Forbes on Article XX: Of the Authority of the Church

in the ” earliest and purest ages,” we find : — ” failure of first love ;” ” toleration of the doctrine of Balaam ;” ” immoral living introduced by a false prophetess ;” “a church which had need to strengthen the things that remain that are ready to die;” and ’•‘lukewarm and self-complacent Laodicea.” And yet each and all were then integral portions of the Church Catholic, and the merciful word was still, “I will!”

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” Of the Authority of the Church. “TuE Church hath power to decree rites or cere monies, and authority in controversies of faith a : and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture that it bo repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be be lieved for necessity of salvation.”

THE end of revelation requires a Church, one and visible. The divine truth embodied in Jesus Christ,

a For the history of the first clause in Article XX., which gave rise t ’ so much discussion in the time of Archbishop Laud, see Collyer’s Church History, vol. vi. pp. 364 — 377, and Hardwiok’s History of the Vrticles, p. 143.

the eternal Truth, and thereby exhibited in an outward and living phenomenon, is of course a deciding autho rity; but when He ascended, He left His mystical Body — a society which in its turn should be the living expositor of the truth, and represent Him. “As my Father sent Me, so send I you. I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

We never can attain to an external authority, like Christ, by purely spiritual means. The attempt would involve a contradiction, which must be disposed of in one of two ways. Either we must renounce the idea that in Christ God manifested Himself in hiskrfy, to the end that the conduct of men might be permanently determined by Him ; or we must learn that fact through a living, definite, vouching fact. Authority must have authority for its medium. Christ established a credible institution, in order to render the true faith in Him perpetually possible. Immediately founded by Him. its existence is the de facto proof of what lie really was. How doth man attain to the true knowledge of Christ ? The Scripture is God’s unerring word, but ?/v are not exempt from error; we only become so, when we have unerringly received the Word, which in itself is in errable. In this reception of the Word, human acti vity, which is fallible, has necessarily a part. But in order that in this transit of the Divine contents of Scripture into the human mind there be no illusion,, it is taught that the Holy Spirit supplies, in Hi* union with the human spirit in the Church, a pecu liarly Christian tact, and deep sure-guiding feeling*

By confiding attachment to the perpetuated Apo- stolate, by education in the Church, by ” hearing,” as St. Paul would say, a deep, interior sense is formed, which alone is fitted for the reception and acceptance of the written Word, because it entirely coincides with the sense in which the Scriptures were composed.

Where misunderstandings as to the meaning of the Divine Word arise, the Church must interpret Holy Scripture. The Church is the Bod}’ of the Lord ; it is in its universality His visible form, His permanent ever- renovated Humanity, His eternal revelation. Pie dwells in the community. All His promises and gifts are bequeathed to it, but to no individual, as such, since the days of the Apostles. This general sense is the €KK\7)cna(mKbv p6vijij,a of Eusebius, the ecclestasfioa intelligent ia and catholic-its sensits of Vincentius Lirinen- sis. To this sense the interpretation of Holy Writ is entrusted. The declaration which it pronounces on any controverted sense is the judgment of the Church, and therefore the Church is Judex controvei’sianim, an “authority in controversies of faith V

This being so, the first question, that suggests itself is the law whereby she is to be the judge of contro versies. We have in a previous Article laid down the relations between the Church and Holy Scrip ture. We have now to add the other great authority which the Church takes as her guide, in expounding

b Mohler: but the author identifies the ecclesiasticus sensus with tradition, -which seems incorrect, as tradition is a definite thing, the sensus the power of judging of that thing.

that Holy Scripture, and which constitutes the second great factor in her decisions. This is Christian Tra dition, the concurrent testimony of antiquity, univer sality, and consent. A doctrine which the Church has received and taught in every age, in every country, and concurrently by all, must be, as agreeable with the Divine Scripture, infallibly true. These two powers, Holy Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition, have his torically been the sources from whence men ascertained the truth c.

But, secondly, inasmuch as the Church is indwelt by God the Holy Ghost, it is no mere concocter of formu laries after a mechanical and lifeless fashion ; it has been guided to express wisely and rightly the form of faith, and therefore has availed itself of new terms, such as ” the consubstaiitial/’ rejecting it in the wrong sense, accepting it in the right. And so in later times, in regard to the sacred doctrines of the Natures and Person of our Lord, it exercised the Divine gift in dictating the precise terms whereby man might in

c See Dr. Pusey’s Sermon on the ” Rule of Faith,” p. 34. The Fathers at Nicea wrote concerning the Easter, ’ it seemed good as follows/ for it did seem good that there should be a general compliance ; but about the faith they wrote not ’ it seemed good,’ but ’ thus believes the Ca tholic Church ;’ and thereupon they confessed how the faith lay, in order to shew that their own sentiments were not novel, but aposto lical ; and what they wrote down was no discovery of theirs, but is the same as was taught by the Apostles : ” so at Chalcedon, in their decree the Bishops are careful to shew that they set forth no other faith than that of the Fathers, that they are not even devising anew aught lack ing to the faith, but considering what is useful for the things newly invented by these heretics.”

reverence and truth speak of those holy mysteries. But it is not derogatory either to the Church, or to the Office of God the Holy Ghost in her, to maintain that, in some periods, this gift has been less vividly present than at others.

