Edward Bouverie Pusey · 4 of 21

Main Body · Part 4

This long process, which was carried on so perseveringly by four successive Bishops of Rome, is most remarkable for the principles which appear in the course of it, and the persons who enunciated those principles. For St. Augustine, forbearing, as he did, to the utmost, so long as there was even a bare possibility that the Council of Nice should have given a contrary decision, clearly showed by his short speech, that he knew of no other authority to which the Church of Africa should defer. He is further responsible for the Synodal Epistle to Boniface, which he signed, next after Aurelius the Primate. The bishops, and he among them, or rather chief of them, say, “We took care to convey last year by our letters to the same Bishop Zosimus, of venerable memory, that we would allow those [canons] to be observed without any detriment to him, for a little while until the inquiry into the canons of the Council of Nice. And now we ask of your Holiness, that you would cause those things which they brought in their instructions, [viz., the two Sardican canons], to be observed as they were done or constituted by the fathers at Nice, by us, and among yourselves in Italy. These canons are inserted in the Acts until the arrival of the most authentic copies of the Nicene Council; which, if they are contained there (as they stood in the instructions which our brethren sent from the Apostolic See alleged to us), and if they are kept even among you in Italy, we shall not be constrained to endure what for the present we are unwilling to speak of; but we believe that, by the help of the mercy of our Lord God, while your Holiness presides over the Roman Church we shall not have to endure their arrogance, and that will be observed towards us which ought to be observed with brotherly charity, even without any suggestion of ours, which, according to the wisdom and justice which the Most High has given you, you yourself perceive ought to be observed, if perchance the canons of the Council of Nice prove otherwise.”

But indeed the Canons of Sardica (had they been even generally received) involve the same principle. St. Athanasius insists on the distinction between matters of faith and positive enactment, as treated in the Council of Nice. “The faith they declared, ‘Thus believes the Catholic Church,’ in order to show that their own sentiments were not novel, but Apostolical;” but in matter of positive enactments, “They wrote concerning the Easter, ‘It seemed good as follows,’ for it did then seem good that there should be a general compliance.” Now this is exactly the form of the Sardican Canon, “If it seem good, let us honour the memory of the holy Apostle Peter.” The Bishops were providing against the recurrence of injustice to the orthodox Bishops of the East, such as S.

Athanasius had undergone from a packed council of Arian Bishops, and, as in many other canons, so in this, they legislated to meet an emergency. “This form is very strong to show,” says Tillemont, “that it was a right which the Pope had not had hitherto.” “The words of the Canon,” says de Marca, “prove.that the institution of this law is new. ‘If it seems good to you,’ says Hosius,” &c. The mention of Julius, Bishop of Rome, by name, “if to Julius, Bishop of Rome, should seem good,” seems again to imply a temporary purpose, such as was protection against the Arians. Nor was the power given an appeal to Rome strictly. It only empowered the Bishop of Rome to have the cause reheard, if he judged right, by the Bishops of the neighbouring province, together with a presbyter to represent himself. What was granted was the revision of a cause, not strictly an appeal.

What was not of Divine right cannot become such. A state of things may be matter of order, or of human law; it cannot become part of the Law Divine. That only is Divine Law which was given by God. Heretics, indeed, or bad men, excommunicated in their own country, betook themselves to Rome, where they were not known, as contrariwise, Pelagius, condemned in the West, betook himself to the East, a) Marcion, excommunicated by his father, a Bishop in Pontus, for seduction, received the worthy answer from the Roman presbyters in the vacancy of the see: “We cannot do this [receive him to communion] without the injunction of your honoured father. For there is one faith and one harmony of mind, and we cannot go against the excellent fellow-minister, thy father.” b) The Montanists did not apparently appeal at all; but having been rejected in the East, they settled at Rome. They had been disallowed by the predecessors of Victor,whom they would have imposed upon, but for Praxeas. Tillemont conjectures, that they may have had the more hope from Victor on account of his quarrel with the Churches of Asia Minor, which had rejected them, c) Praxeas, at one time, signed a retractation o’f his heresy, which retractation was in the hands of the Catholics. At that time there was neither appeal nor condemnation. When detected, he retracted. He acquiesced outwardly, without giving up his unbelief. Then it burst out again, d) Fortunatus was an anti-bishop, consecrated in opposition to S. Cyprian, who sought to

