(LIBRARY) 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO !
 
 2/6 '
 
 CATHOLICITY 
 
 Condones ad Clerum 
 
 BY 
 
 Ir. A. LACEY, M.A. 
 
 MtAor of" Consciousness of God" "The Mysteries of Grace,' 1 
 " Liturgical Interpolations " 
 
 ire Tdov 
 
 A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. LTD. 
 LONDON : 28 Margaret Street, Oxford Circus, W. 
 
 OXFORD : 9 High Street 
 MILWAUKEE, U.S.A. : THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN Co.
 
 First impression, 1914
 
 TOI2 . IIPE2BYTEPOI2 
 
 TH2 . EN . BEPMIITOI2 . KA00AIKH2 
 
 EKKAH2IA2
 
 PREFACE 
 
 four lectures were addressed to the 
 *- clergy of Birmingham and the neighbour- 
 hood, at the Church of St. Jude in that city, 
 during the Lent of last year. They are pub- 
 lished almost exactly as delivered ; but in some 
 cases a little expansion has relieved, I hope, an 
 obscurity that was due to compression. More 
 than eighty of my brethren did me the honour 
 of listening continuously to discourses which 
 certainly demanded, if they did not merit, very 
 close attention ; and I hope that others may 
 find them not altogether unuseful in their 
 published form. 
 
 To the lectures I have appended two essays, 
 used elsewhere, which may serve for illustra- 
 tion. The first has not been published before ; 
 the other I am allowed to retrieve from the 
 columns of the Church Times, enlarging it 
 slightly on the way. 
 
 January 14, 1914.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE WORD AND THE IDEA - - I 
 
 II. THE ORGANIC ELEMENT - - 30 
 
 III. THE DOGMATIC ELEMENT - - 60 
 
 IV. THE ELEMENT OF LARGENESS - 90 
 APPENDIX A. CATHEDRA PETRI - - 117 
 APPENDIX B. SKCURUS IUDICAT ORBIS TERRARUM - 135
 
 CATHOLICITY 
 
 THE WORD AND THE IDEA 
 
 WE believe in the Catholic Church ; we 
 profess the Catholic Faith ; we call our- 
 selves Catholics. What do we mean ? What 
 is Catholicity ? 
 
 It is never safe to discuss an idea in terms 
 of etymology. We are dependent on words 
 for expression, and a word is usually chosen 
 to express an idea with some reference to its 
 etymological sense ; but it becomes set, or 
 polarized as Wendell Holmes would say, in a 
 fashion that gives it a conventional meaning. 
 Where this has been done it is merely mis- 
 leading to hark back to its origin, and to use 
 it with deceptive purism in the etymological 
 sense. The depolarization of theological terms, 
 which Holmes with some reason demanded, is
 
 not a study in archaeology ; it is the examina- 
 tion of words in common use, for the purpose 
 of finding out what the users really mean, 
 and the occasional substitution of an unusual 
 equivalent for the purpose of accentuating the 
 sense. We cannot determine the meaning of 
 Catholicity by the study of Greek adjectives 
 and prepositions. 
 
 Yet in this case there is something to be 
 gained from that study. We are investigating 
 an idea which has a history ; and in history 
 it is well to begin with the beginning ; not, 
 as in poetry, to plunge in medias res. The 
 Christians of the first age found in use 
 perhaps in common use, and sufficiently estab- 
 lished in literature a Greek word which 
 seemed to them suitable for describing the 
 Church of Christ. They called the Church 
 KaOoXuaj. How soon the word found its way 
 into a baptismal creed cannot be ascertained ; 
 it is used familiarly in one of the Epistles 
 of St. Ignatius and in the Martyrium 'Polycarpi. 
 In the first of these places the meaning is quite 
 clear, though the word has been perversely 
 interpreted. It is a favourite contention of 
 St. Ignatius that the bishop is the head of the 
 Church in each several locality, and he
 
 THE WORD ANT> THE IDEA 3 
 
 emphasizes this by a comparison, Hxnrep OTTOV 
 av y XjOttrro? 'Iqcrovs e/ce? % KaBo\(Kij eKicXija-ia. 1 
 The Catholic Church is, then, the whole 
 Church, as distinct from the part of the 
 Church locally organized. We are thrown 
 back to the language of St. Paul, who could 
 speak of the Church as one and undivided, 
 and yet could name " the Church which is in 
 Corinth," or " the Churches of Judaea." The 
 Catholic Church is the Church regarded as 
 one and indivisible. In this sense the word 
 had long been current. For Polybius ica0o\iict) 
 KCU Koivt] ia-Topia was general history as distinct 
 from that of particular states. 2 
 
 The Martyrium has the word three times in 
 the same sense, made the more emphatic by 
 explicatory additions. In the inscription, 
 " the Church of God dwelling in (jrapoiKova-a) 
 Smyrna," addresses "the Church of God 
 dwelling in Philomelium and all the habita- 
 tions (TrapotKiati) of the holy and Catholic 
 Church in every place." In the eighth chapter 
 Polycarp is described as praying for "the 
 whole Catholic Church throughout the world 
 (otKov/mevyv)." In the nineteenth chapter is the 
 same description of the Church as shepherded 
 
 1 Smyrn. 8. 2 Polyb. 8. 4, 1 1.
 
 4 CATHOLICITY 
 
 by the Lord Jesus Christ. But in the six- 
 teenth chapter the word is found in a very 
 different sense. Polycarp is here called 
 ex/avcO7ro9 r^f ev ^fjivpvfl KaOoXucrj? KK\t]<rta$. 1 The 
 local Church itself is called Catholic. Evi- 
 dently, then, the word has another sense 
 different from that in which it is used to 
 distinguish the whole Church from its several 
 parts. What does it mean here ? 
 
 There is another question. In which sense 
 if there be none other does the baptismal 
 creed use the word ? I would have you 
 observe that the Greek term was taken over 
 in the Latin version of the creed. Why ? 
 The Slavonic translators made a literal ren- 
 dering of the Greek, as the construction of 
 their language allowed. In modern times the 
 Scandinavian Lutherans, and some Germans, 
 have done the like. They have been accused, 
 perhaps unreasonably, of an heretical intention ; 
 but allgemeine is an almost exact equivalent 
 of KaOoXuo) as used by St. Ignatius, and if that 
 is the meaning of the word in the creed, the 
 
 1 I think that Funk has successfully defended this read- 
 ing against the alternative dyias, preferred by Lightfoot. 
 Otherwise, my argument drawn from this use of the word 
 KadoXixfa must wait for the date of the Muratorian Fragment.
 
 THE WORT* AND THE IDEA 5 
 
 rendering is justified. But is that the whole 
 meaning ? Why did not the Latins use a 
 native word ? Unfoersalis ecclesia would be 
 a sufficient rendering of the Ignatian phrase, 
 and would have the authority of Quinctilian ; 
 generalis ecclesia would do equally well, and 
 this word from the time of Cicero had been 
 the accepted equivalent of the Greek term as 
 used in philosophy. But no such word would 
 fit " the Catholic Church in Smyrna." Shall 
 we infer that the word is used in the creed as 
 in this phrase, and that no Latin equivalent 
 could be found ? The conclusion would be 
 too large. But it seems probable that it was 
 not narrowed to either sense exclusively, and 
 was therefore taken over intact, there being 
 no Latin equivalent that would cover its 
 various shades of meaning. You must bear 
 in mind that the borrowing was not without 
 precedent or exclusively ecclesiastical. Pliny 
 spoke of the catholica siderum crrantium^ the 
 general properties of the planets. The Greek 
 word was wider than any of native growth ; 
 it was therefore convenient, and passed into 
 common use. I need not remind you that by 
 the time of Tertullian it had lost all foreign 
 1 Hist, ff^af. ii. 15.
 
 6 CATHOLICITT 
 
 savour, but it may be as well to point out that 
 he could still use it in a sense not quite technical, 
 as when he spoke of the bonitas Dei catholica. 1 
 One seems to be hearing the language of 
 English newspapers. 
 
 1 return to the ^Martyrium Polycarpi, and 
 ask in what sense the Church in Smyrna 
 could be called Catholic. Another use of 
 the word, earlier or contemporary, will occur 
 to you. What are the " Catholic Epistles " 
 of the canon of the New Testament ? They 
 are not all addressed to the whole Church 
 universally. The inclusion of the extremely 
 particular second and third of St. John under 
 this head shows that the cataloguing was not 
 very precise ; but it may be said broadly 
 that the rest of these writings were so called 
 because they were not addressed to one 
 particular Church, but to many. The word 
 Catholic could be used, then, with a certain 
 limited extension. Can we say that "the 
 Catholic Church of Smyrna " means the whole 
 body of Christians in the city and neighbour- 
 hood, as distinct from any several congregations 
 that may have existed ? 
 
 The interpretation is tempting ; the use of 
 '. fMarcion. ii. 17.
 
 rne WORD AND THE IT>EA 7 
 
 such a phrase in connexion with the episcopate 
 fits in with the insistence on the importance 
 of the bishop as centre of unity which char- 
 acterizes the letters of St. Ignatius, and which 
 within a century became the constant burden of 
 St. Cyprian's teaching. Reference has been made 
 to the fifty-ninth canon of the Council in Trullo 
 forbidding the celebration of Baptism in 
 oratories or anywhere else than in " catholic 
 churches" TCU? KaQoXucais Trpoa-epxea-Quxrav 
 KK\rja-l(us which are taken to be the mother- 
 churches of cities. The Lateran basilica, with 
 its unique baptistery, was at Rome mater et 
 magistra omnium eccksiarum. But the Council 
 in Trullo is too late to help us, nor is the 
 term used strictly comparable with that which 
 we are examining. You may possibly find 
 it much earlier in the well-known challenge 
 addressed by St. Augustine to the Donatists. 
 He imagines a stranger in a town asking 
 Ubi est catholica ? Would any Donatists 
 venture to direct him to their own place of 
 assembly ? The argument is not subtle 
 enough, and the play on the word evidently 
 intended is lost, if we suppose the inquirer 
 to be asking for a Catholic as distinct from 
 an heretical or schismatic place of worship ;
 
 8 CATHOLICITY 
 
 it seems probable that in Africa the principal 
 church of a place was familiarly called the 
 Catholica, the general place of worship for the 
 Christians of the neighbourhood. But, as I 
 have said, this meaning does not fit the passage 
 in the Martyrium. We cannot suppose that 
 KK\Tj<ria is here used of a building in which 
 Polycarp presided. 
 
 This later usage, therefore, does not support 
 the contention that the Church of Smyrna 
 is called Catholic in the sense of a precise 
 and limited extension embracing all the 
 faithful within a given circumscription. Nor 
 is there any trace elsewhere of such an use 
 of the word. This interpretation, therefore, 
 must be laid aside. 
 
 Another may engage our attention for a 
 moment. From the fifth century onward 
 we find the title KafloXww occasionally applied 
 to a patriarch or exarch. The Armenians 
 use it to this day for their chief prelate. 
 Can we suppose the Church of Smyrna in 
 the second century to have been called Catholic 
 as having an eminent position among the 
 Churches of Asia ? It is impossible. In the 
 first place the title KafloAoco? seems to have 
 been rather civil than ecclesiastical in origin.
 
 THE WORT> AND THE IDEA 9 
 
 It was borne by the chief financial officer 
 of one of the larger divisions of the empire 
 as organized by Diocletian. He was, in 
 fact, Receiver General. The etymological 
 analogy of this English title must not be 
 pressed too far, because there is an important 
 difference. In English, proper terms of philo- 
 sophy are let down to a loose significance in 
 the popular speech ; in Greek the philosophers 
 took words of common life, and gave them 
 a precise significance for their special purpose. 
 The result, however, is much the same, and 
 in both cases we must guard ourselves against 
 fallacious reasoning from the popular to the 
 technical sense. The KaOoXtico? of the civil 
 administration bore a dignified title of no 
 precise significance, and it may well have been 
 borrowed for ecclesiastical use. But even 
 if the ecclesiastical title be otherwise accounted 
 for, it will not help us here. There is no 
 ground for supposing that in the second 
 century the Bishop of Smyrna enjoyed anything 
 resembling a metropolitical dignity. This 
 interpretation also must be set aside. 
 
 There is a third interpretation to be dis- 
 missed. Was the Church of Smyrna called 
 Catholic because it was an integral part
 
 io CATHOLICITY 
 
 of the whole Catholic Church ? At a later 
 date this seemed to be a natural use of the 
 word, as it does to-day ; but that was because 
 a secondary sense, in which catholic stood 
 opposed to heretic, had become dominant. 
 We must not throw this development back 
 to the second century, though the first step 
 towards it may have been taken ; and, so long 
 as the word was used with a dominating 
 consciousness of its primary meaning, it 
 would have been mere verbal jugglery to call a 
 particular Church Catholic precisely because 
 of its relation to that which was properly 
 Catholic. It would be calling a part the 
 whole because it was a part. This will 
 not do. 
 
 What remains ? You will observe that the 
 Smyrniote presbyters call the whole Church 
 of God, and their own local Church, alike 
 Catholic, without qualification, without ex- 
 planation, without apology. Both uses of the 
 word are evidently familiar. They are familiar 
 not only at Smyrna, but also at Philomelium 
 and doubtless throughout Asia. It seems in 
 the highest degree improbable that an epithet 
 on which much stress seems to have been laid 
 should be applied simultaneously to the same
 
 TH WORT) A3Q) THS IDSA 1 1 
 
 substantive in two entirely disparate senses. 
 Accept that, and you will look for some 
 meaning in the epithet which will fit both 
 the Church at large and the particular local 
 Church. But the meaning of mere geographi- 
 cal extension will not fit the local Church ; 
 therefore there must be something more than 
 this in the word, when it is applied to the 
 Church at large. It does signify geographical 
 extension, and that meaning is pressed, but 
 it signifies something else as well. 
 
 Now look at the inscription of the letter. 
 Twice in the body of their communication 
 the Smyrniotes call the whole Church Catholic, 
 with insistence on its universality alone ; but 
 in the inscription they describe it in a single 
 phrase as " holy and catholic : " iraa-cus rai$ 
 Kara Travra TOTTOV TJ/S ayias KO.I KaOoXiKqs 
 KK\*](ria? TrapoiKiais. Here also the note of 
 universality is pressed ; but, if nothing more 
 than geographical extension is intended, does 
 it not seem frigid to couple with this the 
 note of holiness ? Remember that these men 
 were not using a compound phrase consecrated 
 by centuries of repetition in the Creed. They 
 were themselves helping to form the language 
 of Christendom. You may be sure that when
 
 12 CATHOLICITY 
 
 the Church was first called in a breath Holy 
 and Catholic the two epithets were not with- 
 out congruity. 
 
 Yet the Church was certainly called Catholic 
 because of its extension. True ; but if the 
 extension of the Church was due to some 
 interior quality, then the savour of that 
 quality would easily communicate itself to the 
 word by which the extension was described. 
 The Church would be called Catholic, not 
 merely because it was world-wide, but because 
 there was something in it which made it 
 world-wide. And the quality making for 
 universal extension might well be one that 
 could be coupled not incongruously with 
 holiness. Moreover this quality, being diffused 
 throughout the Church, could be recognized, 
 like holiness, in each several local Church, 
 which might therefore be called Catholic. 
 The Church of Smyrna was Catholic for the 
 same reason that the whole Church was 
 Catholic because it had in itself the quality 
 that makes for world-wide extension. 
 
 I may seem to have deduced much from 
 few words in the Martyrium Polycarpi, but 
 I think the process has been sound, and 
 the conclusion has a value. It shows why
 
 TH WORT) AWJ1 THE IDEA 13 
 
 Christians of the Latin language took over 
 the Greek v/ord, calling the Church catholica^ 
 and passed it on to other languages. It 
 accounts for later uses of the word in which 
 it came to stand for all that is sound and 
 orthodox in doctrine or practice, as against 
 the vagaries of heresy. It enables us to 
 understand why St. Augustine could say 
 that on his conversion he became Christianus 
 catholicus. The word has sunk to baser 
 uses, being made a mere badge, sometimes 
 of nothing better than a party ; but even 
 for this abuse there is seen to be some reason. 
 All this development would be irrational and 
 arbitrary if the Church were at first called 
 Catholic merely in the sense of geographical 
 extension ; all becomes rational when you 
 understand that from the first there was 
 more in the appellation, that it denoted some 
 high and religious quality. The sense of 
 extension has never been forgotten ; it is 
 probable that to a Greek ear it would always 
 be obvious and prominent, but for Latins it 
 would be obscured, and our own people have 
 to be carefully taught that the Catholic Church 
 of the creed is a world-wide organization. 
 In the same way a Greek Christian would
 
 i 4 CATHOLICITY 
 
 always be dimly aware that an eV/cr/coTro? was 
 appointed to look after his faith and conduct, 
 but a Latin episcopus might be allowed to put 
 aside that duty. In all languages borrowed 
 words have this weakness, as compared with 
 those of native growth ; a Frenchman can 
 hardly forget that a lieutenant is in some way 
 a substitute, but an Englishman thinks only 
 of the specific functions allotted in practice 
 to a lieutenant. It is therefore not surpris- 
 ing that in Latin the secondary senses of the 
 word catholicus become prominent ; but I am 
 labouring to show you that such senses are 
 not accidental : they are rooted in the word 
 as originally used by Greeks. A quality 
 is denoted. This quality is intimately con- 
 nected with geographical extension, but you 
 must be careful to make the connexion in 
 the right way. The Church is not Catholic 
 because it is world-wide ; it is world-wide 
 because it is Catholic. 
 
 This quality of the Christian Church and 
 of the Christian religion, this Catholicity, is 
 my subject. 1 am not speaking to you of 
 Catholicism, an ordered system of faith and 
 practice, of doctrine and discipline. I am 
 concerned with the underlying quality of
 
 THE WORD AND THE IDEA 15 
 
 which Catholicism is but the expression, 
 probably an imperfect expression. What is it ? 
 Before engaging myself with that question 
 I have a remark to interpose. I shall not set 
 before you a cut-and-dried definition by means 
 of which you may determine whether this or 
 that Church, this or that person, this or that 
 doctrine, is rightly to be called Catholic. There 
 is no such thing. The Church is Catholic 
 precisely because it is too large for that sort 
 of particularity. If you attempt this kind of 
 definition you will find you have merely 
 defined a sect. For practical purposes you must 
 approach the question of Catholicity from 
 the other side. This Church is professedly 
 Christian, this man professes and calls himself 
 Christian, therefore this Church or this man 
 is presumably Catholic ; for Catholicity is a 
 normal quality of the Christian religion. Being 
 Christian you are Catholic because Christian, 
 unless there be some flaw in your religion serious 
 enough to destroy that quality. The burden of 
 proof rests on the impugner. Or would you 
 examine yourself whether you be in the Catholic 
 Faith ? You must ascertain whether there are 
 in your belief or practice defects that are ruinous 
 to Catholicity. You have not to ask whether
 
 1 6 CATHOLICITT 
 
 you reach a certain standard, but whether you 
 fall short of it. The difference may seem 
 small, but it implies a polar distinction of 
 method. A Christian is presumably Catholic 
 unless he can be shown to be uncatholic ; he 
 is not presumably uncatholic until he has made 
 good his claim to be Catholic. Catholicity is 
 not something superadded to Christianity ; 
 it is inherent in Christianity unless it be 
 extruded by some contrary quality. What is 
 this inherent Catholicity which the Smyrniote 
 presbyters recognized in themselves ? 
 
 We must hark back yet nearer to the 
 beginnings of the Church. We can trace 
 the word no further, but we can look for the 
 idea. When St. Peter enters the house of 
 Cornelius at Caesarea it leaps into light. 
 Think how tremendous an event that is in 
 the light of subsequent history. It is only 
 an obscure Jewish teacher visiting an inferior 
 officer of the Roman army. But that obscure 
 teacher is the chief of a small band of men 
 who conceive it to be their mission to 
 regenerate the religion of Israel and to set 
 forward the Messianic kingdom. Before long, 
 even if they have not yet reached that point, 
 they will be claiming the sole true succession ;
 
 THE WORT> A3{p THE IDEA 17 
 
 they are the Israel of God, the Remnant ; the 
 rest, though the great majority, have fallen 
 away. They are the inheritors of the promises 
 of the Fathers. A certain continuity, both of 
 principle and of practice, must be maintained 
 in their great work of renovation. But the 
 religion of Israel is eminently a religion of 
 separateness ; the holy seed must not mingle 
 with the ruck of humanity. Simon Peter is 
 conscious of this, Galilean though he be. He 
 observes the law of separateness ; nothing 
 common nor unclean has entered his mouth. 
 But the heavenly voice bids him go in to the 
 Gentiles, nothing doubting. He goes, and 
 his eyes are opened : " I perceive that God 
 is no respecter of persons, but in every nation 
 he that feareth Him, and worketh righteous- 
 ness, is acceptable to Him." The door was 
 opened to the Gentiles. It was not yet flung 
 wide. The holy seed would not yet mix with 
 them on equal terms. Peter himself was to 
 hesitate and dissemble. It was the work of 
 St. Paul, through much disputing, through 
 much bitterness, through much unhappiness, 
 to beat down the middle wall of partition, 
 and then to proclaim with almost lyric fer- 
 vour the united Church in which there was
 
 1 8 CATHOLICITT 
 
 neither Jew nor Greek, but all were one 
 in Christ. 
 
