Chapter III. The Doctrine of the Episcopate in Three Periods of Tradition

In the last chapter we have seen what is the idea or conception of the pastoral office as described in prophecy, and as manifested in the person of our Divine Lord. We have also traced the institution and transmission of His priesthood and pastoral authority to the Apostles, and through them to Bishops, priests, and ministers of the Church.

We may now go on to ascertain from the tradition of the Church how this sacred hierarchy has ever heen regarded hy the faithful.

Every doctrine of the faith has its history, for every doctrine of the faith has been both gainsayed and analysed before it has reached its authoritative definition.

The doctrines which have been defined by the Church have passed through three periods: the first is a period of simple faith, in which the truth reposed calmly in the consciousness of the Church, and the faithful believed it without a doubt; the second period began when, by contradiction and by controversy, the schools of the Church were compelled to analyse and to separate the elements of a doctrine, putting them all to the test by tradition, by Scripture, and by theological reason. In this process the schools often seem to diminish or to reduce a truth to its least proportions. Then followed a third period, that of definition, when the simple faith of the beginning revives once more with all the intellectual clearness of the second period — that is, with precise mental conception and exact verbal expression. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception exhibits a signal example of these three periods; so again does the doctrine of Primacy of the successor of Peter, and that also of the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. These two last doctrines were simply believed for the first thousand years; they were then debated in the second period, and by some were even denied; in the third period they were defined — that is, in our time — by the Vatican Council.

The primacy of the successor of Peter was defined in the Vatican Council to be the supreme episcopal, immediate, and ordinary power which the Eoman Pontiff receives immediately from the Divine Head of the Church, for the government of the whole Church and of every memher of the same, both pastors and people, in every Church and diocese throughout the world. This plenitude of jurisdiction given to Peter alone descends to his successor alone.

In this chapter we will trace out the history of the doctrine of the Episcopate, which stands next for definition to that of the primacy. It will be seen that this doctrine also has already passed through two periods, which may be called the patristic and the scholastic, and that it has now entered into a third, which may be called the conciliar period, or the period of the Councils.

It may at first appear strange to call the last three hundred years the period of the Councils, forasmuch as in the first fifteen centuries seventeen Councils were held, but in the last three hundred only two. Nevertheless, it is true that the Council of Trent, which opened this last period, has governed the Church to this day, and the Council of the Vatican, which took up and carried onward the work of the Council of Trent, will signally govern it here after. It has defined the prerogatives of the Head of the Church, and has prepared for the definition of the

Body — that is, of the Church — and of the Episcopate hoth in itself and in its relation with the Head and with the Body of the faithful. With these lights before us we may trace at least the outline of the history of the Episcopate.

THE FIRST OR PATRISTIC PERIOD.

1. In the patristic period, which begins with the Apostolic Fathers, Bishops were often called simply elders or presbyters, or even deacons, forasmuch as they were invested with the fulness of sacerdotal and ministerial power. S. Peter called himself a presbyter,1 and S. Paul called himself a deacon;2 which is enough to show that all argument drawn from the interchange or community of names among Bishops, presbyters, and deacons in the Epistles of S. Paul has no force. The names might be interchanged, but the orders never were and never can be.3

What was the estimate of the state and office of Bishops may be gathered from the titles by which they were described. They were called apostles, s, S. Pet. v. 1. 2 SIOLKOVOS, Ephes. iii. 7.

3 This has been abundantly proved by Petavius, De Hierarch. Eccles., by Mamachius, and our later theologians; and even among non-Catholic writers by Hammond, Pearson, Beveridge, and others.

successors of the Apostles, princes of the Church: and the Episcopate was called the apostolate and a princely office. They were also called prelates, presidents, and rulers; also pontiffs, high priests, and princes of priests; moreover, they were called father, and father of fathers — that is, of priests — and judges of the people, and finally Vicars of Christ.4 These names were never given in common to deacons or, except that of father, to priests.

It is not easy to imagine any titles of love and veneration higher than these. But it was not by reason of titles or of names, but by reason of facts, and those facts divine, that the love and veneration of the Christian world encompassed its pastors.

The Apostles had seen the Good Shepherd. They could say, ' That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have diligently looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life.'5

They were the witnesses and the reflections of their Divine Lord. To call them Bishops, priests, pastors, was to identify them with Him, and to

4 Mamachius, Origines et Antiq. Christiana:, lib. iv. pp. 285-308. 5 1 S Johni. 1. e S. Johni. U.¹

clothe them with the light and the glory of His presence. This was the source of their power and of their persuasive authority. It was on them that the Holy Ghost descended; upon them rested the parted tongues as of fire. They had the mind of Christ and the mind of the Spirit.7 They had His own authority, His word, His jurisdiction over souls, and the keys of life and death.

What the Apostles were, excluding only their personal conversation with their Divine Master, and their universal mission to the world, such in power, authority, and commission were the Bishops who succeeded in their place. When the apostolate by martyrdom, in deed or in will, had been gathered into the kingdom of God, the Episcopate, under the successor of Peter, sat in its seat. Without doubt the interval of spiritual elsvation between the personal dignity of the disciples who had seen the Word Incarnate, and those who only bore witness by faith in their testimony, was great. But the sacerdotal and pastoral office, in all the plenitude of its power and in all the amplitude of its charity, remained without change or diminution.

And this is expressed in every record we possess of the early ages of faith.

7 1 Cor. ii. 7-16.

Bishops and priests were revered in terms which we hardly dare to quote. The very words are our admonition and our rebuke. Tertullian calls them 1 hereditary disciples;' S. Augustine, ' angelic men;'8 S. Cyril of Alexandria, ' a sacred and elect race;' S. Gregory of Nazianzum, ' the foundations of the world/ ' the lights of life,' ' the pillars of the faith;' S. Basil says, ' The priest is nothing else than he who hears the person of Christ.'

We will take a few of the earliest testimonies, and follow the order of time.

S. Clement of Rome tells the Corinthians that ' Christ was sent from God, and the Apostles from Christ; both (missions) were ordered by the will of God. Having received commandment, and being filled with certain hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and confiding in the word of God, with the fulness of the Holy Ghost, they went forth preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God which was about to come. Preaching, therefore, in regions and cities, they appointed their first-fruits (i.e. of their disciples), after they had proved them in the Spirit, to be Bishops and deacons.' 9 And again, ' The Apostles knew from our Lord Jesus Christ that

8 Forma Cleri, cap. i. passim.

9 S. Clem. Rom. ad Cor. c. xlii., ed. Jacobson (Oxon. 1840).

there would be contention about the dignity 10 of the Episcopate. For this cause, with perfect foresight, they appointed the forenamed (priests and deacons), and delivered to them the line of future succession, that when they should fall asleep men well proved should take up their ministry.' n

The whole of S. Clement's Epistle to the Corin thians is an intense reproof of their divisions, springing from insubordination to the Divine authority of the Church and its Bishop, on which its unity depends.

But the most precise and abundant evidence of the sacred authority of the Episcopate, and of the love and veneration due to it as ruling in the place of God, and by the authority of its Divine Head, is to be found in the Epistles of S. Ignatius the Martyr. For this reason it is that the authenticity of these Epistles has been so universally and contemptuously denied by all Presbyterian writers. They have been denounced as interpolated, spurious, forged, and of an age later than the second century. To this it may be said that the forger or interpolator must have been simple even to stupidity to forge- or to insert into his text matter which would

10 Ibid, Mparos, i.e. a£f«jua — res ipsa Episcopatus.

11 Ibid. c. xliv.

insure detection. If, in the second century, the faith and veneration of Christians did not regard the Bishop as S. Ignatius writes, then such writing could have deceived nobody. It would have condemned itself.12

Writing to the Ephesians, S. Ignatius bids them to glorify Jesus Christ, as He had glorified them; * that, being united in one obedience, they might be knit together in the same mind and the same judgment, and might all speak the same thing, so that, being subject to the Bishop and the presbytery, they might in all things be sanctified.'13 'Wherefore, you ought to concur in the judgment of the Bishop, as indeed you do. For your presbytery, worthy of its name, and worthy of God, is in harmony with the Bishop as the chords in a harp.'14 'Let no man be deceived. Except he be within the altar, he will lack the bread of God. For if the prayer of one or of two have so great power, how much more the prayer of the Bishop and of the whole Church! Whosoever then comes not to the same, he is proud

12 The passages quoted are taken from the last Oxford edition of the Apostolic Fathers, published by Dr. Jacobson, who, in a full and learned preface, has given the evidence on both sides of this old controversy.

13 S. Ign. Ep. ad Ephes. c. ii. (ed. Jacobson, Oxon. 1840).

14 Ibid. c. iv.

and condemns himself. For it is written, God re sisted the proud, andgiveth grace to the humble. Let us be careful, then, not to array ourselves against the Bishop, that we may he subject to God. The more, then, any one sees the Bishop to keep silence, the more let him fear. For whomsoever the Master of the house sends to His own household we ought so to receive as we should receive Him that sent him.' 15

To the Magnesians he says, ' It becomes you not to abuse (i.e. by familiarity) the youthfulness of the Bishop; but, according to the power of God the Father, to pay him all reverence, as I know the holy priests have not regarded his apparent youthful state, but, in the wisdom of God, have obe3Ted him; and not so much him, indeed, as the Father of Jesus Christ — the Bishop of all. For the honour, then, of Him who has loved us we ought to obey without hypocrisy; for (hypocrisy) it is not only that a man mis leads the Bishop who is seen, but he tries to deceive Him that is unseen. And this warning is not a counsel of the flesh, but of God who knows all secrets.

' It becomes us, therefore, not only to be called Christians, but to be so. For some there are who call him Bishop, but do all things without him.

15 S. Ign. Ep. ad Eplies. cap. v. vi.

F

Such men do not appear to me to be of a good conscience, because they are not firmly united (to the Bishop) according to the commandment.'

1 But these things come to an end; and two things are at once before us, death and life, and every one is going to his own place: as there are •also two coins, one of God, the other of the world, and each has its own character engraven on it. They that believe not (have) the character of this world; they that believe in love, the character of God the Father, through Jesus Christ, in whom, unless of our own will we die through His Passion, His life is not in us.'

' Since, then, in the persons of whom I have written, I have, by faith, seen and loved the whole multitude (of you), I beseech you to strive to do all things in one mind, which is (the gift) of God, the Bishop presiding in the place of God.'

' As the Lord did nothing without the Father, being united with Him, neither by Himself nor by the Apostles, so neither do you anything with out the Bishop and the presbytery, nor endeavour to justify any separate action of your own.'16

To the Trallians S. Ignatius writes: ' Forasmuch as you are subject to the Bishop as to Jesus Christ,

16 Ad Magnes. cap. iii.-vii.

you seem to me to be living not according to man, but according to Jesus Christ, who died for you, that, believing in His death, you may escape death. For it is necessary, as you are doing, to do nothing without the Bishop; and to be subject also to the presbytery, as to the Apostles of Jesus Christ.'

After describing the deceits of heretics, he says: ' Guard yourselves against all such. And this (safety) shall be yours, (if you be) not puffed up, but inseparable from God, from Jesus Christ, and the Bishop and the commandments of the Apostles. Whosoever is within the altar is pure; that is, he that acts apart from the Bishop and presbytery and diaconate, he is not pure in conscience.' 17

In writing to the Romans he speaks of himself and of his see, from which he had been torn, and says: ' Eemember in your prayers the Church in Syria, which, in my stead, has God for its pastor. For Jesus Christ alone will be its Bishop.' 18

To the Philadelphians he says: ' Children of light and of truth, fly from divisions and from evil doctrine; for wheresoever the pastor is there follow as sheep. For many plausible wolves make captive, with evil allurement, those who are in the way to God; but in your unity they have no place.' 17 Ad Trail, c. ii.-vii. 1S Ad Rom. ix.

'Be not deceived, my brethren. If any one follow him who makes division he shall not inherit the kingdom of God. If any man goes ahout in another (i.e. a private) judgment, such a one is not in accordance with the Passion (of Christ).

' Study, then, to share one Eucharist; for the Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ is one, and one also is the chalice of His Blood for our unity. The altar is one, as the Bishop is one, together with the presbytery and the deacons, my fellow-servants, that whatsoever you do you may do according to God.'

' Some had the will, according to the flesh, to make me to err; but the Spirit errs not, being of God; for He knows whence He cometh and whither He goeth, and He reproves the things that are hidden. I cried aloud meanwhile, and uttered with a loud voice, " Give heed to the Bishop and to the presbytery and the deacons." Some thought, in deed, that I said this foreseeing the divisions that some would make; but He in whom I am bound is my witness that I knew nothing (from human flesh) from any man. But the Spirit cried, and said, "Do nothing without the Bishop. Guard your body as the temple of God, love unity, fly from divisions, be imitators of Jesus Christ, as He also is of His Father." '

'I made it, therefore, my own interest, as a man perfected in unity. But where division is, and anger, there God dwells not. The Lord forgives all who repent, if they repent in the unity of God and the tribunal of the Bishop.'

' Priests are good, hut (he is better,) the high priest, to whom is intrusted the Holy of Holies; he alone has in trust the hidden things of God.'19

To the Church in Smyrna S. Ignatius writes: ' Fly from divisions as the beginning of evil. Follow (obey), all of you, the Bishop as Jesus Christ the Father, and the presbytery as the Apostles. Revere also the deacons as the commandment of God. Let no one do anything, in what relates to the Church, without the Bishop. Hold that to be a sure (valid and licit) Eucharist which is under the (jurisdiction or presence of) the Bishop, or of him to whom he has given commission. "Wheresoever the Bishop appears, there let the multitude be; as wheresoever is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful, without the Bishop, to baptise or to hold the agape. But whatsoever he shall judge to be right, that is also well pleasing to God, that whatsoever is done may ba both safe and stable.