get recognized at Home, whither he sent letters, as Novatian, consecrated against S. Cornelius, sought to be recognized in Africa. Neither was an appeal, a) The case of Basilides and Martialis is more interesting. Both, besides other sins, had denied Christ in persecution. The Spanish bishops deposed them, and consecrated Felix and Sabinus in their stead. “Basilides, canvassing to be unjustly restored to the Episcopate from which he had been justly deposed, went to Rome and deceived Stephen our colleague,” says S. Cyprian, “residing at a distance, and ignorant of what had been done and of the real truth.” The clergy and people of Astorga, Merida, and Leon appealed to S. Cyprian, through their newly-consecrated bishops. S. Cyprian, assembling thirty-seven other bishops, in a synodical letter, judged that the deposition of Basilides and Martialis was right, the election of Felix and Sabinus, of which an account had been sent, was canonical, and that the effect of “Basilides deceiving Stephen was not to efface but to swell the crimes of Basilides, in that to his former sins is added the guilt of deceit and circumvention.” Conceive Spanish bishops now, having been consecrated in place of deposed bishops who had appealed to Rome, deputed by Spanish clergy and people to the Archbishop of Paris, and that he, with a Provincial Synod, should reply that the former bishops had been rightly deposed, that these had been canonically elected, and that the appealing bishop had only aggravated his crimes by “deceiving Pio Nono, our colleague,” but excusing Pio Nono, in that “he is not so much to be blamed, who through negligence was imposed upon.” If the appeals of bad men were a precedent, the rest of the history is equally a precedent, showing that the relations in the times nearest the Apostles were very different from those which the Church of England laid aside. The English Church in the fifteenth century acquiesced in, or consented to, the suppression of appeals to Rome; the African Church in the fifth century not only forbade them, but excommunicated throughout Africa any one who should so appeal. It was not a mere abstract question. About the same time, A.D. 1438, the Council of Basle complained of “the very many abuses of intolerable vexations” consequent on appeals, especially from “remote parts,” the “ease with which pettifoggers oppressed the poor, ecclesiastical benefices were

obtained through the cavils of litigations, for the most part unjustly,” &c. The Council prohibited, as far as in it lay, appeals from more distant parts, with certain exceptions. Louis, Archbishop of Aries, Cardinal, and President of the Council (of whom Æneas Sylvius, Pius II., speaks in high terms), asked in the Council, “What at this day were bishops, but a sort of shadow? What had they left, but a staff and mitre? Could they be called shepherds, without sheep, when they could do nothing towards those under them 3 For whereas in the Primitive Church the chief powers were with bishops, now they have come to this, that in dress only and revenue they surpass presbyters. But%we have restored them to their former condition. We [the Council] have made those bishops who were no longer bishops.” “A General Council, representing the Universal Church,” says Gerson, “if it aim to see complete union, to repress and put an end to schisms, to exalt the Church, must, before all things, after the manner of the holy fathers before us, limit and bound the coactive and usurped power of the Pope.” Which coactive power many supreme Pontiffs, at successive times, obtained to themselves, contrary to God and justice, depriving inferior bishops of the powers and authorities given them by God and the Church, who in the Primitive Church were of equal power with the Pope, when there was no sale of indulgences,” &c. “At length in the course of time (the avarice of the clergy, and the simony, cupidity, and ambition of the Pope increasing), the power and authority of the bishops and inferior prelates seem as though dried up and utterly overthrown, so that they seem now in the Church to be but painted images, to no end. For now the Pope of Rome has reserved all ecclesiastical benefices; now has he called all causes into his own court; now has he willed that a penitentiary should be held there; now he wills that the holy ordination of any person indiscriminately should take place in his own court; and they, who cannot obtain ordination in their own country, easily obtain ordination in that court.” Nicolas V. plainly owned, “The Roman Pontiffs, it seems to