 But to break down the isolation of Judaism 
 was only one step. Much remained to be done. 
 Consider the state of the ancient world, the 
 principle of division ruling everywhere, the 
 jealousy of city against city, of race against race ; 
 the contempt of Greek for barbarian, the 
 fundamental distinction of freeman and slave, 
 the arrogance of the Civis Romanus. Remem- 
 ber that all these differences had sacred 
 sanctions, that religion was in the main civic 
 or national, that cults were jealously guarded, 
 that gods were opposed to gods. This 
 antagonism was weakening, but it was still 
 vigorous. Then think of the task to which 
 St. Paul knew himself to be called the task 
 of establishing a religious society in which 
 there should be no distinction of Greek and 
 Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, bar- 
 barian or Scythian, bond or free. Picture to 
 yourself philosophers of Athens, senators of 
 Rome, who were told that they must be 
 reckoned equal to the wild savages beyond 
 the Danube. Try to get some sympathy with 
 Demetrius, who was told that Ephesus was 
 no longer to have its peculiar religion : much
 
 THE WORT) AWD THS IDEA 19 
 
 more than his trade was in danger. These men 
 were turning the world upside down. Do 
 you see what Catholicity means ? It means 
 the negation of national religion. The Church 
 is Catholic, and therefore a Landeskirche is 
 a contradiction in terms. You may talk about 
 a National Church, but you must be careful 
 to know what it means. It must be a Church 
 with a special mission to a nation, not a 
 Church issuing from the thought of a nation, 
 controlled by the genius of a nation, or estab- 
 lished by the laws of a nation. There was 
 at Corinth a recrudescence of the old civic 
 religion ; St. Paul trampled on it : " What ? 
 came the Word of God out from you, or 
 came it to you alone ? " The Church is 
 Catholic because in its essence it transcends 
 all national and local particularities. It is 
 the Church of Humanity. 
 
 And more. There were already religions 
 that overleaped these barriers, and others no 
 less wide were rising simultaneously with Chris- 
 tianity. The worship of the Genius of Caesar 
 was everywhere in the Roman Empire, with 
 its perfect organization and its appeal alike 
 to the spirit of loyalty and to the prudence of 
 servility. Other religions were larger. In the
 
 20 CATHOLICITY 
 
 far East Buddhism was obliterating caste, and 
 addressing man as man. Roman matrons were 
 running after the mysteries of Isis. The cult 
 of Mithras was open to all seekers who would 
 endure a horrible initiation. If Christianity 
 had competed with these on equal terms, if 
 it had been a religion of humanity only in 
 this sense, it would have had no quarrel with 
 the Roman Empire. But the religion of Christ 
 was essentially exclusive. It was intolerant. 
 It went out expressly to destroy all other 
 religions. It would take no place in a 
 Pantheon. It would not even gather lesser 
 gods into a Pantheon of its own under the 
 sovranty of Christ. It would utterly abolish 
 the idols. It was not exclusive in the Jewish 
 or the Greek sense, for it would shut out 
 no man from its precincts. On the contrary, 
 it would draw all men in, compel them to 
 come in ; it would not willingly allow any 
 to lag outside. But the Church was and is 
 exclusive in the sense of claiming to be the 
 sole possessor of the oracles of God, and the 
 only ordered channel of divine grace. It is 
 Catholic, not because it is accidentally spread 
 over the whole world which in point of fact 
 it is not but because it is meant by God
 
 TH WORT) AND THE IDEA 21 
 
 to embrace all men in a jealous guardian- 
 ship. 
 
 Again, the Church of Christ transcends not 
 only civic and national boundaries, but the 
 limits even of the visible world. There might 
 conceivably be a religion practised by the whole 
 human race with perfect uniformity, which 
 should nevertheless be the merest local cult. 
 The whole world is not so very much larger 
 than Jerusalem. To an observer in Arcturus 
 the difference would be inappreciable. A word 
 of God coming out from the whole human 
 race would not be much more important than 
 one coming from a coterie of worshippers at 
 Corinth. Indeed the minority might weigh 
 the heavier. The teaching of the Academy at 
 Athens was worth more than all the specu- 
 lations of all the teeming millions of Asia. 
 The Catholicity of the Church would be a 
 poor thing if it meant only the general agree- 
 ment of men at a particular moment, or the 
 sum of human thought since the beginning 
 of the world. He would be a bold man who 
 should traverse it, but a prophet or an 
 Athanasius might be bold enough. 
 
 Ancient religion was in the main a civic 
 thing ; citizenship and worship went together.
 
 22 CATHOLICITY 
 
 But our TroXrrev/za, says St. Paul, is in heaven. 
 The idea was not entirely new. It was adum- 
 brated, as the author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews saw, in the prophetic books of the 
 Old Testament, and Philo the Alexandrian, 
 almost contemporaneously with St. Paul, was 
 deducing it from them in almost identical 
 terms. The souls of the wise, he said, reckoned 
 the heavenly country to be their fatherland, in 
 which they were citizens, and the earthly abode 
 in which they sojourned was to them a strange 
 land : TraTpiSa /j.ev TOV ovpaviov ^wpov ev <a TTO\L- 
 Teuovrat, evov <$e TOV Treplyetov ev aj TrapwKriarav 
 vofiifyva-ai. l What the Alexandrian Jew ad- 
 mired in his mythical forefathers, became a 
 commonplace of actual life under the new 
 impulse of the Gospel. You will see that it 
 was not merely a feverish expectation of the 
 Trapova-ia that made men think of themselves 
 as in a state of suspense, as strangers and pil- 
 grims. The kind of exaltation upon which 
 so much stress has recently been laid would 
 not survive two generations of disappointment. 
 The sentiment of pilgrimage did survive. It 
 is strong in the measured Epistula ad T)iog- 
 netum, which nevertheless labours to show 
 1 T>e Confuslone Linguarum, 1 7.
 
 THE WORT) AND THE IDEA 23 
 
 that Christians were good citizens of an 
 earthly commonwealth, and did not differ in 
 mode of life, save by a stricter morality, from 
 their neighbours ; TreiOovrai rot? fcywoyieW? 
 
 VO/J.OIS) KCli 7*0*9 IS IOIS /3tO(9 VlKUKTl TOV? VOfJLOV?. 
 
 The writer piles up words in description 
 of this unworldliness consistent with worldly 
 virtues, and incorporates St. Paul's own 
 phrase in one of his antitheses ; Christians 
 pass their time on earth, but their citizenship 
 is in heaven : ext yfjs SiaTplfiowiv, aXX* ev ovpavw 
 TroXirevovrai. When he would show how men 
 can be imitators of God he uses the bold 
 phrase on 0eo9 ev ovpavois TrdXireverai. I need 
 not remind you how in later ages the language 
 of devotion became saturated with this notion 
 that the faithful are here in >*'#, journeying ad 
 patriam. But that is a modification. Pilgrim- 
 age came to mean travel, but I would remind 
 you that originally peregrinus was a man residing 
 in a foreign land, not one pressing forward to 
 his true bourne. In the earlier thought of 
 Christianity the Heavenly City was not a future 
 home after which the voyager sighs ; it was 
 a present possession, a stronghold in which the 
 faithful had rights ; they looked to it as the 
 civis Romanus looked to the Forum, wherever
 
 24 CATHOLICITY 
 
 in the world his lot might be cast. Roman 
 citizenship was not a hope some day to settle 
 amid the opes strepitumque Romae ; these might 
 never be visited, but the ius civile was a present 
 mainstay from the Thames to the Euphrates. 
 Recall the nature of citizenship in the ancient 
 world, whether in the form of Greek inde- 
 pendence or in the larger Roman conception, 
 and you will get to the real meaning of this 
 heavenly franchise. In the second century, 
 Roman citizenship was the main thing in view, 
 but the sweeping of all subject races into the 
 net of common rights was not yet thought of ; 
 that was the work of the coming century ; 
 a Roman citizen was still a privileged person ; 
 he might be resident at Smyrna or at Tarsus, 
 sharing the municipal life of those towns, but 
 he was somewhat aloof, having a larger right 
 than his neighbour, protected by the majesty 
 of Rome. This great conception must have 
 influenced Christian thought. We know how 
 Caesar seemed to be a rival of God, how Rome 
 was set, as Babylon, over against the Holy 
 City. Into the conception of the Catholicity 
 of the Church there would enter something 
 suggested by the wide influence of the con- 
 quering city. But the Empire of God was
 
 THS WORT) A^D THE IDEA 25 
 
 wider than that of Caesar ; it was not bounded 
 by the Rhine or the Euphrates ; it passed 
 the limits of the inhabited earth ; its Forum, 
 its Capitol, was on the heavenly hills ; its 
 eternity was no poetic dream ; its universality 
 was not an idle boast, was not geographic, 
 but cosmic. 
 
 It seems to me not altogether insignificant 
 that in the document where for the first time 
 we find a local Church called Catholic that 
 Church is described as Trapoiicova-a. ev ^lAiipvy. 
 This word, you will remember, was used by 
 Philo to express the sense of being strangers 
 and pilgrims on earth, which he ascribed 
 to the patriarchs. He found the word in 
 the Septuagint, where the pilgrim of the 
 Gradual Psalms, looking to Jerusalem, the 
 city of solemnities, sighs, " Woe is me that 
 I am constrained to dwell with Mesech ! " r 
 It may represent plain fact ; a -n-dpoiKos was a 
 foreigner, in the proper sense of that much- 
 abused term, a man dwelling in a land or 
 a city not his own, exiled from his own 
 people. But in the language of devotion it 
 receives even here the metaphorical or spiritual 
 sense adopted by Philo. In that sense it 
 
 1 Ps. cxix. 5, ofyxoi ort rj TrapoiKta pov e/JMKpvv6rj.
 
 26 CATHOLICITY 
 
 passed into Christian use. 1 You may think 
 it an affectation, a touch of preciosity, when 
 the Smyrniote presbyters employ it in the 
 formal inscription of a letter. St. Paul had 
 in plain language addressed 777 KK\rj(ria rou 
 Qeov T# oXarjj ev KoplvOu), and St. Ignatius was 
 content with the same form, but for a striking 
 variation in the case of the Roman Church. 2 
 This use of the word TrapoiKovva is found, 
 however, in the Epistle of St. Clement to the 
 Church of Corinth, as also in St. Polycarp's 
 own Epistle to the Philippians. His presbyters 
 followed his example ; with them it was not 
 improbably a familiar commonplace. And 
 their exile Church they called Catholic. It 
 was in Smyrna, but it was not properly 
 Smyrniote ; it transcended the local habitation 
 by virtue of the quality which made it but 
 a stranger there, having its citizenship in 
 heaven. And that is true of the whole Church 
 throughout the world. Here, then, is another 
 element in Catholicity. The Catholic Church 
 is a pilgrim Church. 
 
 1 Heb. xi. 9, Tra/xuKT^rev. I St. Pet. i. 17, irapoiKias ; 
 
 il. II, TTUpOLKOVi. 
 
 3 "Hns Ko.1 irpoKa.OrjTa.1 ev Tair<p \o>piov 'Pa/iata>v, with 
 much complimentary amplification.
 
 rne WORT> A^D THE IDEA 27 
 
 I find a fourth element. Ancient religion 
 was not only a religion of local cults, but 
 it was the worship of local gods. The gods 
 were essentially gods of the family, of the 
 tribe, of the city or nation. There were at- 
 tempts to escape from this limitation. Sun- 
 worship is an example. The Persian religion 
 seems to have achieved a complete emancipa- 
 tion, at the cost of dualism. But escape 
 was usually in the direction of confusion, and 
 the worship of other gods in addition to your 
 own. Polytheism, whatever else it may be, 
 is syncretic. Greek philosophers, like those 
 of India, could rise to the conception of uni- 
 versal theism, but their theology could hardly 
 be translated into the terms of the ancient 
 religion. Alone, or almost alone, the prophets 
 of Israel found their way to a true monotheism. 
 The way was not found easily or speedily. 
 You see it triumphantly passed over when 
 the fortunes of the nation are at the lowest 
 ebb. The prophets, breaking away from the 
 traditional belief that defeat and conquest 
 imply the defeat of the tribal god by the 
 gods of strangers, aver that Yahweh, the God 
 of Israel, is not merely greater, in spite of 
 all appearances, than the gods of the victorious
 
 28 CATHOLICITY 
 
 nations, but that He is the one Lord of heaven 
 and earth, and the rest are naught, dumb 
 idols. 1 This became the peculiar conviction 
 of the Jews, unshaken by any catastrophe. 
 Christianity entered upon their heritage, en- 
 riching it after some hesitation with the 
 complementary truth that the chosen people 
 of God is no less universal than the sovranty 
 of God. The Church is Catholic because 
 God is One. In the idea of Catholicity there 
 is a protest, not only against the civic religion 
 that must have a peculiar cult, the national 
 religion that demands a national God, but 
 also against any theoretic limitation of God. 
 He is TravroKpdroop, omnipotent ; nothing is with- 
 drawn from His sway. He is not, indeed, 
 the impersonal Absolute of idealist philosophy, 
 or the All of pantheism ; but He is infinite, 
 as Aubrey Moore said, in the adjectival sense : 
 He is immensus. This complete monotheism 
 is involved in the idea of Catholicity. 
 
 In Catholicity are these four elements. We 
 shall find other elements, less obviously present, 
 which call for particular examination. These 
 
 1 See especially Jeremiah x, and cf. xiv. 22 ; xxvii. 59. 
 I find this theme well developed in Jeremie, sa Politique, 
 sa Tfifo/ogif, by the Abb6 Charles Jean.
 
 THS WORT> AND THS IDE A 29 
 
 four are primary ; they constitute the idea. 
 Catholicity means that the Christian religion 
 embraces ideally and potentially all mankind ; 
 it means that no rival or supplementary cult 
 is to be endured; it means the transcendence, 
 not only of civic or national bounds, but of 
 the whole world; it means the proclamation 
 of One transcendent God. And this fourfold 
 quality is found, vitally energetic, in the smallest 
 fraction of the whole Christian society. The 
 local Church is not merely a part of the uni- 
 versal Church ; it does not merely represent 
 the whole; it is a true microcosm. All that 
 is in the whole Church is there. As Harnack 
 has well said, the whole is in the part, and 
 not merely the part in the whole. 1 Catholicity 
 is fundamentally this in its primary significance ; 
 from this all secondary meanings must flow, 
 and to this they must conform. 
 
 1 The Conffifufioa and Law of the Church in the First Two 
 Centuries (Engl. tr.), p. 46.
 
 II 
 
 THE ORGANIC ELEMENT 
 
 r*HE Church, being universal, is one ; 
 * there is no room for another. Unity 
 and Catholicity go inseparably together. And, 
 being one, the Church should also be united. 
 These two notions are distinct, but it is 
 not always easy to keep the distinction 
 clear in language. For union is a property 
 of oneness, and we constantly have to use 
 words etymologically connected to express 
 the two ideas ; unica and unita are obviously 
 near akin, and are closely allied in meaning 
 as epithets of ecdesia. The distinction is more 
 easily marked in English, but here also it 
 has to be guarded, and we use the word 
 unity in both senses. In the former sense 
 it stands for a natural fact that cannot be 
 altered ; there is but one Church, and there 
 can be none other. In the other sense it 
 stands for a moral obligation, a purpose of 
 God that can be thwarted. Our Lord prayed, 
 
 30
 
 THE ORGANIC ELEMENT 31 
 
 " That they all may be one ; " and that prayer 
 would be unmeaning if the unity so desired 
 were a natural necessity. In this sense unity, 
 though it goes with uniqueness, implies also 
 multiplicity ; those whose unity is an object 
 of desire must be many. The Church is there- 
 fore both one and many ; it is one body 
 comprising many members. That is an im- 
 portant part of the meaning of Catholicity. 
 
 This kind of unity can be achieved in 
 various ways, of which two may engage 
 our attention. A number of individuals 
 may be united into a single aggregate. A 
 number of men may be united into a single 
 society ; a number of independent communities 
 may be united into a single federal State. 
 You may call this an artificial union. It 
 is not merely artificial, for it springs from 
 the ordinary working of human nature ; but 
 it is artificial in so far as it is realized by 
 the more or less conscious energy of human 
 wills. It remains artificial, even if the com- 
 ponent parts, once united, lose the power 
 or the right of separating. On the other 
 hand, a single and homogeneous entity may 
 by differentiation be divided into parts without 
 loss of unity. That is the physiological origin
 
 32 CATHOLICITY 
 
 of an articulated animal body ; it is not built 
 up of gathered members, but begins as a 
 single cell, out of which the members are 
 produced by differentiation of parts. You 
 find various degrees of such differentiation 
 in various examples of the animal kingdom ; 
 mammals are more completely articulated than 
 birds and reptiles, and there is a descending 
 scale down to the amoeba ; but every in- 
 dividual animal begins life as a nucleated cell 
 compared with which the amoeba is a com- 
 plicated organism. In the same way, though 
 by the working of less rigorous laws, a 
 civic community, small and homogeneous, 
 may in the course of ages grow into an 
 elaborate political organism, minutely sub- 
 divided ; and even a fully developed State 
 may consciously divide itself without loss 
 of unity in either sense of the word ; many 
 degrees of Home Rule are possible. Unity 
 which thus begins with simplicity and develops 
 multiplicity may be called a natural or organic 
 unity. 
 
 The unity of the Church is a combination 
 of these two modes, but it is chiefly an organic 
 unity. That is indicated when it is called 
 the Body of Christ. Historically the Church
 
 TH ORGANIC ELEMENT 33 
 
 was a continuation of the Jewish polity ; it 
 was the faithful Remnant, from which the 
 mass of the people fell away. But the organi- 
 zation of this Remnant begins from the person 
 of the Incarnate Son of God. According to 
 the flesh He is the Seed of Abraham ; and, 
 as St. Paul saw clearly, even while expressing 
 the fact by a strange exegesis of Rabbinical 
 subtlety, He alone is the Seed according to 
 promise. In Him are concentrated both the 
 privileges of Abraham and the spiritual rights 
 of Adam, including those which had fallen 
 into abeyance through sin. He, the Lord 
 from heaven, is also the New Man, renewed 
 in the image of God. He is, so to say, 
 the nucleus from which a renovated human 
 society is to spring. " In Him was Life, and 
 the Life was the light of men." From this 
 beginning grows the articulated Body of 
 Christ. The unity of the Church is organic. 
 
 But, on the other hand, individual men 
 are gathered, aggregated, incorporated, into 
 this unity. The faithful are "added to the 
 Church." The Church is not formed by 
 this aggregation. It exists before a single 
 member is incorporated. It is not a mere 
 society, still less a federal union of societies.
 
 34 CATHOLICITY 
 
 But there is aggregation, there is incorporation. 
 Consequently, the imagery of the Body and 
 its members, of the Vine and its branches, 
 will not express the whole truth. St. Paul 
 found another image in the branch grafted 
 into a tree-stock. It is curious to observe 
 that his argument required him to reverse 
 the usual method and to speak of a scion 
 of wild olive being engrafted into a fruit- 
 olive an inversion to which his description 
 of the process as irapa (f>v<rtv may possibly 
 refer but this does not affect the substance 
 of the illustration ; he is thinking only of 
 the engrafted branch which lives by the 
 sap of the tree communicated to it. 1 You 
 may press the illustration further. The hos- 
 pitable tree, rejoicing in non sua poma, may 
 remind you of the glory and honour of the 
 nations which are to be brought into the 
 City of God. The individuals aggregated 
 to the Church contribute something to the 
 Church. 
 
 The Church is united, then, because it is 
 
 one ; but the oneness does not, if I may so 
 
 say, automatically effect union. The unity of 
 
 the Church is not merely natural or organic. 
 
 1 Rom. xi. 1724.
 
 TH ORGANIC ELEMENT 35 
 
 It is chiefly this, but partly also an effect of 
 aggregation. It is chiefly the work of God, 
 but partly also the work of men, as fellow- 
 workers with God. In other words, it is 
 partly natural, partly artificial. It is a thing 
 to be declared ; it is also a thing to be worked 
 for and desired in prayer. 
 
 The Catholicity of the Church is intimately 
 connected with its uniqueness. It is Catholic, 
 in the sense of universal, because it is one, 
 and one alone. The oneness of the Church 
 is also intimately connected with its unity ; 
 it is united because it is one. These three 
 qualities hang together unity, uniqueness, 
 and Catholicity. You may say, then, that 
 Catholicity is a quality in the Church that 
 makes for unity. And you may go further. 
 The individual member contributes to the 
 unity of the Church ; he can mar it, and he 
 helps to make it. He can partake of the 
 qualities in the Church which make for unity. 
 And Catholicity is such a quality. Therefore 
 Catholicity is a quality in the individual ; a 
 man may be called Catholic. 
 
 In another sense of the word, to which 
 we shall come later, this is more obvious. 
 But I am trying here to show that in its
 
 36 CATHOLICITY 
 
 primary and fundamental sense Catholicity 
 can be attributed to the individual. So 
 regarded, it becomes a temper, an ^#09, 
 characteristic of his religion. You may recog- 
 nize degrees in it. A good Catholic will be 
 one who works and prays for that perfect 
 unity of the Church that accords with the 
 will of God, who labours to correct all in 
 himself that may cause disunion, who 
 strives to weld others into that unity. A 
 bad Catholic will be one who approves these 
 things in theory, but neglects them in practice. 
 I have come down to a modern form of 
 speech, but now I must go back. You have 
 considered with me how a particular local 
 Church could be called Catholic. Add to what 
 we then found this further consideration. 
 A local Church, equally with an individual 
 Christian, may be called a member of the 
 Body of Christ. At times, indeed, this has 
 been the more common use of the term ; at 
 times, that is to say, when the corporate 
 activity of the Church has been more in 
 view than the individual Christian life. In 
 the fourteenth century, when men were loudly 
 demanding the reformation of the Church 
 in capite et in membris, they were not thinking
 
 rne ORGANIC ELEMENT 37 
 
 of the individual morality either of the Pope 
 or of a ploughman ; they wanted to reform 
 the papal court and the corrupt administra- 
 tion of dioceses. A local particular Church, 
 like an individual Christian, is a member of 
 the universal Church, and, like the individual 
 Christian, it may have or lack this temper that 
 makes for unity, the temper of Catholicity. 
 