As man is the microcosm of the universe, so the in dividual, faithful man, is that of the universal Church. As in the individual the faith whereby he believeth unto salvation is, as we have seen, a faith informed and animated by love ; and as his faith stands in relation to, and is profoundly affected by his moral nature, (so that love and good works are an inte gral part of vivid faith, and, correspondingly, faith is quickened by a holy life, and expires under the in dulgence of certain sins,) so something of this kind, limited of course by Christ’s promise of indefectibility and the Holy Spirit’s guidance, must take place in the Church. There must be a similar process. The divino perception of truth will be quickened in the body of the faithful, in periods of revival and refreshment. The eye of the Church will Avax dull when the moral state of society, and especially of its teachers, is at the lowest. Is it impious to believe that the Christian izing of the Empire, by increasing the material in terests, by silencing the delator’s tongue, by bringing into the net plenty of bad fishes, weakened the spiritu ality of the Church ? Is it not in the nature of things, that when the old society, before the fresh blood of the barbarians gave it new youth, was actually dying out, the divine ray should become dimmed by the

fetid exhalations from a putrifying civilization ? Would the great schism ever have been permitted, had men not lost their sense of the necessity of Christian unity and of the transcendental truths in the Divine na ture, on which that Christian unity depends ? Surely as under the old law we find a shortening of God’s merciful hand caused by the sins of His people, so, even in the dispensation of the Spirit, in the Catholic Church of Christ, we may believe that the depraved use of man’s free-will may have worked to the distinct detriment of her teaching office, if faith and works be different aspects of the same habit.

Hence it may have been, in the providence of God, that no heresy arose in those awful times, when ” Christ seemed to be fast asleep in the bark, and the ship was covered with waves, and He Himself seemed to allow of the evils which He did not avenge d.” And we cannot think that it was without His providence that almost all the heresies which could emerge in the great, central doctrines of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, (and we might say also as to the grace of God,) did emerge in those first centuries of strong faith and fresh tradition, so that the highest truths of faith were ruled in the undivided Church.

It is even remarkable how very little was defined between the fourth General Council and the Council of Florence. The lawfulness of the religious use of images, established in the second Council of Nice, has scarcely the character of a dogma. The Council of d Baron. H. E. A.D. 912.

Frankfort, in condemning Felix and Adoptianism, had no new definition to make. In the fourth Lateran Council, transubstantiation is rather practically taught in view of the Real Presence, than defined in itself6. Perhaps the one great exception is, that in regard to the Procession of God the Holy Ghost, the heresy im puted by Photius of old, that the Latin doctrine in volved two “Ap^ai in the Deity, is rejected in the second Council of Lyons ; and the decision of the Council of Florence, that the language used by the Greek and Latin Fathers meant the same, was anticipated. Even in the Council of Trent it is remarkable how very little is defined upon some of the subjects which perhaps mainly occasioned the Reformation, — e.g. indulgences, purgatory, the cultus of the saints.

In fact, the short-comings of sinful humanity have -crippled the operation of this divinely-ordered system. So long as the Church was undivided, the organ was in perfection and did its work. The decisions of the (Ecumenical Church are the voice of the Holy Ghost ; nothing can exaggerate the veneration or submission with which they ought to be received. But when, for the sins of Christendom, God permitted the great schism between the East and the West, the teaching office of the Church was, for the most part, limited to the authorization, inculcation, and application of truths already infallibly defined, or to the declaration of truth which had not yet that test of infallibility, the re ception by the whole Church of Christ. We cannot e See further on, Article XX VI II.

dispose of this fact as we can of the casting forth of Nestorianism or Eutychianism, or even of the No- vatian schism in earlier times. On the one hand, no heresy can be charged against the orthodox East ems; and on the other, the position of the East was founded in no negation of unity or catholicity. Nova- tianism had a theory of its own — a false one. The Greek Church became separated by circumstances over which it had no control. From the time of the esta blishment of the Empire at Byzantium, the elements of the future scission began to work — the human passions of the Popes and Patriarchs gave force to a dissidence which probably had its roots in the totally different temperaments and minds of their respective subjects; and in the final quarrel about Bulgaria, which occa sioned the actual split, it is very difficult to award the meed of praise or blame to either party. If the Easterns, on the plea of the decrees of the Councils, arrogated for the Patriarchs a power to which they had no right, the Westerns were equally bold in assert ing the prerogatives of St. Peter. The establishment of the Latin Emperors, and the aggression of a Latin Church at Constantinople, were not to be justified. In short, it is impossible to say that either side was quite right, or that either side had not much to say for it self ; and therefore we cannot aver that either party is cut off from the true Vine, or that either section has ceased to be a part of the Catholic Church of Christ.