me, extended their skirts too far, in that they left no jurisdiction to the other bishops. Those of Basle abridged too much the power of the Apostolic See. But so it happens. “Whoso doth things unworthy, must endure things unjust. Those who would set erect a tree inclined on one side, draw it on the other. Our mind is, not to despoil of their rights the bishops who are called to a part of our charge. For so we hope to preserve our own jurisdiction, if we do not usurp what belongs to others.” But things went on as before.

And if, after the Pope had not only excommunicated King Henry VIIL, but had deposed him, deprived his future children, given away his dominions, laid the kingdom under an interdict, absolved his subjects from allegiance, and stirred up other princes against them if they rebelled not, given them to be slaves to their captors, and their property to be a spoil, the Church of England reformed by herself, it was always allowed to a Provincial Council to make decrees in matters of faith, subject to the ultimate authority of the Universal Church. Successive Councils, Pisa, Constance, Basle, had met and failed. Men’s hearts despaired. Constance had been chosen to avoid Italian influence; at Basle it had been defeated but the Council was therefore closed. “I can scarcely believe,” said a Carthusian, A.D. 1449, “that the general Church can be reformed unless the Roman court be reformed first, which yet how difficult it is, the course of the present times shows. For no nation of believers so resists the universal reformation of the Church, as the Italian and others who praise them, bound by hope of promotion or gain or temporal benefit, or fear of losing dignities. They tremble at the very sound of a General Council, knowing by experience that General Councils speak not smooth things, but correct and amend without respect of persons.” “There will be no reformation,” said a Bishop in 1519, “save in some general, free, and candid Council, where room shall be given, not to a malicious, but to the Holy Spirit to breathe. Alas! I conjecture with alarm, that our age is not worthy of the gathering of a lawful Council, wherein, virtues being promoted and vices censured, the Church shall be reformed; so deceived are we by the workings of error. The Councils we need are rarely and sluggishly held; they are conducted at Home or elsewhere before the powerful, where there is no freedom of speech to the humble and the faithful, so that in them what concerns the worship of God,

through the consent or permission of one’s own bishop in this matter. Since, then, this has been introduced by common custom, and the consent is elicited from the custom, it is plain that its efficacy is derived from custom. It is not read then that the Roman Bishops in old times intermeddled in these things, or granted such confessionals and the like; and perhaps it would not have been allowed. Since then the Council of Africa, which S. Augustine subscribed, did not allow of an appeal from a Council to a Pope, because it was not found in the Canons that this was allowed, but it was defined in the Council of Nice that the cause ought to be terminated by the Synod, where it arose: how could they have admitted these things, and the irregular things done at this day? But because consent has now from long custom introduced this, those things are valid as to the salvation of souls, as long as they allow them, but they can be taken away by a Council, and reformation requires this.” De Conc. Eccl. ii. 13, pp. 726-729, quoted Gies. K. G. § 136, pp. 215, 216.

the Christian religion and reformation, is slowly corrected.” And yet these three last Councils had borne witness to the need of reformation “in the head and the members;” and worse was feared if it was not hastened, “It is strongly to be anticipated with foresight and fear,” says that same Bishop, “that the ruin of the Latin Church as to Ecclesiastical dignity is near at hand, since weakness in the foundation brings a fall.”