 And now I ask another question not how 
 the Church of Smyrna could be called Catholic, 
 but why it was so called. The presbyters 
 announcing the martyrdom of Polycarp were 
 careful to describe him as Bishop of the 
 Catholic Church in Smyrna. Why this 
 precision ? 
 
 It would not seem natural to introduce 
 such a descriptive term without special reason. 
 For it was descriptive ; it was not yet become 
 a mere appellative. How far the word had 
 passed into common use we cannot ascertain, 
 but so much may be affirmed pretty confidently. 
 Not only did the word mean something 
 definite, but it was used for some definite 
 purpose. St. Ignatius spoke of the Catholic 
 Church in distinction from the local particular 
 Church. So also did the Smyrniote presby- 
 ters. But from what did they distinguish
 
 38 CATHOLICITY 
 
 the local Church at Smyrna when they called 
 this also Catholic ? 
 
 There seems to be only one possible answer. 
 There was a Church of some kind at Smyrna 
 that was not Catholic. What was this ? The 
 use of the word that became general in the 
 next century will enlighten us. The Catholic 
 Church of a city was then distinguished from 
 groups of men who, though Christian, stood 
 aloof from the main body. I purposely put 
 it, for the present, in the most general way 
 possible. Such groups there seem to have 
 been almost everywhere. The beginnings of 
 this state of things at Corinth alarmed and 
 angered St. Paul. There is good ground for 
 supposing that the institution of episcopacy 
 the establishment, that is to say, of a chief 
 pastor in every city was designed expressly 
 to combat the tendency to such grouping. 
 Otherwise the oversight of many local 
 Churches in a wide region by a travelling 
 Apostle might have continued, and have 
 been preferred. It is interesting to observe 
 that the arrangements of the far-reaching 
 Diocese of York are more apostolic than 
 those of the primitive episcopacy which has 
 been revived in your favour at Birmingham.
 
 THS ORGANIC ELEMENT 39 
 
 But, whether this be the original purpose of 
 the episcopal system or not, it was certainly 
 the use to which the system was put. It is 
 the constant theme of the Ignatian epistles 
 that the bishop is the centre of unity. No- 
 thing must be done without him. Baptism 
 and the Eucharist, especially, are functions 
 in which he must preside. There is a cor- 
 relative : he must do nothing without the 
 Church, its presbyters, and deacons ; he 
 also must avoid an excessive individuality. 
 But Ignatius says more. All who belong 
 to God and to Jesus Christ, he says, are with 
 the bishop : ocroi Qeov eicri KOU 'I^fTOv XpicrTOv, 
 OVTOI /u.era TOV CTTI^KOTTOV el<riv. 1 That is 
 seriously said. It is put forward as a statement 
 of fact, and it is difficult to avoid the converse 
 conclusion ; those who are not with the bishop 
 do not belong to Christ. They are not mem- 
 bers of the Body. They are not properly 
 Christians. You may recall sentences from 
 the Gospel which look the same way. He 
 who will not hear the Church, speaking pre- 
 sumably by the bishop, is relegated to the 
 standing of the heathen. The branch that 
 does not abide in the vine is withered. Does 
 1 Philad. iii. 2.
 
 40 CATHOLICITY 
 
 a man abide in the Vine, which is Christ, when 
 he cuts himself adrift from the bishop who is 
 Christ's representative ? 
 
 There is much in the letters of Ignatius 
 implying a negative answer. You will find the 
 same implication in the writings and the acts 
 of St. Cyprian ; analogous judgements have 
 been pronounced from time to time down to 
 our own day. I have heard a most respected 
 theologian say that he was not sure whether 
 he could admit the right of English Dissenters 
 to be called Christians. But the dominant 
 judgement of the Church has gone the other 
 way. You will find it in the decision of the 
 controversy about the baptism of heretics 
 against the sense of St. Cyprian. You will find 
 it in the terms on which certayi schismatics 
 were received at Nicaea. You will find it 
 in the law of the Conclave, which allows an 
 excommunicate cardinal to vote at the election 
 of a Pope. There are degrees of separation, 
 nor is it quite clear what is the effect even 
 of complete apostasy. One who goes out, 
 or is cast out, from the ordered unity of 
 the Church does not altogether cease to be 
 a member of the Church. A fanciful distinc- 
 tion has been drawn between belonging to
 
 THS ORGANIC ELEMENT 41 
 
 the body and belonging to the soul of the 
 Church. It suits some of the cases in view, 
 but not all, and it is unnecessary ; the analogy 
 of the body is no more complete than any 
 other analogy, and it fails in respect of 
 amputation. A later theology will try to solve 
 the difficulty by leaning hard on the indelible 
 character of Baptism. It would be anachron- 
 istic to throw back that solution to the second 
 century, but the truth which it enshrines was 
 seized in another form, and schismatics were 
 recognized as being in some way members 
 of the Church. The severity of St. Ignatius 
 was not general ; perhaps it was not, even 
 in his own case, more than earnest pleading 
 for unity. 
 
 But if these separated and scattered members 
 are still to be reckoned in some sort members 
 of the universal Church, is a gathering of 
 them to be called in the local and particular 
 sense a Church ? There is another saying 
 of Ignatius. We do not speak of a Church, 
 he says, where there is no bishop and presby- 
 tery : xoopts TOVTWV KK\rj(ria ou KaXeirai. 1 Would 
 he, then, allow that venerable title to be used 
 of casual groups of Christians segregated from 
 1 Trail, iii. I.
 
 42 CATHOLICITY 
 
 the bishop ? And if not, why should it be 
 necessary to distinguish the congregation ad- 
 hering to Polycarp as the Catholic Church 
 in Smyrna ? Why not call it simply the 
 Church ? Here, you see, is a question which 
 is presented to us afresh in our own day. Are 
 those congregations of Dissenters, with which 
 we are familiar, to be called Churches ? I 
 think we must reply that they certainly are 
 Churches. They are groups of baptized 
 persons ; and groups of baptized men and 
 women, organized for the purposes of Christian 
 worship and of the Christian life, are Churches. 
 What else was the Church in the house of 
 Philemon or of Aquila, to which St. Paul sent 
 greeting ? It is evident that we must read this 
 sentence of Ignatius with some latitude. If 
 you press it rigorously you will be landed in 
 the absurd conclusion that sede vacante your 
 Church of Birmingham ceased to exist. It 
 may move you less to reflect that the existence 
 of the famous Church of Westminster depends 
 on the accident of its having a retired bishop 
 for dean. We must suppose that St. Ignatius 
 was here doing nothing more than state with 
 the utmost possible emphasis the proper order 
 and constitution of a local Church. That
 
 TH ORQAO^IC ELEMENT 43 
 
 groups improperly organized were known as 
 Churches at Smyrna seems to me almost 
 incontestable, the group over which Polycarp 
 presided being called Catholic because of its 
 adherence to the true type. The dissenting 
 congregations that we have about us come 
 into the same category. The question is 
 not whether they are Churches, but whether 
 they are Catholic Churches. I can see no 
 good reason for refusing to call them 
 Churches. Duchesne has not been censured 
 for writing of eglises separees, and you 
 hardly need be afraid of erring in his 
 company. 
 
 We may therefore conclude that the Church 
 at Smyrna presided over by Polycarp is 
 called Catholic precisely because it is under 
 his presidency ; it consists of those who 
 adhere to the ordered unity of which he, as 
 bishop, is the organic centre. The description 
 is required because there are in Smyrna other 
 Churches not adhering to him. In my last 
 lecture I raised the question whether it could 
 be called Catholic as embracing all Christians 
 gathered into several congregations within 
 the city ; we now see that it is so called, 
 on the contrary, precisely as excluding such
 
 44 CATHOLICITY 
 
 congregations if they are not in communion 
 with the bishop. 
 
 But here is a verbal inconsistency : the word 
 catholic^ from being a term of universality, is 
 become a term of limitation. That is true, 
 and the inconsistency continues all through 
 history. You may find some glaring instances. 
 In one of Constantine's letters about the 
 Donatists, which we have in the Greek ren- 
 dering of Eusebius, he speaks of y aipea-i? 17 
 KaOoXiio'i. l His own word was probably secta ; he 
 spoke of the Catholic sect. The phrase exactly 
 resembles that by which some of us offend 
 others in speaking of the " Catholic Party." 
 Perhaps it would be wiser not to follow so 
 closely in the footsteps of the half-converted 
 emperor. But this use of the word Catholic 
 cannot be avoided ; you cannot go behind 
 the practice of nearly eighteen centuries. It 
 soon extended from the local Church to the 
 Church at large. As the Catholic Church at 
 Smyrna consisted of those who adhered to 
 the bishop as centre of unity, so the Catholic 
 Church at large consisted of those, and was 
 limited to those, who adhered to a larger 
 
 1 Euseb. H. E. x. 5. Imperial letter to Chrestus of 
 Syracuse.
 
 THS ORGANIC ELEMENT 45 
 
 order of unity. It was what Duchesne, steeped 
 in memories of the petite eglise of France, loves 
 to call the Great Church. 
 
 That curious outcome of the French 
 Revolution, the petite eglise^ so aptly illus- 
 trates my theme that I must ask leave to 
 detain you a moment for its consideration. 
 The Pope, you will remember, denounced 
 the Civil Constitution of the clergy, set up 
 in 1790, and almost all the French bishops, 
 with the majority of the clergy, refused to 
 accept it. In 1801 Pius VII made peace with 
 the Republic ; by the Concordat of that year 
 the Civil Constitution was withdrawn, but 
 most of its less objectionable features were 
 established afresh by papal authority ; the new 
 arrangement of dioceses was confirmed, and 
 most of the old bishops, already in actual 
 exile, were removed de iure from their sees. 
 They protested, denied the right of the Pope 
 so to depose them, and engaged a small 
 number of priests and of the faithful in their 
 resistance. No attempt was made to carry on 
 an episcopal succession, but the priesthood was 
 for a time sparsely recruited from the dis- 
 affected in the Church of the Concordat. At 
 the present day, I believe, a small remnant of
 
 46 CATHOLICITY 
 
 the laity lingers on, without ministers and 
 without sacraments, in a sullen and senseless 
 schism. These men are strictly orthodox ; 
 even Gallicanism hardly enters into their 
 thought ; they do not question the supreme 
 authority of the Pope, but only a particular 
 act of the papal administration. Such is the 
 petite tglisfy and such was most of the heresy 
 and schism of the second century. I do not 
 speak of Gnosticism, for that was hardly 
 Christian, but of the petty groups which in 
 various places separated themselves or were 
 cut off from the communion of the Great 
 Church. I shall have to speak on another 
 occasion of the doctrinal aberration that accom- 
 panied or followed this kind of schism, but 
 heresy did not yet signify as much. At the 
 end of the century, Tertullian was fastening 
 upon the word that significance just when he 
 himself was falling into heresy ; by inaccurate 
 exegesis he tried to distinguish between the 
 ayta-fiara and the alpecreis which St. Paul coupled 
 together. 1 But that was a development yet 
 to follow ; at the time of which I am speaking 
 the heretic was still, as in the Epistle to Titus, 
 a stiffly opinionated man who could not get 
 ' I Cor. xi. 1 8, 19. Tertull., <De Traescr. 5.
 
 rne ORGANIC ELEMENT 4 y 
 
 on with his fellows ; the contrasted temper was 
 naturally Catholic. Even for St. Cyprian 
 heresy is chiefly a principle of division ; it 
 occurs " dum peruersa mens non habet pacem, 
 dum perfidia discordans non tenet unitatem ; " 
 it is even useful, under the providence of God, 
 for dividing the chaff from the wheat ; it is 
 seen in those " qui nemine episcopatum dante 
 episcopi sibi nomen adsumunt." l You are 
 still far from the state of things in which 
 doctrinal error becomes the great cause of 
 disunion, and heresy is identified with hetero- 
 doxy. 2 
 
 We ought now to be able to see clearly 
 what is Catholicity in relation to the unity of 
 the Church. By an irony of circumstance 
 it is only because the Church is divided that 
 the word has obtained its vogue. They are 
 distinctively Catholic who adhere to the 
 ordered method of promoting unity. Catho- 
 licity is a quality, alike in the Church at large, 
 in the local Church, and in the individual 
 Christian, which makes for unity. It is a 
 temper, and a practical temper. It is not 
 
 1 De Unitate 10. 
 
 2 St. Ignatius speaks of heterodoxy in another connexion. 
 Smyrn. vi. 2.
 
 48 
 
 a vague aspiration after unity, but a temper 
 which seizes and holds the way to unity. In 
 the second century, the only visible way to 
 unity was adherence to the communion of the 
 bishop of each several Church, regarded as 
 the Vicar of Christ. Catholicity could there- 
 fore be summed up as loyal adherence of the 
 Church at large to the Lord Jesus Christ, the 
 supreme Pastor, and loyal adherence of the 
 local particular Church to its own bishop. 
 But this was Catholicity only because the 
 bishop was the accepted centre and symbol 
 of unity. If this kind of episcopacy proved 
 a failure, if it were found that the bishop 
 himself might be a cause of disunion, if 
 some other ordering should therefore become 
 necessary, then the rejection of this new 
 ordering, and an obstinate adherence to the 
 bishop, would become uncatholic. Catholicity 
 is the temper which seizes and holds the 
 ordered way of unity, whatever that way 
 may be. 
 
 Here I make a digression, if only to show 
 that 1 have not forgotten a grave question. 
 If it be true that communion with the Roman 
 See is by divine appointment the ordered way 
 of unity, or even if it has been so ordered by
 
 THS ORGANIC ELEMENT 49 
 
 the wisdom of the Church, then Catholicity 
 involves adherence to that communion. You 
 ought not to meet with impatient resentment 
 those who judge this to be the case, and 
 therefore call themselves exclusively Catholics. 
 You who judge otherwise cannot allow them 
 an exclusive right to the title, and it may often 
 be your duty to make that plain in speech ; 
 but you should not treat the assumption of 
 it as an impertinence. They are really showing 
 the temper of Catholicity by insisting on what 
 they take to be the only effective mode of 
 union for Christendom. The only proper 
 contention against them is a demonstration, 
 either a priori or a posteriori^ that communion 
 with the Roman See is not the ordered way of 
 unity. If my subject were Catholicism, the 
 working system which is an expression, more 
 or less imperfect, of Catholicity, I should have 
 to deal with this question at large. As it is, 
 I have but to glance at it now, and perhaps 
 again. 
 
 To return : Catholicity meant in the second 
 century a temper of loyal adherence to the 
 Great Church. For the local Church, and 
 for its individual members, the link was 
 the bishop. But bishops themselves were
 
 50 CATHOLICITY 
 
 individuals ; their thoughts, their practices, their 
 teaching, might be divergent. Each was the 
 centre of unity for his own Church, but he 
 might become a focus of disorder and disunion 
 for the Church at large. An heretical bishop 
 would be more mischievous than a single 
 individual heretic, a faction of bishops worse 
 than a faction within the Church of Smyrna 
 or of Philadelphia. St. Paul had a rough 
 rule to apply in such cases ; local Churches 
 must conform, more or less, to each other's 
 usages. When petulance and Hellenic rest- 
 lessness suggested singularities at Corinth, 
 he put down his foot : " We have no such 
 custom, neither the Churches of God." But 
 St. Paul was an Apostle, speaking with great 
 weight of authority : who could speak so 
 peremptorily a hundred years later ? Here 
 was one of the difficulties produced by the 
 substitution of local episcopacy for general 
 apostolic oversight. 
 
 It does not appear that the difficulty was 
 tackled on its theoretic side before the time 
 of St. Cyprian. There is evidence that the 
 greater Churches, and notably those of Rome 
 and Alexandria, intervened from time to time 
 for the purpose of allaying disorders by the
 
 ORGANIC ELEMENT 51 
 
 weight of their authority. The Epistle of 
 St. Clement to the Corinthians is an instance, 
 prior, perhaps, to the establishment of mon- 
 archic episcopacy at Corinth. Most familiar 
 is the reference of St. Irenaeus to the unify- 
 ing influence of the Church of Rome with 
 its potior principalitas. Tertullian, while still a 
 Catholic, advised reference to one or other 
 of the Churches actually founded by Apostles, 
 as at Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus, and, the most 
 conspicuous of all, at Rome. x We might 
 expect to find a theory worked out, assigning 
 a special authority to these apostolic sees, and 
 so anticipating the patriarchal system of the 
 fifth century, or even the later papacy. But 
 it does not appear ; and St. Cyprian, when 
 he addressed himself expressly to the task of 
 expounding the way of unity, took another 
 direction. He too extols the Church of Rome, 
 " Ecclesia principalis unde unitas sacerdotalis 
 exorta est," and that in a letter dealing with 
 just such a case of intervention as I have 
 mentioned ; but at the same time he scornfully 
 repels the suggestion that bishops in Africa had 
 any less authority, 2 and in his formal treatise 
 on the Unity of the Catholic Church he assigns 
 1 T>e Praeser. 36. 2 Ep. 59. 14.
 
 52 CATHOLICITT 
 
 no prerogatives to the apostolic sees or to the 
 greater Churches. He puts all bishops on 
 a footing of absolute equality. All alike are 
 successors of the Apostles, and receive their 
 mission through the Apostles from Christ. 
 How, then, are these many kept in union ? 
 They have not each a separate mission ; the 
 episcopate is a single order, a common posses- 
 sion, which is not partitioned among them, 
 but is held in solidum by each one. The terms 
 are legal, for Cyprian was a jurist, but the 
 sense is not obscure. This unity is further 
 illustrated by the original mission. It was 
 given first to St. Peter alone, for a mani- 
 festation of its oneness ; afterwards the other 
 Apostles also received it, becoming the equals 
 of St. Peter in dignity and power : " Hoc 
 erant utique et ceteri apostoli quod fuit Petrus, 
 pari consortio praediti et honoris et potestatis." 
 You see that St. Cyprian leaves no room for 
 St. Peter even as princeps apostolorum, except 
 in the sense of being the first commissioned. 
 From this equal and united apostolate the 
 equal and united episcopate descends. Every 
 bishop is the successor of St. Peter ; his throne 
 is the Cathedra Petri. So St. Cyprian could 
 say, in speaking of the internal affairs of his
 
 THS ORGANIC ELEMENT 53 
 
 own Church of Carthage, " Deus unus est, 
 et Christus unus, et una ecclesia, et cathedra 
 una super Petrum Domini uoce fundata." l 
 
 The catholicity of a bishop is therefore 
 determined by his adhesion to the whole body 
 of the episcopate. From this conception 
 there issues a working Catholicism. A bishop's 
 proper place is settled by the consentient voice 
 of other bishops ; they plant him, and they 
 can remove him. If he separate himself from 
 the rest, or if they cut him off, he is no true 
 bishop. For practical purposes the bishops 
 must act in groups, and so the provincial 
 system, and ultimately the patriarchal, will 
 follow from the Cyprian ic principle of equality. 
 In the case of the patriarchates, however, this 
 will be complicated by the older conception 
 of the dignity of apostolic sees. In the last 
 resort, the episcopate of the whole world must 
 in some way be consulted. That should end 
 all disputes. 
 
 So St. Augustine answered all the evasions 
 of the Donatists. They were the most exas- 
 perating of disputants, and their faults affected 
 their opponents ; St. Augustine himself never 
 appears to so little advantage as when engaged 
 1 Ep. 43. 5. See Appendix A, Cathedra Petri.
 
 54 CATHOLICITY 
 
 with them. The task was the more difficult 
 since at the beginning they had a good case. 
 They objected, not without grave reasons, to 
 the election of Caecilian as Bishop of Carthage, 
 and put forward a rival claimant. But all the 
 bishops of the world, outside the African 
 provinces, recognized Caecilian. What more 
 was to be said ? Obstinately continuing their 
 opposition, the Donatists put themselves in 
 the wrong, and showed themselves uncatholic. 
 They went to absurd lengths, asserting that all 
 who favoured Caecilian were partakers of his 
 fault, and so they alone, the Donatists of 
 Africa, remained faithful, and formed the 
 entire Catholic Church. This was to give 
 themselves away utterly, and St. Augustine 
 told them with unwearied iteration that by 
 separating themselves from the episcopate of 
 the whole world they were ensuring their own 
 condemnation. The whole world could, with- 
 out hesitation, condemn those who in a par- 
 ticular section of the world separated themselves 
 from the world : " Securus iudicat orbis ter- 
 rarum, bonos non esse qui se dividunt ab 
 orbe terrarum, in quacunque parte orbis ter- 
 rarum." l 
 
 1 Contra /. Parmeniani, iii. 4. See Appendix B.
 
 TH ORGANIC ELEMENT 55 
 
 That was conclusive, because there was prac- 
 tical unanimity of the rest of the episcopate 
 against the Donatists, and they themselves 
 proclaimed it. But I would have you observe 
 that such unanimity could not always be 
 secured. You must not suppose that the 
 Cyprianic principle, because it could logically 
 settle the Donatist difficulty, could therefore 
 solve all similar problems. St. Augustine could 
 not apply his securus iudicat to the long schism 
 of Meletians and Eustathians at Antioch, 
 because there was no unanimous judgement 
 of the orbis terrarum. The episcopate of the 
 world was divided on the question, which 
 therefore had to be settled by accommodation. 
 Still less could this measure be applied when 
 Leo IX of Rome, in the year 1054, broke off 
 communion with Michael Cerularius of Con- 
 stantinople, and the whole West and the whole 
 East drew apart in that schism which the 
 pleadings of eight centuries have not yet 
 healed. 
 
