Union of Christendom

Union of ChristendomUnion of Christendom The Catholic Church is by far the largest, the most widespread, and the most ancient of Christian communions in the world, and is moreover the mighty trunk from which the other communions claiming to be Christian have broken off at one time or another. If, then, we limit the application of the term Christendom to this, its most authentic expression, the unity of Christendom is not a lost ideal to be recovered, but a stupendous reality which has always been in stable possession. For not only has this Catholic Church ever taught that unity is an essential note of the true Church of Christ, but throughout her long history she has been, to the amazement of the world, distinguished by the most conspicuous unity of faith and government, and this notwithstanding that she has at all times embraced within her fold nationalities of the most different temperaments, and has had to contend with incessant oscillations of mental speculation and political power. Still, in another and broader sense of the term, which is also the more usual and is followed in the present article, Christendom includes not merely the Catholic Church, but, together with it, the many other religious communions which have either directly or indirectly, separated from it, and yet, although in conflict both with it and among themselves as to various points of doctrine and practice agree with it in this: that they look up to our Lord Jesus Christ as the Founder of their Faith, and claim to make His teaching the rule of their lives. As these separated communities when massed together, indeed in some cases even of themselves, count a vast number of souls, among whom many are conspicuous for their religious earnestness, this extension of the term Christendom to include them all has its solid justification. On the other hand, if it is accepted, it becomes no longer possible to speak of the unity of Christendom but rather of a Christendom torn by divisions and offering the saddest spectacle to the eyes. And then the question arises: Is this scandal always to continue? The Holy See has never tired of appealing in season and out of season for its removal but without meeting with much response from a world which had learnt to live contentedly within its sectarian enclosures. Happily a new spirit has lately come over these dissentient Christians, numbers of whom are becoming keenly sensitive to the paralyzing effects of division and an active reunion movement has arisen which, If far from being as widespread and solid as one could wish, is at least cherished on all sides by devout minds. In summarizing in this article the various matters that bear upon this question of the unity of Christendom, its present default, and the hopes for its restoration, the following points will be considered: The Principles of the Church's UnityUnity in the Early Church and its CausesThe Divisions of Christendom and their CausesReunion Movements in the PastReunion Movements in the PresentConditions of Reunion Prospects of Reunion Principles of the Church's unity As determined by Christ It is to the Gospels we must go in the first place if we desire to know what in the intentions of its Founder were to be the fundamental elements in the constitution of the Church, nor do the instructions He gave to His Apostles leave us in doubt on the subject. His last words, as reported by St. Matthew, are: "All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth. Going therefore make disciples (matheteusate) of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and, lo, I am with you all days until the consummation of the world" (28:19-20) St. Mark's account is to the same effect, but adds important details: "Going into all the world, proclaim the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, he that disbelieveth (ho de apistedaz) shall be condemned. And these signs shall follow those that believe: in my name they shall cast out devils, speak with new tongues, and take up serpents, and if they shall drink any deadly drink it shall not hurt them; and they shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall be healed. And they going forth preached everywhere, the Lord co-operating with them, and confirming their words by the signs that accompanied them" (16:15-20) St. Luke, in Acts 1:8, preserves words of Christ which fit in with these two accounts: "You shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost that will come down upon you, and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth"; whilst in his Gospel this Evangelist has recorded how Jesus Christ in His post-Resurrection discourses to His disciples enumerated as among the primary doctrinal facts to be thus attested by the Apostles and preached throughout the world, the fulfilment in Jesus of the Old-Testament prophecies, and the remission of sins through His name: "These are the words which I have spoken to you whilst I am still with you, for it is necessary that all things which are written of Me in Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms be fulfilled; and He said to them: For thus it is written that the Christ must suffer and rise again from the dead on the third day, and repentance be preached in His name for the remission of sins to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. And you shall be witnesses to these things. And I will send down upon you that [gift] which has been promised to you by My Father. Remain therefore in this city until you be endued with power from on high" (xxiv, 44-49). Further, to go back to St. Matthew, this Evangelist tells us, in a most impressive passage intimately connected with the plan of his Gospel, that Christ made provision for unity of action among His Apostles by appointing one of them to be the leader of his brethren, and assigning to him a unique relation to the spiritual building He was raising. "And I say to thee that thou art Peter [i.e. the Rock], and upon this Rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (xvi, 18, 19) St. Luke (22:31-32) has words spoken in the supper-room which imply this previous appointment of St. Peter, by describing in other terms the same firm support which it would be his to communicate to the faith of the Church. "Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee that thy faith may not fail, and do thou when thou art converted" (or it may mean, "do thou in thy turn") "confirm thy brethren." St. John, whose Gospel follows a different course from the Synoptics, and seems to select for narration previously unrecorded deeds and words of Christ which cast a fuller light on what the others had given, tells of Jesus Christ's final reiteration of the commission to St. Peter rendered necessary perhaps to reassure him after his fall and deep repentance, and entrusting him anew with the supreme pastoral charge of the entire flock. "Simon, Son of John, lovest thou me more than these feed My lambs be the shepherd of my sheep" (21:15-17) To St. John, too, we are indebted for our knowledge of a fact which accords well with the words, "Lo, I am with you always", reported by St. Matthew; for he testifies that on the occasion of the Last Supper Jesus Christ promised to send the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, and "will bear testimony of me" (15:26) and "will lead you into all truth" (16:13); also that on the same occasion He prayed an effectual prayer for His disciples and "those who through their word should come to believe in him, that they all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art one in me, and I am one in Thee, so that they may be one in us, and thus the world may believe that thou hast sent me" (17:20-23). Were we arguing with the Rationalistic critics we should have to meet their refusal to grant the authenticity of much that is in these passages, but the question of reunion is practical only for those who accept fully and in all respects the authority of the canonical Scriptures. If, then, we take these passages together as utterances of the same Divine voice, reaching us through these different channels, the conclusion is irresistible that the Church was founded by Christ on the principle of a revelation to which, as attested by the word of God, unquestioning assent is due from all to whom it is addressed; on the principle of an authority communicated by Christ to chosen representatives whom He set as teachers of the world, and to whom He requires that the world should render the obedience of faith; and on the principle of a single religious communion, under the rule of these teachers and their duly appointed successors, admission to which is through the gate of baptism and adherence to which is imposed on all under the most solemn sanctions. For: the duty assigned to the hearers is simply to believe what the Apostles impart to them as teaching derived from Jesus Christ, no liberty being allowed for disbelief on the ground that the Apostolic teaching does not commend itself to the judgment of the disciple; and this duty is declared to be so imperative that the fulfilment of it places a man in the way of salvation, but disregard of it in the way of Divine condemnation — the implication being that, as this teaching comes ultimately from Christ, that fact in itself should be held to give the disciple a better guarantee of truth than any reasoning of his own could give. The Apostles are sent by Christ in like manner as He was sent by His Father, and to the chief of them are given the keys of the kingdom of heaven with a far-reaching power to make binding laws which must mean that He sends them forth to continue the work He had begun, to make disciples as He had done, and to rule them in the spirit of the Good Shepherd as He had done; consequently, that He delegates to these Apostles such share of the authority given to Himself as He deemed necessary for the discharge of their world-wide commission. The community thus formed out of the Apostolic teachers and their disciples was necessarily one by a twofold bond of union, inasmuch as the teaching, being from God, was necessarily one, and the faith with which it had to be received was correspondingly one, inasmuch too, as the visible society into which all were baptized was essentially one, being under the rule of a body of pastors united under the presidency of a single visible head. The words, "I am with you always until the consummation of the world", prove, what indeed was presumable from the nature of the case, that Christ was then instituting a system not intended for the Apostolic generation only, but for all the generations to come, and hence that He