19 Ad Phil. iii. iv. vii.-ix.

'He that honours the Bishop is honoured of God. He that does anything stealthily (hidden) from the Bishop worships (Xargzvzi) the devil.'20

Lastly, in the letter to S. Poly carp, he writes: *' Give heed to the Bishop, that God may give heed to you.21 My soul he for those who are suhject to the Bishop, preshytery, and deacons; and may my lot be with them in God. Labour with one another — strive, run, suffer, rest, awake together, as God's stewards, assistants, and ministers.'22

Whatsoever critics may be pleased to say, we have here documents of the highest antiquity, in which the Divine office of the Bishop, the duty of obedience in the faithful — obedience not only of outward unity, but of inward conformity, of mind and judgment — are expressed with a confidence of faith, and an intensity of exhortation, which renew the words of the Holy Ghost: ' Obey your prelates, and be subject to them. For they watch, as being to render an account of your souls, that they may do this with joy, and not with grief.'23

The next witness to S. Ignatius is S. Irenaeus,

20 Ad Srnyrn. cap. viii. ix.

21 avri^xov. The passage is elliptical, and seems parallel to S. Paul's words in Rom. ix. 3: r/ux^" yup avrbs e^cb avaQe^a elvat cbrb TOW Xpurrov vnlp TUV dSeA^wi/ /nov.

22 Ad Polyc. c. vi. 23 jjeb. ^ii. 17> the disciple of S. Polycarp, who was the disciple of S. John the Apostle. Throughout his writings Against Heresies, his prompt and immediate test of faith is tradition, but his test of tradition is the Episcopate. He affirms the tradition of doctrine to be inseparable from the succession of the episcopal order. His testimony is too well known to need quotation. It is to be read in the third, fourth, and fifth books of his work.

But two passages must be quoted, as less often noticed, and direct to our point.

He says, in lib. iv. c. xxvi. 2, p. 262, in the Venice edition: ' Wherefore it is a duty to hear and obey the presbyters who are in the Church, those who, as we have shown, have succession from the Apostles — - who, with the succession of the Episcopate, according to the will of the Father, have received the sure grace (-fcdoiffjAu rqg uXqfaiag) or unction of the truth.' It is evident that S. Irenseus has in his mind the words of S. John: ' You have the unction from the Holy One, and know all things.'24

This charisma, which is attached in its plenitude, as a special privilege, to the primacy, is extended to the whole Episcopate as a body united to its head in the active infallibility of the Church, and from the

21 1 S. John ii. 20.

Ecclesia docens descends to the Ecclesia discens, and is, as S. John writes to all the faithful, a Divine guidance in all truth, so that they ' have no need that any man teach' them.25

The other passage is in lib. iii. c. xiv., where S. Irenaeus says that S. Paul ' called together the Bishops and presbyters from Ephesus and the other cities to Miletus.'20

That in this passage not priests only, but Bishops, are intended, is evident from the words of S. Paul: ' Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you Bishops, to rule the Church of God.'27 In verse 17 they are called ' the ancients (rovg ftgeo'fiuT&goug) of the Church.' But S. Irenaeus calls them 'Bishops and presbyters,' because the Apostle declares them to have received the government of the Church from the Holy Ghost. It is clear, from the evidence already given, that the community of names does not imply identity of office. And the passage is explicit in proof that S. Irenseus regarded the rule or government of the Church, spoken of by S. Paul, as proving the presence of Bishops among those who were called to Miletus; and further, that in his mind, as in that of S. Ignatius, government was the

88 1 S. John ii. 27. 26 Acts xx. 28. 27 Ibid. 17.

primary and proper end and office of the Episcopate.

Almost contemporaneously with S. Irenaeus among Orientals was Tertullian among the West erns; and his evidence of the Episcopate, as the divinely ordained government of the Church, is almost identical with the words of S. Irenaeus. The passages are so well known that they need not be quoted. It will be enough to cite one passage only, in which the obedience of faith to the Divine government of the Church is expressly enjoined: ' It is not lawful for us to indulge our own choice in anything, nor to choose anything which another has brought in of his own choice. For we have as our authorities the Apostles of the Lord, W7ho did not choose anything of their own, but faithfully handed on to the nations the teaching of discipline (disciplinam) which they had received from Christ.' He then says that the Apostles delivered the revelation of Christ to the Churches; and that they, by the succession of their Bishops, have preserved the faith.28 The whole of his argument against here tics is by the prescription or primeval tradition of the Churches, which, by their unbroken succession, are the guardians of the faith.

" De Pnescrip. Hceret. vi.

Fifty years later, S. Cyprian still more explicitly declares the Divine institution and office of the Episcopate, in words so precise that they must be quoted. But I shall do so, not by reciting, as I might, the many well-known passages of his treatise on the giving in extenso the mind of S. Cyprian, as collected and expressed by one of the most approved writers on the subject of the Episcopate. Bolgeni, in his unanswerable defence of the primacy of the Holy See against the whole line of Gallican and Febronian errors, describes the Episcopate as fol lows: ' The saying of S. Cyprian is well known, that " the Episcopate is one of which every Bishop has a part in solidum" The Episcopate, being nothing else than the power of governing the Church, and the Church being one only — I believe one Church — it follows necessarily that the Episcopate also must be one only, for otherwise the Church would no longer be one, as it is, by the unity of its government. We must, therefore, see in what con sists this unity of the Episcopate, how it is formed, and how it is preserved.' In this inquiry, as he says, we must follow the traditions of the Fathers, who received it from their predecessors, until we reach the lips of our Divine Eedeemer. He then² continues: ' The unity of the Church in respect to its government, and, by consequence, the unity of the Episcopate, is formed on the pattern and imitation of the unity of God in three Divine Per sons. As in God there is the unity of nature with plurality of persons, so the priesthood is one, as Pope Symmachus says, though the Bishops be many.' Like the Trinity, of which the power is one and undivided, the priesthood is one in many Bishops. Nearly three centuries before S. Sym machus, S. Cyprian said the same. In explaining his words, ' The Episcopate is one, spread abroad by a concordant multitude of many Bishops,' which is called by him the ' one Episcopate, of which a part is held by each in solidum,' he turns to the mystery of the Holy Trinity: ' The Lord saith, 1 and the Father are one. And again of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost it is written, And these three are one.' And in another place, insisting on the unity of the Church against Novatian, who had set up a see in opposition to the legitimate Pontiff, S. Cornelius, he says, 'And therefore the Lord, to impress unity on us, shows that it comes from Divine authority, and says, "I and My Father are one." To which unity He reduces His Church, and says, "And there shall be one flock and one shepherd." He adds that the writers of the Church, in the earliest ages, frequently use this comparison of the unity of God in three Persons to explain the unity of the Church and of the Episcopate. S. Cyprian, writing to Pope S. Cornelius, says: ' We are not ignorant that God is one, and Christ the Lord is one whom we have confessed, and the Holy Ghost is one; and in the Catholic Church the Bishop must be one.'

1 These ideas our fathers received from the lips of Jesus Christ. In the seventeenth chapter of S. John's Gospel is recorded the wonderful prayer in which 'our Saviour prays to His Father for the unity of His Church and of all His followers: "And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in Me; that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee."

' The Divine Son is one in the essence of the Father, because He has received all from the Father.' 1 All Mine are Thine: all that Thou hast given Me are of Thee.' He received of the Father the fulness of power, and gave it to His Apostles: ' The glory which. Thou hast given Me I have given them; that they may be one, as We are one.'

' All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore.' He received from the

Father the mission for the salvation of the world, and this mission He gave to the Apostles: ' As Thou hast sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.'29

' This stupendous prayer,' Bolgeni adds, ' which fills the heart of every Christian with a sacred awe and with a sweet tenderness, gives us the true, clear, and precise idea of the unity of the Church in all its relations, and ahove all in regard to its power of government. The mission and the power of teaching and baptising the people, of feeding them with the Divine Word and the administration of the Sacraments, loosing and binding them, and in governing them in all that belongs to their eternal salvation — in one word, the Episcopate — must descend from one origin and from one fountain, from which, as from one point alone, depart all the lines which go forth and spread through the whole circumference of the Church diffused throughout the world. Take away this unity of origin, and there can be no unity of the Episcopate after the pattern of the Trinity, as the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are one.

' The Universal Church is one, because it is founded by the voice of the Lord upon Peter, its 29 S. John xvii. 20-22, 18.

one head: upon him alone He builds His Church: as the same S. Cyprian says in another place, The Church is in the Bishop and is constituted upon the Bishop. Therefore the Church Universal is in S. Peter, as in its Bishop; and our Lord Jesus Christ, disposing in order the dignity of the Episcopate and the government of His Church, speaks first of all to S. Peter, and says, " Thou art Peter" &c. From Peter, therefore, spring and emanate in the succession of ages the ordination of Bishops and the government of the Church. Our Lord dis posing the dignity of the Bishop and the constitution of His Church, in the Gospel, speaking to Peter, says, " Thou art Peter," &c. Thence, hy the change of times and successions, the ordination of Bishops and the constitution of the Church come down, so that the Church is founded upon the Bishops.'

' And thus, though the rays be many and the streams he many, yet one only is the beginning and the fountain from which they flow.'

Now, the passage of S. Cyprian here referred to, though so trite and common, is nevertheless so important to the argument before us that it must be quoted in full. It runs as follows: * This unity we are bound to hold, especially we who are Bishops, who preside over the Church, that we may show the Episcopate itself to be one and undivided.... The Episcopate is one, of the fulness of which each holds a part. The Church, too, is one, though spread far and wide, and is ever multiplying by increase of fruitfulness. As the sun has many rays, yet one light; and the tree many boughs, yet its strength is one, resting upon the firm and tenacious root; and as when from one spring-head flow many streams, the multitude of waters may seem to be lost by reason of the exuberance of its abundant overflow, yet unity is preserved in the source which is common to all. Sever a ray of the sun from its orb, the unity of light does not admit of division; break a branch from the tree, and it can blossom no more; cut a stream from its source, and it dries up.' From this we see that as the light in every ray is of the same nature as the light in its source, as the branch is of the same kind as the root, as the streams are the same water as in the fountain, so the Episcopate in every Bishop, derived from Peter, is the same Episcopate in all its Divine character and powers, as in Peter himself. The primacy of Peter and its twofold plenitude of jurisdiction and assistance are distinct from his Episcopate, and his primacy is incommunicable. But the Episcopate is in itself a Divine order instituted for the government of the Church, and, whether mediately or immediately received, is full, perfect, and immutably the same in every one on whom by legitimate consecration the episcopal character has been impressed. As S. Jerome says, ' Wheresoever the Bishop is, whether at Eome, or Eugubium, or Constantinople, he is of the same dignity and of the same priest hood.'30

The testimony of S. Cyprian (A.D. 250) exhibits the mind of the West in the third century. But inasmuch as the teaching of S. Cyprian was consciously derived from Tertullian (A.D. 200), whom he called his master, it exhibits the mind of the West in the second century also — that is, almost contemporaneously with S. Irenaeus, who, though Bishop and Martyr in Gaul, wrote in Greek, and exhibits in the West the mind of the East.

S. Cyprian says that ' the order of Bishops and the constitution of the Church descend through the course of time and succession, so that the Church is founded upon the Bishops, and every act of the Church is governed by the same who are set over it.'31

30 Ep. ad Evangelum, cxlvi. al. Ixxxv. n. 1.

31 S. Cypr. De Lapsis, ed. Baluz, p. 5.

In writing to Rogatian for the purpose of restraining the pretensions of certain deacons he says, ' Deacons ought to rememher that our Lord chose out the Apostles as rulers; but deacons were instituted after the ascension of our Lord into heaven by the Apostles to be the ministers of their Episcopate and of the Church.'32

To Pope Cornelius he says: ' This, brother, we chiefly labour, and are bound to labour for, that we take care to maintain the unity which has been handed down from our Lord, through the Apostles, to us their successors.'33

' The power of remitting sins was given to the Apostles, and to the Churches which they founded, whom Christ sent; and to the Bishops who, by a vicarious ordination, succeed them.' He likens to Core, Dathan, and Abiron those who exercised their priesthood in opposition to the successors of the Apostles.34

He says, in writing to Cornelius, that the Bishop is in every place the one priest and the one judge, who holds the place of Christ.35

And in the Council of Carthage Clarus of Masurta said: * The sentence of our Lord Jesus Christ is

32 S. Cypr. Ep. Ixv. 33 Ibid. Ep. xlii. p. 37.

34 Ibid. Ep. Ixxv. 3S Ibid. Ep. Iv. p. 82.

manifest, who sent His Apostles, and gave the power which He received from the Father to them alone, whose successors we are.' 3

S. Cyprian sums up the whole faith of antiquity as to the office of the Episcopate when he says, ' Wherefore you ought to know that the Bishop is in the Church and the Church in the Bishop; and that whosoever is not with the Bishop is not in the Church.' 37

It is no answer to this to say that S. Cyprian spoke only of positive outward schism; for he writes: 1 For heresies have no other source, nor schisms any otlier cause, than this, that the priests of God do not obey: nor is it realised that the one priest who for the time is in the Church, and for the time is also the judge, is in Christ's stead.' 3S

S. Hilary, in the fifth century, says that priests are not ' inflated because they are honoured as the heads of all faithful Catholics; but rather they rejoice because they will be the more resplendent members of Christ, who is the Head of all priests and of all who believe.'39 They are more resplendent because the Head of the Church uses them as His members to work the miracles of His grace. By their eyes

36 Opp. ed. Baluzii, p. 337. ™ Ibid. Ep. Ixix.

38 Ibid. Ep. ad Corn. Iv. ™ UK i. c. xiii.

He watches over His flock; by their tongue He preaches; by their voice He utters the form of the Sacraments; by their hands He baptises, confirms, consecrates, ordains, anoints.

' Priests in the body of Christ hold the place of the eyes; when the eyes are darkened the whole body becomes dark; who can doubt it?' 40

It would be easy to multiply passages of the same kind; but as our chief object is to see in what light the Fathers regarded the Episcopate, enough has been adduced. They believed it to be instituted by our Divine Lord for the government of the Church. They believed its powers to be Divine, and its unity to be after the pattern of the Divine Unity, of which it was the visible and imperishable witness to the world. We may now add a few passages to show what exalted conception they had of the Episcopate. And the first passage shall be from the Celestial Hierarchy, attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite.