 What shall we say to this ? The history of 
 the Church is in great part the record of 
 attempts to find an absolute Catholicism, a 
 system perfectly expressing .Catholicity. The 
 quest is vain, because the Catholic Church
 
 56 CATHOLICITY 
 
 transcends the limits of the world to which 
 our search is confined. There can only be a 
 working system, and that will fail at certain 
 breaking points. The system of the papal 
 monarchy, whether founded in truth or in 
 falsehood, whether of divine or of human 
 appointment, can no more escape this law than 
 any other system. The election of an antipope 
 is the breaking point, for the system provides 
 no means of deciding between the two claimants. 
 The dispute must be settled either by accom- 
 modation or by lapse of time. 
 
 Where, then, is Catholicity ? I have de- 
 scribed it as the temper, in Churches and in 
 men, which seizes and holds the way of unity, 
 whatever this may be. But what if the acknow- 
 ledged way of unity be forked ? Let me illus- 
 trate the position by what happened on a 
 memorable occasion. 
 
 When the papacy was at its apogee, when 
 its authority was unquestioned in the whole 
 Western Church, then it failed most con- 
 spicuously. Christendom was distracted by 
 the rival claims of two, and finally of three 
 Popes. What happened ? The Council of 
 Constance cut the knot by compelling all three 
 claimants to stand aside, and directing the
 
 THS ORGANIC ELEMENT 57 
 
 election of a new Pope. That proceeding was 
 revolutionary. According to the current theory 
 of the Church, unquestioned by any in the 
 Council, the Pope could be judged of none. 
 It was a disputed question whether a General 
 Council were superior to him in matters of 
 faith, but in point of discipline or jurisdiction 
 he was undisputed chief. Lip-service was 
 done to this theory, but it was violated. 
 The Council set aside three claimants, one 
 of whom must have been true Pope, and 
 ordered a new election by a process that 
 was only colourably canonical. The act, I 
 say, was revolutionary. Gerson laboured in 
 vain to justify it on the accepted principles 
 of Catholicism. 
 
 But the Council was Catholic. What was 
 its catholicity ? Its catholicity consisted pre- 
 cisely in this, that it transcended the accepted 
 Catholicism of the day. The catholicity of 
 Gerson is found, not in his laboured argument 
 de auferibilitate Papae, but in the underlying 
 assumption that the government of the Church 
 must be carried on, and in the bold practical 
 step which he advised the Council to take with 
 that end in view. The leaders of the Council 
 were Catholic because they realized that the
 
 58 CATHOLICITY 
 
 Catholic Church is larger than any system 
 devised to express Catholicity. 
 
 This gives me my final conclusion. Catho- 
 licity is the temper that seizes and holds the 
 ordinary way of unity, without contempt, with- 
 out neglect, without evasion, but which can 
 also, in case of need, throw itself upon the 
 guidance of the Divine Spirit, and strike out 
 for new and untrodden ways. 
 
 You will see how this organic test of Catho- 
 licity must be applied. I cannot sufficiently 
 insist on the truth that Catholicity is not an 
 added grace, but an inherent quality of the 
 Christian religion. A Christian does not 
 become Catholic ; he was not baptized into 
 anything smaller than the organic unity of 
 the Catholic Church. But he may cease to be 
 Catholic ; he may develop flaws in his religion 
 that will deprive him of that character ; he 
 may fall into schism. But he began well. 
 " Go into your infant-school," I once heard 
 Fr. Benson say, " as into a community of 
 saints." Baptized, you were baptized into the 
 Catholic Church, and in the Catholic Church 
 you remain unless you are cut off. You are 
 not Catholic because you adhere to a particu- 
 larly organized community ; you belong to a
 
 THS ORGANIC ELEMENT 59 
 
 particularly organized community because you 
 are a Catholic Christian. You are Catholic 
 unless you are schismatic. What is true of 
 you is true of others. You must acknowledge 
 a Christian to be Catholic unless you can 
 prove him to be schismatic.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE DOGMATIC ELEMENT 
 
 / T A HE standard of communion with the 
 * Great Church, which we have been con- 
 sidering, may be called a social test of Catho- 
 licity. If the Church were a mere society, 
 this might be sufficient. An aggregation of 
 individuals may be effectively held together 
 by the loyal adhesion of individuals to the 
 aggregate. Yet even there the association will 
 usually have a basis in some common purpose, 
 and disregard of that purpose will hardly be 
 consistent with membership. I have called 
 your attention to the intimate connexion 
 between the catholicity of the Church and 
 a true, transcendent monotheism ; men, or 
 groups of men, could not retain the quality 
 of Catholicity if they departed from that mono- 
 theism in the direction either of polytheism 
 or of immanental pantheism. But there is 
 much more than this to be said about the 
 Christian Church. The Church springs from 
 60
 
 THS DOGMATIC eLSMSNT 61 
 
 the Incarnate Word, as an articulated body 
 from a nucleated cell. And the essence of 
 the Incarnation is the fact that the one trans- 
 cendent, incomprehensible God is revealed 
 to men in Jesus Christ. The revelation is 
 incomplete. There are vast immeasurable 
 reticences. God is revealed only as working 
 for our salvation. And He is revealed in 
 a mystery, by symbols and symbolic actions, 
 the full meaning of which is slowly and with 
 difficulty apprehended. What we see, we see 
 dimly as in a mirror. Yet, even so, it is of 
 paramount importance. The function of the 
 Church is to keep this revealed truth. 
 
 The revelation of Jesus Christ, as designed 
 for this present world and for our present 
 life, is so far complete that we have no right 
 to expect any addition. It is sufficient for 
 its purpose. But complete apprehension of 
 it is another matter ; the purpose must be 
 achieved by labour. The way of salvation is 
 revealed as an entering into eternal life by 
 the knowledge of God, and that knowledge 
 is seldom or never attained by a flash of 
 intuition. The great mystics go far by such 
 means, especially when to their mysticism 
 is added sanctity, but their knowledge is
 
 62 CATHOLICITY 
 
 individual, terminating with themselves ; what 
 St. Paul saw and heard in ecstasy could not 
 be told to others in words which they might 
 understand. Salvation is not for mystics alone, 
 as the Neo-Platonists thought ; it is for the 
 common run of men. The knowledge of God, 
 which is their eternal life, must therefore be 
 communicated to them slowly, with much 
 patience, with infinite pains and striving. 
 How shall this be done ? 
 
 The Christian revelation is in Jesus Christ 
 Himself. It is not contained in a scheme of 
 words, clear-cut and precise. It is not a code 
 of morals or a metaphysic. It is in Jesus 
 Christ Himself, in His life among men, 
 in His words and actions, in His tender- 
 ness and in His anger, in His human rela- 
 tions and in His loneliness, in His death, and 
 in His resurrection. These were enshrined in 
 the memories of those with whom He had 
 lived ; they are described for us in the frag- 
 mentary records which we call the Holy 
 Gospels. But the revelation is not, as the 
 Ritschlians think, a merely historic record, by 
 means of which, learning something of the 
 mind of God, we may individually enter into 
 communion with the Divine Nature. It is
 
 THS DOQMATIC SLSMSNT 63 
 
 clear that our Lord, when departing out of 
 this world to the Father, left behind Him a 
 society, which was more than a mere band 
 of disciples ; it had more than a memory of 
 Him, for it had a corporate life drawn from 
 His own. In His followers, both individually 
 and collectively, He had planted certain fruit- 
 ful ideas, with a power of development. To 
 what extent He had instructed them in the 
 details of what they were to do the things 
 pertaining to the kingdom of God cannot 
 be ascertained ; perhaps very little. But they 
 had an immense equipment. You do not 
 diminish the importance of their memories 
 by insisting on their spiritual endowments. 
 The memories were the matter on which the 
 Spirit was to work : He was to bring to 
 their remembrance all that they had seen and 
 heard in their intercourse with Jesus. I shall 
 not detain you with the special revelation 
 given to St. Paul, for it was not something 
 additional ; he himself, even when asserting 
 its separateness, identified it with that which 
 the Twelve had received, and did not disdain 
 conference with them ; for all the indepen- 
 dence of his call, he was admitted, you will 
 remember, by baptism into their fellowship.
 
 64 CATHOLICITY 
 
 I think it is not too much to suggest that he 
 wisely verified his subjective revelation by com- 
 paring it with their more objective memories. 
 They added nothing, he says, ovSev Trpo<rav- 
 Oevro, but on the contrary, acknowledged that 
 his gospel was theirs. 1 
 
 The Apostles, then, had a Gospel, a message 
 of good, which they were to communicate to 
 mankind as a revelation of God ; and it was 
 to be communicated, not merely as a verbal 
 pronouncement, Kvptjyfjia, but much more by 
 the influence of a life lived in community. 
 In wonderfully picturesque language that 
 Epistle to the Ephesians, which is like a 
 triumphal song on the unification of the 
 Church, attributes to this completed unity the 
 development of the knowledge of God in 
 the individual man. There is one Body and 
 one Spirit, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, 
 one God and Father of all ; the gift of grace 
 is several to each man, producing various 
 effects ; but where it seems most individual, 
 dividing to diverse men diverse functions, it 
 is still directed to the end of unity ; if it is 
 for the perfecting of the saints, it is also for 
 the building up of the Body of Christ " till 
 1 Gal. ii. 6.
 
 TH DOGMATIC SLSMSNT 65 
 
 we all attain unto the unity of the Faith and 
 of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto 
 a complete man, unto the measure of the 
 stature of the fullness of Christ." Here are 
 two things, an original gift and a growing 
 appropriation of it. The gift is to individuals 
 as members of a community, and the growth 
 is by the interaction of the one and the many. 
 
 There is one Faith as well as one Body. 
 There is a Catholic Faith as well as a Catholic 
 Church. The Church is one through the ages, 
 as it is one throughout the world. But to be 
 Catholic it must, as we have seen, transcend 
 the world ; its TroX/rei^ua is in heaven. So also 
 to be Catholic it must transcend the ages ; 
 if we know it in time we must conceive it 
 also in specie aeternitatis. So with the Catholic 
 Faith : to be Catholic it must be one through 
 the ages and beyond. But faith is the appro- 
 priation of the revealed truth of God ; the 
 Catholic Faith is the corporate appropriation 
 of it by the Catholic Church ; if there is a 
 growing appropriation, how can this consist 
 with the unity and catholicity of the Faith ? 
 
 There are two aspects in which revelation 
 may be regarded. It may be regarded as 
 a deposit committed to the keeping of the
 
 66 CATHOLICITY 
 
 Church. It may be regarded as a development, 
 a progressive unfolding of the truth of God. 
 The two are distinct ; they are inconsistent with 
 each other ; and yet they are not opposed, 
 for they are complementary. If either be 
 insisted on, to the exclusion of the other, or 
 if either be interpreted so as to nullify the 
 other, you have the falsehood of partial truth. 
 
 If the depositum fidei be conceived as a body 
 of formal doctrine, there can be no growth, 
 no true development, except by way of 
 addition ; and this will destroy the unity 
 of the Faith. Additions to Christian doctrine 
 may be true and may be universally accepted, 
 but they cannot be Catholic ; nothing is 
 Catholic but what is actually contained in the 
 original deposit. 
 
 An attempt has been made to escape from 
 this difficulty by the supposition of a progres- 
 sive explication of what was implicit in the 
 deposit. I shall try presently to show how 
 true that supposition is in a certain sense ; but 
 if it be applied to a deposit consisting of 
 a formal body of doctrine there is still a 
 negation of growth. The supposition has 
 taken two forms. One of them is hardly 
 worth considering. The Apostles are sup-
 
 rne DOGMATIC SLSMSNT 67 
 
 posed to have received from our Lord a 
 detailed knowledge of all Christian doctrine, 
 which was retained by the Church apparently 
 in a sort of corporate subconsciousness and 
 doled out to the faithful OIKOVO/ULIKW, by careful 
 stewards of the divine mysteries, as need arose 
 and as the Holy Spirit directed. In the other 
 form the supposition is more tolerable. It 
 is supposed that in the original deposit all 
 Christian doctrine was really contained, but 
 not set out in express terms. The deposit 
 is in this case the actual teaching of the 
 Apostles, which is partly enshrined in the 
 canonical writings of the New Testament, 
 partly stored up in the corporate memory or 
 unwritten tradition of the Church. The mean- 
 ing and full content of this teaching was in 
 some measure obscure, but can be drawn out by 
 reflection with the help of Christian experience. 
 The explication is properly theological ; hence 
 the consensus theokgorum is of capital impor- 
 tance ; what the common sense of theologians 
 draws out of the deposit is not an addition to 
 the Faith, but is to be accepted as an integ- 
 ral part of the Catholic Faith, one for all 
 time. These theological developments are not 
 inferences, probable or necessary, from the
 
 68 CATHOLICITY 
 
 contents of the deposit, for in that case they 
 would be additions ; they are parts of the 
 deposit which had been unnoticed for lack of 
 attention, but which the piety of the faithful 
 or the gainsaying of heretics has brought into 
 prominence. The Apostles, for example, did 
 really teach the Immaculate Conception of our 
 Lady, but in such obscure terms that the fact 
 was not observed for some centuries, and was 
 not finally established by the consentient witness 
 of theologians until sixty years ago. 
 
 This is New Scholasticism : not a great 
 improvement on the old. Strip it of the 
 unwritten tradition of the Church, confine 
 the deposit to what is contained in the 
 canonical Scriptures, pack into it the practice 
 and discipline as well as the faith of the 
 Church, and you have Calvinism. 
 
 Here is no growth, but a form of doctrine 
 fixed from the first. On the other hand, you 
 may have a conception of development which 
 ignores the deposit, or indeed denies it any 
 existence. You may picture the Apostles 
 flooded with light from their intercourse 
 with the Master and from the proofs of His 
 Resurrection, but blinded by the very excess 
 of illumination, groping after the truth pre-
 
 THS DOQMATIC SLSMeNT 69 
 
 sented to them, seizing it in part and 
 erroneously, seeking and attaining ever more 
 light, guided in thought and aspiration by 
 the Divine Spirit, gladly casting aside their 
 earlier guesses and cramped interpretation 
 of their message, ever advancing to new 
 truths, recipients of a progressive revelation. 
 It is a beautiful and attractive picture. From 
 this beginning you may advance by two roads. 
 The one will bring you to the conception 
 of each several man illuminated by the 
 Divine Spirit, that he may select and judge, 
 approve or reject, all things presented to 
 Him as revealed truth of God. He is the 
 spiritual man, Trvev^ariKo^ who judges all things 
 and is judged of none. That is Quakerism. 
 The other road will bring you to the stand- 
 point of those who believe intensely in the 
 corporate life of the Church, who v/ould 
 subordinate the individual and even silence 
 very strong convictions for the sake of unity, 
 who see in the present state of the Catholic 
 Church the result of an impulse originally 
 given by Jesus Christ but modified by much 
 weakness or perversity of men, who conceive 
 the life of the Church as a continuous effort 
 for the attainment of the knowledge of God,
 
 yo CATHOLICITT 
 
 and therefore demand a large freedom of 
 opinion, a courageous rejection of old thoughts, 
 a generous reception of new ideas, that the 
 whole Church together may advance from 
 achievement to achievement of unflinching 
 faith. The Catholic Faith is, then, that which 
 the Catholic Church has learnt up to the 
 present day. That is Modernism. 
 
 I have described it in the most favourable 
 terms that I can find. You might find others 
 more sinister and perhaps not less true. This 
 conception of the Catholic Faith is in the air, 
 and enters more or less into the thought 
 of a good many people. It has been called 
 Modernism. The name is rather absurd. 
 The modern man is one who is abreast with 
 his time, not one who makes the thought of 
 his own time the measure of truth. Nor, to 
 do them justice, do those infected with 
 Modernism make this mistake. They do not 
 suppose themselves to be at the end of the 
 quest. They are rather Futurists than 
 Modernists. But the name has come into 
 use, and it may serve for a time. 
 
 You will sec that these two modes of 
 thought, Quakerism and Modernism, deny or 
 nullify the deposilum fidei^ as Scholasticism and
 
 TH DOGMATIC SLSMSNT 71 
 
 Calvinism deny or nullify development. Can 
 we draw together what they separate ? 
 
 You can do this if you will remember 
 that the revelation of God is in Jesus Christ. 
 It is not what is taught about Him, or what 
 He taught ; it is Himself. The depositum fidei 
 was not a dry form of doctrine ; it was the 
 memory, tender and ardent, which the Apostles 
 had of their Lord. Of the richness and fullness 
 of its content they could not be aware ; but 
 it was there, and they knew it ; in Him dwelt 
 all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. What 
 they had heard and seen, what they had touched 
 and handled, of the Word of Life, was their 
 gospel. But the Word was also more than 
 they had heard or seen or touched or handled. 
 So much they could declare. But they could 
 do more than this. They had unconsciously 
 assimilated habits of thought, implications 
 of act, which became fruitful in word and 
 deed. " I perceive that God is no respecter 
 of persons," said St. Peter at Caesarea. He 
 had not perceived it before, but it was implied 
 in the sayings and doings of his Master. 
 The Spirit brought to his remembrance, not 
 some specific teaching on this head that is 
 too arid a conception for the occasion but
 
 72 CATHOLICITY 
 
 something, or a hundred things, in his training 
 as an Apostle which pointed to that conclusion. 
 He had in memory, stored up as depositum fidei, 
 the total impression made upon him by his 
 Lord. 
 
 In this sense it is true to say that the 
 development of the faith is nothing else 
 but the explication of what was implicit in 
 the deposit. What Jesus Christ really is 
 becomes better known. The Ritschlians are 
 right when they say that faith is an apprecia- 
 tion of values. But, once more, it is not the 
 mere interpretation of an historical record, 
 or of a portraiture. It is not achieved by the 
 study of the Gospels, but by experience of 
 the Christian life, the life which we live 
 now in the flesh by the power of the Son 
 of God. That life is the corporate life of 
 the Church ; because we are the Body of 
 Christ we have the Spirit ; he that is spiritual 
 judges all things, says St. Paul, because 
 " we have the mind of Christ." The mys- 
 teries of humanity, " the things of man," are 
 intelligible to no lower being than " the spirit 
 of man that is in him ; " so the mysteries 
 of God are intelligible only to the Spirit 
 of God ; we have received that Spirit,
 
 THE DOGMATIC SLSMSNT 73 
 
 " that we might know the things that are 
 graciously bestowed on us by God." In the 
 one Body the one Spirit searches out the 
 deep things of God, and we know the divine 
 glory in the face of Jesus Christ. 1 
 
 There is, then, an original depositum fidei. 
 It is the total impression made by the Lord 
 Jesus up to the time when He departed out 
 of this world to the Father. It was not an 
 impression made on some exceptional men, 
 held by them esoterically and transmitted 
 to others for safe keeping. It was the im- 
 pression made on a multitude, not large 
 but fairly representative. Here I would have 
 you observe the importance of the fact that 
 even among the Apostles our Lord chose 
 some very commonplace men. St. Paul was 
 a man apart, St. Peter was doubtless a man 
 of striking personality, St. John was probably 
 a wonder of intuition ; but we have no reason 
 to suppose that the rest were in any way 
 remarkable. If St. Paul had a tendency 
 to exaltation, or if he be suspected of extrava- 
 gance, it is well to remember that he had 
 to accommodate himself to these ordinary 
 persons. They all received the impression 
 
 1 I Cor. ii. 10-16 ; 2 Cor. iv. 6.
 
 74 CATHOLICITY 
 
 and stored it in the tradition of the Church. 
 They all shared the life of the Spirit which 
 made the impression intelligible. They were 
 all on the watch, dull and probably suspicious, 
 against eccentricity. And as the tradition 
 of the Church began, so it continued. How 
 often have we been told that in the fourth 
 century, while the brilliant and learned prelates 
 of the East were trying to define away 
 Arianism with endless variations of subtlety, 
 the Faith was held and saved by the untheo- 
 logical piety of common men and by the 
 uncultured bishops of the West ? Remember 
 that if the Twelve were peculiarly the 
 witnesses of the Resurrection, St. Paul laid 
 great stress on the testimony of the Five 
 Hundred. 
 
 Weigh this, and you will see how impossible 
 is the Calvinist notion that you should set 
 aside all Christian tradition except that which 
 is written in the canonical books of the New 
 Testament. How could the total impression 
 made by the Lord Jesus on the whole body of 
 the disciples be set down by the few writers of 
 those books ? If any one had attempted this, 
 he would have produced a rambling and incon- 
 sistent narrative, without vigour and without
 
 THS DOGMATIC SLSMSNT 75 
 
 conviction. None did attempt it. We have 
 only some occasional letters and some jottings 
 of personal memories, with detailed accounts 
 of the Passion. There is, in consequence, a 
 portraiture of amazing vividness and truth ; 
 a complete presentment of the incarnate Son of 
 God there is not. But, on the other hand, 
 bear in mind the wise words of the Bishop of 
 Oxford about the value of this portraiture. 
 Oral tradition is subject to peculiar dangers : 
 it is well to be able to test its developments by 
 reference to records all but contemporary. It 
 will contain much that is not there, but it must 
 not contradict what is there. Again, the Church 
 may resolve, by a self-denying ordinance, to 
 teach nothing as necessary for the soul's health 
 which cannot be justified by these records. It 
 would be false to say that the creeds of the 
 Church can be proved by deduction from 
 formal teaching contained in the canonical 
 books ; there are few things more pitiful 
 than the text-twisting to which men resort in 
 the endeavour to do this ; but it is true that 
 they are nothing more than efforts on the part 
 of the Church to declare some details of its 
 tradition regarding the Lord Who is vividly 
 portrayed in those books ; they are therefore
 
 76 CATHOLIC1TT 
 
 proved by the test of comparison with the 
 portrait. 
 