was addressing His Apostles, not as eleven individual men only, but as men who, with their legitimate successors, formed a moral personality destined to last through the ages. We may further gather from the texts above cited that the revelation thus brought down from heaven and imparted to the world to be the means of its salvation was not confined to a few ethical maxims, lit up by the splendour of a surpassing example and of such simplicity that all men in all ages could without difficulty reconcile them on intrinsic grounds with the dictates of their personal reason. On the contrary, it is expressed in terms of unlimited range — "teaching them all that I have commanded" — and is explicitly declared to contain first and foremost in its doctrinal whole the mystery which surpasses all others in baffling human speculation, namely, the mystery of the Holy Trinity — "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" — in other words, for this is the meaning, dedicating them by baptism to the worship of (eis to honoma), and therefore to belief in the Trinity in Unity. At the same time, that the human mind, in thus giving its assent to doctrines so difficult for it to conceive may do no violence to its own rational nature, the above passages tell us of the promise of the Spirit to abide for ever in the Church, to guide at all times the mind of the teaching body, organized under its visible head, so that it may always be kept from corrupting the sacred doctrine, and presenting it for acceptance in a form foreign to its original purity. Lastly, that we may understand the vital importance of this unity of communion, of this unity of truth, for the due carrying out of the Church's work, we have the prayer of Christ to His Father to teach us that the spectacle of it was intended by Him to furnish the world with the most signal and convincing proof of the divinity of the Christian religion: "That even as the Father is in Me, and I in Him, so they may be one in Us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me." We can appreciate the character of this motive, we who live in an age when the divisions of Christendom are cast in our faces as evidence of the uncertainty on which the Christian pretensions rest. We can see how it would facilitate Christian work at home and in the mission field, if we could still say, as in the time of the Apostles, "The universality of those that believe are of one heart and one soul." We can understand how discerning observers, weighing the natural tendency of human minds to differ, would, in the presence of such a world-wide unity, be fain to exclaim, "This is something that surpasses the power of nature; the hand of God is here." As understood by the apostles and their disciples In the Acts and the Epistles we have a record of the way in which the Apostles understood their commission, and it is obvious that the two things correspond. After receiving the promised gift of the Spirit, the Apostles go forth confidently and commence their preaching. Peter is their leader and, in those early days, so far their spokesman as for the moment to throw his fellow-Apostles almost entirely into the shade. Even St. John, great as he was, and, as we may gather from a comparison of the writings of the two, greatly St. Peter's intellectual superior, accompanies him as a silent companion, thus illustrating the completeness of the union that bound together the Apostolic band. In his preaching St. Peter follows an easily recognizable plan. First he seeks to accredit himself and his colleagues by appealing to the character of their Master, Whose life had been led before the eyes of the people of Jerusalem. He was Jesus of Nazareth, "a man approved by God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God wrought through him in the midst of you" (Acts 2:22), One, therefore, to Whose teaching the people were bound to attend and Whose representatives they were bound to receive. It was true that He who had thus been approved by God among them had afterwards fallen into the hands of wicked men who had taken and slain Him, thereby appearing to show signs of weakness hard to reconcile with such stupendous claims. But the Twelve, who were now addressing the people, were also known to them as having each and all been the companions of the Lord Jesus all the time He went in and out from the Baptism of John (Acts 1:21-22); and these could testify from their own immediate experience that what had befallen their Master, so far from being a real sign of weakness, had been ordained for His glorification "by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God", Who, after thus permitting His Son's death for our sakes, had "raised him up" from the dead, whereof they, the Apostles, were the witnesses (Acts 2:33), as they were also of His subsequent Ascension. Having thus declared and authenticated their commission, and having received a further confirmation of it by the miracles wrought through their intercession (Acts 4:10, 29, 30; 5:12, 16), which made a, deep impression on the people, they take up a position of the utmost authority (Acts 5:32), proclaim their Master's teaching, and, on the faith of their sole word, demand credence for it and obedience to its requirements. "Therefore let the House of Israel know that God hath made this same Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ. Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:36, 38) Thus did they teach and claim to be believed, and thus did they call upon their hearers to enter the nascent Church by Baptism and to place themselves as disciples under the Apostolic instruction and rule. And this is what the hearers did in large numbers. On the day of Pentecost itself there were added to the Church, we are told, three thousand souls (ibid., 11, 41), a number which a few days later, after another discourse from St. Peter, swelled into five thousand, and from thence the multitude steadily grew, not only in Jerusalem but in Judæa, and Samaria, and unto the ends of the earth (iv, 4) In strict conformity with the words of Christ (make disciples of all nations. He that believeth and is baptized shall he saved), those who thus join themselves to the Apostles are described invariably as "believers" (pistoi, Acts 10:45), or again as "disciples" (mathetai, Acts 9:1; 11:26; 16:1), or in other places as "those who are being saved" (sozomenoi, Acts 2:47; 1 Corinthians 1:18) On these principles the Church was founded, and from these principles unity of faith and communion resulted. "They continued", we read, "steadfastly in the Apostles' teaching and communion, and in the breaking of bread and in prayer" (Acts 11:42); and again "the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul" (iv, 32) Later indeed disputes arose and led to critical situations. That was to be expected, for human minds necessarily approach subjects that challenge their attention from the standpoint of their own antecedents, which means that their judgments are apt to be one-sided and to differ. But the point to note is that in those times the authority of the Apostles was universally recognized as competent to decide such controversies and to require obedience to its decrees. Accordingly, they were controversies which led to no breach of communion, but rather to a strengthening of the bonds of communion by eliciting clearer statements of the truths to which all believers were committed by their faith. One instance of a controversy thus happily terminated we have in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts. It is a valuable illustration of what has been said, for it was settled by the authority of the Apostles, who met together to consider it, and ended by affirming the equality of Jews and Gentiles in the Christian Church, together with the non-necessity of circumcision as a condition of participating in ifs full benefits; and by recommending to the Gentile converts a certain (apparently temporary) concession to Jewish feelings which might soften the difficulties of their mutual intercourse. "It has seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us" (xv, 28) was the ground on which those Apostles claimed obedience to their decree, thereby setting a type of procedure and language which subsequent rulers of the Church have consistently followed. From the second part of the Acts and from the remaining books of the New Testament we have the means of ascertaining how St. Paul and the other Apostles conceived of their mission and authority. It is clear that they, too, regarded themselves as clothed by Jesus Christ with authority both to teach and to rule, that they, too, expected and received in every place a like assent to their teaching and a like obedience to their commands from their disciples, who just by this means were held together in the unity of the one undivided and indivisible Church which the Apostles had founded. The following texts may be consulted on this point, but it is not necessary for our present purpose to do more than refer to them: Acts 15:28; Romans 1:5, 15:18-19 and 16:19-26; 1 Corinthians 4:17-21; 5:1-5; 15:11; 2 Corinthians 3:5-9; 10:5-8; 13:2-10; Ephesians 2:20; 4:4-6, 11, 12; 1 Thessalonians 2:13 and 4:1-8; 2 Timothy 2:2; Titus 2:15; Hebrews 13:7-9; 1 John 4:6; 3 John 10; Jude 17-20. We must not, however, pass over St. Paul's jubilant description of this unity in his Epistle to the Ephesians, standing out so conspicuously as it does in the New-Testament writings, to convince us of its deep significance, its all-penetrating character, and the firm foundations on which it was set: "One body, one Spirit, one Hope, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, Who is over all and through us all, and in us all." Such was the spectacle of Christian unity born of the Apostolic preaching which presented itself to the eyes of the enraptured Apostle some thirty years from the time when St. Peter preached his first sermon on the day of Pentecost. As resisted by the earliest heretics To claim this wonderful unity as distinctive of the followers of Jesus Christ in the Apostolic days is not to forget that there were sad exceptions to the general rule. There were indeed no rival communions then which, whilst claiming to be Christian, were maintained in formal opposition to the Church of the Apostles. It is expressly stated by Tertullian (Adv. Marcion., IV, v) that the Marcionites, in the middle of the second century, were the first who, when expelled from the Church Catholic, created an opposition Church for the expression of their peculiar views. Before that time the dissentients contented themselves with forming parties and schools of thought, and of this mode of separation, which sufficed to put men outside the Church, we find clear traces in the New-Testament writings together with predictions that the evil thus originating would become more pronounced in after times. Men of what would nowadays be called independent temperament were dissatisfied with the Apostles' teaching in some particulars, and refused to accept it without further warrant than the mere "word of an Apostle." Thus we may gather from the Epistle to the Galatians that, in spite of the decision of the Council of Jerusalem, there continued to be a party which insisted that the observance of the Jewish Law was obligatory on Gentile Christians, and from the Epistle to the Colossians that there was likewise a Jewish party, probably of Hellenistic origin, which mingled insistence on Jewish legalities with a superstitious worship of the angels (Colossians 2:18) At Ephesus we may detect the adepts of an incipient Gnosticism in St. Paul's warnings against giving heed to "fables and endless genealogies" (1 Timothy 1:4) and against "profane and vain babblings and oppositions of 'gnosis' falsely so-called" (1 Timothy 6:20) Hymenæus and Alexander are mentioned by name as denying the resurrection of the flesh at the last day (2 Timothy 2:18. Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:12) St. John, in the Apocalypse (ii, 6, 15), tells us of the Nicolaites who seem to have fallen into some kind of Oriental admixture of immorality with worship, and in his second Epistle (verse 7. Cf. 1 John 4:2) he warns his readers that many "deceivers are entered into the world" who confess not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, which the church historians refer to the Docetism of Cerinthus. Our modern admirers of comprehensive Churches would regard the coexistence side by side of these beliefs with those of the Apostles as a healthy sign of mental activity in those early Christian communities, and it is instructive to compare such modern judgments with those of the Apostles, because the comparison enables us to realize better how strong was the feeling of the latter as to the essential importance of basing unity of communion on adherence to the Apostles' doctrine, and as to the exceeding sinfulness of dissenting from it. Thus St. Paul calls these alien doctrines "old wives' fables" (1 Timothy 4:7), "doctrines of devils" (ibid., 2), and "profanities the preaching of which will spread and devour like gangrene" (2 Timothy 2:17) St. Peter calls them "fables skillfully made up" (2 Peter 1:16), and, in a passage where the word heresy under Christian influences has already acquired its traditional meaning, "damnable heresies", or "heresies leading to damnation" (ibid., ii, 1) The preachers of these heresies St. Paul calls "men of corrupt minds" (1 Timothy 6:5), who "speak falsehood in their hypocrisy, and have consciences seared with a red-hot iron" (1 Timothy 4:2) St. Peter calls them "false teachers who deny the Lord that bought them and bring upon themselves speedy damnation" (2 Peter 2:1), and St. John calls them "antichrists" (2 John 7; 1 John 2:18; 4:3) Moreover, so far from wishing to tolerate such persons in the Church, St. Paul warns the faithful to avoid them (Romans 16:17), calls upon those who are set over Churches to cast out the recalcitrant heretic, as one who is "subverted and self-condemned" (Titus 3:10-11), and, in a particular instance, tells St. Timothy that he has "delivered" two such heretics "to Satan" — that is, cast them out of the Church — "that they may learn not to blaspheme" (1 Timothy 1:20) Finally, St. John is most severe towards the Christians of Pergamos for neglecting to expel from their midst the two classes of heretics whom he describes (Revelation 11, 14, 15). Summary In short, according to the teaching and record of the Scriptures, the Church is one everywhere with a oneness which is desired by Christ on its own account as befitting the obedient children of one God, one Lord, and one Spirit, and likewise as the necessary outcome of faithful adherence on the part of its members to the concordant teaching of those whom He appointed to be its rulers, and whom the Holy Spirit preserves in all truth. Still, inasmuch as each is left free to accept or reject this one teaching, this wholesome doctrine, there were, side by side with the general body of the true believers, some apparently small groups who held alien doctrines, for which they had been rejected from the communion of the one Church and these were regarded as having placed themselves outside the pale of salvation. There is not a trace, however, of any third class, separated from the communion of their brethren, but still regarded as members of the true Church. Unity in the early Church In the writings of the early Fathers, which contain their testimony to the nature of the Church as it existed in their days, we find the same formative principles which moulded its origins continuing to determine the character of its structure and the distinctive spirit of its members. The Church is now widely spread through the known regions of the world, but it is still, as in the days of St. Paul, everywhere one and the same, all its members in whatever place being united in the profession of the same faith, in the participation of the same sacraments, and in obedience to pastors who themselves form one corporate body and are united by the bond of an intimate solidarity. We learn, too, from these contemporary witnesses that the principle of this remarkable unity is still that of a strict adherence to the Apostles' doctrine, but here a new element from the nature of the case comes in. The Apostles no longer live to proclaim their doctrine; It can be obtained, however, with perfect security from the Apostolic tradition. In other words, it has been banded down incorrupt by oral transmission through the lines of bishops who are the duly appointed successors of the Apostles, and who, like them, are guarded in their teaching by the assistance of the Holy Ghost. Thus the word tradition now comes into prominence, and, just as St. Paul said to Timothy, "keep the deposit" (1 Timothy 6:20), that is the sacred doctrine committed to him by the Apostle as a sacred trust, so the Fathers of the Church say "keep the tradition." This is ever their first and most decisive test of sound doctrine, not what recommends itself to the reason of the individual or his party, but what is sanctioned by the Apostolical tradition; and for the ascertaining of this tradition the Fathers of the second and third centuries refer the searcher to the Churches founded immediately by the Apostles, and before all others to the Church of Rome. We learn, moreover, from these early witnesses, that this Church of Rome, in proportion as the ecclesiastical system passed out of the state of embryo to that of full formation, became more and more explicitly recognized as the see which had inherited the prerogatives of Blessed Peter, and was, therefore, the authority which in all cases of controversy must ultimately decide what was in accordance with the tradition, and in all questions of jurisdiction and discipline was the visible head, communion with which was communion with the one and indivisible Church. As these points of ecclesiastical history are discussed elsewhere, we need not demonstrate them by bringing forward the copious Patristic testimonies which may be found in any good treatise on the Church. We may, however, usefully quote, not so much in proof as in illustration of what is said, a passage or two from St. Irenæus's treatise "Adversus hæreses", he being the earliest of the Fathers from whom we have extant a treatise of any fullness, and this particular treatise dealing with just the points with which we are concerned. "The Church which is now planted throughout the whole inhabited globe, indeed even to the ends of the earth, has received from the Apostles and their disciples that faith which is in one God, the Father omnipotent who made Heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in it; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who was incarnate for our salvation, and in the Holy Ghost. Having received this preaching, and this faith, as we have said, the Church, though spread throughout the whole world, preserves it with the utmost care and diligence, just as if she dwelt in one house, and believes these truths just as if she had but one and the same soul and heart, and preaches them and teaches them and hands them down [tradit] just as if she had but one mouth. For, although the languages of the world are diverse, the force and meaning of the tradition is everywhere the same. Nor do the Churches which are in Germany believe differently or pass down a different tradition, as neither again do the Churches in Spain or Gaul or in the East, or in Egypt or Africa, or those situated in the middle of the earth [that is the Churches of Palestine] But as the sun, which is God's creature, is one and the same throughout the whole world, so too does the preaching of the truth shine everywhere and illuminate all men who desire to come to the knowledge of the truth. And neither do those of the Church's rulers who are powerful in speech add to this tradition — for no one is above the [great] teacher — nor do those who are infirm in speech subtract from it. For since the Faith is one and the same, neither does he who can say more add to it, nor he who can say less diminish it" (Against Heresies I.10.2). This striking passage shows not merely how complete was the unity of faith throughout the world in those days, but how this unity of faith was the response to the unity of the doctrine everywhere preached, to the unity of the tradition everywhere handed down. Elsewhere St. Irenæus testifies to the source of this uniform tradition, and what was understood to be the safeguard of its purity. In the first three chapters of his third book he is criticizing the heretics of his time and the inconsistency of their methods; and in so doing sets forth by way of contrast the method of the Church. "When you refute them out of Scripture", he says "they accuse the Scriptures themselves of errors, of lack of authority, of contradictory statements, and deny that the truth can be gathered from them save by those who know the tradition." By "tradition", however, they mean a fictitious esoteric tradition which they claim to have received, "sometimes from Valentinus, sometimes from Marcion, sometimes from Basilides, or anyone else who is in opposition." "When in your turn you appeal to the tradition that has come down from the Apostles through the