which they represent from the person giving it, that is Jesus Christ, in the name of His Father, and not from the people for whose good it is bestowed. The whole publication of the Gospel is, in fact, called "The Proclamation," which the word preacher and preaching no longer conveys. It is the message of a King to His subjects declared by His heralds. They convey it to those who hear it by a commission from above. Their whole authority comes from above, not from below. It is not the election of brethren which is the principle of their mission, but the charge of the Sender, Christ. And as the Apostles were sent, they sent their successors. Election, in subsequent times, however conducted, indicated the person upon whom power fell; but the power was from G.o.d.
A further light is thrown upon this most grand and beautiful doctrine of St. Paul as to the Church being the Body of Christ, and her ministry the appointed organ for maintaining divine truth through the whole course of time upon earth, by the magnificent vision bestowed upon the beloved Apostle when he was by command of Domitian a prisoner in the island of Patmos, "for the Word of G.o.d and the testimony of Jesus." As he "was in the Spirit on the Lord"s day, he heard behind him a great voice as of a trumpet, saying: What thou seest write in a book, and send to the seven Churches which are in Asia, to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamus, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicia. And I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks one like to the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. And His head and His hairs were white, as white wool and as snow, and His eyes were as a flame of fire, and His feet like unto fine bra.s.s, as in a burning furnace. And His voice as the sound of many waters. And He had in His right hand seven stars. And from His mouth came out a sharp two-edged sword: and His face was as the sun shineth in His power. And when I had seen Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, Fear not, I am the First and the Last, and He that liveth, and I became dead, and behold I am living for ever and ever, and have the keys of death and of h.e.l.l. Write, therefore, the things which thou hast seen, and which are, and which must be done hereafter: the mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in My right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven Churches: and the seven candlesticks are seven Churches."
This vision occupies a quite singular position. It is, as it were, the opening scene of that revelation which was made by our Lord to the Apostle of the things that should happen in His Church from His first to His second coming; and which terminates only in the conclusion of the great conflict between the city of G.o.d and the city of the devil, when the seer beholds the Holy City "coming down out of heaven from G.o.d, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." It took place rather more than sixty years after the day of Pentecost, when two persecutions of the Church, the first under Nero, and the second under Domitian, had already tried the patience of the saints. Thus it dates a full generation after the time of St. Paul. In accordance with the position which it occupies at the head of a revelation given by the Lord Himself to him,
"Che vide tutti i tempi gravi, Pria che morisse, della bella sposa, Che s"acquist con la lancia e co" chiavi,"
it is a vision of extraordinary power and majesty, repeating, and if possible excelling, the grandeur of similar visions in the old prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.[34] Our Lord appears with the incommunicable name of G.o.d, as the First and the Last: as the Redeemer, that Living One who became dead and is alive for ever and ever; as the Ruler who orders all things as to the race of man, having the keys of death and of h.e.l.l; as the world"s Teacher, with the sharp sword of the Word, the instrument of His dominion, proceeding out of His mouth; in the glory of the Resurrection, for His face is as the sun shining in his strength. The disciple who lay upon His breast at the Supper, now, when he saw Him, fell as one dead at His feet; but He, deigning to lay His right hand on him, raised him up, and communicated the meaning of the vision: and we learn from our Lord"s own words that it showed Him present in the government of His Church. Write, He commanded the seer, the mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in My right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven Churches, and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are seven Churches. The mystery, He said-and the number seven is mystical. The seven stars represent the whole Episcopate held in the right hand of the Lord:[35] the seven candlesticks the whole number of Churches throughout the world: and that He, the Son of Man, is in the midst of them, His perpetual government in and through those whom He has appointed:[36] and the seven letters directed to the seven Churches, may by parity betoken seven ages or conditions of the one Church.[37] For the vision, taken as a whole, exhibits the perpetual action of Christ, not in one place, but in the midst of His people from the beginning to the end. It is thus equivalent to the scope of the entire Apocalypse, at the head of which it stands. It also conveys to us, with the witness of St. John, a complete agreement with the conception of St. Paul as to the unity of the divine mission centred in the Church, and exerted by her Episcopate; as to the relation of that Episcopate to Christ, which in every age is held in His right hand, as in every age He is in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; as to the relation also of that Episcopate to the people over which it is set: for our Lord commands what He would say to the Churches to be written to their several angels, to express the truth that they summed up in their person the flock committed to them. The stars are in His hand, while He is in the midst of the candlesticks. They are His angels, and their authority lies in the message which they bear from Him, not in any charge deputed to them by those whom they govern. Each letter gathers up the character of the people, in the single person of the angel: "I know thy works, thy labour, and thy patience:" thus expressing the doctrine of St. Cyprian, "the Church is in the Bishop."