 What are these creeds in relation to Catho- 
 licity ? There is a Catholic tradition, which is 
 therefore one. There are also traditions which 
 are various, and therefore, though they may be 
 true, not Catholic. There are creeds belong- 
 ing to both sets of traditions. It seems prob- 
 able that creeds were at first anything but 
 uniform. What was their use ? We must 
 not take it for granted that the " pattern of 
 health-giving words," which Timothy received 
 from St. Paul to hold as a precious deposit, 
 belongs to this kind, though the interpretation 
 is not impossible. When we first hear of 
 indisputable creeds, they are formularies used 
 at baptism, by which the newly-enlightened 
 make formal profession of their belief the 
 testatio fidei of Tertullian. In some cases the 
 form can be pieced together from scattered 
 references, and we then find a general similarity 
 indeed, but also considerable variations. At 
 the Nicene Council Eusebius of Caesarea read, 
 for the information of the assembled fathers, 
 the form used in his own Church. It is 
 remarkable enough, and one might suspect it 
 of being imbued with some of his own rhetoric,
 
 DOQMAT1C SLSMSNT 77 
 
 had he not publicly stated that it was the very- 
 form used at his own baptism. 1 
 
 It is obvious that these baptismal creeds 
 would contain only a small part of the tradi- 
 tions of the various Churches. They con- 
 tained, in fact, just so much as was explained 
 to catechumens before their baptism. Instruc- 
 tion of exactly the same kind continued after- 
 wards, in which the mysteries of the faith were 
 more largely exposed. A magnificent example 
 is extant in the Mystagogic Catechism of 
 St. Cyril of Jerusalem ; a century earlier the 
 catechetic schools of Alexandria were famous 
 throughout the world. There was, there- 
 fore, a steadily maintained tradition, as con- 
 crete in the teaching of those admitted to 
 communion as in the preparation for baptism ; 
 but there was probably nowhere any formulary 
 definitely summing up the more advanced 
 instruction, because there was no occasion 
 after baptism for a formal profession of faith. 
 What we know as the Apostles' Creed is a 
 rather late recension of the Roman baptismal 
 creed : it would be absurd to suppose that the 
 whole doctrinal tradition of the Roman Church 
 is contained in that brief summary. 
 1 Socrates, i. 8.
 
 78 CATHOLICITY 
 
 The several Churches had, then, their several 
 doctrinal traditions enshrined in the formal 
 teaching of catechumens and candidates for the 
 sacred mysteries. Where was the Catholic 
 Faith ? In the general agreement of the 
 Churches. How could that be guaranteed r 
 By frequent interchange of communication. 
 There was at first no other way, and it is 
 remarkable that few instances of serious diver- 
 gence are recorded. There might be sharp 
 and widespread dissension, but until the end 
 of the third century you have to look for this 
 in connexion with matters rather practical than 
 doctrinal ; there is the dispute about the dating 
 of Easter, and there is the quarrel between 
 Rome and Carthage, or rather between Rome 
 on the one side and Carthage with a consider- 
 able part of the East on the other side, about 
 the baptism of heretics. Erroneous doctrine 
 was common enough. Numerous petty schisms, 
 beginning with little more than self-will or 
 cross-grainedness, opened the way to rash 
 speculation precisely because their adherents 
 had the safeguard neither of local tradition nor 
 of any common standard of teaching in the 
 Great Church. The prophetic fervour of the 
 Phrygian Montanists degenerated into un-
 
 THE TtOGMATIC SLSMSNT 79 
 
 known excesses. But these vagaries were 
 almost always confined to outsiders ; the 
 Catholicism of the Great Church did its work, 
 and the traditions of the episcopal sees were 
 remarkably constant. 
 
 The one great exception during the first 
 three centuries will be found in the case of 
 Paul of Samosata. It is important as marking 
 the first serious failure in that method of 
 reference to apostolic sees which Irenaeus and 
 Tertullian recommended. For the Bishop of 
 Antioch, the chief apostolic see of the East, 
 was himself accused of heretical innovation ; 
 other bishops of the East, instead of referring 
 to him for guidance, assembled in synod, con- 
 demned, and deposed him. The incident at 
 once depressed the value of the apostolic sees 
 and illustrated the competence of the collective 
 episcopate. The lesson was the more emphatic 
 because the president of the Synod was Fir- 
 milian of Caesarea, who had recently been 
 supporting Cyprian in his dispute with the 
 apostolic see of the West about the practice 
 of baptism. It seems to me that the im- 
 portance of this event has not been sufficiently 
 weighed. You may see its effect fifty years 
 later in the Arian troubles. In composing
 
 80 CATHOLICITY 
 
 them the authority of the apostolic sees would 
 seem to have counted for little. Indeed the 
 trouble arose from a challenge addressed to 
 the second of them in dignity and influence. 
 Arius opposed the teaching of Alexander of 
 Alexandria, precisely as the teaching of Paul 
 of Antioch had been opposed, and by some- 
 thing more than a coincidence the battle was 
 joined in both cases about the same word. 
 Paul had been condemned for an heretical use 
 of the term oyuoowno?. There is no evidence 
 that Alexander actually used this term, but it 
 was certainly familiar in the catechetic tradition 
 of his see, having been used both by his pre- 
 decessor Dionysius and by Origen. The 
 historian Socrates says that his own teaching 
 was disfigured by ambitious philosophizing ; 
 his presbyter Arius protested, and afterwards 
 stirred up against him several bishops of the 
 East. The integrity of an apostolic see was 
 in question, and once more an appeal to the 
 collective episcopate was necessary. 
 
 The result was momentous, for a new 
 standard of Catholicity was introduced. To 
 understand the method of the Nicene Council 
 we must first get a clear view of the method 
 of Arius and his supporters. It appears in
 
 THS DOGMATIC SLSMSNT 81 
 
 the first encounter at Alexandria, and it con- 
 tinues throughout the whole struggle. Arius 
 challenged the teaching of Alexander, first on 
 the ground of pure dialectic, and secondly on 
 the basis of particular texts of scripture. That 
 is to say, he set up a standard of orthodoxy, 
 theological and scriptural, other than that of 
 the current tradition of the Church. From 
 the imperfect accounts of the debates at 
 Nicaea which have come down to us, we can 
 ascertain that objection was taken to this 
 method of discussion as much as to the con- 
 clusions which it induced. Dialectic and 
 scriptural exegesis were not neglected on the 
 orthodox side, either then or afterwards ; 
 neither would be lacking where Athanasius 
 was concerned ; but the primary appeal was 
 to the traditional teaching of the various 
 Churches represented, and as a result the 
 disputed doctrine was digested into the tradi- 
 tionary form of a creed. Two things, however, 
 are to be noticed. One is, that no existing 
 baptismal creed would serve, since none 
 touched the questions newly raised. The 
 other is that appeal was made, as the subse- 
 quent controversy shows, not only to formal 
 catechetics, but even more to the traditions of
 
 82 CATHOLICITY 
 
 worship and devotion everywhere prevailing. 
 What decided the case against the Arians was 
 the constant practice coming down from the 
 days when Pliny found the Christians of 
 Bithynia worshipping Christ as God, " carmen 
 Christo quasi deo dicere." Never was lex 
 orandi more conspicuously lex crcdendi. In 
 the absence of any sufficient creed, a new 
 form was drawn up. There is no reason for 
 doubting the statement of Eusebius that his 
 own baptismal creed of Caesarea was taken 
 as the basis ; its verbal exuberance was pruned> 
 the necessary words were added, and it was 
 sufficient. 
 
 Tradition, then, prevailed. And where was 
 the novelty ? It was in the use made of this 
 new creed. It does not seem to have dis- 
 placed any baptismal creed, but it was pro- 
 posed to the bishops for signature as a test 
 of orthodoxy. And this proposition continued. 
 The example was followed ; heretics, and 
 those who would compromise with heresy, 
 put out creed after creed during the next fifty 
 years ; the Nicene party urged consistently, 
 in good and evil fortune, the acceptance of 
 the Creed of the Three-hundred-and-eighteen 
 Fathers ; the worst was over when the
 
 THE DOGMATIC ELEMENT 83 
 
 Acacians subscribed it, not without some 
 characteristic criticism, at the Antiochene 
 Synod of the year 363. 
 
 Here, I say, you have a new standard of 
 Catholicity : they are Catholic who consent to 
 a formulary of faith. If this were fixed once 
 for all time, the tradition of the Church would 
 become a dead tradition of the letter, and 
 would cease to be Catholic. It is not so fixed. 
 You must not think of one creed, or three 
 creeds, as declaring the whole counsel of God 
 for all time. All through the ages you will 
 find the work of the Nicene Council being 
 renewed ; heretical innovations will be met by 
 a fresh formulation of the traditionary teaching 
 of the Church, and each new formulary may 
 become a test of Catholicity. Some will be 
 found erroneous and cast aside ; some will be 
 of merely temporary use ; some will hare a 
 mere local interest, as meeting a local heresy ; 
 some will survive their usefulness, like the 
 English Thirty-nine Articles ; but some will 
 remain a possession for all time. We are not 
 tied to words ; the same term, as in the case of 
 oyuoowrto?, may be condemned in one sense and 
 afterwards approved in another sense. Still 
 less are additions barred ; the anger of the
 
 84 CATHOLICirr 
 
 Easterns against the enrichment of the filioque 
 is not in the temper of Catholicity ; it might, 
 perhaps, be right to abandon the added words 
 if that were the one thing needed for the 
 unifying of the Church, but the addition must 
 not be condemned as false. That which is 
 permanent in all such articles of faith is the 
 standard of Catholicity. It is not to be distin- 
 guished by any cut-and-dried rules. Catho- 
 licity is too large for such methods. It has to 
 be ascertained with labour and with patience. 
 The Catholicity of the simple man lies in the 
 acceptance, not necessarily uncritical but patient 
 and humble, of what is proposed by authority. 
 By authority : that is the point. For a 
 dogma is a law : there is no escape from that. 
 The word was used in the Greek schools of 
 philosophy for that kind of settled conviction, 
 allowed as starting-point, without which pro- 
 gress of thought is impossible. But in the 
 Church it stands for more than this ; a dogma 
 is not merely what Christians in general agree 
 to accept as true, for the word is here used in 
 its other sense of a decree ; it is decreed by 
 authority that none shall rank as an orthodox 
 member of the Church who does not accept 
 this or that doctrine. M. Le Roy gives an
 
 THE DOGMATIC ELEMENT 85 
 
 incomplete account of it when he makes it 
 mean only that I shall comport myself as if 
 the doctrine were true. Something more is 
 required of me. It is idle to object that belief 
 cannot be commanded ; I am either convinced 
 or not convinced, and no command can alter 
 the fact. That is self-evident. But the social 
 authority of the Church can decree that if I am 
 not convinced, or at least if I deny, I lose the 
 title of Catholic. That is to undertake a tre- 
 mendous responsibility ; but that, and nothing 
 less, is the meaning of a dogmatic definition. 
 
 The Commonitorium of St. Vincent of Lerinum 
 was written, in or about the year 434, when 
 this new mode of Catholicity was well estab- 
 lished, and it remains as good an explanation 
 of it as can be found. But do not stop at the 
 brief canon of Catholicity with which he begins : 
 " Ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, 
 quod ab omnibus creditum est." It is easy to 
 misunderstand this if you do not read what 
 follows. Nothing could be further from the 
 thought of the author than a static, unchanging 
 standard of orthodoxy. It distinguishes the 
 deposit of faith and the development, profectus, 
 of religion. The deposit is what has been 
 entrusted to you, not discovered by you, what
 
 86 CATHOLICITY 
 
 you have received, not thought out for your- 
 self : " Id quod tibi creditum est, non quod 
 a te inuentum, quod tibi creditum est, non 
 quod excogitasti ; rem, non ingenii, sed doc- 
 trinae ; non usurpations priuatae, sed publicae 
 traditionis ; rem ad te perductam, non a te 
 prolatam ; in qua non auctor debes esse, sed 
 custos ; non institutor, sed sectator ; non 
 ducens, sed sequens." It is more than the 
 original revelation ; it is that revelation as it 
 has reached you, and you are to hand it on 
 with such polish and illustration as you can 
 achieve ; but it must be the same that you 
 received : " Eadem tamen quae didicisti doce ; 
 ut, cum dicas noue, non dicas noua." 
 
 There is, therefore, profectus, a development 
 of the deposit. In describing this the author 
 uses with imperfect physiological knowledge 
 the analogy of animal growth. He looks only 
 to the change from youth to age, insisting on 
 the numerical identity of members throughout, 
 and knowing nothing of growth from the single 
 cell. Yet he may glance at something like this 
 when he presses the point, " Ut nihil nouum 
 postea proferatur in senibus, quod non in 
 pueris ante latitauerit." It is true that every 
 feature of adult manhood was potentially con-
 
 THE DOGMATIC ELEMENT 87 
 
 tained in the olpum ; and, when you apply the 
 analogy, it is true that every dogma of the 
 Catholic Faith is potentially contained in the 
 impression made on the disciples by Jesus 
 Christ. Otherwise it is not Catholic. But the 
 development is a real growth. The author of 
 the Commonitorium states exactly the nature of 
 the passage from the Catholicity of oral tradi- 
 tion to the Catholicity of formularies. What 
 the Church did in the definitions made neces- 
 sary by heretical innovations was just this : 
 " Ut quod prius a maioribus sola traditione 
 susceperat, hoc deinde etiam per scripturae 
 chirographum consignaret." But how should 
 the new definition, the written rule of faith, 
 the -^eipojpa^ov of the Church, be devised ? 
 He answers by reference to the procedure of 
 the Ephesine Council which had lately con- 
 demned Nestorius. There is much of sinister 
 import in the history of that Council, but what 
 he lays stress on is the method professedly 
 followed, the irreproachable cover under which 
 haste and personal animosity were veiled. The 
 Council, he says, gathered up the threads of 
 continuous tradition from various parts of the 
 Church, calling in evidence three Bishops of 
 Alexandria, three of the great Cappadocians,
 
 88 CATHOLICITY 
 
 two Bishops of Rome, one of Carthage, and 
 one of Milan. 1 These were accepted as repre- 
 sentative men, and their tradition was con- 
 firmed. He applauds the modesty of the 
 assembled fathers, many of them learned theo- 
 logians, " quibus ipsa in unum congregatio 
 audendi ab se aliquid et statuendi addere 
 uideretur fiduciam," who nevertheless resolved 
 to claim no such power, but only to pass on to 
 posterity that which they had received. It is 
 an idealistic picture, on which Theodoret could 
 have painted some shadows, but it sets out 
 what we need. He establishes the principles 
 on which conciliar definitions of the faith 
 should be constructed. 
 
 Such definitions have been made, and thence- 
 forth heresy has a new character. It is no 
 longer mere waywardness of temper ; it is the 
 definite rejection of what has been defined. 
 And, correlatively, Catholicity also takes a new 
 colour. You may not like it. You may think 
 the earlier mode of tradition, the free move- 
 ment of thought under the guidance of the 
 Spirit, a nobler thing. You may deprecate 
 
 1 He enumerates these ten. Twelve were in fact cited 
 by the Council, Atticus of Constantinople and Amphilo- 
 chius of Iconium being added to those whom he mentions.
 
 THE DOGMATIC ELEMENT 89 
 
 fresh definitions, and the closing of open ques- 
 tions. But you cannot go back to the older 
 conditions, nor finally stop the march of de- 
 velopment. Heresies have made the mode 
 of definition a necessity. We are perforce 
 dogmatic, and Catholicity lies in the generous 
 acceptance of that necessity.
 
 IV 
 THE ELEMENT OF LARGENESS 
 
 I RETURN this week to the fundamental 
 notion of universality. We have seen that 
 Christian doctrine, to be Catholic, must be 
 continuous. That does not mean that it 
 shall be always identically the same in expres- 
 sion. A word which is at one time condemned 
 as heretical may at another time become the 
 very watchword of the Faith, and the process 
 may less easily be reversed. The shiftings of 
 the terms ova-la and vTrocrracris are sufficient 
 illustration. But Catholic doctrine must be 
 continuous in the sense that it is drawn by 
 tradition from the original revelation, which 
 is the total impression made by the Life and 
 Death and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. An entirely new thought, though it 
 be true, and though it be closely connected 
 with that revelation, will not be Catholic, 
 since it is not in the tradition ; if it be urged 
 as a part of the genuine Christian tradition 
 
 90
 
 THE ELEMENT OF LARGENESS 91 
 
 it may be condemned as heretical ; if it 
 seem to contradict the tradition it may be 
 condemned, whether urged in that fashion 
 or not, as rash or as false. So much is in- 
 volved in the conception of Catholicity as a 
 continuing unity of the Faith through time 
 and beyond. 
 
 But there is another way of marring 
 Catholicity. As there is uncatholic innova- 
 tion, so also there is an uncatholic conserva- 
 tism. Definition has almost always been taken 
 in hand reluctantly, as heresy made it necessary ; 
 it has almost always been opposed, not only 
 by the heretics against whom it is directed, 
 but also by others who affect the vaguer 
 teaching previously sufficient. Such men are 
 often the very salt of the earth, faithful, 
 devout, humble-minded, the solid underprop 
 of orthodoxy. Their opposition may be in- 
 valuable as checking the ardour of controversy, 
 which is apt to rebound from an error confuted 
 into a contradiction not less erroneous. They 
 may have to be overruled, but if such men had 
 been heard more patiently at Ephesus, in the 
 day of Cyril's triumph, there might have 
 been no call twenty years later for the com- 
 plementary judgement of Chalcedon. They
 
 92 CArHOLICITT 
 
 have to be overruled, because the challenge 
 of heresy, when raised and pressed home, 
 makes it impossible to stand in the ancient 
 ways. A point is reached where silence be- 
 comes the suppression of truth. It has to 
 be stated what is the tradition of the Church 
 and what it means. If the statement is not 
 made, a part of the tradition, challenged and 
 disputed, may be lost altogether as tradition. 
 But to hold one part of the truth to the ex- 
 clusion of another part, even without the least 
 intermingling of falsehood, is no less heretical 
 than to deny one part of the truth or to 
 corrupt it with falsehood. The Catholic Faith 
 is the tenure of the whole truth revealed in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ ; Catholicity is the 
 quality in Church or in man by which the 
 whole is held fast. 
 
 The full richness of the content of that 
 revelation can never be defined. To suppose 
 that possible is to attribute not only to the 
 human mind, but also to the language 
 employed as instrument of thought, a 
 capacity which it almost certainly does not 
 possess. Therefore, merely to hold what has 
 been defined is to fall short of Catholicity. 
 You may say more. In all definition there
 
 THE ELEMENT OF LARGENESS 93 
 
 is a risk of obscuring the richness of the 
 content. In proportion as your attention is 
 directed to what has been defined, it may be 
 drawn away from the rest. Engaged in 
 saving one part of the content, you may lose 
 sight of other parts. There is such a thing 
 as uncatholic dogmatism, into which you may 
 drop without swerving by a hair's breadth 
 from the truth. It seems to me that we are 
 just now peculiarly exposed to this danger. 
 We stand in defence of this and that defined 
 truth, this and that dogma, until our atten- 
 tion is so concentrated on these that the 
 Catholic Faith comes to mean for us a poor 
 little group of unrelated beliefs. You will 
 sometimes discover the most eccentric opinions 
 lurking in the mind of one who is a noted 
 champion of orthodoxy ; he is like the 
 specialist in history, who may have the wildest 
 notions about events and characters that do 
 not belong to his period. Even if room be 
 not made for eccentricity, such concentration 
 of attention produces a dangerous narrowness. 
 A Roman cardinal once said to me, in depre- 
 cation of the discussion of a certain subject, 
 " What is the use of talking about these 
 things ? The Pope is what matters." It
 
 94 CATHOLICITY 
 
 was quite true. There does constantly emerge 
 in times of controversy some one thing that 
 matters, one thing on which all hinges, an 
 articulus stantis aut cadentis. It may be an 
 iota : then you must stand firm by that 
 letter. But you cease to be Catholic if you 
 become unable to think of anything else. 
 
 So the process of definition is as dangerous 
 as it is necessary. It is necessary, and there- 
 fore the danger must be faced ; you must 
 try to retain your Catholicity. 
 
 Catholicity is the will to have and to hold 
 the full richness of the content of revelation 
 to have Christ, and in Christ to have all 
 truth. St. Paul avowed the Catholicity of 
 his teaching when he told the Ephesine 
 presbyters, " I have not shrunk from declar- 
 ing to you the whole counsel of God." He 
 did not mean that he had set out in human 
 speech all divine truth ; he had himself seen 
 in ecstasy things beyond the scope of language. 
 His message had limitations. The counsel 
 of God, n fiovXrj TOV 0eov, is here, as else- 
 where in St. Luke's writings, the plan of 
 salvation determined by the will of God ; 
 and so to declare this counsel is neither 
 more nor less than to preach the Gospel.
 