succession of the presbyters in the Churches, they reply that they are wiser than the presbyters and even than the Apostles themselves, and know the uncorrupted truth." To this Irenæus observes that "it is difficult to bring to repentance a soul captured by error, but that if is not altogether impossible to escape error by setting truth by the side of it." He then proceeds to state where the true tradition can be found: "The tradition of the Apostles has been made manifest throughout the world, and can be found in every Church by those who wish to know the truth. We can number, too, the bishops who were appointed by the Apostles in the Churches and their successors down to our own day, none of whom knew of or taught the doctrines which these men madly teach. Yet, if the Apostles had known of these secret mysteries and used to teach them secretly, without the knowledge of others, to the perfect, they would have taught them to those chiefly to whom they confided the Churches themselves. For they desired that those whom they left behind them as successors, by delivering over to them their own office of teaching, should be most perfect and blameless, inasmuch as, if they acted rightly, much good, but if they fell away the gravest calamity, would ensue." To exemplify this method of referring to the tradition of the Churches, he applies it to three of the Churches: Rome, Smyrna, and Ephesus, setting that of Rome In the first place, as having a tradition with which those of the other Churches are necessarily in accord. The passage is well known, but for its Intimate hearing on our present subject we may transcribe it. "But as it would take too long in a volume like the present to enumerate the successions of all the Churches, we confound all those who, in any way, whether through self-will, or vain glory, or blindness, or evil-mindedness, invent false doctrines, by directing them to the greatest and most ancient Church well known to all, which was founded and established at Rome by the two glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, and to the tradition it has received from the Apostles and the faith it has announced to men, both of which have come down to us through the succession of the Bishops. For to this Church, on account of its greater authority", — the Greek text being defective here, it is impossible to say exactly what Greek word lies behind the Latin principalitas, but the context indicates "authority" as giving the intended sense — "it is necessary that every Church — that is, the faithful from all parts — should have recourse as to that in which the Apostolic tradition is ever preserved by those" — if we follow Dom Morin's highly probable correction of an apparently defective reading — "who are set over it." One more quotation from St. Irenæus we must permit ourselves, as it evidences so clearly the feeling of this Father and his contemporaries as to the relative conditions of those who were in the one Church or without it: "For in the Church God has set Apostles, prophets, and doctors, together with all the other operations of the Spirit, in which those have no share who do not fly to the Church, but deprive themselves of life by their evil opinions and evil deeds. For where the Church is there is the Spirit of God, and where the Spirit of God is there is the Church and all grace, but the Spirit is truth. Wherefore those who have no part in it neither receive the life-giving nutriment from the breasts of their mother, nor drink of the most pure spring that flows from the Body of Christ; but such people dig for themselves broken cisterns out of earthly trenches, and drink out of the filth putrid water, flying from the faith of the Church lest they should be converted, rejecting the Spirit that they may not be instructed. Being alienated from the truth by just consequence, they are rolled and tossed about by every error, holding at one time one opinion, at another another in regard to the same subject, never having any fixed and stable judgments, caring more to cavil about words than to be disciples of the truth. For they are not built upon one rock, but upon the stone-strewn sand; and hence invent many gods, and plead ever in excuse that they are seeking, but, being blind, never succeed in finding" (ibid., III, xxiv). A modern reader of St. Irenæus's "Adversus hæreses" might be inclined to object that the heretics of those days held doctrines so preposterous that his severe language about them is intelligible without our having to suppose that he would have judged with similar severity doctrines opposed to the tradition which could claim to rest upon a more rational basis. But his principle of the authority of the tradition is manifestly intended to have universal application, and may be safely taken as supplying the test by which this typical Father of the second century would, were he living now, judge of the modern systems in conflict with the Church's tradition. Divisions of Christendom and their causes Extinct schisms The notable heresies that originated in the first four Christian centuries have long since expired. Gnosticism in its various forms occasioned serious trouble to the Apologists of the second century, but scarcely survived into the third. Montanism and Novatianism are not much heard of after the third century, and Donatism, which arose in Africa in 311, perished in the general ruin of African Christianity caused by the Vandal invasion in 429. Manichæism came forward in the third century, but is not much heard of after the sixth, and Pelagianism, which arose at the very end of the fourth century, though for the time it provoked an acute crisis, received a crushing blow at the Council of Ephesus (431) and disappeared altogether after the Council of Orange in 529. Arianism arose at the beginning of the fourth century and, in spite of its condemnation at Nicæa, in 325, was kept alive both in its pure form and in its diluted form of Semi-Arianism by the active support of two emperors. From the time of the First Council of Constantinople (381) it disappeared from the territories of the Empire, but received a new lease of life among the northern tribes, the Goths, Lombards, Burgundians, Vandals, etc. This was due to the preaching of Ulfilas, a bishop of Arian views, who was sent from Constantinople in 341 to evangelize the Visigoths. From the Visigoths it spread to the kindred tribes and became their national religion, until 586, when, with the conversion of Reccared, their king, and of the Spanish Visigoths, the last remnants of this particular heresy perished. As these ancient heresies no longer exist, they do not concern the practical problem of reunion which is before us in the present age. But it is instructive to note that the principles they embodied are the very same which, taking other forms, have invariably motived the long series of revolts against the authority of the Catholic Church. Thus regarded, we may divide them into five classes. First there are certain intellectual difficulties which have always puzzled the human mind. The difficulty of explaining the derivation of the finite from the infinite, and the difficulty of explaining the coexistence of evil with good in the physical and moral universe, motived the strange speculations of the Gnostics and the simpler but not less inconsistent theory of the Manichæans. The difficulty of harmonizing the mystery of the Trinity, and that of the Incarnation, with the conceptions of natural reason motived the heresies of the Patripassians, the Sabellians, the Macedonians, and the Arians, and again the difficulty of conceiving the supernatural or justifying the idea of inherited sin motived the Pelagian denial of these doctrines. A second source of heresies has been the outburst of strong religious emotions, usually based on fancied visions to which, as being direct communications from on high, it was claimed that the traditional teaching of the Church must give way. Montanism, that earliest example of what are now glorified as "religions of the Spirit", was the most striking example of this class. Thirdly, the chafing under the rule of authority, with the desire to pursue personal ambitions, is discernible in the origins of Novatianism and Donatism, whose founders, although they alleged on the flimsiest grounds that the rulers they wished to displace had been irregularly appointed, must be held to have acted primarily from the desire to exalt themselves, even at the risk of dividing the Christian community. In the fourth place comes the principle of nationalism, that is of nationalistic exclusivism, in those who ally themselves with a separatist movement not from any conviction personally formed of the justice of the arguments on its behalf, but because its leaders have contrived to present it to them as a means of emphasizing their national feeling. This has always proved a potent instrument in the hands of heretical leaders, and we have early examples of it in the way in which Donatism presented itself as the religion of the Africans, and Arianism as the religion of the Goths. A last class of motives which has often worked for separation is to be sought in the disposition of temporal rulers to intrude into the administration of the ecclesiastical province and mould ecclesiastical arrangements into forms that may assist their own political schemes. We have an example of this evil in the conduct of the Emperors Constantius and Valens, who so disastrously fostered the Arian heresy. To all these false principles the orthodox Fathers opposed, in the first place, the authority of the tradition that had come down from the Apostles, though not refusing to meet the heresiarchs on their own ground also, and refute them by argument, as many beautiful treatises testify. Nestorianism Besides these notable heresies of the early centuries, which fixed the type, as it were, for all future divisions, Monothelitism in the seventh century, Iconoclasm in the eighth, together with the heresies of the Waldensians, Albigensians, Wycliffites, and Hussites of the medieval period, introduced strife and division into Christendom for periods shorter or longer. As, however, they too are extinct, it is enough just to refer to their existence, and we may pass on to the still-enduring separatist Churches of the East of which the most ancient is the Nestorian. The distinctive doctrine of the Nestorians is that which, as held by Nestorius, was condemned in the Council of Ephesus, in 431. It is the doctrine that in Christ there are not only two natures but also two persons, the Divine person, Who is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and the