Thus St. Paul"s truth of the Body of Christ is delineated in the vision of Him who is the First and the Last, who became dead, and who lives for ever and ever, and from whom not only does all spiritual power originally descend, but is perpetually carried in His right hand; which does not leave Him because it is used by human instruments under Him. And if the vision seen by St. John is in perfect agreement with the conception of St. Paul, no less does it agree with, and convey in visible action, that whole account of the origin and transmission of spiritual power which we have been contemplating in the harmony of the Gospels and the Acts. Only it is to be noted that what the Gospels declare is _to be_, the vision exhibits _as being_.
If we take the whole ma.s.s of the Scripture testimony respecting the transmission of spiritual power for the government of the Church and the const.i.tution of her polity, four qualities will appear salient: its coming from above; its completeness; its unity; its independence of civil authority.
1. First, the power thus inst.i.tuted comes down from Christ upon Peter and the Apostles, and from them upon their successors. It does not spring from election out of the body, but by an exactly reverse process; the body itself springs from it. On the eve of the Pa.s.sion, just after the inst.i.tution of the Priesthood, our Lord said: "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and have appointed you that you should go and should bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain."[38] This is the whole order of the divine appointment, from beginning and throughout.
The Apostles develop out of themselves ministry and people. This growth Peter"s preaching on the day of Pentecost inaugurated, as the power from on high came down upon him and his brethren. The whole history of the Church through the first three centuries is a faithful continuation of this beginning. But here we have to note how every particle of the Scripture record testifies to the spiritual power coming down from above, not rising up from below. The figure of this in the old law was Aaron invested by Moses with the Priesthood in the face of the whole congregation of the children of Israel; the counterpart in the new is Christ ascending to heaven, blessing His brethren as He ascended, and sending down upon them the promise of the Father. Thus the divine polity unfolds itself in a spiritual descent.
2. The second quality is the completeness of this power. The absence of details in the records, far from being an impeachment of this completeness, subserves to its expression, because the power given is summed up in a general head, which embraces all particulars under it. Of this summing up we have in the same Gospel of St. John an instance both in what is said to the Apostles and in what is said to Peter. As to the Apostles, the Incarnation, often called by the Fathers the Dispensation, embraces the whole work of our Lord; not only His coming in our flesh, but His satisfaction for the sins of the world in the flesh a.s.sumed. All this was a mission from the Father. Now, in investing His Apostles with power on the evening of the Resurrection, He used this very expression: "As My Father hath sent Me, I also send you." Whatever there was to be done and ordered in the Church from the beginning to the end was, by the force of the similitude with Himself thus used, included in these words.
They are truly imperial words, const.i.tuting a spiritual empire. So, again, as to St. Peter, our Lord was "the great Pastor of the sheep in the blood of the everlasting testament." As such He had been marked out by prophecy: it was His name of predilection: "I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep." Now, this and none other was the term He used when He would convey to Peter, in the concluding words of the last Gospel, supreme authority: "Lovest thou Me more than these? Be shepherd over My sheep." What could be added to this one word? That which we render "Be shepherd" comprehends all offices which government in the divine polity requires. It is the word chosen of old in psalm and prophecy for the sovereignty of the Messiah. First the Psalmist sung, as he recorded the splendid promise of the future King, "Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thine inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for Thy possession: Thou shalt _rule_ them with a rod of iron."
Again, when Herod, a.s.sembling all the high priests and scribes of the people, inquired of them when the Christ should be born, they replied to him out of the prophet Micheas, describing by this word the reign of Messiah: "Out of thee shall come forth the Captain that shall _rule_ My people Israel."