 THE ELEMENT OF LARGENESS 95 
 
 St. Paul averred that he had declared it in 
 its entirety. But again, he did not mean 
 that he had set out the whole, even of this, 
 in final dogmatic form. The purport of 
 his avowal is evident. He had not shrunk 
 (vTToa-reXXeiv) from declaring all ; he had 
 made no timid reserves. He was thinking 
 of the compromise with Jewish opponents, 
 which an unworthy prudence would have 
 dictated. This shrinking, this cowardly com- 
 pliance, is precisely what he laid to the 
 charge of Peter at Antioch * ; a timorous 
 conservatism would have kept something in 
 the background ; to be held implicitly, no 
 doubt, but not to be definitely proclaimed 
 as the purpose of God. The Gospel was 
 already preached, with all its implications, 
 before St. Peter went to Caesarea, but if 
 it were still preached exactly as then it would 
 be a poor maimed thing ; for the question 
 of the admission of the Gentiles was come 
 to the fore, and to shirk it was to cut the 
 Gospel short. St. Paul declared the counsel 
 of God in its entirety as required for the 
 needs of the moment. 
 
 His entirety would not be entire now, any 
 
 1 Gal. ii. 12. vTTf
 
 96 CATHOLICITY 
 
 more than was the entirety of the first years at 
 Jerusalem entire for the time when he was 
 speaking. This does not mean that we have a 
 larger faith than his. The profectus religionis of 
 St. Vincent of Lerinum is of another sort. We 
 do not believe more ; we do not even know 
 more in substance ; but discursively we do 
 know more. And the knowledge is burden- 
 some. In proportion as we know more dis- 
 cursively the content of revelation, we are the 
 more in danger of leaning on some details and 
 neglecting others. St. Paul could fearlessly 
 tell in passionate words how the Lord of Glory 
 emptied Himself. When you have a laboured 
 theology of the fynosis, you can hardly speak 
 of the subject at all without stumbling into 
 heresy. 
 
 Our Catholicity, therefore, must be broad ; 
 not really broader than that of St. Paul, of 
 St. Athanasius, of St. Leo, but consciously 
 broader because consciously embracing details 
 to which they paid no attention. It will 
 include details at which they would probably 
 have shaken their heads ; for St. Paul at 
 Ephesus had no more reached finality than 
 St. Peter at Antioch. It must be theologically 
 broad. We might prefer not to be theological
 
 THE ELEMENT OF LARGENESS 97 
 
 at all, but we cannot help ourselves, and we 
 have to see to it that our theology is Catholic. 
 You must not tie it to the first century or to 
 the fourth, or to the first six centuries, to the 
 age of the Fathers or to the Seven General 
 Councils, to the Alexandrians or to the Africans, 
 to the Schoolmen or to the Caroline divines. 
 Least of all must you give it a national hedge, 
 adjust the Word of God to the focus of 
 German lenses, or the mysteries of the faith to 
 the standard of English common sense. All 
 these are ways of narrowness. Abjure An- 
 glicanism as heartily as Romanism. Catholicity 
 is breadth. 
 
 Yet there is nothing smaller and more pitiful 
 than the affectation of breadth. It consists 
 almost invariably in marking out some limit 
 within which you allow yourself a freedom 
 which others do not claim. The result is 
 that the space within which you expatiate, 
 the space between your limit and that of other 
 people, becomes the whole world to you. It is 
 usually a very narrow space, and enlargement 
 comes to mean just the privilege of walking on 
 those flagstones. It is as though the garrison 
 of the outworks of a fortress should plume 
 themselves on the larger scope of their opera-
 
 98 CATHOLICITY 
 
 tions, as compared with those within the main 
 walls. It it wider on the map, but their actual 
 manoeuvring ground may be much smaller. 
 The analogy is very imperfect ; I will not press 
 it, for it is enough to say, without figurative 
 speech, that breadth of theological thought is 
 secured, not by freedom from definition, but 
 by fullness of content. Pure theism is not 
 fuller and richer than the orthodox doctrine of 
 the Holy Trinity ; it has a comparatively poor 
 and thin content. Everything which it con- 
 tains is in the other, and much more. Intel- 
 lectual breadth may even be attained by 
 increasing fullness of definition ; the chemistry 
 of to-day is a much bigger thing than the 
 primitive theory of the four elements. It is 
 not quite the same with faith, for the primitive 
 Christianity of the Upper Room at Pentecost 
 was as wide and all-embracing as the doctrine 
 of the Angel of the Schools ; but when once 
 definition has made progress you achieve 
 breadth of thought by articulate synthesis of 
 propositions, and not by a general merger. 
 Enlargement is the filling-up of the sight of the 
 eyes, not an extension of the wanderings of 
 desire. Some schemes for uniting Christians 
 on an undogmatic basis are like an invitation
 
 THE ELEMENT OF L^RQENESS 99 
 
 to congregate on the point of a needle. Angel 
 hosts may balance themselves there, but hardly 
 a great company of men. 
 
 You may think that I am using modern 
 language and purely modern conceptions. I 
 should have no objection to this, but in point 
 of fact I am doing no such thing. An illustra- 
 tion from the fourth century will show it. I 
 shall not go to the Alexandrians, whose ten- 
 dency to a kind of syncretism might be suspect. 
 1 will call in witness St. Cyril of Jerusalem, 
 whose sympathies were with the literal school 
 of Antioch, and with the stiff conservatism that 
 inspired much of the opposition to the Nicene 
 definition. He is instructing the newly - 
 baptized on the style of the Church. It is 
 called Catholic, he says, in the first place 
 because of its extension throughout the world ; 
 but he then adds three other explanations of 
 the term. I shall have occasion to cite them 
 all, but the first alone will serve my immediate 
 purpose. The Church is called Catholic, he 
 says, because it teaches generally and unfailingly 
 all the defined doctrines which ought to be 
 brought to men's knowledge, about things 
 visible and invisible, in heaven and in earth : 
 Aia TO td(TKiv KaOoXiKw? KOI aveAAiTTo)? aVai/rot
 
 ioo CATHOLICITT 
 
 TO. ei? yvuxTiv a.v6pu>Tru>v e\0etv 6<pei\ovTa 
 Trept re opctTutv Kaii aopaTwv trpayiJ.a.T(av, eirovpaviuiv 
 re KOI eiriye'uav. 1 Whether you can safely throw 
 this idea back to become historically a part of 
 the original content of the term as applied to 
 the Christian Church may well be doubted ; I 
 am concerned only to show that it was already 
 current in the fourth century as part of the 
 meaning which the word then expressed. I 
 shall have spent my labour in vain if I have 
 not convinced you that Cyril was right in 
 making this a part of the logical content of 
 Catholicity. The Catholic Faith is not only 
 that which is taught by the whole Church 
 throughout the world ; it is that system of 
 doctrine which sets out as fully as possible, and 
 as definitely as the needs of the time require, 
 the whole meaning of the Christian revelation. 
 The twofold explanation is important ; for, if 
 geographical extension were alone in view, the 
 Catholic Faith would be just that which is in 
 fact taught by continuous tradition in every 
 part of the Christian Church alike. Even this 
 would be an imposing body of doctrine, but 
 more is required. You might very well find 
 in one part of the Church a complete neglect 
 1 Catech. xviii. 33.
 
 THS ELSMSNT OF LARGNSS 101 
 
 or forgetfulness of some definite teaching which 
 the experience of another part of the Church 
 proves to be necessary for guarding the full 
 content of revelation. To exclude that doctrine, 
 or to deny its necessity because the necessity 
 has not been universally experienced, would be 
 an uncatholic judgement. To do so at the 
 cost of a breach in the practical unity of the 
 Church would be an heretical judgement. Two 
 things are equally uncatholic to press as 
 Catholic a definite doctrine which is not veri- 
 fied by continuous tradition as part of the 
 Christian revelation, and to reject a doctrine 
 that is so verified because definition has not 
 universally been found necessary. 
 
 This seems to require illustration by ex- 
 ample. I will try to construct one which 
 shall be as little controversial as possible. 
 The Latin Churches of the fourth century 
 might with some reason have pleaded that 
 they had no need of the Nicene definition ; 
 the questions in dispute were due to the 
 subtleties of Greek thought and of the Greek 
 language, and did not concern them ; if they 
 had on this ground rejected the definition, 
 they would have acted in a most uncatholic 
 manner, and would indeed have imperilled the
 
 102 CATHOLICITY 
 
 Faith. But you may object to the history of 
 things that did not happen, and demand an 
 example from real life. I would then refer 
 you reluctantly to the rejection of the dog- 
 matic decree of Chalcedon by the Armenians. 
 They pleaded with reason, say some good 
 authorities that in their language the heresy 
 of Eutyches had no meaning, and the defini- 
 tion with which it was countered could not 
 be intelligibly expressed. So far they may 
 have been right ; they put themselves in the 
 wrong when they rejected the definition which 
 was necessary both for Greeks and for Latins, 
 emphasizing their rejection by a breach of 
 communion, and by the symbolism of litur- 
 gical peculiarities. I do not see how they 
 can escape the charge of heresy. Even their 
 Greek neighbours, I believe, accuse them of 
 no positive error, and with some reserves 
 admit them to communion ; but there is such 
 a thing as negative heresy, the refusal of a 
 definite doctrine which has been found neces- 
 sary for safeguarding the full content of the 
 Christian revelation. 
 
 I have chosen these remote examples ; you 
 may possibly find something of the same 
 kind nearer home.
 
 ELMNr OF LARGENESS 103 
 
 Catholicity, then, is the temper that avoids 
 narrowness in the field of doctrine, the narrow- 
 ness that comes of a timid conservatism, of 
 concentration upon certain dogmatic defini- 
 tions, of a restricted outlook, or of studied 
 vagueness. But it is not only in the field of 
 doctrine that Catholicity is to be found. Life 
 is much more than thought, and the Christian 
 life is much more than formulated belief. 
 Even in the field of doctrine we have seen 
 that the loss of Catholicity sometimes becomes 
 apparent only when thought, or the refusal 
 to think, begets public action. It is in public 
 action, the life of the Christian community, 
 that the Catholic temper is most important 
 and most manifest. 
 
 I return to St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The 
 Church is called Catholic, he says, because 
 it brings into holy obedience every class of 
 men, rulers and ruled, learned and simple. 
 That will not help me much, except to the 
 obvious remark that a " Labour Church " will 
 have some difficulty in proving itself Catholic, 
 and that one which frowns on culture, or 
 contentedly fails to be the Church of the 
 poor, has a very imperfect Catholicity. 
 
 Let us pass on. The Church is called
 
 io 4 CATHOLICITY 
 
 Catholic, he continues, because it ministers 
 an universal remedy for every kind of sin, 
 of soul or of body, and because it has in 
 possession every kind of virtue that can be 
 named, in act and word and spiritual gift : 
 Kcu Sia TO icaOoXiKc!)? idTpeveiv /u.ev KOI Oepcnreveiv 
 dirav TO TCOV a/u.apTi<av etSos, TWV Sia ^vyy? KCU 
 o-cojuaro? e7rtreXoi//xej/a)j/, KKTrjcr6ai Se ev ai/Tfl TraVai/ 
 iSeav ovoju.aFo[Ji.evr)<i apeTtj?, ev epyot? re /cat Xo'yot? 
 KCU Trvev/maTiKois Travrolots ^aplcrfj.acrt. Here is 
 a conception of Catholicity which has but to 
 be stated, and you see at once how true it 
 must needs be. This revelation of God in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ was designed for the 
 destruction of the works of the devil, and 
 for the salvation of all human souls. The 
 Church which is the steward of the mysteries 
 of that revelation cannot do its service if any 
 kind of sin lies beyond the province of its 
 healing ministry. The salvation of man- 
 kind means the sanctification of all human 
 affections, all human efforts, all human 
 powers and virtues ; not only the peculiar 
 virtues of the elect, but the glory and 
 honour of the nations also are to adorn the 
 City of God. 
 
 Yet in the history of Christianity you will
 
 THS ELSMSNr OF L4RGNSS 105 
 
 find much that conflicts with this concep- 
 tion of Catholicity ; much that breaks out 
 into open heresy and schism, much also 
 that manages to keep within the borders of 
 Catholicism. Here let me put in a word 
 of caution. You will not unfrequently find 
 Catholics doing very uncatholic things ; you 
 are not therefore to deny the name of Catholic 
 either to them or to the Church which more 
 or less willingly tolerates them. You will 
 find many in the Church doing unholy things, 
 but they are not the less saints in the making, 
 and the Church is not the less holy. Holi- 
 ness and Catholicity are on the same footing, 
 both as necessary qualities of the Church, 
 and as qualities which are very imperfectly 
 in evidence. The Church is One, Holy, 
 Catholic, Apostolic. Why should you expect 
 any one of these qualities to be more com- 
 pletely or more inevitably brought to fruition 
 than the rest ? In a sense all are alike in- 
 evitable, indestructible. The Church is one, 
 for there is none other ; that one Church is 
 sanctified by the indwelling Spirit ; it is in- 
 destructibly apostolic by origin and by tra- 
 dition ; it is of necessity Catholic in more 
 than one of the senses which we have been
 
 considering ; but the flower and fruit of all 
 four qualities will be achieved only by those 
 efforts of faulty fellow-workers with God, in 
 which there is always mingled some defect 
 of human weakness, and often some strength 
 of human perversity. 
 
 I put in this caution here because I am 
 going to speak of a kind of Catholicity which 
 is at times sadly to seek in Catholicism. 
 Hitherto we have been considering matters 
 in respect of which uncatholic thought or 
 conduct leads pretty straight to heresy or 
 schism. It is in part the same with what 
 we now have before us, but not entirely. In 
 the writings of Hermas you will find the 
 earliest surviving mention of a doctrine about 
 sin which made great trouble in the Church for 
 some centuries. His advocacy established an 
 opinion, already current, that for grave sins 
 committed after baptism there could be no 
 absolution. 1 Adultery or fornication, idola- 
 try and murder, were thus irremediable. 
 The structure of a sentence made it possible, 
 though not without violence to the context, 
 to interpret his " one penitence," which was 
 baptism, of one opportunity after baptism ; 
 1 fMandat. iv. 3-7.
 
 THE ELEMENT OF LARGENESS 107 
 
 and this illogical compromise was much 
 favoured. In either form such rigour was 
 a denial of the Catholicity of the means of 
 grace. When bishops of the third century 
 broke away from it, and notably Callistus 
 and Cornelius of Rome, they were violently 
 opposed. The first antipopes were then set 
 up. The schism of Hippolytus was short- 
 lived, but that of Novatian lasted for more than 
 four centuries. It spread from Rome to the 
 East, for everywhere the narrower and more 
 severe discipline found advocates who quarrelled 
 with the laxity of the Great Church. They 
 called themselves the Clean, KaOapol, and seem 
 to have been generally unlike many of their 
 kind men of genuine austerity, and otherwise 
 strictly orthodox. Others, however, were yet 
 more austere in profession. The Montanists 
 pretended to derive from the spiritual gifts 
 that were peculiar to them a practical holiness 
 distinguishing them from the mere " psychic 
 men " who were tolerated in the Great Church. 
 Donatism sprang from the same root, for it 
 began with a denial of the power of the Church 
 to grant a plenary absolution for the sin of 
 weak compliance in time of persecution, and 
 its principle was rigid exclusion from the
 
 io8 CATHOLICITY 
 
 Church of all who fell short of an arbitrary 
 standard of excellence. 1 
 
 These three great schisms did but exaggerate 
 the hardness already established in the Church. 
 If they have had no successors, it is because 
 the Church itself shook off the burden of 
 unevangelic sternness. The discipline which 
 is inaccurately called primitive passed away ; 
 those who sigh for its revival probably know 
 little of its character. It made a hard and fast 
 distinction, and a highly artificial distinction, 
 between sins for which penance might be done 
 and sins for which there could be no absolution. 
 The Catholicity of grace was ultimately asserted, 
 never more, let us hope, to be questioned. It 
 must be confessed, however, that the laxity 
 of some Jesuit casuists caused an unlovely 
 reaction in Jansenism. 
 
 The doctrine of penance has ethical as well 
 as sacramental connexions. A measure of the 
 guilt of sin is also a standard of virtue. To 
 say that some sins might be remitted to the 
 penitent, while others might not, was to set 
 up a particular standard of virtue in the Church. 
 There you have all the evils of a partial 
 morality. This trouble, in one form or 
 1 See Appendix B.
 
 THE ELEMENT OF LARGENESS 109 
 
 another, is of constant recurrence. Sometimes 
 it takes the form of a notion that certain sins 
 will not count against a Christian ; sins of the 
 flesh, for example, are nothing to one who is 
 in the Spirit. You will find that only in 
 fanatical sects, or lurking perhaps among 
 Catholic Christians who have been infected 
 by their neighbours. At other times it appears 
 in the more subtle form of the assumption 
 of certain peculiar Christian virtues, the prac- 
 tice of which makes the Christian character, 
 though other virtues be neglected. This is 
 one of the familiar features of Pharisaism, as 
 condemned in the Gospel. It is seldom far 
 away in the Christian Church. 
 
 Is there a specific Christian morality ? If 
 there is, then Christianity is so far not Catholic. 
 But Christianity is Catholic. As there is no 
 part of the earth to which it lays no claim, 
 no class of men for whom it has no call, 
 so also there is no kind of human virtue 
 which it does not take in charge. But 
 Catholic Christianity transcends the limits of 
 the world and of human life. So also it 
 transcends morality ; transcending morality, it 
 has knowledge and experience of the heroic 
 development of virtue which is supernatural
 
 no CATHOLICITY 
 
 sanctity. But in transcending the world it 
 does not pass out of the world, and in achieving 
 sanctity it does not forget the common virtues 
 of human life. In this region it has no new 
 revelation. The moral teaching of the Gospel 
 does not differ in kind from that of the world. 
 It is only steadier and more intense. You 
 will find some people disturbed and shocked 
 by the discovery that the noblest sayings 
 of the Gospel in regard to conduct can 
 be matched in the teaching of Indian or 
 Chinese sages ; that the Golden Rule was 
 enunciated with but little difference by 
 Confucius or Lao-Tse. They will patheti- 
 cally insist on minute verbal differences, as 
 if the value of the Gospel depended on the 
 uniqueness of its moral precepts. But that 
 is all wrong. In the preaching of the Gospel 
 there is a direct and confident appeal to the 
 moral convictions of those who are addressed. 
 Because such convictions exist everywhere in 
 the world of men, and because their founda- 
 tions are everywhere the same, the appeal 
 of the Gospel can go straight to all hearts. 
 There are mistaken values to be corrected 
 everywhere, as there were in the Temple of 
 Jerusalem and in the schools of the Pharisees ;
 
 THE ELEMENT OF LARGENESS 1 1 1 
 
 there are sectarian moralities to be set aside ; 
 but the correction is made by reference to 
 a larger rule which the sectarian mind will 
 acknowledge. When our Lord told the Phari- 
 sees, " These things ought ye to have done, 
 and not to leave the other undone," He was 
 referring to a duty which they would not 
 dream of disputing. When I was the guest 
 of the Oxford Mission at Calcutta some years 
 ago, I observed how constantly the worst 
 perversions of Hindu morality could be cor- 
 rected by reference to rules of conduct which 
 Hindus themselves steadily and even passion- 
 ately affirm. The ethical teaching of the 
 Gospel rests on the broad base of natural 
 morality. 
 
 But transcends it. The transcendence ap- 
 pears in two forms. First, there is the trans- 
 cendent motive of the love of God. But 
 this is not purely transcendent, for what 
 moves us is the love of God revealed in 
 the human life and death of the Incarnate 
 Word. Secondly, there is the transcendent 
 teaching of the counsels of perfection ; we are 
 invited to a perfection of character surpassing 
 the limits of natural morality at its best. But 
 neither is this purely transcendent. The call
 
 of the saint is not to live a life apart, in 
 a spiritual nirvana ; the supernatural virtues 
 of sanctity operate in the ordinary circumstances 
 of human life. The Catholicity of the Chris- 
 tian religion links together the now and the 
 hereafter, the here and the beyond. 
 
 The distinction between precepts of morality 
 and counsels of perfection is important from 
 our present point of view. Catholic Chris- 
 tianity must take count of both in due pro- 
 portion. The sense of proportion may be 
 lost in two ways. You may forget the con- 
 tinuity of human life in which the saints 
 pass on from natural to supernatural virtue ; 
 you will then make a chasm between the two, 
 and treat natural perfection as the final goal 
 of ordinary Christians. That is the danger 
 of theories of supererogation. On the other 
 hand, you may put the natural virtues outside 
 the pale of proper Christianity. Professor 
 Burkitt claims to have found evidence that 
 the Church of Edessa at one time restricted 
 baptism to those who would live in virginity 
 or widowhood. That restriction would be 
 just as uncatholic as the claim of the Montan- 
 ists that their " pneumatic men " were alone 
 true Christians.
 
 THE ELEMENT OF LARGENESS 113 
 
 In modern times the denial of the distinction 
 between precepts of morality and counsels of 
 perfection has been characteristic of Puritanism. 
 What is the peculiarity of Puritanism ? Not 
 its austerity of life and manners, real or 
 assumed. Equal austerity, real or assumed, 
 has always been found in many who have 
 no link with Puritanism. The peculiarity of 
 Puritanism is the contention, derived from 
 Calvin, that a precise code of manners proper 
 to a Christian can be gathered from the re- 
 vealed Word of God. The system is all of 
 a piece. Christian doctrine is precisely set out 
 in the canonical books of the New Testament, 
 and must be reinforced from no other source ; 
 Christian worship and the Christian sacraments 
 are ordered with a like precision ; and finally 
 there is a Christian morality of the same 
 arbitrary type. The strength of Puritanism, 
 in the days when it was strong, lay in this 
 affirmation of an absolute law regulating every 
 detail of human life. Its weakness lay in the 
 artificiality of the result. The refusal to dis- 
 tinguish between natural morality and super- 
 natural sanctity, between precepts of conduct 
 and counsels of perfection, made it necessary 
 to reduce the harder sayings of the Gospel
 
 n 4 CATHOLICITY 
 
 into practicable obligations or indeed to 
 ignore them altogether. George Fox de- 
 nounced the Puritans of -his day as false to 
 their principle ; they did not live according 
 to the teaching of the Gospel. Their only 
 answer was the whipping -post and the 
 stocks. 
 
