THE

CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

No LXXVII. OCTOBER 1894.

ART. I.-THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND THE PAPAL CLAIMS.

The Primitive Church and the See of Peter. By the Rev. LUKE RIVINGTON, M.A. With an Introduction by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. (London, 1894.)

PART I.

THIS volume contrasts remarkably in bulk and elaborateness with Mr. Rivington's coups d'essai as a Roman assailant of the Church in which he so long ministered with his Authority, his Dependence, and his Dust. We propose to use the opportunity of its publication by considering at fairly sufficient length the evidence, in regard to the present Papal claims, supplied by the history of the period which it covers. This will involve an examination of its argument, in which, inevitably, we must pass over many details, but shall omit no point which can be deemed important, and shall for the most part follow the sequence of topics adopted by its author. We may venture to doubt whether he will be very much advantaged, except with very young minds, by the Introduction' in large type with which he has been favoured by his Archbishop. Undoubtedly it is a distinction to have a commendatory preface from so high a quarter instead of a cold Imprimatur, following on a cold Nihil obstat; and Cardinal Vaughan must always be spoken of with respect, as one who gave up secular prospects for the priesthood, and who, as priest and as bishop, has been conspicuous for energy and devotion. But argumentation seems hardly to be in his line, and a reader of these fifteen pages may possibly be reminded of a naïve remark in one of Dr. Ward's letters to a much more VOL. XXXIX.-NO. LXXVII.

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eminent cardinal.' The old comfortable syllogism, 'Every visible body must have a single visible head: the Church is a visible body; therefore,' &c., is made to do duty once more. It is presumed that no one will question the major,' or ask whether all corporations are so equipped, and that then all will go smoothly. Find the Divine Teacher' [sic], 'find the Supreme Shepherd, find the Vicar of Christ.' 3 He must exist somewhere; look out for him; and who but Leo XIII. is he? One or two other passages will equally fail with those who know to what a pass the Papal shepherding had brought Europe in the fifteenth century, or what has been in our own time its effect on the religious belief of multitudes in the lands of its own 'obedience -a worse scandal, we think, than the 'sporadic dissent' which, according to his Eminence, has punished our severance from Rome.

4

But now for Mr. Rivington. What is his thesis? What is the position which he occupies? He frankly tells us that he 'maintains, as the teaching of the primitive Church, the doctrine set forth by Archbishop Peckham as that of the Church of England in a letter to Edward I.' (p. xviii). This 'doctrine' is quoted further on (p. 381). We had better, perhaps, give the original: 'Decretis summorum pontificum auctoritatem dedit omnium Imperator, dicens Petro in evangelio Matthæi, Quicquid ligaveris,' &c. This is certainly firstrate authority on such a point; and those who 'verify' Mr. Rivington's 'reference' will find some other remarkable things in this same letter of 'Friar John.' But he proceeds to assert a theory of development: it is 'in substance, in principle, in essential features' that he claims primitiveness for the Papal régime of to-day,' and he relies on Vincent of Lerins himself, as recognizing a process analogous to the

1 Herbert Vaughan, who is my greatest friend, and, to my mind, about the finest character I ever came across, is not intellectual, and (with a self-knowledge truly rare) knows himself not to be so.'-W. G. Ward and the Catholic Revival, p. 457.

* Some chapters have had no deans; and corporate bodies might be governed by a board, not by an individual-still less by an individual possessing absolute power.

If only you find the Divine Teacher, you may leave all objections to the doctrines he teaches to answer themselves.' So that the character of the doctrines taught by the 'visible head' is not among the criteria of his commission.

4 When the Cardinal says, 'There are works, like those of Dr. Littledale. . . written in order to blind and mislead,' he forgets alike the courtesy of an English gentleman and the charity of a Christian priest.

Reg. Epist. J. Peckham (Rolls Series), i. 240. Peckham adduces Matt. xvi. 19, &c., for the absolute subordination of secular to canon law, and specially insists on clerical immunities in the broadest sense.