The works ascribed to Dionysius have been variously estimated by critics. By some they have been rejected as containing erroneous matter, and as belonging to a late period; by others defended as authentic and free from error. As my purpose in 40 S. Hilar. in Ps. cxxxviii. 16.

quoting the Celestial and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy is only to ascertain in what light the Episcopate and the priesthood were regarded in the first centuries, I need not enter into those questions which do not touch the subject in hand. A consent of the safest authorities ascribes these books to the fourth or fifth century at latest, and as such we may treat them. If in those centuries the pastoral and priestly office was regarded as we have already seen, it is enough for my purpose.

The author then, whosoever he be, writes as follows:

1. 'The hierarchy, in my judgment, is a sacred order, science, and action, assimilating man, as far as may be, to the likeness of God, and elevating him, by illuminations infused by God, in a measure, to the imitation of God. The beauty which is proper to God, as it is simple, good, and the origin of perfection, is wholly unmixed with anything unlike itself. It communicates to each, according to merit, of its own light; and perfects (each) harmoniously, conforming (to itself) those that are perfected, in a Divine mystery, according to its own immutable image.'41

2. 'The aim of the hierarchy is, so far as pos-

41 Ch. iii. p. 35.

sible, conformity and union with God; having Him. as the guide of all sacred science and of all action (i?g£yg/a?)i and contemplating without distraction the Divine beauty, to copy it as far as may be.... There fore, in naming the hierarchy we intend a certain sacred ordinance, the image of the Divine original beatity, distributed in hierarchical orders arid sciences, working the mystery of its own illumination, and conforming itself, as far as can be, to its own origin. For the perfection of each of those who have their lot in this hierarchy is to be carried upwards, according to the measure of each, to the imitation of God, and to that which is the divinest of all things, as the Scriptures say — to become fellow-workers with God, and to show forth manifestly in himself, as far as he is able, the Divine operation. Forasmuch as the order of the hierarchy is that some should be purified and others should purify, and some be illuminated and others illuminate, and some be perfected and others make perfect, the imitation of God comes to each in this way. For the Divine Blessedness — I speak after the manner of men — is free from all that is unlike itself, and is full of eternal light, itself perfect and wanting in no perfection, purifying, illuminating, and perfecting all things, or rather being in itself the sacred purification, illumination, and perfection, above all purity, above all light, alone perfect, and in itself the origin of perfection and the cause of all hierarchy, but exalted by its excellence above all sacred things.

' Every order, therefore, of the hierarchical constitution, according to its proportion, is elevated³ towards their co-operation with God; working those things, by grace and power from God, which are essentially and superessentially above nature in the Divine government, and are by the same supersubstantially accomplished, and are manifested by the hierarchy for imitation, so far as possible, to minds that love God.'

S. Dionysins then goes on to the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, which he describes as intermediate be tween the hierarchy of the old Law and the hierarchy of the heavenly court.42 He then divides it into three orders, according to the three functions of its ministry — namely, expiation, illumination, and perfection43 — and says that the lower orders are brought to God by the higher.44 The first order is of Pontiffs or Bishops, in whom the other orders culminate, and from whom all powers are derived to the orders below them. The pontifical order, he says, perfects what the others begin, being filled with the habits or powers of contemplation, illumination, and expiation.45 The sacerdotal order illuminates by doctrine and teaching, and finally leads the disciples to the Bishop for the discipline of the higher mysteries. The order of

42 De Eccles. Hierarchia, cap. v. 2. 43 Ibid. 3.

44 Ibid. 4. « Ibid. 6.

ministers or deacons expiates or cleanses the soul from sin, that is, by baptism and regeneration, and delivers over the baptised to the priesthood. He then sums up in these words: ' We have therefore apprehended that the pontifical order has the power of perfecting, and does make perfect; the sacerdotal order of illuminating, and that it does illuminate; the order of deacons has the power of cleansing and of discerning (i.e. or separating the clean from the unclean by regeneration). Bishops, therefore, have the power not only of perfecting, but of illuminating and of expiating; priests both of illuminating and expiating; deacons of expiating only; nor can the lower overpass their limits, and exercise the powers of the order above them.'46 It is not possible to find language stronger or more precise to declare the incommunicable distinction of the three orders, the Divine superiority of the Episcopate compared with the priesthood, and the office of perfector or the state of perfection divinely ordained in the order of the Episcopate. Such then, assuredly, was the mind of the century in which these books were written; and they who deny them to the Areopagite do not place them later than the fifth century. Pearson47 shows that they were quoted by Juvenal of 4fi De Ecclcs. Hier. 7. " Vindicia; Ignat. cap x. p. 142 et srq.

Jerusalem in A.D. 431, and he believes that S. Gregory of Nazianzum also refers to them. This would place them about A.D. 370, or in the fourth century.

The description, then, of the celestial hierarchy the writer carries on, servata proportione, to the ecclesiastical hierarchy; for, in truth, both are but one — distinct indeed, but inseparably united, and working for the same end, which is the assimilation of man to God.

He says: ' The sacred function of these mysteries (offices) has first the power of assimilation to God by the cleansing of those who are imperfect; the intermediate (second) function is the illumination of those who are cleansed; the last, which is the sum of the former, is the perfecting of those who have been instructed in the knowledge of their own consecration.' 4:

' The Divine order, therefore, of Pontiffs (high priests) is the first of the orders who have the vision of God, which is the highest and the ultimate order, for in this the whole ordination of our hierarchy is perfected and fulfilled. For as we see all hierarchy to terminate in Jesus, so all orders terminate in its own sacred Pontiff.' 49

He then assigns to priests the second order:

48 S. Dion. De Eccl. Hier. cap. iv. 3. 49 Cap. iv. 5.

adding, that though priests administer many Divine Sacraments, yet they can only do so in dependence on the first order, from which they receive ordination and the power of sacrifice.

The third order he assigns to deacons.

He then adds, ' We have, therefore, proved that the order of Pontiffs has power to make perfect, and does, in fact, work perfection. The order of priests has the power of illumination, and does illuminate. The office of minister (deacon) has the power of cleansing and of separating (i.e. the regenerate from the unregenerate). The pontifical order has the power not of perfecting only, hut of illuminating and of cleansing; the office of the priesthood has with the power of illumination also the faculty of cleansing. But the lesser offices have no power to intrude into the higher functions.'60

These passages will recall at once the distinct hierarchies of angels and of men as revealed in the old and new Law: the conversion of Cornelius hy the vision of an angel; the illumination of Peter hy the vision of the vessel descending from heaven. Cornelius was illuminated by the angel, hut bap tised by Peter. It is of this united hierarchy of distinct ministries that the Church gives witness in

50 Cap. v. 7.

all its ritual, but especially on the feast of S. Michael and All Angels, of the Angel Guardians, and the like. It is not possible to elevate our conception of the pastoral and sacerdotal office higher than by interweaving it with the angelic hierarchy.

S. John Chrysostom speaks as follows: ' The priesthood is exercised indeed on earth, but it belongs to the order of heavenly things, and, indeed, most fittingly: for no man, nor angel, nor archangel, nor any other created power, but the Paraclete Himself, ordained this ministry, and caused that they who still abide in the flesh should make the ministry of angels to be visible. Wherefore it is required that the priest, as standing already in the heavens, in the midst of these powers, should be also in like manner pure. For the things which were before the time of grace were terrible and awful, as the bells, the pomegranates, the stones upon the breast, the superhumerals, the mitre, the tiara, the vest ments reaching to the feet, the plate of gold, the Holy of Holies, the profound silence within. But if any one examine the order of grace, he will find the terrible and the awful to be but little; and that it is truly said of the Law: that what is glorious is no longer glorified in this respect, by reason of the surpassing glory (that now is). For when thou beholdest the Lord sacrificed and lying (as the victim), and the priest standing over the sacrifice and interceding, and all those around tinged with the most Precious Blood, do you still think yourself to be among men, and to be standing on the earth? Do you not rather think yourself to be translated to the heavens, and all carnal thought of the Lord cast out? do you not see around you the things in heaven with the soul itself, and with the mind in its purity? 0, how wonderful is that love of God for man! He who sits on high with the Father, in that very moment, is held in the hands of all (priests), and He gives Himself to those who desire to embrace and to hold Him fast. All behold this through the eyes of faith. Do these things seem to you worthy of contempt, or to be such as a man can exalt himself against? Would you in another miracle see the excess of this mystery of holiness? Set before your eyes, I pray, Elias, and the endless multitude around him, and the sacrifice lying upon the stones (of the altar), and all in stillness and great silence, the prophet alone praying. Then of a sudden the fire cast from heaven upon the sacred (oblation). Wonderful are these things, and full of all amazement. Pass now from them to the mys teries of this our time, and thou shalt behold not only things wonderful, but surpassing all wonder. For the priest is here, bringing down not fire, but the Holy Ghost; and making great supplication, not for a flame from heaven to consume the oblation, but that grace may come down upon the sacrifice, and thereby may kindle the souls of all, and may manifest them to be brighter than silver purged in the fire. Such awful mysteries what man who is not greatly mad and beside himself can hold in contempt? Dost thou not know that no soul of man has ever been able to endure the fire of that sacrifice, but that all would have been utterly consumed away had not the help and grace of God been abundant?

' For if any one considers how great a thing it is for man, knit together of flesh and blood, to be able to draw near to that blessed and spotless nature, then he will clearly see of how great a dignity the grace of the Holy Ghost has made priests to be. For by priests both these mysteries are wrought, and others also, which in nothing fall short of these in relation to our dignity and our salvation. £or dwelling upon earth, and having their commerce in it, they have received commission to dispense the things that are in heaven, and have received a power which God has not given either to angels or to archangels. For to them it was never said, "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Earthly rulers have indeed the power of binding, but of the body only; but this binding is fastened on the soul, and reaches to heaven; and what things priests shall do here below these God ratifies above, and the Lord confirms the sentence of the servants. For what did He give them but all heavenly power? " For whose sins," He says, " ye forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins ye retain, they are re tained." What power can be greater than this? The Father has given all judgment unto the Son; but all that power I see put into their hands by the Son. For, as if already translated to heaven, and rising above the nature of man, and putting off our infirmities, thus have they been elevated to such authority. If any king should give to one of his subjects such an honour as to be able to imprison whom he will, and again to forgive him, he would be envied and conspicuous to all. But the priest has received from God a power by so much the greater as heaven is more glorious than the earth, and souls than bodies. But to some he (the priest) appears to have received a power so small that they can even imagine some of those who have received it in trust may despise the power which has been intrusted to them. Away with such madness! For the madness is manifest of despising so great an authority, without which there is neither salvation for us, nor the attainment of the good things which are promised to us. For no man can enter into the kingdom of heaven, except he he born again of water and the Holy Ghost; and he that eateth not the Flesh of the Lord, nor drinketh His Blood, shall be cast out of everlasting life. But all these things can be ministered by no other, but only by. those holy hands (that have been sanctified); I mean by those of the priest. How, then, shall any one who is without them be able either to escape the fire of hell, or to win the crown that is laid up for us? These are they to whom have been committed the spiritual travail and the regeneration of baptism. By them, then, we put on Christ, and are buried with the Son of God, when we become members of that Blessed Head; so that by us (priests) are justly to be revered, not only more than rulers and kings, but even honoured more than our fathers. For they have begotten us of blood and of the will of the flesh; but these are the authors to us of the birth which is of God, of that blessed regeneration, of liberty and truth, and of the adoption by grace.' 51 51 De Sacerdotio, lib. iii. 4, 5.

Julian Pornerius, who wrote in the fourth century, has left us a hook, De Vita Contemplativa, erroneously ascribed to S. Prosper; in it he says that priests ought to share in the life of contemplation, because these four things belong essentially to the priesthood: (1) The knowledge of things that are hidden and future; (2) freedom from all occupations of the world; (3) the study of Holy Scripture; and (4) the vision of God. He then says: ' I do not see what can hinder holy priests from attaining to these four things.' The first and the last, he says, are attainable, but not perfectly; the second and the third are the duties of priests.52 He then says: ' To them the care of souls is committed as their own; and they, sustaining with profit the weight of the people com mitted to them, are unwearied in their prayers to God for the sins of all, as if for their own; and, like as Aaron, they offer the incense of a contrite heart and of a humble spirit, by which God is ap peased, whereby they turn away from the people the wrath of judgment to come; they become by the grace of God the signs of the Divine will, and next after the Apostles, the founders of the Church, the guides of the faithful people, the asserters of truth, the adver saries of false doctrine: full of love to the good; to 12 De Vita Contemplativa, lib. i. c. xiii.

those of a bad conscience even their appearance is terrible; avengers of the oppressed. They are the fathers in the Catholic faith of the regenerate, the preachers of heavenly things, the front rank of the invisible conflict, the examples of good works, the rule of virtues, the pattern of the faithful. They are the beauty of the Church, in whom its splendour shines more brightly; they are the pillars of strength planted by Christ, on which rest the whole multitude of those who believe; they are the gates of the eternal city, by which all who believe in Christ enter into Christ; they are the door keepers, to whom are given the keys of the kingdom of heaven; they are the stewards of the royal house, by whose judgment in the court of the Eternal King the degrees and offices of each are distributed.'53

Pomerius addresses to those who desire to lay down their episcopate, out of fear of its responsibility, the following warning: ' You who would resign the Church intrusted to you as being un equal to its government, and go into some solitude, not so much from desire of quiet as from despair about your office itself; no other reason constrained you to change your mind for the better, 53 Jul. Foin. De Vita Contemp. lib. ii. c. ii.

H than because you were afraid of incurring a greater danger; for if it be dangerous to steer a ship in cautiously among the waves, how much more dangerous it is to abandon it when tossed by the swelling seas. For as it is better not to go on board, so, when once undertaken, it is right to cast off all fear of the stormy sea, and in full hope of gaining (the shore) to bring the ship into port without loss of its merchandise.' 'The Church, therefore, which, like a mighty ship, is navigating the sea of this world, beaten by the various waves of temptation, and tossed about by the various persecutions of unclean spirits as by stormy waves, dashed on the shallows and rocks of scandals, encompassed by banks of sand — this ship is not to be forsaken, but to be steered; for as it brings safely (to shore) all whom it carries by the vigilance of the steersman, so, if submerged and broken up by the waves, it will destroy not only all whom it has on board, but also the steersman himself.'54

I cannot better recapitulate the evidence of the patristic period than by quoting the words of a writer, whose profound learning in Christian antiquity is known to all theologians.