“Unless,” said a Cardinal, in the preface to a paper presented to the Council of Constance, “the Church be reformed speedily, I venture to say, that, albeit great are the things which we see, we shall soon see incomparably greater, and, after thunderings so awful, we shall very shortly hear others yet more awful. “Wherefore we must watch with the utmost diligence for the Reformation of the Church.” And Cardinal Julian, appealing to the Pope against the dissolution of the Council of Basle, “What will the whole world say, when it shall hear this? “Will it not judge that the Clergy are incorrigible, and will for ever to remain in the defilements of their deformities? So many Councils have been held in our days, from which no reformation followed. The people looked that some fruit should come of this. If it be dissolved, it will be said that we mock God and man.” The Council was after a time removed to Italy, and reformation was no more spoken of.

vi. c. The last charge which Dr. Manning brings against the Church of England is, that “it formally denies “the “perpetual Divine voice” of the Church. In this statement the stress, I conceive, lies upon the word “perpetual.” Dr. Manning understands “the Divine authority of the Church “to involve, not only what we confess,—that the whole Catholic Church has not collectively sanctioned error; and so, that what it has collectively pronounced is certain truth,—but also an ever-present power to declare new truth. “The perpetual and ever-present assistance of the Holy Spirit, whereby the Church in every age is not only preserved from error, but enabled at all times to declare the truth; that is, the infallibility of the Church at this hour—that it is, that the Anglican Church in terms denies. For three hundred years the Anglican Clergy have been trained, ordained, and bound to deny not only many Christian truths, but the Divine authority of the h aei ekklhsia, the living Church of every age.” Conscious that we had never done any thing of the kind, nay that, in the Articles, we subscribe the contrary, I asked myself, “What can this mean? For we are here concerned with an abstract proposition, not with a matter of fact, such as is that of the extent of the visible Church, viz., whether it comprises the Oriental and Anglican Churches, or whether it consists only of the Churches in communion with Rome. Dr. Manning has, naturally, identified the two questions; and assumes, in fact, that, in denying the infallibility of the Roman Church by itself, we are “denying the infallibility of the living Church at this hour;” because, on his hypothesis,

the Roman Church is, alone, the living Church, to the exclusion of the Eastern Church and of ourselves. This, I understand, is a favourite formula with Dr. Manning,— “By whom does God the Holy Ghost speak? By the Roman Church? or by the Eastern? or by the Anglican?” I have been wont to say, “by all concurrently, in so far as they teach the same faith which was from the beginning, which is the great body of all their teaching; and, if need required, they could at this day declare concurrently any truth, if it should appear that it had not, as yet, been sufficiently defined, against some fresh heresy which should emerge.”

But I see not, what this question as to the present ability of the Church to meet fresh errors which may emerge, has to do with the question as to the infallible certainty of the truths which the whole Church in common has received.

The office of our Divine Lord, as a Teacher, was, to be the perfect Revealer of the whole truth as to God, which God willed to disclose to His creatures here. This same office God the Holy Ghost undertook after the Resurrection, teaching invisibly to the Apostles that same divine truth. Our Lord said to His Apostles, “He shall teach you the whole truth (pasan thn alhqeian), and bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I have said unto you.” The whole revelation then was completed at the first. He, “the Spirit of Truth,” was to teach the Apostles the whole truth. It was a personal promise to the Apostles, and fulfilled in them. The Church of this day cannot know more than St. John, else the promise would not have been fulfilled to him, that God, the Holy Ghost, should teach him the whole truth. Whatever the Apostles received, that they were enjoined to teach. And that whole truth the Apostles taught, orally and in writing, committing it as the deposit (parakataqhkh) to the Bishops whom they left in their place, and, under inspiration of God the Holy Ghost, embodying it in Holy Scripture. At least we know from the testimony of those who followed, that they taught it orally in all its great outlines; and St. Paul himself says, “I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God.” It does not indeed absolutely follow, that they so taught in detail all which is contained in Holy Scripture. How much, e. g., is taught in the Epistles incidentally, in answer to doubts which had arisen, whether this were so or no, even as to Apostolic teaching, or in correction of nascent heresies! But there is this difference between the teaching of the Apostles and that of the Church after them, that what the Apostles taught as the original and Fountain-head, that the Church only transmitted.