human person, Who was born of the Virgin Mary; and that the union between these two persons is not physical but moral, the Divine person having chosen the human person to be in a unique manner His dwelling-place and instrument. As Nestorius, after his condemnation, was first imprisoned in his former monastery at Antioch and then banished to the Greater Oasis in Upper Egypt, his personal influence over his disciples ceased. But his doctrine was undoubtedly derived from his former master, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and, as Theodore's memory was cherished as that of the greatest theological light of Syria, the condemned doctrine found many friends in the Eastern Patriarchate, and was taken up with special zeal at Edessa. From thence it spread to the neighbouring kingdom of Persia, where it was welcomed and protected by the Persian king as tending to emancipate his Christian subjects from Byzantine influence. Shortly afterwards the prevailing sentiment at Antioch became Monophysite, and the Nestorians of the patriarchate had to take refuge in Persia, with the result that the subsequent development of the heresy had its centre of propagation in the Persian town of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, on the Tigris, where was its metropolitan see. These Nestorians had a fine missionary spirit, and evangelized many countries in the Far East, some even reaching China, and others founding those Christian communities on the Malabar Coast of India called the Thomas Christians, or Christians of St. Thomas. This Nestorian Church reached its highest pitch of prosperity in the eleventh century, but the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries involved its adherents in ruin and the great mass of their posterity became absorbed in the general Mohammedan population. They are now represented by a small body, who dwell on the borders of Lake Urumiyah in Kurdistan and in the neighbouring highlands. They are not a very civilized race and probably know little of the doctrine which was the original cause of their secession, or know it only as the patriotic watchword of their race. A still smaller body of Catholics of the same spiritual ancestry and the same liturgical rite are called Chaldees and live in the Euphrates and Tigris valley. In 1870 their catholicos seceded on a purely personal matter, and induced his people to refuse acceptance of the Vatican decrees. They returned to unity seven years later, but the episode seems to show that their faith is not very firm. Monophysitism The Monophysite schism had still more serious consequences. Its distinctive doctrine is associated with the name of Eutyches, former archimandrite of a monastery near Constantinople, and Dioscorus, the nephew of St. Cyril and his successor in the patriarchal See of Alexandria. This doctrine, which was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, contrasted with Nestorianism by running to the opposite extreme. It maintained that in Christ there is not only a single personality, but also only a single nature. "Of two natures but not in two natures" was its phrase; for the Monophysites were zealous upholders of the decrees of Ephesus, and affirmed that Mary was the Theotokos, from whom her Son received a perfect human nature; but they maintained that the effect of the union was that the Divine nature absorbed the human so that there were no longer two natures, but one only; anything short of that seemed to them to dissolve the essential unity of Christ's person. At Ephesus the two theologians mentioned had stood by the side of St. Cyril and had fought hard for the condemnation of Nestorianism just on this ground, that it amounted to a denial of the unity of Christ; and now it seemed to them that his doctrine, which had triumphed so splendidly at Ephesus, had been condemned at Chalcedon. Nor can it be denied that some unguarded expressions used by St. Cyril, though not so intended by him, were susceptible of a Monophysite interpretation. Besides Eutyches and Dioscorus, some of those who had signed the decrees of the new council felt that St. Cyril's expressions were affected by its decisions, and they returned home dissatisfied. But here, too, it was chiefly racial feeling which, by intensifying the crisis, precipitated a far-reaching schism. Although hellenized on the surface by their incorporation first in the Macedonian Empire and then in the Roman the populations of Egypt and Syria were racially distinct from the Byzantines who governed them and the Greek colonists who had settled among them. Hence their attitude towards the dominant race was one of dislike and resentment, and they welcomed the opportunity which enabled them to assert in some measure their national distinctness. Accordingly, when the Egyptians were assured that their great hero St. Cyril had been outraged by a condemnation of his doctrine, they rallied round Timothy Ælurus, the usurping successor of Dioscorus, and embraced his doctrine. The Greek colonists of course took the orthodox side, or rather took the side of the Court, just as it happened to be at the time, whether orthodox or Monothelite, according to the personal policy of the successive emperors; but from the time of Chalcedon the great mass of the Christian population of Egypt became Monophysite and was lost to the unity of the Church. Two centuries later the Mohammedan invasion came both to emphasize and to enfeeble this extensive schism. During the interval, though the people were set against orthodoxy, the imperial power could do much to enforce it, but when the Mohammedans came the whole influence of the caliphs was used to confirm the schism — that is, in those whom they could not succeed in gaining over to the religion of Islam. In the Patriarchate of Antioch and the smaller Patriarchate of Jerusalem events pursued a corresponding course. The Christians of Syrian race were predisposed to take up with Monophysitism just because their Byzantine rulers were on the side of orthodoxy, and so fell away into a schism which, although from time to time checked or modified by the action of the Court as long as Byzantium retained its sovereignty over those parts, settled down into a permanent separation, when the Mohammedans had obtained possession of the country, besides losing vast numbers of its adherents by perversions to Mohammedanism. The Christians of the present day who represent the former populations of the three splendid Patriarchates of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem are few in number, and fall into five classes. First there are the schismatic Copts in Egypt, descendants of the native Egyptians, whose numbers are estimated at about 150,000. Secondly the Abyssinians. These were in early days converted from Alexandria, and so in due course passed into schism along with it. They form the great mass of the inhabitants of Abyssinia, about three million and a half, and have kept their faith well, but are very ignorant of its teaching and duties. Thirdly, the Jacobites of Syria, who bear the same relation to the ancient Syrians as the Copts to the ancient Egyptians, and are called Jacobites after Jacob Barradai (Baradæus), who preserved the episcopal succession when it was threatened by Justinian. The Jacobites are to be found mostly in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Kurdistan, and are estimated as numbering some 80,000. Fourthly, the Thomas Christians on the Malabar Coast, who may number about 70,000. These were originally Nestorians, having been first evangelized, as we have seen, by the early Nestorians; the Portuguese sought to catholicize them by very harsh means, and succeeded only in attracting their dislike. When the Dutch succeeded the Portuguese in India, and began to persecute the Catholics, these Malabar communities returned to schism, but, not being able to find a Nestorian bishop, procured a Jacobite bishop from Jerusalem, to renew their episcopal succession, and thus ended in becoming Monophysites. Fifthly, the Armenians, if we include with those who dwell in Armenia Proper those of the same race and religion who are settled in Asia Minor, European Turkey, Galicia, Armenia, and elsewhere, may perhaps amount to some three millions and a half, though trustworthy statistics are difficult to obtain. As in the case of the Nestorians, by the side of each of these sections of Monophysites is a corresponding body of Eastern-Rite Catholics who, once Monophysites, have at one date or another in the past renounced their heresy and been reconciled to the Catholic Church, which has cordially sanctioned the retention of their native rites. Of these the Melchites, Coptic and Syrian included, amount to about 35,000, the Catholics of St. Thomas to about 90,000, and the Catholic Armenians to about 60,000 or 70,000. Of Abyssinian Catholics there are practically none. Photianism The next great schism which divided Christendom was that which is known as the Photian schism, and led to the separatist existence of that vast body of Christians which has come to be called "the orthodox Church" We shall employ both these names as names which have become current designations, though without accepting the implications that attach to them. Certainly Photianism is a name which well expresses the character of a separation motived, at all events in the first instance, not by any doctrinal reasons, but by one man's endeavour to realize his personal ambitions, that one man being Photius, the usurping Patriarch of Constantinople in 857. It is true that the schism initiated by Photius did not long survive his death, but he was a man as remarkable for his learning and ability as for his unscrupulousness, and so was able to create — doubtless out of pre-existing materials — and to equip with an effective controversial armoury an ecclesiastical party animated by his own separatist ambitions and anti-Latin animosities. The history and vicissitudes of this most lamentable of all schisms have been sufficiently told in other articles (SAINT IGNATIUS OF CONSTANTINOPLE; PHOTIUS OF CONSTANTINOPLE; MICHAEL CÆRULARIUS; GREEK CHURCH), but we must note here how entirely unprovoked it was, both in the time of Photius and in that of Michael Cærularius, by any harsh or inconsiderate action on the part of the popes. When Bardas, the uncle or the Emperor Michael III, presented himself to the Patriarch Ignatius to receive Communion while living in incest with his daughter-in-law — when the empress mother and her daughter were brought to the patriarch against their will to receive the veil of religion — what else could a conscientious prelate do save refuse