Thomassinus, in his work De Veteri et Nova 54 Jul. Pom. De Vita Contemp. lib. ii. c. xvi.

Ecclesice Disciplina, represents the mind of the Fathers with a singular fidelity. His mode of statement appears so true to the Divine order and to the institution of the Episcopate, and expresses so luminously what I have endeavoured to draw out, that I cannot refrain from making a full quotation from the opening of his work.

He says: ' It cannot be doubted that the Son of God, when He was made partaker of human nature, assumed Himself the whole plenitude and amplitude of the priesthood; and when He 'was about to return to the bosom of the Father trans mitted the same to His Apostles, to be imparted (by them) to their successors, and to be propagated in the Church until a blessed eternity should close the successions of time; that is, the Episcopate instituted by Christ was, in itself, the fullest communication of sacerdotal dignity and power.

'For Christ did not invest the Apostles with His priesthood, as is now done with those who are promoted to the summit of their spiritual power, by single steps and by the interstices of times and of orders. More copiously, nobly, and richly, as it was fitting for Apostles to receive and for Christ, Who is the best and greatest, to give, they did receive the full power and majesty by which the fathers and chief priests of the Church have been created.'

He then says that we are born imperfect, and grow by slow degrees; but Adam, our first father, was created in perfect manhood. ' So also Christ, the Creator of His Church, and of this new and restored world, so instituted the sowers and chief parents of His new people, that is, the Apostles, clothing them first with the fulness and power of His Word and Spirit, and enriching them with the plenitude of sacerdotal offices, by which, to the end of the world, the sons of God should be propagated.

' They who have looked at the priesthood as we now laboriously reach it, climbing to it by many steps were struck by this great difficulty: what could be added to the order and character of priesthood by episcopal consecration? For since to priests are given the two great powers of consecrating the Eucharist and of forgiving sins, can anything more ample or more divine be granted to Bishops? For this cause many of the leaders of the schools, and even of those who had gone deepest into what I may call the patristic theology of the holy Fathers and Councils, have said that the Episcopate is nothing else than a certain extension and amplification of the character of priesthood, and, what is more wonderful, only a moral extension. Hardly could any conception enter the mind by which the dignity ordained by Christ as the most excellent of all dignities in His Church could be more obscured and lowered.

' The same reason for which Christ did not separate this twofold dignity (of Bishop and priest), resplendent with the highest sanctity and power, led the Apostles either always or most frequently to confer the same in one act on the same ministers, whom they chose out for admission into the order of the Apostles and of apostolic men.

' To return to the Episcopate, which is of all orders and states the most ancient and the most eminent, as being the fountain and origin of all spiritual orders and powers. This inexhaustible fulness of the Episcopate was revealed first in Christ, who is therefore called by the Apostle " the Bishop of our souls." This plenitude of the priesthood flowed forth first from Christ upon the Apostles, and by the ministry of the Apostles upon apostolic men; together with that abundance of graces and virtues which was proportioned to the work intrusted to them of subduing the world. To understand the nature, power, and majesty of the Episcopate, it must be contemplated in this its fountain and head.

It was with this order and heavenly ministry that Christ invested His Apostles, and Bishops the successors of Apostles. He infused into them the plenitude of the whole priesthood, not an extension of the office of presbyter. He elevated them to the highest summit of sacred power, and to a kind of infinite source of sacerdotal functions and of ecclesiastical government. From this springhead thenceforward flowed like streams all dignities and orders lower than the Episcopate. They, therefore, who imagine the Episcopate to consist only in an extension of the priesthood are far off from the semblance or similitude of truth.

' Certainly, on the contrary, it ought to be held as fixed and firm that the plenitude of all sacred orders, and ecclesiastical dignities, and spiritual powers and prerogatives, resides in the Episcopate as in their primary fountain; and thence, as streams, all sacerdotal orders and powers flow: and first of all comes the priesthood.

' When, then, a priest is called up into the episcopal order by a sacred -consecration, it is not that his former dignity is extended, but the whole plenitude of the priesthood is poured (like an unction) over him, with the dew of which only he was before anointed: before, he had been nurtured as a branch in the tree; now, lie himself grows into a tree of Divine creation. As a priest he could generate sons of God by baptism,' but not priests by ordination.

i Such is the unbroken tradition of the Fathers for a thousand years in speaking of the priesthood and of the Episcopate. I can find in language no terms more intense or more elevated than those in which they describe the dignity, sanctity, responsibility, powers, and glory of the priest and of the Bishop. So strong are their words that we take them for rhetoric, hyperbole, exaggeration. The Fathers meant what they said, for what they said they believed. We shrink from their language because either we do not believe as they did, or we do not realise their faith. Their words are too intense for us because our conceptions of the priesthood and of the Episcopate are lowered and secularised by cold intellectual analysis, and jealous diminution of the supernatural jurisdiction by which the Church is governed.

1 While the early years and youth of the Church were fresh, nothing was more uniform and evident than this doctrine. For the Councils of that happy and truly golden age, and other documents of writers, bear witness that in those times presbyters neither preached, nor baptised, nor reconciled sinners, nor said Mass, unless in the absence or by the order of their Bishop, who, for the most part, alone exercised those sacred ministries. By episcopal consecration, then, the proper office (right) and plenitude of the priesthood is conferred, to be exercised together with a supreme government. Wherefore even then, when as Bishop he administers the same Sacraments which he administered before as priest, he is putting forth a far more splendid, effective, and august power. You may say that the waters of the fountain and the stream are the same, and the rays of the sun and of the light which illuminates the world are the same, but vast is the interval between them. The king and the viceroys discharge the same offices; but the dignity and majesty of the king himself in the act of fulfilment is of a far greater excellence.

' Hence it is that the Bishop alone can confer these marvellous powers by sacerdotal ordination, as having alone the chief authority of the priesthood, and has therein received the power of productiveness. A presbyter cannot create presbyters because he has received a priesthood dependent on another,, and (his office is) so limited that it hardly suffices for itself, and he cannot communicate it to others. But the Bishop, out of the fulness of his own vitality, endows whomsoever he may approve as worthy, by which prerogative he abundantly proves that all the riches of the priesthood are obtained from himself. Therefore, when Jerome says that Bishops are superior to priests by the power of ordination alone, he dimin ishes nothing from the amplitude of the episcopal order, though he may seem to narrow it to a point. For whosoever claims for Bishops alone the power of ordination confesses that Bishops alone have received that amplitude of the priesthood — that is, those immense riches of sacred power, which they can pour forth in all the Churches of the world, and in all succession of time to come.

' Finally, the dignity and splendour of the Episcopate is not narrowed by these limits, that is, of exercising the priesthood, and of investing priests and deacons with power to exercise the same. It also consecrates Bishops, and continually creates new apostles, who also with equal power produce not priests only, but Bishops. This exuberance of the priesthood is above measure wonderful, in which not only the fecundity of propagating itself is stored up, but also the authority of communicating this Divine fecundity. Who can doubt that the wonderful pre-eminence of a sun would be supreme, which had power to multiply other suns, endowed with equal abundance of light and equal glory of fecundity? To such a sun, this sun which illumi nates the visible world and fecundates innumerable natures, but is barren in itself, would readily yield pre-eminence.' 55

THE SCHOLASTIC PERIOD.

The second or Scholastic period is in marked contrast with the patristic. In the first thousand years the consciousness of faith and the Divine tradition of the Episcopate filled the mind of the Church with a pervading sense of the sanctity and authority of the priestly and pastoral office. The scholastic period was one of intellectual analysis, turned inwardly upon this consciousness, and testing every doctrine by objection and by proof.

I have been unable to find in any writer of the Oriental or of the Greek Church any such scholastic treatment of the Episcopate or of the priesthood as is to be found in the schools of the West. The canonists and the commentators of the Greek Church repeat identically the language of S. John Chryspstom, S. Irenaeus, and S. Ignatius. They all recognise the community of the names of Bishop and presbyter, but they all maintain the dis-

55 Thomassinus, Veteri et Nova Ecclesice Disciplina, P.i. cap. i. De plenitudine sacerclotii in Episcopatu.' tinction of the offices. They had ever before them the fact that to say that the offices of Bishop and priest were identical had been condemned in Aerius as heresy. Therefore it was of faith in the Greek mind that the offices are distinct, and the Episcopate superior to the priesthood. •

Moreover, I have not baen able to find in any Greek author such a question as ' whether the Episcopate be an extension of the priesthood?' Such a question seems to have been impossible to the mind of a Greek or Oriental, to whom the superiority of the Episcopate and its Divine jurisdiction and government were primary truths in the constitution of the Church.

The whole analysis appears to be a creation of the Western intellect. S. Anselm shows no trace of it. And the earliest example I can find of it is in the Sentences of Peter Lombard — that is, in the thirteenth century. In the fourth book and the twenty-fourth distinction on the Sacrament of Order he says, ' The seventh order is that of priests. Presbyter in Greek and elder in Latin are the same. It is a term not of age, but of dignity.' ' Therefore presbyters are also called priests because they minister sacred things; yet though they are priests they have not attained the elevation of the Pontificate as Bishops have, because they cannot confirm with the chrism, nor confer the Holy Ghost (ordain), which powers the Book of Acts proves to belong to Bishops alone.'56 He then says that as Aaron was high-priest, with lesser priests about him, so Peter was among the Apostles, his successor among Bishops, and Bishops among priests. It would seem, then, that Peter Lombard recognised a distinction as of Divine ordinance; but, to keep to the number of seven orders, he classes Bishops and priests in one.

The Sententiastse, who commented on him, began to analyse the distinction of Bishop from priest, which Peter Lombard only stated.

The first in time and in name is Albertus Magnus, who, in commenting on the opinion of Peter Lombard, says, ' Forasmuch as no act can be more excellent than the consecration of the Body of Christ, there can be no order after (i.e. higher than) the priesthood. But the offices of jurisdiction are those which relate to the mystical Body, over which they who bear such office preside; and when they are consecrated they receive grace not for an order, but for the exercise of jurisdiction in the Church, if they be worthy. And in this the answer to the objections is clear; for when it is said that 56 Lib. Sent. iv. xxiv.

order is a promotion in power, it is not to be under stood of the power of jurisdiction, but rather of the power of consecrating the Sacrament of the Eucharist.'57

This seems to have given the line of thought to the Dominican school.

Next came Alexander of Hales, who, comment ing on the same text of the master of the Sentences, says, ' If it be objected that it is more fitting that the power of the keys be given to the Bishop in episcopal consecration, it must be said that this is not so, because the (office of) Bishop does not express a new order; nor in the consecration of a Bishop is a new order given, but only power is extended, as is touched on in another place.'58

And this seems to have given a direction to the Franciscan school.

S. Bonaventure says, ' The Episcopate is not properly an order. The Episcopate, as it is contra distinguished from the priesthood, expresses a certain dignity, or office annexed to the Episcopate, and is not properly the name of an order, nor is a

57 Albertus Magnus, Opp. in lib. iv. Sent. dist. xxiv. art. 39, torn. xvi. p. 550, ed. Lug. 1651.

58 Alex. Alens, in lib. iv. distinct, xxiv. quaest. 20, art. 1, ed. Colon. 1622.

new character impressed nor a new power given, but power already given is amplified.'59

Then followed S. Thomas, who fixed the current of thought not only in the Dominican Order, hut in the schools of the Church. We will, therefore, more carefully examine his opinion.

On the same fourth book of the Sentences, dist. xxiv., he says, ' The Episcopate is not an order.'

1. First, he defines ' ordo ' with the master of the Sentences — ' Signaculum quoddam Ecclesia3 quo spiritualis potestas traditur ordinato'60 — 'A certain sign or seal of the Church, whereby a spiritual power is given to the ordained.'

After verifying this definition in the priesthood, he asks whether the Episcopate be an order. His answer is as follows: ' Order may be considered in two ways: the one regards it as a Sacrament, and as it is ordained for the Sacrament or consecration of the Eucharist. In this sense the Episcopate is not an order, for the priest and the Bishop are equal in respect to the consecration of the Holy Eucharist. There is in this, then, no distinct order. The other way of considering the Episcopate is as it is an office for the discharge of certain sacred actions, and

59 In lib. iv. Sent. d. xxiv. q. 3.

60 S. ThomsB, Sum. Theol. 1. iii. qmest. 30, art. 2.

in this the Bishop has power over the mystical Body which the priest has not. The Episcopate, there fore, in this sense is an order.' 61

But he adds that order, as a Sacrament directed to the natural Body of Christ or the Holy Eucharist, impresses a character. Therefore the Episcopate is not an order, because it impresses no character distinct from the priesthood.

Nevertheless, he says that in another sense — that is, as not impressing a character — the Episcopate may be considered as an order, because it confers power for certain hierarchical acts directed to the mystical Body of Christ.

In answering, however, his fourth question, ' Whether there be an episcopal power above that of the priest?' he says power is directed to acts. Now, no act is greater than the consecration of the Body of Christ. But he answers, power is greater as it extends to more acts. Dionysius, in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, says that the power of the priest extends to the purification and illumination of souls, but the power of the Bishop also to their perfection.

He adds that the priest has two actions, or a twofold power: the principal one is the consecrating of the Body of Christ; the secondary the preparing 61 S. Thoncse, Sum. Theo\ 1. iii. q. 40, art. 5.

of the people for the receiving of this Sacrament. As to the first action, the power of the priest does not depend on any higher power, except the Divine; hut as to the second, it depends upon a higher power, which is also human. Every power which cannot issue into act (exire in actum), except on certain presupposed conditions, depends on the power that determines those conditions. But a priest cannot absolve or bind, except by presupposing the jurisdiction of the superiority by which those whom he absolves are subject to him; but he can consecrate the Body of Christ. That is to say, the power of consecration and the power of absolution are both in the priest, and are both in themselves Divine. But with this difference: the power of consecration, exit in actum, issues into act validly though illicitly if the priest consecrates without faculty from the Bishop. But the power of absolution, though in itself Divine, non exit in actum, does not issue into act if exercised without faculty or jurisdiction from the Bishop. Such an absolution would be not only illicit, but invalid. Nevertheless, in articulo mortis even a heretical or schismatical priest can give valid absolution, because the power is Divine and inherent, and the Church supplies the actual jurisdiction.