This I conceive to be the meaning of the Council of Trent too, that, when our Lord became Man, He completed His revelation to man. For the Council of Trent, at its outset, recognized as the sources of our knowledge, only Holy Scripture, and those traditions, whether as to faith or morals, which had been dictated orally by Christ or by the Holy

Ghost, and had been preserved by continual succession in the Catholic Church.”According to the Council of Trent, then, as well as ourselves, the revelation was finished in and through the Apostles. In Ravignan’s words, “Achevé, sanctionné par Jésus Christ, il s’arrête, et Dieu ne revèle plus, ne doit plus révéler après la rédemption operée; car elle est le terme des promesses, le sommet de l’édifice et des conseils divins. La pierre fondamentale est posée, l’édifice couronné, et nul n’en pent bâtir un autre, comme s’exprimait S. Paul.”

The office, then, which God the Holy Ghost vouchsafes to take for us, became different after the time of the Apostles. For they were the chosen instruments whom our Blessed Lord selected to be the primary authoritative teachers of His truth. And, in conformity with this choice, God the Holy Ghost dwelt fully in them, inspiring them and making them infallible teachers, and completing His revelation through them.

Thenceforth, then, it was the office of the Church, under the guidance of God the Holy Ghost, to transmit, guard, defend that truth, which our Divine Lord, and God the Holy Ghost, teaching the Apostles what, during our Lord’s Bodily Presence, they had not been able to receive, gave to the Church once for all.

Again, within the post-Apostolic Church, God the Holy Ghost has been pleased to operate, in a twofold way, for the preservation of that truth, which He first gave, ordinary and extraordinary. Ordinarily He upholds and maintains that body of faith, once declared, which, without His continual presence and inspiration, would be lost. He operates also in sacraments; He ordains the succession of pastors, doctors, bishops, through whom he continually propagates the truth; He converts the Jews and heathen; He reclaims heretics, and those too who have done despite to His Grace; He extends the bounds of the Church; He operates towards, or in every soul of Christians; He teaches in all true teachers. “The Holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge Thee.” Through His continued operation and inspiration the Church everywhere, in East and West, North and South, confesseth, maintaineth, teacheth, propagateth the one faith,—that “which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

Extraordinary operations of this same teaching of God the Holy Ghost have been on those occasions, when the Church has had to state, explicitly and formally, in correction of emerging heresies, the truth which God the Holy Ghost ever taught by her. I call these “extraordinary,” because such occasions have been comparatively rare in the history of the Church. The form of “General Councils,” to which our thoughts naturally are first directed, are rarer still. When there was a good hope that the East and West might be again united, the Western Church was willing to ignore all the Councils which it had held subsequently to the separation, and to count the existing Council from the last which East and West had held together. They virtually acknowledged the intervening Councils to have been, not in their fullest sense General Councils, but to have been Western Councils only.

Yet the same object of ascertaining the mind of the Church might be, and was, attained in another way. In the three first centuries a General Council was obviously impossible. It would only have marked out Christian bishops for martyrdom, on the supposition that they were engaged in a conspiracy against the State; yet emergent heresies were condemned, and the mind of the whole Church was ascertained as clearly without them as with them. St. Augustine says of the Pelagian heresy, “What need was there of gathering a Synod, to condemn a manifest mischief? As though no heresy had ever been condemned, except by the gathering of a Synod! Whereas, contrariwise, there were very few heresies, to condemn which there was any such need; and incomparably many more heresies have been rejected and condemned where they arose; and thence they could be made known through the rest of the world as things to be avoided.” Yet during all that time the assent of the whole Church would be obtained without any meeting. It is said of the Pelagian heresy, “the whole world embraced the enactment of the 214 [African] Bishops against the enemies of the grace of God.” “The Synodal decrees of the Council of 214 Bishops of Carthage were transmitted to Pope Zosimus; which, being approved, the Pelagian heresy was condemned through the whole world.”The doctrines of grace were thus established as part of the faith, as fully as if they had been formally received by a General Council. Mr. Palmer counted “more than ninety heresies, which were suppressed before the Council of Nice by the arguments and authorities of the Bishops and Provincial Synods.” In like way St. Jerome relates, “how the Bishops of Rome, Alexandria, Milan, Aquileia, and the whole Synod of Catholics, both of East and West, with a like sentence, because their mind is alike, denounce Origen to the people as a heretic.” We have no detailed account of the Synods to which St. Jerome refers, except that Origen was condemned first at Alexandria, then at Rome, at the instigation of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, and then by other Synods. But the result St. Augustine sums up: “him, not undeservedly, the Church hath rejected” on account of the heresy of Universalism, “and for some other things.” He speaks of the doctrine as one which the Church had not been able to endure. “The Catholic Church wholly rejects this, when it neither accuses him falsely, nor can be deceived by his defenders. For what Catholic Christian, learned or unlearned, would not be exceedingly horrified” thereat?