what was so improperly sought? Yet it was just for this that the Patriarch Ignatius, on refusing to resign his see, was banished to the island of Terebinthus, and under just these circumstances that Photius mounted the still occupied patriarchal throne and sought confirmation of his appointment from Pope St. Nicholas I. The letter which he addressed to St. Nicholas ("Opera", in P.G., CII, 586-618) misrepresented the facts, and besides bore on its face such signs of unreality as could not but arouse the suspicions of the pope, who, when at last he found out what the true facts were, did the only thing that a conscientious pope could do, pronounced the election of Photius null and void, and laid Photius under excommunication. Later, when Photius saw that Rome could not be induced to sanction his usurpation, he threw off his disguise and, professing to have discovered that certain usages of the West were scandalous and even heretical, addressed an encyclical to the other Oriental prelates inviting them to meet in a general council at Constantinople and pass judgment on St. Nicholas. Though the pope's real offence, in the eyes of Photius, was that, as successor of St. Peter, he exercised an authority which stood in the way of Byzantine ambitions, the schismatic felt that, if he would recommend his cause to the religious world, he must provide it with a dogmatic basis, and accordingly he formulated the following charges, only one of which raised an issue which had even the appearance of being dogmatic. The Westerns, he said, fast on Saturdays, use lacticinia during the first week in Lent, impose the yoke of celibacy on their clergy, reconfirm those who have been confirmed by simple priests, and have added the "Filoque" to the creed. To these five points he added four others, in a subsequent letter to the Bulgarians, namely, that they sacrifice a lamb along with the Holy Eucharist on Easter Sunday, oblige their priests to shave their beards, make their chrism of running water, and consecrate deacons per saltum to the episcopate. Nothing could be more trivial than these charges on the ground of which this man was prepared to break up the unity of Christendom; but for the time the schism thus caused was only transitory. Photius himself was quickly displaced by a fresh court intrigue, and though, on the death of Ignatius, he attained to a more legitimate possession of the patriarchate, he died in 867, after which there was a reconciliation with the Holy See which lasted for the next two centuries. Then came the Patriarch Michael Cærularius, who in 1053 — that is at a time when not only was there no tension between the emperor and the pope, but the Norman invasion of Sicily just then occurring made it peculiarly desirable that they should unite to oppose the common enemy — caused letters to be written and brought to the notice of the pope, in which he renewed the old condemnation of the Latins for fasting on Saturdays, consecrating the Holy Eucharist in unleavened bread, and requiring clerical celibacy. Also at Constantinople, he invaded the churches built for the use of the Westerns, where the Latin Rite was used, and ignominiously handled the Blessed Sacrament there reserved, on the plea that, being consecrated in unleavened bread, it was not truly consecrated. Again there was a saint on the throne of St. Peter, and St. Leo IX in a temperate letter contrasted the violence offered by Michael to the Latin Church at Constantinople with the pope's cordial approval of the many monasteries of the Greek Rite in Rome and its neighbourhood. Further, at the request of the Emperor Constantine Monomachus, who by no means shared the patriarch's bitter spirit, St. Leo sent two legates to Constantinople to arrange matters. There was nothing, however, to be done, as the emperor was weak, and the patriarch was allowed to carry all before him. So the legates returned home, having first left on the altar of St. Sophia a letter in the pope's name by which Michael Cærularius and one or two of his agents were deposed and excommunicated. Of course the excommunication touched only the persons named in the document, and not the whole Byzantine Church; indeed the excommunication of a whole Church is an unknown and unintelligible process. If the whole Church or patriarchate from that time fell away from unity, and has remained out of it ever since, it was because, and in so far as, its members of their own initiative adhered to Michael and his successors in breaking off relations with Rome. This fact, however, must remind us of the mistake we should make were we to regard the vagaries of a patriarch like Michael Cærularius as the adequate cause of so persistent and far-reaching an effect. Undoubtedly, he had with him in his secession, if not the whole population of his patriarchate, at all events a party strong and influential enough to compel the submission of the rest. This party was the one to which we have referred as formed and consolidated by Photius. In a less pronounced form it is traceable back to the secular struggle between the Greek and Latin races for universal dominion; and since the time of Photius its antipathies had been further stimulated by the growth of Western kingdoms hostile to the empire and by the amicable relations in which their rulers stood to the Roman bishops. This then was the main cause of the separation which has endured so long, and still endures, but to estimate it at its full strength we must take into account the accompanying negative cause. For, though Photius in one of his letters claimed for his see that it was "the centre and support of the truth", and though his followers would have us seek our standard of doctrinal purity exclusively in the prescriptions of the first seven oecumenical councils, St. Leo IX, in his letter to Cærularius enumerated nineteen of the latter's predecessors as having fallen under the condemnation of these seven councils, while Duchesne (Eglises séparés, p. 164) calculates that in the interval of 464 years which separates the accession of Constantine the Great from the celebration of the Seventh Council (787), Constantinople and its ecclesiastical dependencies had been in schism for 203 years. This means that the sense of unity, so strong in the West, had in the East, owing to the perversity of emperors and patriarchs, no fair chance of striking deep roots among the people, and so could seldom offer effectual resistance to the forces making for schism. Unlike the Nestorians and the Monophysites (whom the Orthodox regard as heretics just as much as do the Catholics), the Photian schism commenced nearly nine centuries ago by Michael Cærularius is now represented not by a few scattered groups which taken altogether number not more than six or seven millions, but by vast populations which, in the aggregate, number not far short of a hundred millions. This is chiefly, though not solely, because, the Russians having been converted by missionaries from Constantinople about a century before the time of Cærularius, their direct religious intercourse was with Constantinople and not with distant Rome; and accordingly they drifted gradually first into unconscious, and later into conscious, acceptance of its separatist attitude. The upshot is that out of the 95,000,000, at which the Orthodox Christians are estimated by statisticians, some 70,000,000 are Russian subjects, the remaining 25,000,000 being divided among the pure Greeks of the Turkish Empire and the Kingdom of Greece, the Rumanians, Servians, and Bulgarians of the Balkan Peninsula, the Cypriotes, and the comparatively small number, mostly Syrians, who reside in the former territories of the Alexandrian and two Eastern Patriarchates. (For particulars see GREEK CHURCH.) As against these must be set a group of Catholics who, since the disruption, have been converted from their schism and are now in communion with the Holy See, though keeping religiously to their ancient Byzantine Rite, whether in its Greek, Slav, or other vernacular form. These are estimated by the author of the article just cited as numbering in all about 5,000,000, of whom the greater part are Ruthenians and Rumanians in the Austrian dominions. Probably, when the Photian schism was first effected it seemed to the Byzantine leaders that, though by an unfortunate chance the see from which they were separating was the one which could claim the inheritance of the promise made to Blessed Peter, it was with themselves rather than with the Westerns that the main portion, the very substance, of Christendom was and would always be found. Certainly the centre of the world's culture and civilization, religious as well as civil, was then on the Hellespont, and it may be that even in actual numbers the subjects of this one patriarchate surpassed the hordes of half-converted barbarians (as they would have called them) who formed the populations of the new Western kingdoms. Regarded under this aspect, however, it cannot be said that the comparison still tells in their favour or that the schism has profited them. Impressive as is the Orthodox Church numerically, it is far surpassed in that respect by the 260,000,000 or more who represent the old Patriarchate of the West, nor could anyone now compare, to the advantage of the former, the religious culture and activity of the East with that of the west. Indeed, until a quite recent date, stagnation and ignorance is the judgment passed on the Orthodox clergy and laity by observers of all sorts; and if during the last century there has been a distinct improvement in the leaders among priests and people, it has derived much of its inspiration from Protestant sources, chiefly from German universities, and has not been obtained without some sacrifice of the integrity of their ancient tradition and without some admixture of the modern Protestant spirit. In another very serious respect the Orthodox Christians have lost by their separation from Catholic unity, for they have succumbed to progressive disintegration — the fate of all communities that are without an effectual centre of unity. The Patriarch of Constantinople's original claim to be exalted to the second, if not to the first, place in Christendom was (though never formulated distinctly) that Old Rome had been chosen for the seat of primacy because it was the imperial city, and hence, with the transference of the empire, this primacy had passed to New Rome. Such a claim quite lost its significance when the Byzantine Empire was overthrown in the fifteenth century, and the sultans sat in the seat of the former sovereigns of the East. For the time, indeed, the new order of things