 Puritanism, therefore, was a sectarian mo- 
 rality. It has long since broken down at all 
 points, but its ruins are among us. One does 
 not care to drag out a silly phrase once uttered 
 in a moment of excitement, but if there be such 
 a thing as a Nonconformist Conscience, it is 
 certainly a thing to beware of. Only you must 
 be equally on guard against any other kind 
 of sectarian conscience. Pharisaism is a deadly 
 snare. Suspect yourself of it when you find 
 yourself calling a man a " good Churchman " 
 without regard to his conduct of business, 
 when you extoll his charities but veil the 
 sources of his income, when you absolve a 
 sinner who confesses delinquencies against the 
 laws of fasting but is untroubled in conscience 
 about a neglected family. The large temper of 
 Catholicity should save you from this pettiness. 
 That, and the charity which ensues. 
 
 I have said that the Catholic Church is, and
 
 THE ELEMENT OF LARGENESS 115 
 
 must be, intolerant. It can tolerate no rival^ 
 neither Caesar nor, sect. Just . because it is 
 Catholic it must fill the field. Neither can it 
 tolerate any pantheon. It has always raised 
 the cry which Islam lifts to a sterile elevation, 
 " There is no god but God." And yet how 
 tolerant is the temper of Catholicity ! In- 
 tolerant of evil, of that which would mar its 
 own perfect unity, it extends the most 
 generous welcome to all that is imperfectly 
 good. The sectarian temper is harsh, re- 
 pellent, exclusive. Its intolerance is a mockery 
 of the intolerance of the Catholic Church, for 
 it affects uniqueness and unity by driving out 
 all who will not conform to an arbitrary 
 standard. Catholics often do uncatholic things, 
 and the exercise of the power of excommuni- 
 cation by the most unimpeachably Catholic 
 authority may be an exhibition of this secta- 
 rian temper. Indeed corruptio optimi pessima, 
 and there is no sectarianism, no Pharisaism, 
 worse than that of Catholics when they become 
 sectarian. Though they be entrenched in 
 Catholicism, their Catholicity is lost. That 
 temper, while intact, embraces in the largest 
 charity every effort towards holiness, every 
 attempt to grasp the truth. In these days
 
 n6 CATHOLICITY 
 
 of disunion, more especially, it will recognize 
 as of the Church many who are apparently 
 very far from being within the Church. We 
 must still declare that extra ecclesiam nulla sa/us y 
 and that he who would be saved must before 
 all things hold fast the Catholic Faith, but we 
 must also confess that many fulfil this con- 
 dition in reality whose mode of salvation it 
 would be difficult to define in word. 
 
 The relation of largeness in faith and morals 
 to Catholicity must be taken the right way. 
 You do not become Catholic merely by being 
 unsectarian. No such mere negative has any 
 value. Rather it is by being Catholic that you 
 become unsectarian. You are a Christian, 
 and therefore you are Catholic unless your 
 Christianity is marred by the sectarian 
 temper.
 
 APPENDIX A 
 CATHEDRA PETRI 
 
 'TpHERE is at Rome a venerable relic 
 - honoured under the name of Cathedra 
 Sancti "Petti. It is a chair, dating in its present 
 form from the ninth or tenth century, but 
 constructed on a framework which is much 
 older. Its history can be traced back pretty 
 clearly to the time of St. Damasus, and more 
 obscurely, but with considerable probability, to 
 the first century. It is now enclosed in the 
 monstrous erection designed by Bernini for the 
 apse of the Vatican Basilica. In the fourth 
 century it seems to have been in the Baptistery 
 of Damasus, and there is a respectable tradi- 
 tion connecting it with the house of Pudens, 
 the earliest of the domestic churches of Rome, 
 now known by a grammatical confusion as 
 St. Pudentiana, where it is supposed to have 
 been actually used by the Apostle himself when 
 presiding in the assembly of the faithful. 1 
 
 1 On these points the two great authorities De Rossi 
 and Duchesne are at variance. See Duchesne, Origines, 
 p. 268 (Engl. tr., p. 280). 
 
 I 17
 
 n8 CATHOLICITY 
 
 A similar relic is venerated in a chapel of the 
 Ostrian catacomb on the Via Nomentana, a 
 chair hewn out of the solid rock, the use of 
 which is also attributed to the Apostle ; but 
 this belongs almost certainly -to the second 
 century, and there is no evidence of its venera- 
 tion at any early date. 
 
 Two festivals of the Cathedra Sancti Petri are 
 observed at Rome, on January i8th and Feb- 
 ruary 22nd, which it seems natural to connect 
 with these two relics. The second is now 
 known as the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter 
 at Antloch ; but this seems to be due to a mere 
 blunder, arising from the fact that in some 
 martyrologies the Antiochene martyr St. Gallus 
 was commemorated on the same day. On this 
 day, in point of fact, the relic of the Ostrian 
 cemetery is specially venerated. But the con- 
 nexion of the festivals with the relics breaks 
 down when we observe, first, that nothing 
 either in breviary or missal looks that way ; 
 and, secondly, that the feast of January i8th 
 was unknown at Rome until introduced by 
 Paul IV in the year 1558. The festival of 
 February 22nd can be traced back to the 
 year 336 ; it seems to have been unknown in 
 Africa and in the East, but made its way into
 
 CATHEDRA PE TRI 1 1 9 
 
 Gaul during the fifth century. The Churches 
 of the Galilean rite afterwards removed it 
 to an earlier day in January, apparently 
 for the purpose of keeping it out of Lent ; 
 in the sixteenth century, as I have said, 
 this observance was imported to Rome as 
 a second festival, the latest example of that 
 conflation of Roman and Gallican elements 
 which has been the cause of so much ritual 
 perplexity. 
 
 There seem, therefore, to be no grounds for 
 connecting the festivals with the relics. What, 
 then, is the meaning of Cathedra Sancti Petri as 
 here used ? Two uses of the word cathedra 
 present themselves ; it is the Seat either of the 
 teacher or of rule. The meaning may be either 
 symbolic or literal. In the Gospel the mem- 
 bers of the Sanhedrim are said to sit exJ r/9 
 Mexrt>9 KotOeSpas. 1 Tertullian speaks of the 
 cathedrae apostolorum in the various Churches 
 expressly founded by Apostles, as Corinth, 
 Philippi, Thessalonica, Ephesus, and Rome, 
 which "adhuc suis locis praesident." 2 This 
 must mean that the teaching or ruling authority 
 in such a Church is regarded as continuing in 
 some special sense the work of the founder. 
 1 St. Matt, xxiii. 2. " Df Praescr. 36.
 
 120 CATHOLICITY 
 
 The implication is that the seat of authority 
 would be called at Corinth Cathedra Pau/i, at 
 Rome probably Cathedra Petri et Pauli. In 
 the introduction to the Clementine Homilies 
 St. Peter is made to say that he entrusted to 
 Clement TIJV e/a-tiv TWV \oywv KaOeSpav as a 
 modern might say, " my pulpit " for in this 
 heretical document St. Paul is studiously 
 depressed. The phrase may indicate, however, 
 the currency of the term Cathedra Petri^ the 
 earliest known occurrence of which is found, 
 so far as I am aware, in the writings of 
 St. Cyprian. It is a familiar story that the 
 text of the fourth chapter of his treatise De 
 Catholicae Ecclesiae Unitate was for centuries in 
 a state of confusion, due to supposed interpola- 
 tions, and that discreditable means were used 
 to prevent the removal of these blemishes from 
 the principal editions. The critical labours of 
 Hartel, however, have shown that certain 
 manuscripts of the eighth and ninth century 
 contained side by side two distinct texts of the 
 passage, a blending of which caused all the 
 subsequent confusion. It is at least possible 
 that both are Cyprian's, being drawn from two 
 editions of the work issued by him. I am 
 concerned with them merely because in one
 
 CATHEDRA PETRJ 
 
 121 
 
 text the phrase Cathedra Petri occurs ; but to 
 make the matter clear I will set down both, the 
 one as given by Hartel in his definitive edition, 
 the other as reconstituted by him from the 
 above-mentioned manuscripts in his Critical 
 Preface, p. xlii. 
 
 Loquitur Dominus ad 
 Petrum : Ego tibi dico, in- 
 quit, quia tu es Petrus et super 
 istam petram aedificabo eccle- 
 fiam meam, et portae infero- 
 rum non uincent earn ; dabo 
 tibi claues regnl caelorum : et 
 quae ligaueris super terrain 
 erunt ligata et in caelis, et 
 quaecumque solueris super ter- 
 ram erunt soluta et in caelis. 
 Super unum aedificat eccle- 
 siam, et quamuis apostolis 
 omnibus post resurrectionem 
 suam parem potestatem tri- 
 buat et dicat : Sicut misit 
 me pater et ego mitto uos. 
 Accipite Spiritum sanctum : si 
 cuius remiseritis peccata, remit- 
 tentur illi : si cuius tenueritis, 
 tent&untur,t&mein ut unitatem 
 manifestaret, unitatis eius- 
 dem originem ab uno in- 
 cipientem sua auctoritate 
 disposuit. Hoc erant utique 
 
 B 
 
 Loquitur Dominus ad 
 Petrum : Ego tibi dico, in- 
 quit, quia tu es Tetrus et super 
 istam petram aedificabo ecc/e- 
 siam meam, et portae infero- 
 rum non uincent earn ; dabo 
 tibi claues regni caelorum : et 
 quae ligaueris super terram 
 erunt ligata et in caelis, et 
 quaecumque solueris super 
 terram erunt soluta et in 
 caelis. Et idem post resur- 
 rectionem suam dicit : pasce 
 cues meas. Super unum 
 aedificat ecclesiam et illi 
 pascendas oues mandat suas, 
 et quamuis apostolis omni- 
 bus parem tribuat potestatem, 
 unam tamen cathedram con- 
 stituit et unitatis originem 
 atque rationem sua auctori- 
 tate disposuit. Hoc erant 
 utique et ceteri quod Petrus, 
 sed primatus Petro datur ut 
 una ecclesia et cathedra una
 
 122 
 
 CATHOLICITY 
 
 et ceteri apostoli quod fuit 
 Petrus, pari consortio prae- 
 diti et honoris et potestatis, 
 sed exordium ab unitate pro- 
 ficiscitur, ut ecclesia Christi 
 unamonstretur. Quamunam 
 ecclesiam etiam in cantico 
 canticorum Spiritus sanctus 
 ex persona Domini designat 
 et die it : una ett columba me a, 
 perfects mea, una tit mafri 
 suae, electa genetrici suae. 
 Hanc ecclesiae unitatem qui 
 non tenet tenere se fidem 
 credit ? qui ecclesiae reniti- 
 tur et resistit in ecclesia se 
 esse confidit ? quando et 
 beatus apostolus Paulus hoc 
 idem doceat et sacramentum 
 unitatis ostendat dicens : 
 unum corpus et unus spiritus, 
 una spes uocationis uestrae, unus 
 Dominus, una fides, unum bap- 
 tisma, unus Deus. 
 
 1 Here follows in the manuscripts collated by Hartel 
 the whole of the corresponding passage in text A : " Super 
 unum aedificauit ecclesiam, et quamuis . . . se esse confidit." 
 This duplication is noted by Hartel as proving that text B 
 is a forged interpolation, and he has been followed with 
 more vehemence and scorn by a sometime Archbishop 
 of Canterbury. It seems to me, on the contrary, a 
 signal proof of honesty in some librarius, who, being 
 acquainted with two recensions of the passage, thought 
 it well to put both faithfully, though clumsily, before the 
 reader. 
 
 monstretur. Et pastores 
 sunt omnes, sed grex unus 
 ostenditur, qui ab apostolis 
 omnibus unanimi consen- 
 sione pascatur. Hanc et 
 Pauli unitatem qui non 
 tenet, tenere se fidem credit ? 
 qui cathedram Petri super 
 quam fundata ecclesia est 
 deserit, in ecclesia se esse 
 confidit ? * . . . quando et 
 beatus apostolus Paulus hoc 
 idem doceat et sacra- 
 mentum unitatis ostendat 
 dicens : unum corpus et unus 
 spiritus, una spes uocationis 
 uestrae, unus Dominus, una 
 fides, unum baptism a, unus 
 Deus.
 
 CATHEDRA PETRI 123 
 
 Why this text B should have been attacked 
 as a deliberate falsification, made in the interest 
 of the Roman See, I cannot understand. If 
 any one so altered the text of St. Cyprian for 
 the purpose of maintaining the cause of the 
 Papacy, he did the work very negligently. 
 There is rather more about Peter, rather less 
 about the other Apostles, and the word 
 primatus is used ; but on the other hand the 
 crucial words parem tribuat potestatem remain 
 to negative the idea that Peter received 
 any power which was not shared equally 
 with the rest. The phrase cathedra Petri 
 alone could have the intended effect, and 
 that only if it indicated the apostolic See 
 of Rome as a necessary " centre of unity ; " 
 but this would clash with the main argu- 
 ment of the treatise, left intact by the 
 supposed interpolator, which finds the sacra- 
 mentum unitatis in the episcopates unus adque 
 indiuisus. 
 
 In what sense, then, does St. Cyprian use 
 the term cathedra Petri here or elsewhere ? 
 It is found in one passage only of his undis- 
 puted writings. Complaining to Cornelius 
 of Rome about the Carthaginian malcontents, 
 who had appealed thither from his judgement
 
 i2 4 CATHOLICITY 
 
 condemning them, he describes their pro- 
 cedure thus : 
 
 Pseudoepiscopo sibi ab haereticis constituto nauigare 
 audent et ad Petri cathedram adque ad ecclcsiam 
 principalem unde unitas sacerdotalis exorta est ab 
 schismaticis et profanis litteras ferre. 1 
 
 This passage presents some obvious diffi- 
 culties. It is easy to see why the Roman 
 Church is called ecclesia principally though the 
 precise meaning of the word is in doubt. Rome 
 was indisputably the chief apostolic see of 
 the world. But thence sacerdotalis unitas exorta 
 est : how could this be ? In Cyprian's lan- 
 guage sacerdos is always equivalent to episcopus, 
 and we know exactly what he took to be the 
 source of the united episcopate. It was the 
 original mission of St. Peter. Rome had 
 nothing to do with that. But on the other 
 hand the intimate connexion of St. Peter 
 with the Roman Church was a commonplace 
 for Cyprian, and if on this account he called 
 it in some special sense cathedra Petri y he 
 might speak of it rhetorically as the fountain- 
 head of unity. Turning now to an earlier 
 letter, I find him saying that Cornelius was 
 elected Bishop of Rome, " cum Fabiani 
 
 1 E P . 59. 14.
 
 CATHEDRA PETRI 125 
 
 locus, id est, cum locus Petri et gradus 
 cathedrae sacerdotalis uacaret." r Cornelius suc- 
 ceeded Peter just as he succeeded Fabian, and he 
 succeeded him in the episcopal seat. The locus 
 Petri might naturally be called cathedra Petri. 
 It would seem, then, that cathedra Petri is a 
 synonym for the eccksia principalis of Rome. 
 
 In that case you may observe from this 
 letter that the African bishops stand to the 
 Bishop of Rome exactly as the other Apostles 
 stood to Peter, " pari consortio praediti et 
 honoris et potestatis." For Cyprian indignantly 
 resented the notion that the malcontents 
 could find a higher authority at Rome than 
 in Africa. They had been condemned in 
 Africa : " lam causa eorum cognita est, iam 
 de eis dicta sententia est." It was monstrous 
 for them to be running about over sea and 
 disturbing the harmony of the united episco- 
 pate, " nisi si paucis desperatis et perditis 
 minor uidetur esse auctoritas episcoporum 
 in Africa constitutorum." 
 
 Cyprian was evidently troubled in mind 
 
 about this desperate attempt of abandoned men 
 
 to set up an authority at Rome superior to 
 
 his own at Carthage. Cornelius appeased and 
 
 ' E P . 55. 8.
 
 126 CATHOLICITY 
 
 satisfied him, but the trouble became acute 
 when Stephen succeeded to the Roman See, 
 and the controversy about the baptism of 
 heretics broke out. Cyprian's ally in this 
 dispute, Firmilian of Caesarea, wrote with 
 fierce sarcasm of the " stultitia " of Stephen, 
 " qui sic de episcopatus sui loco gloriatur et se 
 successionem Petri tenere contendit," and "qui 
 per successionem cathedram Petri habere se 
 praedicat." 1 It is evident that Stephen claimed 
 a superior dignity, at least, on two grounds ; 
 because of the majesty of Rome, and because 
 he held an apostolic see in direct succession 
 from Peter. The claim was resented both in 
 East and West, by Firmilian and by Cyprian ; 
 the resistance of Firmilian is the more interest- 
 ing since it was he who gave the first blow to 
 the prestige of the apostolic See of Antioch also, 
 presiding in the council which deposed Paul of 
 Samosata. But these protests themselves show 
 what ideas were current, and if the letter 
 to Cornelius stood alone we should certainly 
 say that Cyprian called the Roman See cathe- 
 dra Petri because of its special apostolicity. 
 
 1 Cypr. Epp. 75. 17. The letter, as it appears among 
 those of St. Cyprian, is a literal translation from the Greek 
 original.
 
 CATHEDRA PETRI 127 
 
 But we must look further. Not only did 
 Cyprian maintain the complete equality of 
 his own See of Carthage with that of Rome, 
 but he connected this also with Peter. Writ- 
 ing to the faithful about the schismatics who 
 disturbed the interior peace of the Church 
 of Carthage during his exile, he said : 
 
 Deus unus est et Christus unus et una ecclesia et 
 cathedra una super Petrum Domini uoce fundata. r 
 
 Here is the very thesis of the treatise De 
 Unitate. Not only is there one sole bishop 
 in Carthage, who is the necessary centre of 
 unity in that Church, but this single episcopate 
 rests upon a larger unity. We know what 
 this larger unity is ; it is the unity of the 
 whole episcopate, and this derives its unity 
 from the original mission of Peter as the one 
 first Apostle. Therefore the episcopal chair 
 of Carthage is founded on Peter. 
 
 One asks whether cathedra Petri and cathe- 
 dra super Tetrum fundata can have meant the 
 same thing in Cyprian's mouth. If now we 
 turn back to the text B of the treatise De 
 Unitate^ and suppose it to be the genuine 
 writing of Cyprian, an affirmative answer 
 
 1 Ep. 43. 5. The reading petram is of inferior 
 authority.
 
 128 CATHOL1CITT 
 
 seems to be imperatively required. He is 
 there dealing with this same trouble of schism 
 within the local Church, and he deals with 
 it throughout in the same way. The principle 
 of unity is traced from Peter through the 
 whole apostolate to the episcopate as a whole, 
 and so to the bishop of each several Church. 
 The chain is complete. At either end is an 
 individual centre of unity; there is none 
 other between. From the one Peter to the 
 one bishop the progress is through corporate 
 unity. If in the course of this argument 
 Cyprian says that he " qui cathedram Petri 
 super quam fundata ecclesia est deserit," can- 
 not be counted in the Church, it is clear that 
 cathedra Petri means the authority given to 
 Peter, which is shared pan potestate by all 
 the Apostles, by the whole episcopate, and 
 by every several bishop ; for every bishop 
 holds it, he says, in solidum. It follows that 
 cathedra Petri stands for episcopal authority, 
 just as in the Gospel cathedra Moysi stands 
 for the authority of the Sanhedrim. 
 
 Will this interpretation fit the phrase where 
 it occurs in the letter to Cornelius ? We 
 must remember the indignation with which 
 Cyprian was writing. The word audent should
 
 CATHEDRA PETRI 129 
 
 be noticed. The schismatics were doing an 
 audacious thing in going over sea to Rome. 
 Condemned by their own bishops, they were 
 seeking rehabilitation elsewhere. The mean- 
 ing may be that they were looking abroad 
 for that cathedra Petri which they despised at 
 home, and sought it in the leading apostolic 
 see. We shall then read some irony in the 
 words ; they will represent the plea put for- 
 ward by the malcontents themselves, " des- 
 peratis et perditis," the plea that the cathedra 
 Petri was somehow more in evidence at Rome 
 than elsewhere. This passage will then adjust 
 itself to the scornful words of Firmilian about 
 Stephen's use of the same phrase. It is not 
 impossible, if the text B be really from the 
 hand of Cyprian, that he wrote it thus in 
 the first instance, and afterwards withdrew 
 it precisely because of this abuse of the term 
 cathedra Petri, substituting that text A which 
 passed more generally and is found in almost 
 all the older copies of his treatise. I 
 
 It seems to me, then, probable that in the 
 
 1 There is one piece of internal evidence pointing to the 
 priority of text B. The words hanc et Pauli unitatem, etc., 
 lead naturally to the concluding sentence qttando et beattu 
 apostolui Paulus, etc., which text A brings in abruptly 
 without any preparation.
 
 1 30 
 
 mouth of St. Cyprian cathedra Petri meant 
 the authority of the episcopate. If the bishops 
 of Rome and Antioch were in a peculiar sense 
 successors of St. Peter, every individual bishop 
 was equally the representative of St. Peter in 
 his own Church, and sat in St. Peter's seat. 
 Are there any traces of the observance of the 
 festival of the Chair in this sense ? 
 