Of these two ways of ascertaining the mind of the Church, neither have been adopted on any fixed rule. The Second General Council was originally only an Eastern Council, which became general through its reception by the West, which was not

represented in it. The Church had to wait many years for the Council of Constantinople, which completed the Nicene Creed until the accession of the Orthodox Emperor Theodosius gave scope for it. She had again to await the accession of the Emperor Marcian, before the robber-Council of Ephesus could be displaced by the Fourth General Council at Chalcedon. The Fifth General Council was assembled by an heretical Emperor, instigated by heretics, yet was preserved by God’s Providence and by His Spirit, under which it was not convened.

Nor is there any promise that the Church shall be guided, when and how to hold Councils, although it is promised that the whole Church should not be led into error. Centuries elapsed before the attempt to solve the great schism of the East and “West by a Council.

Nor is it essential, according to the Church of Rome itself, that the Church should at once define even a matter of faith which is disputed. The controversies about the Immaculate Conception are older than the Reformation, but have only just been decided. It has now been ruled that that doctrine was always matter of faith; yet it has only been formally received in the Roman Church, when it had tacitly made its way, and its once powerful opponents had ceased. The object of the decision was understood to be, not to settle controversies which had long expired, but to obtain the favour of the Blessed Virgin towards the Church of Rome by doing honour to her. During the disputes between the Gallican and Ultramontane Divines about the supremacy of the Pope, each party held the opposite statements to be heretical; but the Church did not interpose. No doubt, wisely. Ultramontanism has been fostered by the tyranny of the State, driving people to take refuge in an authority external to the State. Should Gallicanism be extinguished hereafter, it would be according to the analogy of the course as to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that Ultramontanism, which is now the favoured opinion should be declared to be matter of faith. But anyhow, it is clear from the old controversies as to the Immaculate Conception, that, according to the Roman Church too, what is subsequently ruled to be de fide may be allowed, for a long time, to remain matter of vehement dispute.

Nor, although it is promised that the whole Church should not fall into error, is it promised that they should in all things act wisely. The Roman Church long refused to accept those Canons of the Second and the Fourth General Councils which settled the rank of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, although it ultimately acceded to them. The fifth General Council, although marvellously preserved from error, and a maintainer of truth, gave rise to a lamentable schism among the orthodox as to “The Three Chapters,” very chiefly through the vacillations of Pope Vigilius. The Latin Church has tacitly acknowledged that the Council of Florence acted unwisely in trying to force upon the Greeks the Latin formula as to the Procession of God the Holy Ghost, contrary to their uniform tradition, even while it granted that the formula of the Greek fathers, dia tou Uiou, expressed the same truth as the Latin “Filioque.” On this and other grounds the Council failed of its object, and the opportunity was lost of effacing the inveterate

prejudice of the Greeks, that the Latin formula had an heretical meaning, viz., that there are two ‘Arcai in the Divine nature. The Latin Church has tacitly allowed that it was a mistake to insist that the Greeks should adopt our Western expression, by allowing the Greeks, who have submitted to its authority, to say the Creed, as the Council of Constantinople left it.

It is, then, no essential part of the office of God the Holy Ghost in the Church to direct it, how, when, and for what to assemble General Councils.