It is not necessary to quote other scholastics. Peter Lombard may be said to have directed the thoughts of Albert the Great and of Alexander of Hales, and these respectively of S. Thomas and of S. Bonaventure. And the light of these five great names prevailed over the mind of the older scho lastics.

Cardinal Capisucchi, writing in 1670, enumerates eighty-three authors who hold that the Episcopate is not a Sacrament. 63 Nevertheless, the contrary opinion not only prevails, but is all but unanimously held; and the scholastic opinion would not now be without a note of censure.

It would seem that two causes conspired to produce this change of teaching. The one, that after the fall of Constantinople the study of the Greek Fathers and the mind of the Eastern Church began to affect the schools of the West; the other, that the growing heterodoxies, which were the forerunners of the great revolt of the sixteenth century, compelled the students and teachers of the schools to return to the texts of antiquity. Without ceasing to be scholastic and scientific, theology became once more patristic and positive.

Let so much suffice for the scholastic period. 83 Pen-one, Prcelect. Theol tie Ordine, n. 78, note.

THE CONCILIAR PERIOD.

The third period in the history of the doctrine of the Episcopate may be called the Conciliar or that of the Councils, beginning with the Council of Trent.

The government of the Church was never so dangerously assailed as in the conflict which is called the great Western Schism. Every doctrine of the faith has had its contradiction and its definition. The Oriental and Greek Schism denied the primacy of jurisdiction in the Vicar of our Lord, and rent four patriarchates from the Catholic unity. But the great Western Schism rent the Episcopate into fractions,, and for a time suspended the canonical election of the successor of Peter, by multiplying doubtful elections in the separated fragments or obediences of the Episcopate, as they were called, with unconscious irony. The regimen of the Church was never so profoundly tried. It was founded by the Holy Ghost in Peter and the Apostles, and continued in his successor and theirs; but now for years it was doubtful who was his canonical successor, and the successors of the Apostles were divided. The Church was struck in head and mem bers. The gates of hell seemed to be prevailing over the unity and supremacy of the Church. But it was precisely in this moment of preternatural danger that the Divine and indefectible power of the Church was most luminously revealed. The Council of Constance met. First one obedience began to legislate without effect; then two without validity; then three were united — that is, the whole Episcopate; and their first act, in 1417, was to clear away the Pontiffs of doubtful election, and to unite all in obedience to a legitimate Pontiff chosen by the Cardinals present in the Council. To Martin V. all alike submitted as to the Vicar of Jesus Christ. It was the Divine authority of the Episcopate that put an end to the separations and contentions of years, and laid the broad foundation of unity, which, for nearly five hundred years, has never again been shaken. It has exalted, also, the primacy of Peter to the plenitude of power, which the Councils of Florence, of Trent, and of the Vatican afterwards recognised and defined., The power of the Episcopate, which is set by the Holy Ghost to rule the Church of God, was never more supernaturally manifested than in the Council of Constance. It is a visible proof of the Divine assistance that the united Episcopate of the Church, conscious of its own power, should have in the last four General Councils steadily amplified the definitions of the Papal power. The Council of Florence, about thirty years after the Council of Constance, made the following decree: ' We define, also, that the Holy Apostolic See and the Koman Pontiff have the primacy in all the world, and that the Koman Pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, true Vicar of Christ, and the head of the whole Church, the father and teacher of all Christians; and to him, in blessed Peter, was given, by our Lord Jesus Christ, the plenary power of feeding, ruling, and governing (pascendi, regendi, et gubernandi) the Universal Church.'

It is obvious that this decree was the foundation of the decrees of the Council of Trent, in which the prerogatives of the Vicar of Christ were recognised with an especial fulness. But for the uncertain condition of France, it is probable that the decree of the Florentine Council would have been unfolded into an explicit definition of the infallibility of the Koman Pontiff, which is implicitly contained in it. But this was reserved for the Council of the Vatican, in which, by a solemn definition, the magisterium of the Koman Pontiff is declared to be infallible. Now, it is remarkable that in no Councils of the Church has the Episcopate been more powerful than in the

Councils of Constance, Florence, Trent, and the Vatican. And the use it has made of its power has been to define more and more explicitly the Divine prerogatives of its head. So far from truth is the unworthy suspicion of jealousy or desire of independence in the Episcopate towards the Vicar of Jesus Christ. It knows, in the words chosen by itself from the writings of S. Gregory, that the honour of the Pontiff is the honour of the Episcopate, and that the Divine prerogatives of the head are the strength and glory of the body.64

And yet most sure it is that the Episcopate, in exalting its head, has raised itself. Khetoricians and controversialists have delighted in saying that the Vatican Council extinguished the Episcopate, and made Bishops to be shadows and vicars of the Pope. There is no Council of the Church in which the power and jurisdiction of the Episcopate has been more explicitly declared, as we shall see in due time.

In the Council of Trent the excesses of the Protestants compelled the Fathers to treat of the Sacrament of Order. Luther and Calvin revived the heresy of Aerius; and, arguing from words, as the teachers of error always do, affirmed the identity of 64 Const. Prima Dogm. de Ecclesia Christi, c. iii.

Bishop and priest, and claimed for the priesthood the power of ordination.

This compelled the Council of Trent to define, under anathema, that Bishops were superior to priests.65 It did not define whether that superiority be of Divine ordinance, hut it affirms that such superiority exists.

This one decision destroys all arguments from the names of Bishop and priest, which S. Paul evidently uses without anxiety. He knew that Bishops were distinct from and superior to priests. For him that was enough. The community of names could not ohscure the distinctness of two orders of men.

This decision also renders impossible the opinion that the Episcopate is an extension of the priest hood.

The Council of Trent may be said to fix the be ginning of the third period in the doctrine of the Episcopate, because it is the first (Ecumenical Council that has treated fully of the Sacrament of Order. It may be truly said that the innovators of the sixteenth century abused the opinion of the schools, which denied the Episcopate to be a Sacrament distinct from the priesthood, and that Presbyterianism was the spurious result. The power of

65 Sess. xxiii. can. 7.

ordination and the power of the keys, being thus displaced, soon vanished from among them, and the Sacrament of Penance speedily followed.

This compelled the Council to treat the whole suhject in its twenty-third session.

The Council explicitly defined three points which hear upon the Episcopate. It decreed as follows: ' Therefore this Holy Synod declares that besides other ecclesiastical orders, Bishops, who have succeeded in the place of the Apostles, belong in chief to this hierarchical order, and are placed, as the Apostle says, by the Holy Ghost to rule the Church of God; and that they are superior to presbyters; and that they confer the Sacrament of Confirmation, ordain ministers of the Church, and are able to do many other acts, in which functions other ministers of inferior order have no power.' 6

In the canons it says:

Canon IV. ' If any shall say that, by sacred ordination, the Holy Ghost is not given, and that, there fore, Bishops vainly say Receive the Holy Ghost, or that by ordination a character is not impressed, let him be anathema.'

But if in ordination of priests this be true, then in consecration of Bishops, when the consecrator says 66 Cone. Trid. sess. xxxiii. c. 4.

Receive the Holy Ghost, these words confer grace and impress a character.

Canon VI. says: ' If any one shall say that in the Catholic Church there is not a hierarchy insti tuted hy Divine ordination, consisting of Bishops, presbyters, and ministers, let him be anathema.'

But if the hierarchy be by Divine ordinance, every part of it is by Divine institution; and if Bishops, presbyters, and ministers be distinct, their distinction is of Divine institution.

Canon VII. ' If any one shall say that Bishops are not superior to presbyters, or that they have not power to confirm and to ordain, or that their power which they have is common to them and to pres byters, &c., let him be anathema.'

But if distinct and chief in the hierarchy by Divine ordinance, the superiority of Bishops over priests is implicitly declared to be jure divino.

In this the Council of Trent as implicitly declared the Episcopate to be an order, a Sacrament, to confer grace, to impress a character, and therefore to be jure divino superior to the priesthood, as the Council of Florence implicitly declared the Supreme Pastor and Doctor of all Christians to be infallible. As the Council of the Vatican made explicit what the Council of Florence implicitly declared, so the next Council that meets will probably unfold the implicit teaching of the Tridentine Fathers into explicit definitions.

In the course of these debates on the Sacrament of Order a multitude of points arose, of which we will only touch upon three.

1. The first was whether the Episcopate be superior to the priesthood; and if so, by what right or law, Divine or ecclesiastical. Of this we have spoken.

2. The second was the residence of Bishops, and the obligation which binds them to reside in the midst of their flocks; that is, whether the obligation be of Divine or of ecclesiastical right or law.

3. The third regarded the jurisdiction of Bishops — whether it come to them immediately from Christ, or mediately through the Boman Pontiff.

The first question was at once decided as to its first part. The later schoolmen had deprived the older opinion of probability. As to the second part, it can hardly be doubted that, if the Council had defined at all, it would have decided that the superiority of the Episcopate to the priesthood is jure divino by Divine ordinance. But, with the signal moderation which marks all its definitions, it ab stained from pronouncing.

As to the second question, though the Bishops of Spain, France, and Germany strongly inclined to affirm that the obligation of residence is by Divine right, the Council again abstained from such a declaration. It contented itself with proving that the personal presence of a pastor is of necessity to the discharge of his office, and that nothing but causes of the highest moment, and those to be judged by a superior authority, suffices to release him from this obligation. Moreover, it may be that the Council instinctively felt that if residence be of Divine obligation, the diocesan jurisdiction might seem to be also of immediate collation; so that the one question might prejudge the other.

The third question so intimately touches on the subject before us that we will examine it more closely. The Spanish Bishops maintained that the jurisdiction of Bishops was of Divine right, but in dependence on the Roman Pontiff.

The same was the opinion of the German Bishops; and the Bishops of France appear to have maintained, in substance, the same doctrine.

Among the Italian Bishops, some held an opinion which assigned less to Bishops and more to the Roman Pontiff.

The Archbishops of Granada, of Braga,and of Zara, the Bishops of Segovia and of Orense, affirmed the jurisdiction of Bishops to be Divine, but the exercise of it to come from the Pope, to whom also helong the election of the person and the distribution of subjects. The Bishop of Leon distinguished in Bishops three things: (1) the power of order, (2) the faculty and ability to do acts of jurisdiction, (3) and the jurisdiction itself when perfect and in action. The second (that is, the faculty or ability to do acts of jurisdiction), he said, is intrinsically united to the first (the power of order), and is therefore inseparable from it, as, in the case of priests, the power of absolution exists in virtue of ordination. And all this comes from God. But as the priest has not jurisdiction full and perfect, except from a human superior, so it is with the Bishop. To say, then, that Bishops are by Divine right is not to take anything from the Pontiff, understanding thereby only their primary and inherent power. This he confirmed from S. Thomas, who says that spiritual power is twofold: the one sacramental, which is given in consecration; the other jurisdictional, which is given (ex injunctione liominis) by human authority. When it is said, then, that those who are degraded lose their spiritual power, it is to be understood of the second power; or if it be said of the primary power, it refers not to its essence, but to its legitimate use. 67 67 S. Thorn. 2da 2da3, quest, xxxix. art. 3.

The Bishops of Autun and Viviers spoke in the same sense. The Bishop of Aliffe said that the jurisdiction of Bishops is from Christ, the matter assigned for its exercise from the Pope.

The Bishop or Administrator of Orvieto said that, without doubt, the power of order is of Divine right, Bishops being the successors of the Apostles. But jurisdiction is divided by legists into voluntary and contentious. The voluntary follows the person wherever he goes; the contentious is attached to a territory. But every territory is given by the Pope; and this may be exercised by a Bishop confirmed, but not consecrated. Therefore the power of order is from Christ, the power of jurisdiction from the Pope — that is, the contentious, not the voluntary.68

Lainez said, ' What God does immediately by His own action is Divine; what He does by any person interposed cannot be called Divine.' 69

He affirmed that the power of the episcopal order is immediately from God in all Bishops. That the power of jurisdiction is from God immediately in genere—fh&t, is, in some, as in Peter and his successors; and in the Apostles by special privilege.

58 Pallavicini, Istoria del Concilio di Trento,lib. xviii. c. xiv. 69 Ibid. c. xv. s. 3.

But in Bishops jurisdiction comes by an interposed means from God, and immediately from the Pope.

The Bishop of Leon, following the doctrine of S. Thomas, said that the power of jurisdiction is of human injunction (ex injunctione humana) • — that is, from the Supreme Pontiff; because no Bishop can have jurisdiction over any people unless it be assigned to him by his Holiness, who has universal jurisdiction in the whole Church. And this, he admits, the Bishop may lose, it being restricted, enlarged, or suspended: but he well says that the Bishop, in virtue of his consecration, hasan intrinsic force and ability from God, enabling him to do all the acts which pertain to the episcopal office and cure whensoever the jurisdiction is given him by the Pope, which force and ability he means that the Bishop should not lose any more than the power of confirming; and he gives an example of this in a simple priest, who, though he have from God in his ordination the power of absolving or of binding sins in the forum of conscience, nevertheless is unable to exercise it, or to do any act, unless jurisdiction be given him by a prelate superior to himself.70

The result, then, of the Council of Trent may be thus stated: it defined the hierarchy as a whole, and 70 Miscellanea Baluzii, torn. iv. p. 265, Appendix.

therefore in all its parts, to be of Divine ordinance, and to consist of Bishops, priests, and ministers or deacons. It further explicitly defines the superiority of Bishops to priests, and implicitly teaches that this superiority is of Divine ordinance. It then affirms explicitly that Bishops in ordination, hy the words ' Eeceive the Holy Ghost,' confer the Holy Ghost on the priest ordained — that is, for the power of absolution; and in this it implicitly, and a fortiori, affirms that Bishops in consecration by the same words confer the Holy Ghost for the full intent of the Episcopate, in which is given the power of the keys.