Again, when the last prophet saw in the Apocalyptic vision the glory of the Word of G.o.d going forth as a Conqueror, he described His power in the same expression: "The armies of heaven followed Him on white horses, clothed in linen white and clean. And out of His mouth goes forth a sharp sword, that in it He may strike the nations: and He shall _rule_ them with a rod of iron." Our Lord of set purpose selected the one word[39]
which conveyed His regal dominion, and bestowed it upon Peter. Nor did He give it with a restricted but with a universal application: "Be shepherd over My sheep." Who can refuse St. Bernard"s comment: "What sheep? the people of this or that city, or country, or kingdom? _My_ sheep, He said.
To whom is it not plain that He did not designate some, but a.s.sign all?
Nothing is excepted where nothing is distinguished."[40] On the two sides, therefore, the power is complete; in its nature, as that specially belonging to Christ; in its subjects, as universal. This one word includes in itself all inferior derivations, whether of episcopal or other subordinate power, and in virtue of it St. Peter becomes the source of the whole episcopate as well as the type or figure of every local Bishop.
If the special conversations between our Lord and the Apostles which pa.s.sed in the forty days are not recorded for us in their details, as being privileged communications made only to the chiefs of His kingdom, for their guidance, and as instructions to be carried out by them in practice, yet the inst.i.tution of an everlasting polity by Him is marked out in the two instances of Mission and Rule just cited, as well as in the other pa.s.sages before collected. In fact, it is in the inst.i.tution of such a polity that the perfection of our Lord as Lawgiver and Governor consists. Nothing in His kingdom was left to chance, or to sudden expedients arising in unforeseen dangers. All was from the beginning foreseen and provided for. When He said to Peter, "Follow thou Me," which was His interpretation of the commission He had just before given to Peter, and a crucifixion which ensued upon a crowning in the case of the disciple as of the Master, the whole sequence of His Church through the centuries was in His mind and expressed in His voice.
3. But further, the very basis of the Spiritual Power, as delineated in the testimony of Scripture, is so laid in unity, that if unity be broken the idea itself is utterly destroyed.
"The Captain who should rule My people Israel" presents a very definite idea. "To feed the flock of Christ" is equally definite. The one is the portrait of Christ in prophecy; the other represents His kingdom in history. It is one people and one flock, as it has one King and one Shepherd. So the Rock on which the Church is built is one structure; the confirmation of the brethren is the holding together one family in that one structure. When St. Paul convoked the ancients of the Church at Ephesus, he expressed the duty of Bishops through all time and place: "Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you Bishops, to rule the Church of G.o.d, which He has purchased with His own blood." This work of the Holy Ghost was not limited either as to time or as to place, and belongs to the Bishops of the whole world as much as to those who met at Ephesus to receive the farewell of St. Paul. In precisely similar terms St. Peter charged the Bishops whom he had planted in the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, "to feed the flock of G.o.d which is among you;" indicating at once the unity of the flock and the unity of the episcopate held by many shepherds. For it is one flock which they rule everywhere; not each a separate fold. A confederation of Bishops, each ruling a fold of his own, would frustrate the divine idea; also it would be difficult to imagine a government more futile, or a spectacle less persuasive to the world. If we take the account of the Church"s ministry quoted just above from St. Paul, its unity runs through the whole as much as its descent from above. The Body of Christ expresses both equally. If either part is taken away, the essence is gone. A ministry such as is there described, existing in a dozen different countries of the earth, even if it possessed the same succession and order would present no such idea as the Apostle contemplates, and offer no such guarantee of divine truth as he dwells upon, unless it were organically one. Its witness in one country might otherwise be diverse from its witness in another country; and as each would have the same claim to be heard, the one would neutralise the other. In fact, the Body of Christ would cease to be. So ineffaceably is the Sacrament of Unity impressed on the whole Gospel account of spiritual government. There is not a single promise made nor a single power given except to the whole Church and to the one Church.
4. The three qualities we have described, the coming from above, completeness, unity, are intrinsic to the essence of spiritual government. They form together an external relation of entire independence with regard to civil government. Nothing can by plainer than the fact that Christ came from G.o.d, and that He gave to His Apostles, and not to kings or rulers of the world, the Spiritual Power which He meant to transmit. Equally plain is it that the power so given, being complete, could derive nothing intrinsic to its essence from the Civil Authority; and its unity demonstrates in no less a degree its independence of that authority, for it is the same one power everywhere, whereas civil government is both complete and different in each separate State. Thus the independence of the Spiritual Power is essential to it, as flowing out of the qualities which make it.
