inward to the outward, the spiritual to the material -there is 'one body' as well as 'one Spirit.' Spiritual gifts are given by sacraments, and sacraments are visible and social ceremonies of incorporation, or benediction, or feeding. Thus the Christian's spiritual privileges depend on membership of a visible society; but the visible society exists not as an instrument of external secular authority, but as the divine home of spiritual edification, for the 'building up of the body of Christ,' for the perfecting of man into one-into the unity of the life of God.1 Therefore the instrument of unity is the Spirit; the basis of the unity is Christ, the Mediator; the centre of the unity is in the heavens, where the Church's exalted Head lives in eternal majesty-human, yet glorified. If it be the case, as Ignatius taught (and of course that is still an open question in this discussion), that a bishop is an essential element of the organization of each visible Church, then he will be the centre and symbol of local unity; but, as the local Church exists only in order to bring men into relation to Christ and to the redeemed humanity which Christ is gathering to Himself in the unseen world, so the catholic Church, the society which each local Church represents, has its centre of unity in Christ. Only (so to speak) the lower limbs of the body of Christ are on earth. The Church is a society in the world, but not

1 St. John xvii. 23. It is characteristic of the scriptural and fundamental idea of church unity that it should be a progressive thing, progressing with a spiritual advance; not an external thing once for all imposed. See St John as above, St Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians iv. 13 eis ävdpa Téλetov. See also on the Shepherd of Hermas, above p. 18. The unity of the Church becomes constantly closer as the barriers which sin interposes between man and God, and so between man and his fellows, are removed. Sin, on the other hand, tends to mar the unity by 'schisms which may be more or less pronounced.

2 See the passage from Ignatius quoted before (p. 21) with the Bishop of Durham's

comment.

wholly in the world, nor existing for the world's ends. Thus the primary importance of its organization is local. Each local Church exists to keep open (so to speak) the connection of earth and heaven; to keep the streams of the water of life flowing; to maintain and teach and protect the creed which moulds the Christian character. Of course the Christian Churches have a necessary relation to one another. They constitute together one body; they maintain one tradition, and the test of it is found in their consent; they exhibited, they ought still to exhibit, an unbroken fellowship. At the same time each has a relative independence,1 for the authority over all is that of a common tradition, of which the witness lies in the general consent (as expressed most fully in a general council), coupled with the canon of Scripture.2 Such is the conception of the Church as existing for the ends of 'grace and truth,' which can be justly described as Catholic.3

the Roman

of it.

Enough has been said to enable us to indicate by distinct from contrast what may historically be called its Roman modification development. The scriptural and catholic conception admitted of development-in this sense, that saving the original principle, the relations between

1 As St. Cyprian emphasized. See in chap. III.

2 So the rule of faith is formulated by Irenaeus, i. 10. 1, 2, and iii. 1-5, Tertull. de Praescr. 27-36, Vincent. Commonit. 2, 9, 20, 23, 29.

3 On this conception of the Church see a typical passage in St. Augustin Enarr. in Psalm. Ps. lvi. 1: Quoniam totus Christus caput est et corpus . . . caput est ipse salvator noster, passus sub Pontio Pilato, qui nunc postea quam resurrexit a mortuis, sedet ad dexteram Patris: corpus autem eius est ecclesia; non ista aut illa, sed toto orbe diffusa; nec ea quae nunc est in hominibus qui praesentem vitam agunt, sed ad eam pertinentibus etiam his qui fuerunt ante nos et his qui futuri sunt post nos usque in finem saeculi. Tota enim ecclesia constans, ex omnibus fidelibus, quia fideles omnes membra sunt Christi, habet illud caput positum in caelis quod gubernat corpus suum; etsi separatum est visione, sed annectitur caritate.' Cf. the excellent account of the Church in Mr. Mason's The Faith of the Gospel ch. vii. §§ 9, 10 and ch. viii.

the different Churches admitted of elaboration as facilities for communication increased under imperial recognition, or as the authority of the common tradition was forced into prominence by the disintegrating effects of Gnosticism and other heresies. But the Roman development gave a new colour to the idea of the Church, not indeed by the introduction of any wholly novel element, but by distorting the idea of its function and unity. It has been already noticed how the Roman Church inherited the imperial conceptions of empire and government. The injunction— 'Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento, Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos '

might have been spoken to the popes as well as to the emperors. At Rome, then, to a slight extent perhaps even from Victor's days-to a more palpable extent from the fifth century, the idea of the Church becomes in a measure secularized. The Church becomes a great world-empire for purposes of spiritual government and administration. The primary conception of her unity becomes that of unity of government, the sort of unity which most readily submits itself to secular tests and most naturally postulates a visible centre and head: the dominant idea becomes that of authority. All the needs of the early medieval period tended to add strength to this tendency, for what the world wanted was above all things order, discipline, rule. Thus the conception of government tends to overshadow earlier conceptions of the Church's function even in relation to the truth. Compare the Roman Leo's view of the truth with that of the Alexandrian Didymus or Athanasius, and the contrast is marked. Both the western and eastern writers insist equally on the truth of the

Church dogma; but to the eastern it is the guide to the knowledge of God, to the western it is the instrument of authority and of discipline. Once again, the over-authoritativeness of tone which becomes characteristic of the Roman Church makes her impatient of the more slow and laborious and complex methods of arriving at the truth on disputed questions which belonged to the earlier idea of the 'rule of faith.' The comparision of traditions, the elaborate appeal to Scripture, these methods are too slow and sometimes (as the revelation in this world is incomplete 1) yield no decisive result: something is wanted more rapid, more imperious. It is no longer enough to conceive of the Church as the catholic witness to the faith once for all delivered. She must be the living voice of God, the oracle of the divine will. Now, as the strength and security of witness lies in the consent of independent testimonies, so the strength of authoritative, oracular utterance lies. in unimpeded, unqualified centrality, and Christendom needs a central shrine where divine authority speaks.

Thus an essentially different idea of the Church's function finds expression in the general councils and in the papacy. At least a differently balanced idea of the function of the episcopate finds expression in the catholic conception of the bishop as securing the channels of grace and truth and representing the divine presence, and in the Roman conception of an external hierarchy of government centering in the papacy. The conflict between the two conceptions begins perhaps even in the days of Victor or Stephen; it bears fruit in the Great Schism and in the further

1 Cf. 1 Cor. xiii. 9-12.

Of course the Roman

schisms of the Reformation.1 doctrine of church unity does not annihilate the other and older conception. The bishop remains still in the Roman Church what he was from the beginning, but another idea has been superadded, and it is this superadded idea which differentiates the Romanized from the primitive and undivided Church. With this superadded conception we shall not be further concerned in this argument. We have only to do with the fundamental doctrine of the visible Church as the body of Christ, which is inseparably associated with the doctrine of the faith and the sacraments, and which we are now in a position to assume was a conception held from the first, running up for its primary authority to the will of Christ the King.

1 It is not suggested that the Roman claims were more than one among several causes of these schisms.