And this assertion has not only been held by in dividual doctors of the Western Church, but actually

has been admitted by its most authoritative organs. On 110 other theory could the Councils of Lyons, Sienna, Ferrara, or Florence ever have been held. If modern theories be true, the Church can only deal with the in dividual members of separated communities. In the eyes of the Church such communities, according to these theories, have no corporate existence at all. It was not so in those great Councils, nay, it was not so in any of the prior attempts at reconciliation, some of which from time to time were actually successful. One must deny history, if one would assert that the Latins never treated the separated Greeks as a Church. Except by the Ultramontane School, the Orthodox Eastern Church has ever been regarded as a Church, with orders, sacraments, miracles, and jurisdiction, which has never fallen into heresy — in short, a real Church, the schism notwithstanding.

We find that, long after the time of Cerularius, a certain degree of communion still existed between the East and the West. Leo Allatius has produced several proofs that the act of Cerularius did not pre vent the unity of the Churches : and the author of the Pcrpetidte de Iff Foi, says, “that even in the twelfth century, the schism was not yet so formed as that all the Greeks were generally rejected by all the Latins, and all the Latins by the Greeks, and there appeared among many of them marks of ecclesiastical communion f.”

Again, it must be observed, that in the present day the authority of the Church is made to rest mainly

f Palmer’s ” Treatise on the Church,” vol. i. p. 189.

on unity. It is said that the Church cannot speak authoritatively except it be one. And yet it is in fallibility, not authority, of which the reception by the whole Church is the test, which reception is hin dered when intercommunion is suspended. There may be many degrees of authority, adequate to guide us to the faith, short of absolute infallibility. When u heresy had been rejected of old in a local Church, there was guidance enough for its members, before the universal adoption of its decrees stamped its judgment with infallibility. But apart from this, many years elapsed before it was brought out that unity was the guarantee for authority. Even after the luminous ex position of the unity of the Church by St. Paul, we find centuries elapse before it is brought out scien tifically by St. Cyprian. Before that, bishops excom municated each other, and, resting on the goodness of their respective causes, died in separation, without a doubt as to their eternal safety. Such was the case in the matter of Pope Victor and the Eastern Bi shops. Even St. Cyprian, who, as a doctor, has done more than any other for the scientific development of the idea of Church unity, actually felt it his duty not to give up the re-baptizing of heretics, which he and a large African Council had ordained, in conformity to an African tradition, although Pope Stephen re nounced his communion for it, and the great St. Fir- milian confirmed him in this, saying that Pope Stephen had rejected, not St. Cyprian, but himself s. Except when controversy embittered men’s hearts, the mere

e In St. Cypr. Epp., Ep. 75, n. 25, Oxf. Tr.

fact of separation was not looked upon as crucial, as we may judge by the way in which the Meletians at Antioch were regarded. So also Lucifer of Cagliari, though the founder of a sect, is always spoken of with the greatest reverence ; and St. Leo, after the death of his great opponent St. Hilary of Aries, speaks of him as ” of blessed memory.” The Donatists were heretics as well as schismatics. So that, although St. Augustine dwells very prominently on the fact of the schism, it was not pure schism, (such as that between the East and West,) of which he says, that men without the Church may have everything but salvation.

Nay, the converse of the proposition may be asserted, that the testimony of different Churches, agreeing in handing down the deposit, was regarded as of more im portance in way of corroboratioii of truth, than a con current testimony of two Churches closely united. It was more like the witness we now claim for certain truths from the immemorial practice of the ancient heretical communities. It was the bringing together of witness which was specially called for, as a basis for authoritative declaration. It will be seen that the hinge of the two notions turns on the prominence given to the theory of doctrinal development.

That the plenary and absolute authority of the organ for deciding controversies should be thus tem porarily limited is no doubt a startling fact. The philosophizing Christian may rejoice in the thought that the Church is thereby saved from the danger of over-definition. The Catholic Christian will mourn. The mournful fact itself is clear from what has gone