brought with it even an accession of power to the patriarchs. The sultan saw the advantage of keeping alive a separation which alienated his Christian subjects from their brethren in the West. Accordingly he made the patriarchs, whom he could appoint, keep, or change at his pleasure, to be, under himself the civil as well as the ecclesiastical governors of the Christians of whatever race, within his dominions. Still, the condition of patriarchs thus bound hand and foot, to the chief enemy of Christendom was but a gilded servitude for which it was difficult to feel respect; and, as racial consciousness developed among the many nationalities of the patriarchate, it became more and more realized that the New Rome theory could now be given a fresh application. Russia was the first to revolt, and in 1589 the Tsar Ivan IV insisted that the Patriarch Jeremias should recognize the Metropolitan of Moscow as the head of an autonomous patriarchate. Why should he not, when Moscow was fast becoming what Constantinople had formerly been, the metropolis of the great Christian Empire of the East? Later, to bring the ecclesiastical government more effectually under the thumb of the Crown and convert it into an instrument of political government, the whole constitution of the Russian Church was changed by Peter the Great, who in contempt of every canonical principle, suspended the patriarchal jurisdiction of Moscow, and put the whole Church under a synod consisting of the three metropolitans, who sat ex officio, and some prelates and others personally appointed by the tsar, with a layman as chief procurator to dominate their entire action. Till the last century this was the only diminution of the Patriarch of Constantinople's jurisdiction; but, with the weakening of the sultan's power, the various nationalities over which he formerly reigned supreme have succeeded one after another in gaining their independence or autonomy, and have concurrently established the autonomy of their national Churches. Though adhering to the same liturgy and to the same doctrine as the other Orthodox Churches, they have followed the example set by Russia and, casting off all subjection to the patriarch, have instituted holy synods of their own to govern them ecclesiastically under the supreme control of the civil power. Greece began in 1833, and since then the Rumanians, the Servians, and the Bulgarians, with their respective subdivisions, have followed suit; so that at present we must no longer talk of the Orthodox Church, but of the Orthodox Churches, seventeen in number, in no sense governmentally connected, torn with internecine quarrels, and offering no guarantee, especially in view of the infiltration of Protestant tendencies now going on, that their doctrinal agreement will continue. Summary In these three Eastern schisms, which broke up so disastrously the ancient union of Christendom, two things are specially observable from the point of view of this article. One is that, apart from the separation from the centre of unity which constituted the schism, they have retained almost in its entirety the ancient system of Church organization and method. They have retained the threefold hierarchy endowed with valid orders the sacrificial worship of the Mass, a spirituality based on the use of the seven sacraments, the Catholic doctrine of grace, the exaltation of the Virgin Mother, and the invocation of the saints. Above all they have retained the appeal to tradition as the sure test of sound doctrine and the principle of submission to a teaching authority. The other thing observable in these three schisms accords with what has already been noticed in the early schisms. Doctrinal considerations based on the exercise of private judgment may have influenced their founders to an extent greater or less, but reasons of quite a different order determined the allegiance of their followers. Nationalism exploited by their leaders, or more often exploited by civil rulers for political purposes, is the true formula which explains their origin and long endurance. The nationalism of Syria and Egypt in its antipathy to Byzantine rule, further exploited by Persian and Mohammedan sovereigns, is what explains the facts of Nestorian and Monophysite history; the nationalism of Byzantine hellenism in its antipathy to the Latins, as exploited by the Eastern emperors and their prelates, is what explains the separation of the Orthodox Churches from the Holy See; the nationalism of Greeks, Slavs of different races, and Byzantines, which is the source of their mutual antipathies, is what explains their separation from Constantinople and their erection into so many autonomous Churches. Protestantism The fourth great breach in the union of Christendom was that caused by the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Of this movement it can by no means be said that it left the organization and methods of the Catholic Church largely untouched among the populations which it carried with it. On the contrary, it effected the most revolutionary changes of system where it prevailed, substituting church organizations constituted on a radically different principle and having codes of religious opinions unknown to previous ages. Luther, in the first instance, had no thought of breaking with the church authority; at all events he did not inscribe that object on his original programme. Out of his own disordered spiritual experiences he elaborated a theory of sin and salvation founded on his peculiar doctrine of justification by faith. Only when the Holy See rejected this travesty of St. Paul's teaching, together with the conclusions which Luther had deduced from it — only when it thus became necessary, if he would persist in his errors, that he should elsewhere for a principle on which to base them — did he fall back on the principle of the Bible privately interpreted as the sole and sufficient rule of Christian belief. He had, it must be acknowledged, fore-runners in this course; for the Church herself has always preached the infallibility of Holy Scripture, and previous heresiarchs had been wont to justify their revolts against her doctrinal decisions by claiming that, as regards the particular doctrines in which they were interested, Holy Scripture stood for them and not for her. What was special and novel in Luther and his colleagues was that they erected the principle of an appeal to the Bible not only into an exclusive standard of sound doctrines, but even into one which the individual could always apply for himself without dependence on the authoritative interpretations of any Church whatever. Luther himself and his fellow-reformers did not even understand their new rule of faith in the Rationalistic sense that the individual inquirer can, by applying the recognized principles of exegesis, be sure of extracting from the Scripture text the intended meaning of its Divine author. Their idea was that the earnest Protestant who goes direct to the Bible for his beliefs is brought into immediate contact with the Holy Spirit, and can take the ideas that his reading conveys to him personally as the direct teaching of the Spirit to himself. But, however much the Reformers might thus formulate their principle, they could not in practice avoid resorting to the principles of exegesis, applied well or ill, according to each man's capacity, for the discovery of the sense ascribed to the Holy Spirit. Thus their new doctrinal standard lapsed even in their own days, though they perceived it not, and still more in later days, into the more intelligible but less pietistic method of Rationalism. Now, if the Bible were drawn up, as it is not, in the form of a clear, simple, systematic, and comprehensive statement of doctrine and rule of conduct, it might not, perhaps, seem antecedently impossible that God should have wished this to be the way by which his people should attain to the knowledge of the true religion. Still, even then the validity of the method would need to be tested by the character of the results, and only if these exhibited a profound and far-reaching agreement among those who followed it would it be safe to conclude that it was the method God had really sanctioned. This, however, was far from the experience of the Reformers. Luther had strangely assumed that those who followed him into revolt would use their right of private judgment only to affirm their entire agreement with his own opinions, for which he claimed the sanction of an inspiration received from God that equaled him with the Prophets of old. But he was soon to learn that his followers attached as high a value to their own interpretations of the Bible as he did to his, and were quite prepared to act upon their own conclusions instead of upon his. The result was that as early as the beginning of 1525 — only eight years after he first propounded his heresies — we find him acknowledging, in his "Letter to the Christians of Antwerp" (de Wette, III, 61), that "there are as many sects and creeds in Germany as heads. One will have no baptism; another denies the sacrament, another asserts that there is another world between this and the last day, some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that. No lout is so boorish but, if a fancy enters his head, he must think that the Holy Ghost has entered into him, and that he is to be a prophet" Moreover, besides these multiplying manifestations of pure individualism, two main lines of party distinction, each with a fatal tendency to further subdivision, had begun almost from the first to divide the reform leaders among themselves. The Swiss Reformer, Zwingli, had commenced his revolt almost simultaneously with Luther, and, though in their fundamental doctrines of the Bible privately interpreted and of justification by faith, they were on the same lines, in regard to the important doctrines of predestination and the nature of the Holy Eucharist they took opposite views, and attached to them such importance that they became irreconcilable foes and leaders of antagonistic parties. On such a foundation, if consistently held to, it was impossible to build up a Church which should stand out in the world like the old Church they were striving to destroy, for if in the last resort the judgment of the individual be for him the supreme authority in matters of religion, it is impossible that any external authority can be entitled to demand his submission to its judgments when contrary to his own. The early Reformers probably realized this but they felt the necessity of building up some sort of a Church which could bind together its members into a corporate body professing