 There are traces. The festival was not 
 observed in Africa, and therefore there is no 
 authentic sermon of St. Augustine bearing on 
 it, but two were assigned to it in the older 
 editions of his works. 1 The second of these 
 is an ordinary discourse about St. Peter's 
 walking on the sea, without any reference to 
 the feast of the Chair. The other sermon 
 mentions the feast expressly, and now provides 
 the lessons of the second nocturn for February 
 22nd in the Roman Breviary. This may be 
 quoted : 
 
 Institutio solemnitatis hodiernae a senioribus nostris 
 Cathedrae nomen accepit, ideo quod primus Apostolorum 
 Petrus hodie episcopatus cathedram suscepisse referatur. 
 Recte ergo Ecclesiae natalem sedis illius colunt, quam 
 Apostolus pro Ecclesiarum salute suscepit, dicente Domino : 
 Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam 
 
 1 Serm. de Sanctis, xv and xvj. In the Benedictine edition, 
 PP- i9-9 2 -
 
 CATHEDRA PETRI 131 
 
 meam. Petrum itaque fundamentum Ecclesiae Dominus 
 nominauit ; et ideo digne fundamentum hoc Ecclesia 
 colit, supra quod ecclesiastici aedificii altitude consurgit. 
 . . . Quod natalis ergo Cathedrae hodie colitur, sacer- 
 dotale honoratur officium. Sibi hoc Ecclesiae inuicem 
 praestant, quia tanto necesse plus habet Ecclesia dignitatis, 
 quanto sacerdotale officium plus honoris. 1 
 
 The sermon goes on to lament the continuance 
 of the pagan custom of making offerings to 
 the dead on this day, which is thus identified 
 with February 22nd. A canon of the Council 
 of Tours, held in A.D. 567, condemns the 
 same practice, " in festivitate cathedrae domni 
 Petri apostoli," and with this the homily may 
 possibly have some connexion. However 
 that may be, the text shows that in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and at the date of its delivery, the 
 festival was not related to the establishment of 
 St. Peter at Rome, but to the original establish- 
 ment of the apostolate, and consequently of 
 the episcopate, in his person. It was held in 
 honour of the sacerdotale officium in general. 
 This was probably not invariable. In a 
 Roman calendar of the year A.D. 336 it 
 is entitled Natale Tetri de cathedra ; and 
 
 1 I quote the text as it stands m the Roman Breviary. 
 The Benedictine editors read : " Sibi hoc ecclesiae praestant 
 quibus necesse est ut tanto plus habeant dignitatis quanto 
 sacerdotale officium plus honoris."
 
 132 
 
 Duchesne infers a specific relation to the 
 feast of June 29th, which was the anniversary 
 of the translation of the relics of the Apostles 
 to the cemetery ad Catacumbas in the year 
 A.D. 258. At this period the anniversaries of 
 the election and burial of each bishop were 
 celebrated as his natale and depositio. 1 If 
 this inference be correct, the Apostle may 
 have been commemorated as first Bishop of 
 Rome, and the cathedra would then be the 
 local see. That was perhaps the case at Rome, 
 but the sermon before us shows that when 
 the observance was extended to other regions 
 the words sibi hoc ecclesiae inuicem praestant 
 should be noted it was referred rather to the 
 foundation of the apostolic order, and cathedra 
 Petri stood for the universal authority of the 
 episcopate. Gregory of Tours mentions the 
 festival, in a list of those observed by his own 
 Church, as Natale Sancti Petri episcopates , 2 a title 
 which may be taken either way, but which 
 suits the original mission better than the 
 settlement of the Apostle at Rome. For 
 St. Jerome, when he wrote his youthful letter 
 to Damasus about the Antiochene schism, it is 
 
 1 Duchesne, Origines, p. 266 (E.T., p. 277). 
 * Hist. Franc, x. 3 1 .
 
 CATHEDRA PETRI 133 
 
 clear that cathedra Petri meant the apostolic 
 see, 1 and this was probably the usual style of 
 the Roman Church. That is true also, I think, 
 of Optatus of Mileum, who, in his controversy 
 with the Donatists, relied mainly on the fact 
 that the Catholics of Africa were in communion 
 with the Bishops of Rome in lineal succession 
 from St. Peter ; but in his curious phrase 
 cathedra Petri quae nostra est there seems to 
 be an echo of the language of St. Cyprian, 
 and this appears even more clearly in his 
 remark about the secession of Maiorinus 
 from the cathedra Petri uel Cypriani. 2 Augus- 
 tine reproduced the argument of Optatus 
 in the ballad which he wrote soon after 
 his conversion ; but, in his own conduct 
 of the controversy, he made much less use 
 than might be expected of the authority of 
 Rome, and I have not found the phrase 
 cathedra Petri anywhere in his writings. His 
 comparison of the " cathedra ecclesiae 
 Romanae in qua Petrus sedit et in qua hodie 
 Anastasius sedet," with that of the Church 
 of Jerusalem, " in qua lacobus sedit et in qua 
 hodie loannes sedet," 3 does not show how he 
 
 1 Ep. 15. 2 *De Schism. Donat. i. 10 ; ii. 9. 
 3 Contr. Lit. Petil. ii. 51.
 
 134 CATHOLICITY 
 
 would have employed it. The general use was 
 ultimately settled in the Roman sense, but it 
 seems probable that St. Cyprian gave the 
 phrase a wider significance, and that in Gaul, 
 where the influence of the African Church 
 was very great, his use lingered for some 
 centuries.
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 SECURUS IUDICAT ORBIS 
 TERRARUM 
 
 THE historic stomach-ache from which 
 Newman suffered after reading Wise- 
 man's article in the Dublin Review during 
 the summer of the year 1839 * s a valuable 
 index showing the real state of his mind. We 
 must not rely exclusively on what he wrote 
 nearly thirty years later in his Apologia ; 
 the reminiscences which he poured out in 
 hot and righteous indignation, without any 
 consultation of documents, were inevitably 
 coloured by the experiences of the intervening 
 period, and they can in some cases be checked 
 and corrected by contemporary letters. In 
 this case the blow was certainly sharper and 
 more sudden than it seemed to him in retro- 
 spect ; the homely metaphor in which he 
 expressed his feeling tells a truth which was 
 obscured for him when long afterwards he 
 wrote his memories of that fateful year, and
 
 136 CATHOLICITY 
 
 said that on reading the article he "did not 
 see much in it." The argument, no doubt, 
 was not new to him ; a reference to his 
 previous writings shows that he had already 
 paid much attention to the Donatist con- 
 troversy, and its value as illustrating modern 
 disputes. Notwithstanding this, he remem- 
 bered how he had been struck by the 
 words Securus iudicat orbis terrarum^ how they 
 kept ringing in his ears, how they worked 
 upon him like the " Turn again, Whittington " 
 of the chime of Bow bells, or like the " Tolle, 
 lege Tolle lege " of the children's game 
 which brought Augustine to the crisis of 
 his conversion. I observe, however, that it 
 was just these four words, detached from 
 their context, which clung to his memory ; 
 and this fact is significant. It shows what 
 was the lasting impression. Wiseman quoted 
 them in their context ; in their context Newman 
 read them, and felt sick. It is with their 
 context that they must be considered, if we 
 would understand why they so affected him. 
 
 Quapropter tecurus iudicat orbis terrarum bonos 
 non esse qui se diuidunt ab orbe terrarum, in quacunque 
 parte terrarum. 
 
 I must suppose that Newman was not con-
 
 SECURUS IUDICAT OR'BIS 137 
 
 tent with reading even so much, but examined 
 the whole context in which the sentence 
 occurs. For it was a new quotation ; so far 
 as I am aware, it had never before been used 
 in controversy ; it was not familiar, and the 
 indexers of St. Augustine's works had not 
 fastened upon it. Wiseman, or his printer, 
 unfortunately gave a wrong reference, but 
 this was not far out, and the place could 
 easily be found. Newman must surely have 
 read through at least that third book Contra 
 Epistulam Parmeniani in which the passage 
 occurs. There is, perhaps, nothing in litera- 
 ture more dreary than the treatises of the 
 Donatist controversy; but a man far less 
 sensitive than Newman would wade deep to 
 get the true sense of a saying which he found 
 so impressive. 
 
 What, then, would he discover ? He would 
 find that the recurrent words of the treatise, 
 which reappear in this summary conclusion 
 and determine its meaning, are securus and 
 bonos and se diuldunt : somewhat less dominant 
 is the phrase orbis terrarum. He would care- 
 fully note the particular Donatist contention 
 which Augustine was combating. It was the 
 contention that good men are bound to
 
 138 &ATHOLICITT 
 
 withdraw from communion with evil men, 
 and must come out of the congregation of the 
 wicked lest they be partakers of their sins, 
 that the chaff must be winnowed from the 
 grain, that this had been done by them, and 
 that the following of Donatus was the result- 
 ant pure church. Therefore it was the one true 
 Church of Christ in Africa. Their opponents 
 had tolerated the wickedness of Caecilian, 
 and were cut off from Christ. Moreover, 
 throughout all the rest of the world the 
 bishops communicated with the followers of 
 Caecilian, and so were partakers of his sins ; 
 therefore, all were cut off; the Donatists of 
 Africa were the one and only remnant of 
 the true Catholic Church ; they were, in fact, 
 the Catholic Church, and all others were 
 heretics or schismatics ; there might be some 
 faithful ones scattered here and there who 
 held with them, as we know there was a little 
 congregation at Rome which procured for 
 itself a Donatist bishop ; but the historic sees 
 beyond the limits of the African provinces 
 were apostate. 
 
 How did Augustine answer this contention ? 
 In two ways. First, he asserted boldly 
 almost temerariously that the power of ex-
 
 SECURUS IUDICAT OR'BIS 139 
 
 communication must be used sparingly. He 
 referred to the parable of the tares and the 
 wheat. What is the peril of rooting up 
 the wheat with the tares ? It is the peril of 
 including some good and faithful men among 
 the wicked who are cast out. But more than 
 this : it is the peril also of doing even greater 
 harm than is done by the toleration of wicked- 
 ness. The toleration which he advocated 
 is of a remarkable kind. Excommunication 
 must be attempted, he says, only where it 
 will not cause danger of schism : 
 
 In hac uelut angustia quaestionis non aliquid 
 nouum aut insolitum dicam, sed quod sanitas obseruat 
 ecclesiae, ut cum quisque fratrum, id est, Christianorum 
 intus in ecclesiae societate constitutorum, in aliquo tali 
 peccato fuerit deprehensus ut anathemate dignus habea- 
 tur, fiat hoc ubi periculum schismatis nullum est. 
 
 There will be grave peril of schism, he 
 suggests, if those who are condemned have 
 many supporters within the Church : 
 
 Tune autem hoc sine labe pacis et unitatis, et sine 
 laesione frumentorum fieri potest, cum congregationis 
 ecclesiae multitudo ab eo crimine quod anathematizatur 
 aliena est. 
 
 Is this a cowardly yielding to mere numbers ? 
 He urges that the correction of the wayward 
 must be so administered, " ut possit omnibus
 
 140 CATHOLICITY 
 
 dignissima uideri quae in eum fuerit anathe- 
 matis prolata sententia." Recalling the words 
 of St. Paul about the Corinthian penitent, 
 " Sufficient to such an one is this punishment 
 which was inflicted by the many," he com- 
 ments : 
 
 Neque enim potest esse salubris a multis correptio, 
 nisi cum ille corripitur qui non habet sociam multitudi- 
 nem. Cum uero idem morbus plurimos occupauerit, 
 nihil aliud bonis restat quam dolor et gemitus. 
 
 Evils must be endured with sorrow and 
 sighing, if they are so widespread and so 
 deeply rooted that the attempt to remedy 
 them by severity would rend the Church 
 in twain. The time of harvest must then be 
 awaited. And such difficulties are inevitable. 
 The Church will not be all pure, as the 
 Donatists with little enough reason pretended 
 to be, until after the winnowing of the last 
 judgement. 
 
 In the second place, he pressed against the 
 Donatists an argumentum ad hominem. Their 
 principle notoriously led to continual divisions 
 among themselves, producing mutual excom- 
 munication ; how could they be certain that 
 they were not in some cases communicating 
 with the wrong party and separating them-
 
 SECURUS IUDICAT ORBIS 141 
 
 selves from the good ? Their only security 
 lay in the assumption that all who separated 
 from them proved themselves by that very 
 act of separation to be no good men : 
 
 Unde securi sunt, nisi quia certum habent bonos esse 
 non potuisse, qui se ab unitate communionis Donati, quae 
 per totam Africam diffunditur, segregarunt ? 
 
 This position he turns upon them by showing 
 that the rest of the Church, spread throughout 
 the whole world, judges them exactly as they 
 judge their own dissidents, and with better 
 reason. The whole world judges with perfect 
 confidence that those who separate themselves 
 from the whole world are no good men. 
 
 Such is the argument out of which Wiseman 
 quarried this last sentence to be a stone of stum- 
 bling for Newman. Why did Newman suffer 
 so much in consequence ? Why that stomach- 
 ache ? I could imagine him reading the whole 
 context carefully, and then replying with 
 infinitely more grace and vigour, of course, 
 and with incomparably finer irony some- 
 what as follows : 
 
 " But, Dr. Wiseman, the boot is on the 
 other leg. It is not we who resemble the 
 Donatists ; it is you and your friends at Rome. 
 We poor Tractarians do not pretend that our
 
 1 42 CATHOLICITY 
 
 Church is pure and spotless ; on the contrary, 
 we habitually describe it as a penitent Church, 
 deservedly suffering many woes and privations ; 
 but you and your friends are inclined to resent 
 a suggestion that you need any reform. We 
 do not, like the Donatists, rebaptize people 
 coming to us from other parts of the Church ; 
 but you make a practice of doing this, even 
 if not a rule. We do not hastily excom- 
 municate evil men, at the risk of schism ; on 
 the contrary, we are accused, with some reason, 
 of laxity in this regard, and we excommunicate 
 hardly anybody ; but you are stern and pe- 
 remptory, not, indeed, in judging moral faults, 
 for which I confess you show a large toleration, 
 but in dealing with faults of discipline and 
 minor aberrations from the truth ; you may 
 remember that the excommunication of Michael 
 Cerularius precipitated a schism which still 
 continues after eight centuries, and that 
 Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth of Eng- 
 land with consequences over which his 
 successor Urban VIII declared that he wept 
 tears of blood. We do not pretend though 
 we have a sufficiently good opinion of our- 
 selves that the Churches of these English 
 provinces alone retain the true faith and
 
 SECURUS 1UDICAT ORBIS 143 
 
 discipline of Christ, and therefore form the 
 whole Catholic Church ; but you, if I mistake 
 not, make precisely that claim for your com- 
 munion. We do not ostentatiously separate 
 ourselves from communion with the Church 
 throughout the rest of the world ; on the 
 contrary, we sometimes betray a rather pathetic 
 desire to be admitted to such communion ; 
 but you and yours are very exclusive, showing 
 little or no desire to communicate either with 
 us or with Greeks or Russians ; perhaps you 
 may remember also, though you are now 
 numerous and prosperous, that in the eleventh 
 century, when that decisive and divisive stand 
 was made against the Greeks, the distracted 
 Western Churches counted for hardly more 
 as against the flourishing East than the African 
 Churches of the fourth century counted for 
 as against the rest of Christendom. Forgive 
 me, Dr. Wiseman, but I think the stomach- 
 ache is yours. Physician, heal thyself." 
 
 Why could not Newman make some such 
 reply as this ? It must have been because he 
 was conscious of having the temper of Donatism 
 in himself. For it was the temper, not the 
 circumstances, of the Donatists that Augustine 
 was rebuking, and it is the temper that matters.
 
 i 4 4 CATHOLICITY 
 
 It cannot be denied that the temper of Donatism 
 has been abundantly illustrated in the English 
 Church during the last three centuries. It 
 inspired much of the old-fashioned talk about 
 our incomparable Liturgy. It peeps out in 
 references to " that pure and reformed part 
 of Christ's Holy Catholic Church to which we 
 belong," though, to be sure, the word " part " 
 repels it. In William Palmer's Treatise of the 
 Church there are pages where it seems to be 
 rampant. Wiseman probably had things of 
 this sort in mind when he launched his missile. 
 Was it merely through a misunderstanding of 
 the circumstances that he took aim specially 
 at the Tractarians ? I think not. He prob- 
 ably remembered his interview with Newman 
 and Hurrell Froude at Rome in 1833, and 
 was shrewd enough to understand their atti- 
 tude. At all events, the missile found its 
 mark ; it hit Newman, as we know, in a 
 delicate part, and crumpled him up. Why ? 
 The other Tractarians seem to have been 
 unaffected. There is no mention of this 
 critical occurrence in Pusey's correspondence ; 
 it is evident that both he and Keble were 
 strangers to Newman's fears of the following 
 months, and could not make out what was
 
 SECURUS IVDICAT ORBIS 145 
 
 happening to him. Newman alone was struck, 
 and he must therefore have been struck for 
 some personal reason. 
 
 I turn back to that interview at Rome. 
 The Tracts, be it remembered, were not yet 
 begun ; the two Oxonians were despondent 
 about the present state and the future pro- 
 spects of the English Church, and they were 
 deeply impressed by the majesty of Rome. 
 Almost at the same time Mr. Gladstone was 
 paying his first visit to Rome, was feeling 
 the same impression, and under the great 
 brooding dome of St. Peter's was devoting 
 himself to work for the union of Christendom. 
 But Newman and Froude were affected in 
 another way. Their interview with Wiseman 
 at the English College should be studied, 
 not only as it appears through the mist of 
 time in the Apologia, but also as it was 
 described by Froude in his letters. It is evi- 
 dent that the two friends were already making 
 the tacit assumption, on which Wiseman after- 
 wards relied, that the Roman communion was 
 in some sense the Church of the orbis terrarum, 
 and that they themselves stood outside in 
 separation. Why did they not enter ? They 
 wished to do so ; they made definite proposals
 
 146 CATHOLICITT 
 
 to Wiseman, asking on what terms they could 
 be admitted. Froude was angered by the 
 reply, and expressed his feelings with char- 
 acteristic vehemence. " We got introduced 
 to him," he wrote to a friend, "to find out 
 whether they would take us in on any terms 
 to which we could twist our consciences, and 
 we found to our dismay that not one step 
 could be gained without swallowing the Council 
 of Trent as a whole." Newman said that 
 Froude was made " a staunch Protestant " by 
 the rebuff, but his friend denied this as " a 
 most base calumny," though he admitted that he 
 was deeply moved. " It has altogether changed 
 my notions of the Roman Catholics," he wrote, 
 " and made me wish for a total overthrow of 
 their system. I think that the only TOTTO? 
 now is * the ancient Church of England,' and, 
 as an explanation of what one means, Charles 
 the First and the Nonjurors." Observe the 
 sectarianism of all this ; here is precisely the 
 Donatist temper. Newman, for his part, 
 showed in his correspondence that what held 
 him off was the offence of Roman " corrup- 
 tions," doctrinal and practical. The effect is 
 seen in his theory of the Via Media, and in 
 his fierce onslaughts on Romanism. He was
 
 SECURUS IUDICAT ORBIS 147 
 
 fierce because he felt that these things were 
 separating him from the greater part of 
 Christendom ; but the separation was deter- 
 mined by his own will. That is not exactly 
 the Donatist temper, which rather rejoices in 
 separation, but it is not far removed. Newman 
 was conscious of the difficulties of his posi- 
 tion. In his Home Thoughts from Abroad, 
 written in the spring of 1836, he shows how 
 he was grappling with them. He makes one 
 disputant say, " Surely there is such a religious 
 fact as the existence of a great Catholic body, 
 union with which is a Christian privilege and 
 duty. Now we English are separate from 
 it." And again : " I am only contending for 
 the fact that the communion of Rome consti- 
 tutes the main body of the Catholic Church, 
 and that we are split off from it, and in the 
 condition of the Donatists." The other dis- 
 putant calls attention to the obvious fact that 
 the Roman communion is not the whole 
 Church, but grounds his defence mainly on 
 the departure of Rome from Primitive Chris- 
 tianity, " the practical idolatry, the virtual 
 worship of the Virgin and Saints, which are 
 the offence of the Latin Church, and the 
 degradation of moral truth and duty which
 
 148 CATHOLICITY 
 
 follows from them" ; and so he concludes 
 that " we cannot join a Church which allows 
 such things." 
 
 That again, if both sides of the disputation 
 be read together, is not exactly the Donatist 
 temper, for no true Donatist would ever 
 acknowledge that his communion was anything 
 less than the whole Church, but it comes 
 very near. The separation is admitted, and 
 defended. We must separate ourselves, how- 
 ever reluctantly, from the evil which the Great 
 Church tolerates. We must withdraw, says 
 Newman in effect, from communion with it, 
 even at the cost of a desolating schism. 
 
 It was no wonder that Wiseman's bomb 
 shattered his confidence. Securus iudicat orbis 
 terrarum. He was deliberately separating him- 
 self from what practically represented the whole 
 world, and that on the ground of his own 
 superior virtue. The whole world with serene 
 confidence condemned his assumption, and 
 denied the pretence of goodness which could 
 so act. The wonder is that he did not forth- 
 with submit. But he was so constituted that 
 he must first persuade himself to tolerate the 
 corruptions which were his stumbling-block. 
 He was soon working at the Essay on
 
 SSCURUS IUDICAT ORBIS 149 
 
 Development, and he was satisfied. Meanwhile 
 Pusey and Keble could not make out what 
 was the matter. Their profound humility, 
 and their whole reasoned conception of the 
 Church, made the Donatist temper a thing 
 incomprehensible to them. Their consciences 
 were not touched by what must have seemed 
 to them a fantastic comparison. I doubt 
 whether they ever did understand what it 
 was that tore their friend from them. The 
 truth is that he had never been with them. 
 
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