When we view the Spiritual Power as possessing inalienably these four qualities, as coming from above, as complete in itself, as one in all lands, and as independent of the Civil Power, the notion of perpetuity will be found to be inherent in the thing so conceived. Again, the promises made to it last as long as the subject to which they belong. As the kingdom of Christ and the flock of Christ are perpetual from His first to His second coming, so therefore is the Bearer of the keys and the Shepherd of the flock. And yet more, the Body of Christ moves through the ages, ever growing to His full stature and measure, so that this living structure can as little fail as Christ Himself. The Head and the Body live on together. Again, the secular power also, over against which and in the midst of which in all lands and times the Spiritual Power stands, is perpetual. The promise made to the College of Apostles, "Behold I am with you all days to the consummation of the world," is an express grant of perpetuity. The promise to Peter that the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail against the Rock, or the Church which is founded on the Rock, is a grant of perpetuity equally express. The same is implied in St. Mark"s closing words, that our Lord sat down on the right hand of G.o.d, after giving His commission to the Apostles to preach the gospel through the whole world to every creature; and that as they went forth He worked with them, confirming the word by signs following-a work and a confirmation on His part which should last equally to the end, so long as He was seated at the right hand of G.o.d. So equally the promise of the Father, the Paraclete, sent down from above by the Son, is a permanent power by which the Church was originally made and perpetually subsists.
All these divine promises cohere and shed light upon each other. Thus the commission to Peter, "Feed My sheep," is universal, not only as to its subject, which is the whole flock of Christ, but as to its duration, which is so long as there is a flock to feed. It was a charge, not only to a person, but to an office. If the thing itself to which it related was to endure, it is obvious that the longer it lasted, and the more it grew, the greater also the need of the office which should upbear it. The duration of the living organism moved by the Head, which St. Paul so strongly attests, and carries on into the unseen world, attests the reciprocal duration of the Head.
As those divine words which convey the promise or confer the gift of the Spiritual Power cohere and shed light on each other, so the impairing them in any particular destroys their idea, which is to say that they express a real and concrete existence, wherein the idea has pa.s.sed into an adequate act. This is Jesus Christ in His Kingship, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] Contr. Epist. Manichaei, cap. 5, tom. 8, 154.
[31] 2 Cor. v. 20; Ephes. vi. 19, 20; 2 Cor. iii. 6.
[32] 1 Cor. iv. 1: ?p???ta? ???st?? ?a? ????????? ?st????? Te??.
[33] 1 Tim. ii. 7; 2 Tim. i. 11.
[34] Isaias vi. 1; Ezech. iv. 32; Dan. vii. 9.
[35] Compare the strikingly similar and almost contemporary pa.s.sage in the letter of St Ignatius to the Ephesians: "For Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, is the mind of the Father, as also the bishops, appointed throughout the earth, are in the mind of Christ."
[36] Baur, Kirchengeschichte der drei ersten Jahrhunderte, p. 272, remarks, "Nicht ohne Grund hat man daher schon in den Engeln, an welche die den sieben Gemeinden der Apocalypse bestimmten Schreiben gerichtet sind, einen Ausdruck der Episcopatsidee gesehen-da die den sieben Engeln entsprechenden Sterne alle zusammen in der Hand Christi sind, in ihm also ihre Einheit haben, so kann durch den Engel, welchen jede Gemeinde hat, nichts anders ausgedruckt sein, als die Beziehung, die sie mit Christus als dem einen Haupte aller Gemeinden und der ganzen Kirche verknupft."
[37] "Ideo septem scribi ecclesias ut una Catholica septiformi gratiae spiritu plena designetur."-_Cornel. a L. in loco._ "Wherefore in the Apocalypse the whole Church is represented by the sevenfold number of the Churches."-_St. Greg._, 1. B. 23, _Morals. on Job_. "Propter quod et Johannes Apostolus ad septem scribit ecclesias, eo modo se ostendens ad unius plenitudinem scribere."-_St. Aug. de Civ. Dei_, xvii. 4.
[38] John xv. 16.