How many scholastic questions are thereby explicitly or implicitly determined must be evident, and how powerful an impulse was given to the train of thought and reasoning which theologians in the last centuries have elaborately wrought out. We may now go on to examine a few of these: the number is ever multiplying; but certain authorities are so eminent that they will fully represent the whole post-Tridentine teaching.

The variance of opinion between the Spanish and French Bishops especially, and the opposition of the Cardinal of Lorraine, determined the Holy See to withdraw that subject of episcopal jurisdiction from discussion. S. Charles, by a letter, directed that no further mention should he made of the question as to the mediate or immediate collation of jurisdiction. The question was left open to theological opinion, and has never been closed to this day.71 Nevertheless, as in the question of the superiority of Bishops over priests, the current of opinion has strongly set towards a conclusion which it may be well to trace out.

Bellarmine's doctrine is of greater importance, because he began to write within a few years of the closing of the Council of Trent. The Council had refrained from saying that Bishops are jure divino superior to priests. Nevertheless, Bellarmine, to whom the patristic language was familiar, taught as follows:

1. That the ordination or consecration of a Bishop is a true and proper Sacrament. He says that this was denied by many of the schoolmen, of whom he quotes not a few; but he goes on to say, 'Nevertheless, it is asserted by all the ancient Fathers, and by some more recent, and by some of the ancient schoolmen, and, lastly, by almost all canonists.' In truth, the scholastic opinion was a

71 Gerdil, Opuscule, De Plenitudine Potestatis Episc. pp. 105, 114 (Rome).

novelty, and, though for a time common, was never authorised, but only tolerated. He then says that the Sacrament in consecration impresses a character. S. Thomas teaches that the character is the cause of a sacramental grace. Therefore the Episcopate has a gratia status distinct from and higher than the priesthood.

Further, he says that the Episcopate is one and the same order, as the priesthood in genere non specie — in genus, not in species — and that orders are greater or less as they are related to the Body of Christ. The priesthood is nearest intensive to the Body of Christ; but the Episcopate, which is the plenum sacerdotium, has not this proximate relation only, but a higher, because it ordains to the priesthood, and therefore extensive reaches to more sacred powers. And this he affirms because ' the Episcopate includes the priesthood in its nature and essence.' 72

Gregory of Yalentia was born in 1551. He began to teach theology at an early age, and therefore within the first twenty years after the Council of Trent.

He affirms according to the Tridentine decree that the hierarchy consists by Divine ordination of Bishops, presbyters, and ministers, and that 72 Bellarm. De Sacram. Ordinis, lib. i. c. v.

Bishops are superior to priests. But he goes further. He affirms that Bishops are jure divino superior to priests, which he proves hy Scripture, by the analogy of the Old Law, by the call of twelve Apostles and seventy-two disciples, by the teaching of the Fathers — especially of S. Ignatius, S. Clement, Dionysius the Areopagite, Tertullian, Origen — and from the Councils of Nicea and ofChalcedon. He says that the Fathers everywhere affirm that to the Bishop belongs quoddam imperiwn ecclesiasticum, ' a certain government in the Church.' This he proves profusely from their writings, which affirm that Bishops and not presbyters are successors of the Apostles. And in explaining the well-known passages of S. Jerome he points out that he expressly says that Bishops are superior to priests by the power of ordination; but the power of ordination is jure divino, by Divine institution. His comments on another passage of S. Jerome are so valuable that they must be given in full. 'When he (S. Jerome) says that it was more by custom (consuetudine magis) than by the actual Divine ordinance that Bishops are greater than presbyters in respect to the power of jurisdiction, he does not thereby deny, but he even affirms, that a Bishop is by Divine right (jure divino) superior to a priest in the power of jurisdiction. For when

K

Catholics say that Bishops are superior to priests in the power of jurisdiction, they by no means intend to say that Bishops have actual jurisdiction immediately from Christ by the fact of their consecration (for the Apostles alone had their power immediately from Christ); but they say that Christ by a special counsel willed and ordained that Bishops should have power to hold and to receive actually (in actu) from the Supreme Pastor of the Church, whensoever and howsoever it might be expedient, as it is customarily done.

'Aerius indeed denied that the jurisdiction of Bishops was Divine in this manner. He attacked the custom of the Church as inconsistent with the Divine institution, because it ascribed jurisdiction to Bishops. But Jerome never denied the jurisdiction of Bishops to be of Divine right in this sense. For he fully proved the law of the Church, by which this jurisdiction is ascribed to Bishops, to be consistent with the Divine ordinance. But this jurisdiction of Bishops is, ashas been said, of Divine institution and ordinance only potentially (secundum potentiam quandam); actually (secundum actum) it is from the Church, which immediately confers it: and in all things that which is actual is more than that which is potential; therefore Jerome says that this jurisdiction belongs to Bishops more by the law of the Church and by usage than by force and virtue of the Divine ordinance. As if he should say: Forasmuch as the jurisdiction of Bishops, is both from the ordinance of the Lord and from the law of the Church: it is more by this law of the Church than by the ordinance of the Lord, because from the one it is actual jurisdiction, and from the other it is only potential.' 72

Yasquez also belongs to the same period. He was born in 1551, and began his theological teaching within the first twenty years after the Council of Trent. His CCXL. Disputation73 is on the question, ' An Episcopatus sit ordo et sacramentum a Christo institutus?' And his first proposition is: ' Episcopatum jure divino a sacerdotio non differre ac proinde ejus ordinationem non esse sacramentum, nonnulli haeretici, imo et Catholici senserunt.'

His second proposition is ' that not a few scholastics affirmed that the Episcopate was insti tuted by Christ, but that nevertheless it is neither an order nor a Sacrament.'74

The first part of the assertion he maintains to be

72 Greg, de Valentia, disp. ix. quaest. 1, p. 2, de Sacr. Ordinis.

73 Opp. torn. iii. p. 560.

74 Ibid. torn. iii. pp. 562, 563, 565.

true; the second part erroneous. He says that no one can now deny the Episcopate to be an order and a Sacrament without a grave note of censure. Peter Soto says that it is to be believed that the Episcopate is a Sacrament at least by certainty of faith; Medina says that the opposite opinion is dangerous. Though it is not expressly defined in the Council of Trent, it may be obviously deduced from it. Vasquez gives as his own opinion that it is at least manifest by the Council of Trent ' that the Episcopate is an order, inasmuch as it is defined to be instituted by Christ; therefore it is an order instituted (divino jure) by Divine ordinance.' This granted, he asks, ' Who can deny that the Episcopate is an order instituted by Christ, and that the consecration of a Bishop is a sacred ordination, and there fore a Sacrament by which grace is given?' 75

In answering Soto on the distinctness of the sacerdotal and episcopal character, Yasquez says: ' The episcopal power, if it be compared with the sacerdotal, as it is in itself distinct from the sacerdotal, is not more excellent, as if it were related to a more excellent effect; for no power can have a more excellent effect than the consecration (of the Body and Blood of Christ), to which the chief power 75 Opp. torn. iii. p. 566, s. 38.

of the • priesthood is related. But inasmuch as a Bishop together with the episcopal power has also the twofold power of the priesthood, he is truly said to be constituted by the episcopal power in a more eminent degree above priests, as a more perfect priest, who has not only all powers that other priests have, but has power also to ordain other priests to the same office; and to act as judge in all things, in binding and loosing by the keys.' He therefore affirms that the ordination of a Bishop impresses a more perfect character.76

Vasquez adds that Bishops are superior to priests, not only by reason of order, but by reason of jurisdiction, and both by Divine ordinance. But he says in jurisdiction two points are to be borne in mind: the one being the active power itself (jus clicendi) of giving sentence; the other being the application of the matter and the subjects on whom this active power may give sentence: the former belongs to Bishops (jure divino) by Divine right in virtue of ordination, forasmuch as Christ pro mised them the keys of the kingdom of heaven to loose and to bind, i.e. by excommunication, which power ' is conferred upon them in ordination as pastors and judges.' ' The latter also belongs 76 Opp. torn. iii. p. 568, s. 55.

to them (jure divino) by Divine right, but is received from the Supreme Pastor of the Church, by whose judgment dioceses and parishes are divided, and subjects are assigned to Bishops severally.' 77

The stress of the Protestant controversy, in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries, required of our theologians a deeper study of the Fathers, and a positive treatment of the doctrines of faith. For profuse patristic learning no theologian has sur passed Petavius. His work, De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, was the first complete restoration of the teaching of the patristic period.

He says: ' It is not to be doubted that by the institution of Christ and by Divine right (jure divino) these two orders (the Episcopate and the priesthood) were distinct, whether they were con ferred on one and the same person, or distinct in the persons who bore them; so that one was Bishop and priest, which two are necessarily joined together in the highest grade; and the other priest only, or, as it is commonly said, simple priest.'78

' I have already certainly proved, from the teaching of antiquity and from the perpetual sense and usage of the Christian and Catholic Church, that

77 Opp. torn. iii. p. 566, s. 41.

78 Petav. De Ecd. Hier. lib. iv. c. i. p. 2.

the chief and essential (ouffialrj) difference between the Episcopate and the priesthood is in this, that the Bishop alone is the minister of sacred orders, and that none but he can ordain Bishops, priests, and deacons.'79

' Jurisdiction is inherent in the very nature of the Episcopate, and follows from it by necessity.... Therefore, -whosoever is legitimately made a Bishop, and is placed in a certain see, he has therein a jurisdiction of his own.'

' We have shown in the previous chapter that by the institution of Christ, and the primary origin of the Episcopate, that a spiritual and sacred power is attached to it; and that it is, and is properly called, a true government, constituted not by human right or authority, but by the Divine Will, because it is the Holy Ghost who placed Bishops to rule the Church of God, which He purchased with His own Blood.'

' Lastly, the Fathers whom, in the chapter fore going, we have cited as witnesses to the jurisdiction and power inherent in the Episcopate declare this power to belong to the Episcopate as such, and as it is the ecclesiastical prefecture, and not as its separation from the priesthood came by human ordi- 79 Petav. De Eccl. Hier. ubi supra.

nance. For by this very fact that any one were a ruler or Bishop in the Church, whether alone or with others, his charge they called (af%Jjy) a rule — that is, a government and a chief authority, which Ennodius rightly called a religious command (religiosum imperium), and himself (SgXflvra) a ruler — that is, a prince and a magistrate — of which command or princedom (principatus) the root and foun tain they find in the fact that Bishops are vicars on earth of the Great Shepherd, who placed them over His flock, and willed that, as they are par takers of His charge and His oversight, so they should be of His honour and of His power.... And by reason of this pastoral office of government and rule, Pacian affirms that Bishops are successors of the Apostles, and heirs of their power, and possess the authority of binding and loosing.'80

Suarez, in treating of the ' ordinary minister of the Sacrament of Penance,'81 defines and describes the jurisdiction of a Bishop as follows. He says that five or six points in this matter are certain.

1. First, that the episcopal dignity was insti tuted by Christ, and therefore was introduced by Divine right, and not by human authority. For

80 De Eccl. Hier. lib. iii. cap. x. s. 1, 2, 3.

81 Suarez, De Pcenitentia, disp. xxv. sect. 1.

this, he says, the definition of the Council of Trent is enough.82 Because, if the Bishop be the necessary minister of certain Sacraments, he must be so jure divino.

2. Secondly, it is certain that no spiritual jurisdiction, especially as belonging to the forum of Penance, is necessarily joined to the dignity or power of episcopal order, because a priest has power of absolution, and is capable of receiving and of exercising jurisdiction.

3. Thirdly, it is certain that the jurisdiction of Bishops, as it is ordinary and, by virtue of office at least, in general, was instituted and enjoined by Christ our Lord, so that Peter and his successors might govern the Church, and might assume them to a share of their supreme solicitude (cure of souls'), which may be understood in two ways: the one, that Bishops should be the vicars and delegates of the Supreme Pontiff. But this mode (of government) is not sufficient, for the Pope governs the Universal Church, by the Bishops, in a way different from that in which he governs his own particular bishopric by his vicar; for a vicar has no title of his own nor a property in such bishopric, wherefore he is not in himself its own proper pastor. But it is not so with

81 Sess. xxiii. can. 6 and 7.

Bishops in their own bishoprics, of which the proof a posteriori is this — when the Pontiff dies, his vicar in the bishopric of Kome at once loses his rights, because he depended altogether from him whose vicar he was; but all other Bishops remain as before, because they possess that right by Divine ordinance (jure clivino), and are the possessors of it as their own. It is in this second manner that I understand the government of the Church of Bishops to be by Divine right (jure clivino).

This seems to be the opinion of Innocent III., in cap. ii. Extrav. de Translatione Episcoporum, where he says that the bond of the spiritual dispensation (union and office) between the Bishop and his Church is by Divine right (jure divino). Suarez quotes other authorities, and then adds: ' And this is gathered sufficiently from the words of S. Paul to the Ephesians (cap. iv. and 1 Cor. xii.), where he says that Christ placed in the Church pastors, whom S. Jerome and other expositors understood to be Bishops. But it is of the essence (ratione) of a proper and perfect pastor that he should have his own sheep; for he who governs only the sheep of others is rather called hireling than pastor, as we infer from John x. Christ therefore placed in the Church Bishops, that they might be proper pastors of souls, to whom, as of their own right and as of their own office, the cure of the sheep should helong. And this is also expressed in Acts xx. by the words, ' The Holy Ghost placed you as Bishops to rule the Church of God.'

4. Fourthly, it is certain that, in the forum of Penance, ordinary jurisdiction is annexed to the episcopal office as of the nature of the thing (ex natura rei); and in this way not only the positive Divine law (jus), but also the natural (in so far as it can be in this matter), dictates that he who is con stituted a Bishop has this ordinary jurisdiction over those whose Bishop he is, for such jurisdiction is of the intrinsic essence (ratione) of such office. For a Bishop is, in virtue of his office, a pastor of souls and a ruler in spiritual things, and more in those things which relate to the internal welfare of souls than to the external. Therefore this jurisdiction is intrinsic in such office.