unity of belief and worship, and which, in contrast with the pope's Church, which they called apostate, could be called the true Church of God. And so, regardless of the contradictions in which they were involving themselves, they set to work to excogitate a theory of church-constitution to suit their purposes. This theory is exhibited in the seventh article of the Augsburg Confession of 1530, to which type the other Protestant Confessions, both Lutheran and Reformed (that is, Calvinistic), of the next few decades conformed. "The Church of Christ", says the Augsburg Confession, "is, in its proper meaning, the congregation of the members of Christ, that is of the Saints, who truly believe and obey Christ; although in this life many evil men and hypocrites are intermixed with this congregation until the day of judgment. This Church, properly so termed, has, moreover, its signs, namely, the pure and sound teaching of the Gospel and the right use of the sacraments. And for the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree as to the teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments." This idea of the Church has some surface resemblance to the Catholic idea, but is in reality its exact converse. The Catholic, too, would say that his Church is the home of true teaching and true sacraments, but there the resemblance ends. The Catholic first asks himself which is the true Church that Christ has set to be the guardian of His Revelation, the teacher and ruler of his people. Then, having identified it by the marks set upon its face — by its continuity with the past, which, in virtue of its indefectibility, it must necessarily possess, its unity, catholicity, and sanctity — he submits himself to its authority, accepts its teaching, and receives its sacraments, in the full assurance that just because they are sanctioned by its authority its teaching is the true teaching and its sacraments are the true sacraments. The Protestant, on the other hand, if he follows the course marked out for him by these Protestant confessions, begins by asking himself, and decides by the application of a wholly distinct and independent test, what are the true doctrines and true sacraments. Then be looks out for a Church which professes such doctrines and uses such sacraments; and having found one, regards it as the true Church and joins it. The fatal tendency to disunion inherent in this latter method appears when we ask what is that distinct and independent test by which the Protestant decides as to the truth of his doctrines and sacraments, for it is, as the whole history of the Reformation movement declares, that very rule of the Bible given over to the private interpretation of the individual which is inconsistent with any real submission to an external authority. Important however, and fundamental as this point is, the Augsburg Confession passes it over without the slightest mention. So, too, do most of the other Protestant Confessions, and none of them dare to go to the root of the difficulty. The Scottish Confession of 1560 (of which the Westminster Confession drawn up in England during the Commonwealth is an amplification) is the most explicit in this respect. After claiming that the Presbyterian Church recently established by John Knox and his friends holds the true doctrine and right sacraments, it gives as its reason for so affirming that "the doctrine which we use in our Churches is contained in the written Word of God in which we affirm that all things that must be believed by men for their salvation are sufficiently expressed" It then goes on to declare that "the interpretation of Scripture belongs neither to any private or public person, or to any Church but this right and authority of interpretation belongs solely to the Spirit of God by whom the Scriptures were committed to writing" This, no doubt, is what the other Reformers in Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere would also have said, but they prudently passed the point over in their confessions, half conscious that to claim the right of interpretation for the Spirit of God was but a misleading way of claiming it for each individual who might conceive himself to have caught the mind of the Spirit; foreseeing, too, that, if no Church could claim the right to interpret with authority, no Church, Protestant any more than Catholic, could claim the right to impose its doctrines or worship on others. However, the Reformation leaders knew what they were about. They meant to have a Protestant Church, or at all events Protestant Churches, to oppose to the pope's Church, and they intended that these new Churches should profess a very definite creed, and enforce its acceptance, together with submission to its disciplinary arrangements, on all whom they could reach by the exercise of a very effective and coercive jurisdiction. Accordingly, these Protestant confessions of faith, which were the formal expression of their doctrinal creeds, contained and prescribed, quite after the manner of Catholic professions of faith or decrees of councils, lists of very definite articles, often with added anathemas directed against those who should venture to deny them. The ministers were to be "called" before they could exercise their functions, those entitled to call them being governing bodies consisting of clergy and laity in fixed proportions, and formed hierarchically into local, regional, and national consistories. To these governing bodies appertained also the right of administration, of deciding controversies, and of excommunicating. The difficulty was to equip them with coercive power, but for this the German Reformers had recourse to the secular power. The secular power was, they assured their princes, bound to use its sword for the defence of right and the suppression of evil; and it appertained to this department of its functions that in times of religious crisis it should take upon itself to further the cause of the Gospel — that is, of the new doctrines — and root out the old errors. The German princes had hitherto stood off from the new evangelists, whose democratic tendencies they suspected, but this appeal for their intervention was baited with the suggestion that they should take away from the Catholics their rich endowments, and apply them to more becoming uses. The bait took, and within a few years, one after another, the princes of Northern Germany — no very edifying class — declared themselves to be on the side of the Gospel and ready to take over the responsibility for its administration. Then, from 1525 onwards, following the lead of Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, one of the most immoral men of the age, they seized the abbeys and bishoprics within their dominions, the revenues of which they mostly applied to the increase of their own, and proceeded to found national Churches based on the principles shortly afterwards accepted by the Augsburg Confession, which should be autonomous for each dominion under the supreme spiritual as well as temporal rule of its secular sovereign. For these national Churches they drew up codes of doctrine, schemes of worship, and orders of ministers, observance of which they enjoined on all their subjects under penalty of exile, a penalty which was at once inflicted on those of the Catholic clergy who remained faithful to the religion of their ancestors, as well as on multitudes of Catholic laymen. This system of national Churches did not necessarily involve the imposition of Protestant creeds differing among themselves, for it was within the power ascribed to the princes that they should agree together as to what they would enforce, and no doubt to a certain extent this was what happened, and by happening caused Lutheranism to be the prevailing form of religion in Protestant Germany. Still the system did involve that the prince had the power, if he judged fit, to introduce a creed differing from that of the neighbouring dominions, and eventually this was what occurred when the Lutheran and Reformed parties settled down within the limits of the Empire into formal opposition among themselves. Some principalities — and it was the same with the free cities which went over to Protestantism — enforced one of the forms of Lutheran confession, others one of the forms of Reformed confession, and there were even oscillations in the same principality as one sovereign succeeded another on the throne The signal instance of this was in the Palatinate, the inhabitants of which were required to change backwards and forwards between Lutheranism and Calvinism four times within the years 1563 and 1623. This pretension of the German princes to dictate a religion to their subjects came to be known as the jus reformandi, and gave rise to the maxim, Cujus regio ejus religio. By the Peace of Augsburg, 1555, this pretension was reluctantly conceded as a temporary expedient to the Protestant princes, and by the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) it received a more formal kind of imperial sanction, against which an ineffectual protest was made on behalf of Pope Innocent X by his nuncio, Chigi. In Switzerland there were no princes to put themselves at the head of the new national Churches, but their place was taken by the cantonal governments, wherever these had been captured by the Protestant faction. Thus Zwingli, who began his fiery preachings against the Catholic Church in 1518, and in a few years' time had gathered round himself a band of fanatical followers with their aid and by holding out the confiscation of the church property as an inducement, was able by 1525 to draw over to his side the majority of the members of the State Council of Zurich. By this majority the Catholic members of the council were overpowered and extruded, which done, at the instigation of Zwingli; the Catholic religion, though it had been the religion of their ancestors for many centuries and was still the religion of the quiet people in the land, was summarily proscribed, even the celebration of the Mass being forbidden under the severest penalties; while, to make its restoration forever impossible, fierce crowds led by Zwingli in person were sent to visit the various churches and strip them of their statues and ornaments on the plea that the Bible commanded them to put down idolatry. The ground being thus cleared, the state Council by its own authority set up a national Church conformed to the German type. Berne, Basle, Schaffhausen, St. Gall, and Appenzell followed quickly in the footsteps of Zurich, the same methods of violence being employed in each case. The desires of the people themselves counted for nothing.