growth of the infant into the adult. Granted, of course, that in regard to dogmas or institutions, forms of expression must needs be enlarged or improved, and the various bearings and aspects of the 'depositum' be, as the Commonitory puts it, more exactly expressed, more thoughtfully believed'; but Vincent not only forbids mutilation, he excludes also the introduction of 'superflua' or 'aliena';' and our Anglican contention is that the Papal monarchy, like other elements of the Roman system, is 'alien' from the original type of Church life. But before proceeding further, let us place distinctly before the reader the issue which divides Anglicans from Mr. Rivington in this controversy. He is bound, and repeatedly owns himself bound, by the Vatican decrees of 1870. He has therefore to maintain that the 'ancient and constant faith of the Church Universal,' the 'tradition received a fidei Christianæ exordio,' attests the Papal claims as then defined-i.e. that the Pope, as successor of St. Peter, has 'not merely an office of inspection or direction,' but a full, supreme, ordinary, and immediate jurisdiction over all churches, all pastors, and all the faithful;' and that, 'when he speaks ex cathedra-that is, when, in the discharge of his function as pastor and teacher of all Christians, he by his supreme apostolic authority defines a doctrine on faith or conduct as to be held by the Church universal-he is, through the divine assistance, promised to him in blessed Peter, invested with that infallibility wherewith ' Christ willed the Church, when so defining, to be endowed; and therefore that such definitions of his are of themselves, and not by reason of the Church's assent, irreformable.'

This, and nothing less than this, is what Mr. Rivington has to establish as having been held by the primitive Church, not, of course, necessarily on the same terms, but certainly in substance. If he does not prove this he fails. But, in fact, as we shall see, he assumes it to start with, and applies it to

1 Commonit. c. 23.

2 He says, indeed, that the infallible Pope 'can never act apart from the general teaching of the Church,' so that his utterances, when attended with those conditions which are implied in the exercise of his infallibility' (is it yet settled what those are?),—will certainly be the exposition of the Church's mind as a whole. But still the Pope's pronouncements are deemed infallible as being his. Towards the end of the book we hear of Gratry's submission to the Vatican decrees-made at a time when the alternative was to die without the sacraments. Gratry then said that what he had been afraid of was a definition of infallibility as personal, whereas the decrees spoke only of infallibility official or ex cathedra. But in his second letter' he had dwelt on the theory of Bellarmine and Melchior Cano as supported by forgeries; and

his documents as he proceeds.' And be it remembered that this theory of the provision made by Christ for teaching and administration-the theory of an ecclesiastical monarchyis the simplest which could be imagined. No long process would be needed to work out such a polity: the very first age of Christianity could have exhibited it in operation. With the Apostles and all their converts obeying Peter, and 'seeking the law at his mouth,' the sub-apostolic Church might, and certainly on this showing ought to, have looked to the Roman bishop as its one all-sufficient guide and absolute spiritual king.

I. The epistle of the Roman Church to that of Corinth, written, as all tradition affirms, by St. Clement,2 but markedly silent as to his name, is claimed by Mr. Rivington as attesting the Papal position of Clement, whom he expressly calls Christ's Vicar' (p. 6). True, his personality is kept out of sight; and this is no difficulty on the simply episcopal theory : a bishop of Rome, as such, would have no authority over Corinth, and therefore, might well prefer to write in his Church's name. So he does as Pope, according to Mr. Rivington, who tells us that if 'an act of authority was done in the name of the Church of Rome, it would not follow that it was not done by the authority of the bishop of Rome,' i.e. of him as Pope, as the acknowledged ruler of all Churches. this theory, as their own words prove, was that of infallibility er cathedra in the act of defining,''pronouncing,' or, as Cano puts it, 'decreeing ex apostolico tribunali.' They both disclaim what they consider the extreme view of an extra-official or purely personal infallibility; and their view is that which is now de fide for Romanists.

The sense of the dictum that 'for Catholics the appeal to history is heresy is given on p. 424, where the principle is laid down, as applicable to the times of the Third and Fourth Councils, that the Church's children must receive as history that, and that alone, which she delivered to them as such,' or, as he says on p. 148, ' placing the key' of history (as forged at Rome) in our hands'; whereas, apart from Roman interpretation, history may easily become a labyrinth.' Therefore the view of early Church history which is given in the bull Pastor Æternus is really presupposed throughout this volume, and Mr. Rivington interprets history by it, rather than it by history.

2 Further on (p. 132) Mr. Rivington says curtly, 'St. Clement's brief was at once obeyed.' He tries to enlist St. Ignatius into the Papal service. When the Roman Church is addressed (Ign. ad Rom. pref.) as Tроkаoŋuívη Tηs ȧyáπns, 'love is explained (pp. 33, 134) as an ellipse for 'the Church as founded on love,' and this although, just before, pокÁÐηται had been limited by ἐν τόπῳ χωρίου Ρωμαίων. Clearly Ignatius is praising the Roman Church as showing more love than the less eminent Churches (cf. ad Rom. 9, and Euseb. iv. 23). His silence as to a Roman episcopate is intelligible he does not even allude to a Roman clergy; but could he have thus ignored a personage who had 'immediate jurisdiction' at Antioch as well as at Rome?