5. Fifthly, I think that it is nevertheless certain that all Bishops having the episcopal or pastoral office receive it through the Supreme Pontiff, and in dependence on him.

Suarez then adds, as his conclusion, that this jurisdiction is not given to Bishops immediately by Christ, but through the Supreme Pontiff; and in this sense it is not had by Divine hut by human right.

In proof, he says that Bishops have it not in virtue of consecration, hut in virtue of office (sed ex vi sui muneris); and this office they have from the Supreme Pontiff, and according to his disposition and manner of arrangement.

But two observations are here necessary: 1. First, that between from Christ and through Peter there is a wide distinction. It is true to say 1 Omnia per Petrum in ecclesiam et in episcopos ' — all comes to the Church and to the Episcopate through Peter, but not as the primary source from him. All is from the Divine Head of the Church. Whether immediately or mediately given, the episcopal character and office are Divine. The munus of a Bishop is to be a ruler of the Church of God. This comes by consecration, and is Divine. The exercitium muneris is through and from Peter, inasmuch as the Supreme Pontiff assigns the subjects of the Bishop. But the office that is exercised is Divine. The exercise is not the office itself. Munus and exerci tium are neither equivalent nor identical. The power of absolution, and the exercise of that power in a priest, are not one and the same thing: so the office of a Bishop is distinct from the exercise of that office. The exercise is indeed wholly a Petro et per Petrum, but not the office itself. The power of the keys — and it is of this that Suarez is treating — is in truth the radix qfficii et regiminis. This is given to the Bishop in consecration immediately from Christ. The office, therefore, is jure divino, the exercise altogether jure humano; and yet the office in its origin, in itself (entitative), and in its effects clave non errante, is Divine. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven; and what is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven.

2. The other observation is that between the primacy of Peter and the office of the Bishop there is again a wide distinction. The Episcopate of the Eoman Pontiff and the Episcopate of Bishops are indeed (entitative} identical. Both are received by consecration. But the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Piome is immediately from the Divine Head of the Church; the actual jurisdiction in actu secundo of Bishops is mediately from the visible Head of the Church. Yet essentially both come from one source, and in their nature and effects are Divine. But the Bishop of Rome has also a primacy, which is a supreme jurisdiction over all jurisdictions, and Divine in its supremacy. All inferior actual jurisdictions (in actu secundo) are dependent upon it; and they may be varied, enlarged, contracted, or taken away. It is a superior Divine jurisdiction, instituted to control all others which are also Divine, To say that the inferior jurisdictions are of human ordinance, because they may be controlled or taken away, is arguing from words, not from things. A suspensio a divinis hinders a priest from saying Mass; but the Mass is Divine; the leave to say it is human. So the faculty to exercise episcopal jurisdiction is human; but the jurisdiction, in itself, entitative, is Divine.

Contenson says: ' The truth is that jurisdiction is distinct from the power of order; therefore when the Bishop gives to a priest in sacred ordination the power of remitting sin, he does not thereby give him jurisdiction, because he does not designate any subject on whom he may exercise such authority. For jurisdiction is the designation of subjects.'8*

Cardinal Gerdil, in defending the Constitution Super Soliditate, says, ' The censor (of the Constitution) distinguishes the power of order from the power of government.. *. This latter is either not communicated immediately by God, or is so only radically.' 84

Now, it is evident that the word jurisdiction has

83 Quoted by Bolgeni, torn. iv. p. 43.

84 Opp. ed. Nap. vol. xiv. p. 387.

been used in two senses: sometimes to denote the inherent poiver of government contained in potentia in the power of the keys; and sometimes for the actual exercise of the power of the keys upon sub jects assigned by the Church. In this latter sense jurisdiction is altogether from the Koman Pontiff. Tournely affirms the following propositions:

1. The episcopal ordination is a true Sacrament, distinct from the priesthood in nature and character.

2. Bishops, by Divine right and institution, are superior to presbyters, as well by the power of order as of jurisdiction.85

He affirms also that inasmuch as the Episcopate was instituted for the government of the Church, and as the power of government was never given to presbyters, Bishops are, by Divine institution, necessary, not only in the Church Universal, but also in particular Churches. In affirming this proposition he gives the following facts: ' When some had attacked this necessity of episcopal government in the year 1631, in two books, the title of the one being " A modest and brief Discussion of certain Assertions of Dr. Kellison in a treatise on Ecclesiastical Hierarchy by Nicholas Smith;" the title of the 85 Tournely, Praslect. Theol. torn. x. pp. 166-173 (Venet. 1739).

latter, " An Apology for the mode of Procedure by the Holy See in governing the Catholics of England in time of persecution, hy Daniel a Jesu," these propositions were examined hy the Archbishop and Theological Faculty in Paris, and were condemned. The censure of the Faculty runs thus: " Censure of certain propositions, as well those delated from Ireland, as also extracted from two books written in English, translated bond fide into Latin by the Sacred Faculty of Theology at Paris in the year 1631.

" First, the ordination of priests and ministers of the Church is the sole cause which induces the necessity of a Bishop.

" Secondly, the Church, in time of persecution, needs a Bishop only for the ordination of priests."

' Both propositions,' the censure says, 'are false, destructive of the Church and of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and heretical.'86

If it be said that the propositions only mean that the Supreme Pastor can govern by giving jurisdiction to presbyters, and that presbyters can do every thing but ordain, the answer is that such propositions ought to need no comments; and that these, as they stand, deny the necessity of the ordinary Divine government of the Church as instituted by Jesus Christ. 86 Pralect. TheoL torn. x. p. 197.

The truth is that Bishops are more necessary in time of persecution than priests, for they can do all that priests can do, and more. In the beginning of the Church, Bishops were many and priests few, and Bishops and deacons sufficed to govern and minister to the Church.

Perrone affirms the following proposition: 'Bi shops are superior to presbyters jure divino.' He says, ' a controversy exists, or rather existed, concerning the Episcopate.' The greater number of the old scholastics thought that the Episcopate is neither an order properly so called, nor for that reason a Sacrament, but only an extension of the priesthood, or, as others said, a simple external deputation to certain functions and ministries, of which a presbyter was not capable. But the opinion which is now common and by all means to be held is this: that the Episcopate is both an order specifically distinct from the priesthood, and a Sacrament. For if to constitute an order and a Sacrament an external rite the conferring of grace and Divine institution be required, as all these unite in the Episcopate, there can be no doubt that the Episcopate is an order and a Sacrament.

In a note he adds: ' In this our Roman College, a little before the extinction of the Society, this

L opinion (that the Episcopate is only an extension of the priesthood) was still puhlicly defended, as appears from the theses published at that time. It is still proposed in the theses for examination of those who desire admission to the College of S. Bonaventure in Urhe of the minor conventuals, which were reprinted in the year 1833. But this opinion is now thought so far from probable that by some it is noted with censure.'87

Bellarmiue88 says that the canonists teach that the Episcopate is a Sacrament distinct from the priesthood; the superiority therefore of the Episcopate over the priesthood is (jure divino) of Divine institution. The reason of this is not far to seek. The canonists were familiar with the tradition of the Church as exhibited in the history and legislation of the (Ecumenical Councils, in which the Episcopate was congregated by its head for the government of the Church. They were familiar at least with the language of the Fathers as exhibited in those great assemblies. The relation in which the Bishops stood to their dioceses, and to the priesthood in them, was manifest in their whole action and attitude. The canonists knew without doubt the con-

' 87 Perrone, Prcelect. Theol. de Ordine, torn. vii. pp. 118, 110. 88 De Sacramento Ordinis, cap. v.

damnation of Aerius on this especial point. They therefore spoke as Fathers and '[Councils spoke. It would be endless and needless to do more than give a few examples from each of the last three centuries. They will be enough to represent the mind of the canonists as a school.

Fagnanus says: ' We acknowledge the order of Bishops to be (jure clivino) by Divine right, and to be the chief in the ecclesiastical hierarchy instituted by Divine ordination.' S9

Schmalzgrueber says: ' It must be added that the Episcopate is an order, and that it is distinct from the simple priesthood. So the canonists hold commonly, and not a few theologians.' 9

Ferraris affirms ' the Episcopate to be an order and a Sacrament which involves a Divine institution;' and he adds, ' This our opinion is gathered from the Council of Trent, Sess. xxiii. cap iv., so that to hold the opposite is, as Eeiffensteuil says (lib. i. Decret. tit.ii.c. 56), dangerous... So also Faguanus, adducing various reasons and more fully explaining the Council of Trent, concludes excellently that it is evident that the episcopal order is by Divine ordi-

89 Fagnani, in secundem partem, Primi Libri Decretalium (Romae, 1661).

90 Jus Eccl. Univ. torn. i. P. ii. p. 4.

nance or jure diiino wholly distinct from the order of presbyters.' 91

Barbosa says: * It is manifest, as is clear from what has just been said, that it was not the Church, but Christ Himself, that instituted the Episcopate, and gave to Peter His Yicar, and to the successors of Peter, the right and the power of appointing and of creating Bishops; so it cannot be doubted that they are instituted by Divine right (jure divino).'^ For this he quotes many canonists.

Maschat says: ' The power of jurisdiction be longs to Bishops mediately, and in its origin is by Divine right (jure divino). Because Christ instituted in His Church a hierarchical order, consisting of Bishops, presbyters, and other ministers, immediately and formally but actually (in actu secundo) this power of jurisdiction belongs to them by human and ecclesiastical right.' 93

But to make an end of a matter which is not doubtful, we may take the last and latest canonist of note. Devoti says: * The power of Bishops is superior to presbyters by Divine institution.'94 But

91 Bill. Can. in voc. Episcopatus, 2, 5.

92 Barbosa, De Off. Episc. P. i. tit. i. 7, 5. 83 Mascbat, Ins tit. Can. P. i. p. 263.

94 Ibid. torn. i. p. 116 (ed. Rom. 1829).

as his teaching has heen so fully given in the first chapter, it need not be repeated here.95

Cardinal Tarquini says ' that our Lord constituted Bishops as true and perfect pastors, subject to the Eoman Pontiff; and that consequently the episcopal jurisdiction is derived to each Bishop by this authority, whether mediate or immediate, of the Koman Pontiff, which is called legitimate mission; not therefore by consecration or the receiving of the episcopal order, by which is conferred only the power of administering Sacraments and (hdbilitas) an ability of ruling the flock of Christ, but not the faculty to do so, or of exercising this power and ability.' 96

F. de Augustinis, in his excellent work De re Sacramentaria,97 after affirming that Bishops are superior to priests jure divino in respect to jurisdiction, goes on to say that this does not mean that Bishops receive immediately from Christ a jurisdiction complete and ready for exercise in act (in actu secundo). He distinguishes jurisdiction into abstract and concrete. In the abstract, he says that it is ' the pastoral power for the government

95 Supra, p. 14.

98 Juris Can. PuUici Institutiones, pp. 83-8 (Romae, 1759).

97 Cone. Trid. s. xxiii. can. 4.

of the Church residing in the Episcopate, subordinate to the Bonian Pontiff.' In the concrete it is the same power, as it resides in any particular Bishop. It is in the former sense that the episcopal order is jure divino superior to the priesthood. He then says in the concrete — that is, as residing in each Bishop - — it must be regarded in three ways: 1. as to its exigentia; 2. as to its actuality; 3. as to its exercise.

First, as to its exigentia, i.e. the necessity of office. It is certain that it is a power immediately from God, and therefore jare divino. And the ex igentia, or necessity of jurisdictional power, comes by virtue of episcopal ordination, because by virtue of it a Bishop is immediately constituted in the order of those who by Divine right are to be pastors and rulers in the Church.

Secondly, as to exercise, it is certain that this jurisdictional power of Bishops is wholly dependent on the Koman Pontiff, who can diminish, extend, or take it away.

Thirdly, as to actuality theologians have differed whether it be immediately from Christ or mediately through the Kornan Pontiff, who, as the immediate giver, though the secondary, for Christ is the principal giver, confers it by his own authority.

He then affirms the Episcopate to be a Sacrament, impressing a character and conferring grace, and says that though certain older scholastics denied it, the affirmative opinion is now the common one among theologians, so that Bellarmine calls it most certain. Vasquez says that it cannot be denied with out note of censure, and Peter Soto that it is to beheld by certainty of faith.

In like manner, F. Mazella, in his learned treatise De visibili Ecclesice Capite, discusses the question Utrum Episcoporum jurisdictio procedat a Deo immediate an mediante Romano Pontifice.

He also distinguishes the abstract and the concrete jurisdiction. Of the abstract jurisdiction he says, ' That the power of jurisdiction in the abstract — that is, in the whole Episcopate — is of Divine right, and conies immediately from God, nobody doubts.' ' And certainly neither the Supreme Pontiff or other human authority could ever effect that the order of Bishops should not exi'st in the Church; or that, existing, it should not rule the Church.'

The whole question is as to jurisdiction in concreto, i.e. in each Bishop.

He then draws the same threefold distinction of 1. exigentia or aptitude; 2. actuality; 3. exercise. He says it is certain that this necessity or aptitude comes from God: ' aptitudo enim ad jurisdictionem

Episcopalem immediate pullulat ex characters Episcopali eique est per se aclnexa: sed character a Deo immediate proficiscitur: ergo et exigentia ilia.'

He then states the question thus: the episcopal jurisdiction is either complete or incomplete. The incomplete is that which is conferred on Bishops by Christ, the chief and immediate giver of it, together with the power of order in virtue of consecration; but this jurisdiction is without subjects, and cannot be validly exercised without the authority of the Koman Pontiff. The complete is that which has subjects, and is ready to exert itself in act (in actu secundo). The only question undecided is whether this jurisdiction be immediately from Christ or through the Supreme Pontiff, who, as the immediate giver, though not the principal, confers the jurisdiction of his own authority.

The Council of Trent refrained from deciding it; the Council of the Vatican did likewise.

F. Mazella enumerates Victoria, Vasquez, Alphonsus de Castro, Collet, and others not a few, who maintained that this jurisdiction is immediately from Christ. But he enumerates also a larger number of names, and many of the greatest weight, who held that complete jurisdiction comes mediately through the Roman Pontiff.

He sums up the question as follows: 'According to this latter opinion, the disparity between the episcopal and the Pontifical jurisdiction is better understood.' The Pontiff receives his jurisdiction immediately from Christ; the Bishops mediately from (i.e. through) him.

Having thus stated the question, F. Mazella enunciates the following proposition:

' In virtue of episcopal consecration, there arises in Bishops a certain (exigentia) necessity or aptitude for ruling the Church; but the actual power necessary for this (rule) is not conferred; for this, though it be (jure divino) by Divine right in the episcopal body, is not, like the power of order, communicated to Bishops one by one, except (mediante Romano Pontifice) mediately by the Roman Pontiff.'

Finally, he sums up the chapter with these words: ' That which the Roman Pontiff communicates to Bishops is no authority derived from him self or having its origin in men. It is that same authority which Christ reposed in him when He constituted him in whom the fulness of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction should reside. If therefore the entity of the jurisdiction be considered in itself, it is not a human power, but a Divine.'

In truth, it would seem that the reason of this wise and anxious language has been a laudable and necessary prudence explicitly confessed by Bolgeni; and certainly in the time of Febronius and Scipio Pdcci it must have been wise to guard against all equivocal terms. He says, ' I am of opinion that in the present times it is necessary, or at least supremely advantageous, to abandon all expres sions which are equivocal and capable of insinuating-false ideas, and to fix a language which is one, constant, and common, so as to take away all equivocation of words, and to unite all in the same mode of expression, so as to unite all in the same way of thinking.' 9S

We have now sufficiently traced the teaching of theologians and canonists in the third period, and may sum up the result.

1. They may be said to be unanimous in teaching that the Episcopate is superior to the priesthood jure divino.

2. That the Episcopate is an order.

3. That it is a Sacrament.

4. That it impresses a special character.

5. That it confers grace.

On all these points, if the terms vary the doctrine of all is the same; and the doctrine stands in con-

98 Bolgeni, L'Episcopato, torn. iv. p. 48.

trast with the teaching of many of the schoolmen, and in conformity with the teaching of the Fathers.

There remains one point on wrhich as yet they are not unanimous, in their words at least — that is, as to the jurisdiction of the Episcopate; and yet here also in suhstance they are all agreed:

1. That the whole Episcopate is dependent on the Roman Pontiff, who, out of the plenitude of his primacy, may contract, enlarge, or take away the jurisdiction of any Bishop.

2. That without the authority of the Roman Pontiff they cannot exercise any episcopal power.

But they are not agreed on the following points:

1. Whether there be any episcopal jurisdiction which is not derived from the Roman Pontiff.

2. Whether what is received frdm the Roman Pontiff be a Divine jurisdiction.

3. Whether in consecration any jurisdiction be conferred.

4. What it is that a Bishop receives in consecration as a ruler of the Church.

If we take jurisdiction to mean strictly and technically what lawyers call the right jus dicendi inforo externo, then there can be no doubt that this wholly and altogether comes from the Pontiff; for there can be no forum externum without a flock, and no Bishop can have a flock assigned to him except by thQ successor of Peter.

But theologians do not strictly and technically confine the meaning of jurisdiction within these limits. They use the word as Yasquez, Gregory de Valentia, Ballerini, and Devoti do of the potestas regiminiB, which they affirm to he conferred upon the whole Episcopate immediately hy Christ.

Here, then, we have an equivocal term: and this ambiguity runs through many who write on this subject.

This twofold sense of the term jurisdiction leads to a further ambiguity. It introduces the idea of two jurisdictions — one in the whole Episcopate, and another in each several Bishop.

And a still" further ambiguity flows from this. A Bishop by consecration shares in the jurisdiction of the Episcopate, but is said to have no jurisdiction as a Bishop.

All are agreed that by virtue of consecration a Bishop receives the potestas ordinis. But that which makes the Episcopate superior to the priest hood is not only the power of ordination, but the power of government.

Cardinal Tarquini says that in consecration there is conferred a ' habilitas ad Ecclesiam regendum.'

F. de Augustinis and F. Mazella call it an exigentia.

The two last writers are by far the most exact on this point.

If a Bishop confirmed, hut not consecrated, may exercise episcopal jurisdiction, has he this habilitas before, and without consecration?

What habilitas does he then receive in consecration?

But a simple priest also may exercise episcopal jurisdiction, as Prefects Apostolic and Vicars Capitular. They must, therefore, either have this habilitas, or they do not need it. If so, what does it confer upon a Bishop which they do not possess?

The same remark, more or less, might be made about the exigentia. Either the priest and the lay man have this exigentia, or they do not need it. What, then, does it confer on the Bishop?

When Gregory of Yalentia says that by consecration every Bishop receives the potestas regiminis in potentia, but that for its actuality — that is, for its exercise in act — the authority of the Roman Pontiff is necessary, no ambiguity appears.

Such also I conceive to be the meaning of Devoti, when he speaks of&jurisdictio otiosa a Deo immediate collata. And the parallel lie draws between the power of absolution conferred upon every priest in ordination, mediately by the Sacrament of Order, but immediately from God, seems to be an exact parallel. Every priest has in him in potentia or potentially the power of absolution; but no priest without faculties has jurisdiction over anybody. He may live and die without faculties, but the power of absolution is in him. The Council of Trent, in its fourth canon upon the Sacrament of Order, condemns under anathema those who say that the words ' Accipite Spiritum Sanctum' in the Sacrament of Order are said without effect. But if they do not convey the power of absolution to the priest and of government to the Bishop, how are they not said in vain?

F. Mazella says truly that this exigentia issues from, or is produced by, the character impressed in consecration.

Therefore it is something which without consecration neither cleric nor priest can possess.

The potestas clavium or the power of the keys, and the potestas regiminis or the power of government, according to Ballerini, are equivalent. The signification of the key of David as the government, or throne, promised to the Messias, is sufficient proof. This we have already seen in the first and d chaP*ers-°9 Now, S. Gregory the Great says:

LI

To a seconi

11 wlf° know the Gospel it is plain that hy the

Of Our Lord the care of the whole Church voice

3mm(tted to S. Peter, head of all the Apostles. was c

"j^ him it is said: " Thou art Peter... and ee ^ill I give the keys of the kingdom of to th n " <«cc. See, he receives the keys of the heave Q', ilv kiPo^om > ^e P°wer of binding and loosing heaven en tol him, the care and primacy of the whole

8 gl\is Committed to him.'100 Chun / rie. i/er of the keys, then, includes the whole p o-oyepiment an(^ °f *ne pastoral office, of which ideao to wer of binding and loosing is the essence. But the pis inhelren^ ^n ^ne successor of Peter and the unt,!d

'atholic writers interpret the powers of the keys

. ^ distinp senses, which, however, are all homo-

us anF un^e in one ^1 sense of supreme genec nment.l Macedo gives them as follows: govei

The £|rs^ 1S *^a^ ^ ^ie Poiestas claum s ded a fnpreme and universal power over the

) Churcli1' Par^ly ecclesiastical and partly politiwhol'^ jer^^ [from the sovereignty of our Lord, to

/oil -n™Ver in heaven and earth belongs. This whonf aii P0>

99 p g1. 29^ Isaias xxii. 22, ix. 6, and Apoc. iii.

100 E {j!t. lib. v. ep. 20, al. iv. 32.

is held by Hostiensis and many of the It includes the fullest direct temporal pow«

2. The second somewhat restricts the the keys, that is, to ecclesiastical power in spiritual matters, and indirecte ad spi temporal. This is held hy Stapleton, E Suarez, and others.

3. The third interprets it of the two k science and of government, which is the S. John Chrysostom, S. Maximus, and o the Fathers.

4. The fourth explains it of the pow and the power of jurisdiction. But inasi twofold jurisdiction in corpus verum an< mysticum is an imperfect distinction, 1 jurisdiction in corpus verum runs into tl order, the authors who hold this opini agreed among themselves, some restrictin of the keys to jurisdiction over the my alone.

5. The fifth extends the power of the whole power over the mystical Body, w ferred in the Sacrament of Order, wheth(cial or not, so long as it is directed to < salvation of souls; wherefore they exte] ordinary administration of all the Sacrar secone opinion of many theologians and Fathers, as ' To a by Suarez, Henriquez, Bellarmine, S. John voice sostom, S. Cyril, S. Augustine, S. Cyprian. was c The sixth interpretation, which Macedo calls... rrima, or most common, is that the power of the to th properly and only signifies the judicial power heave i is exercised in the Sacrament of Penance. heave:restricts it to the tribunal of Penance. is givacedo goes on to say that all these opinions are Chun lie, and free from error, and none of them

Tbeen censured.101 idea o it he selects the second interpretation as the P' iost adequate and exact, namely that which this cos the power of the keys to the whole govern-)ecause f *he Church. And this is not inconsistent ie poweie Definition of Pope John XXII., who says n are ver °f *ne keys *s ^ne power whereby the,^epStical judge admits those, who are worthy ^kingdom of heaven, and rejects those who orthy;' for this proposition is true, but can-keys t(l°oically converted, for the subject is far ich is ian ^ie Predicate.

.*, ye.in theologians, then, treat of the power of the hon in treating of the Sacrament of Penance, they t limit it to that Sacrament.

101 De Clavibus Petri, lib. i. c. i.-iii.

M

Suarez, in answer to the question whether the power of absolution be a power of order or of jurisdiction, says that the power of order is nothing else than the sacramental character, inasmuch as by Divine ordination a person is thereby deputed to be a judge of souls in the forum of Penance; he then adds that this character is a true quality in hering in the soul, not, he says, a physical power: the character is a physical quality, but the power inherent in it is moral. And this moral power of being a judge in the forum of Penance is, as he says, that which is given to the priest in his ordination.102

He then refutes the opinion that this inherent moral power or deputation to the judge of conscience gives also jurisdiction, and also another opinion which asserted that it gave at least an inchoate jurisdiction; and he affirms and defends an intermediate opinion which asserts that while the power of absolution is given in ordination, the jurisdiction over souls, without which it cannot be exer cised, is given by a superior — that is, by the Bishop to the priest, and by the Eoman Pontiff to the Bishop.

Such, he says, is the ordinary course of the 102 De Sacr. Pan. diep. xvi. sect. 3.

Church; for the Apostles received jurisdiction immediately from Christ after He rose from the dead, when He breathed upon them, and said, ' Receive ye the Holy Ghost,' &c.

This is so denned by the Council of Trent, and is therefore defide.

What Suarez here calls the moral power of judging in for o conscientice, and the deputation to be a judge as distinct from the jurisdiction necessary for the exercise of this power, S. Thomas clearly defines as follows: ' Spiritual power is twofold — one sacra mental, another jurisdictional. The sacramental is that which is conferred by consecration.... And this power, accordiag to its essence, remains in a man who by consecration has received it as long as he lives, whether he fall into heresy or schism.' But this inferior power cannot issue forth into act unless it be moved by a superior power.

But the power of jurisdiction (i.e. actual) is that which comes from the simple injunction of human authority; and this power does not adhere inseparably to the person; wherefore it does not remain in schismatics and heretics.' ' When, therefore, it is said that such have no spiritual power, it is to be understood either of the second power (i.e. of jurisdiction ab liomine), or if it be said of the primary power, it is not said of the essence of that power, but of its legitimate use.' 103

And this doctrine S. Thomas maintains still more clearly in his comments on the fourth hook of the Sentences.104 ' In all the aforesaid (bad and excommunicated priests), the power of the keys remains as to its essence, hut its use is hindered from the absence of matter (ex defectu materice). For since the use of the keys requires a superiority (pralationem) in him who uses it in respect to him on whom it is used, ashas been said before, the proper matter on which the use of the keys is exercised is man, who is subject to it; and because by the order of the Church one is subject to another, therefore also by the prelates of the Church the subject may be withdrawn from him to whom he was subject. Therefore, as the Church deprives heretics, schismatics, and the like, withdrawing their subjects, either altogether or in some degree, in the measure in which they are deprived they cannot have the use of the keys.'

It is needless to multiply quotations which might be done without end. Suarez calls it an inherent moral power, and deputation as judge in

103 2d 2d£e, qusest. 39, art. 3.

104 Dist. xix. qusest. 11, sol. 3.

the forum of conscience given to every priest in ordination.

S. Thomas, with even greater explicitness, calls it the power of the keys; and he affirms two things: first, that it inheres fully in the priest before he has the power to use it by actual jurisdiction assigned to him; and next, that it remains even when the faculty to use it is taken away.

And this power the Council of Trent defines to be given by the words, ' Accipite Spiritum Sanctum,' in ordination.

If this be so in the case of the priest, who receives the power of the keys without the power of communicating it to others, how is it not a fortiori true of the Bishop, who, by the same words, * Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,' receives not only the power of the keys, but also the power of giving the keys in ordination to the priesthood, and further, of giving the power to give them to others in consecration to the Episcopate?

We may now give a definition of the Episcopate; and the following definition seems to be adequate and complete: ' Sacerdotium Christi ad regendam Ecclesiam a Spiritu Sancto positum.'

I do not say, as some do, ' plenum sacerdotium,' because this would seem to imply that the priesthood is capable of degrees, and may be complete or incomplete. The priesthood was full and perfect when our Lord gave to His Apostles the power of sacrifice. It is full and complete in itself and in every several priest. But our Lord is not Priest only, but Prophet and King. He is the supreme Teacher and Kuler of His people. When He con ferred His Priesthood on the Apostles He did not as. yet make them either teachers or rulers. The Episcopate was not as yet conferred on them. It was instituted when He breathed upon them, and gave them the Holy Ghost and the power of the keys; for in this is the power of government. The Episcopate, therefore, presupposes the power of sacrifice, and unites it with the power of government. As sacrifice is the essence of priesthood, so the power of government is the essence of the Episcopate.

But, perhaps, the following may be preferred: ' Episcopatus est ordo prseditus spiritual! potestate cum regendi turn propagandi et perpetuandi sacris ordinationibus Ecclesiam Dei.'.

This definition is given by Ferrante, whose Elcmenta Juris Canonici are the text-book of the Eoman Seminary.

It is adequate as expressing all that is essential and proper to the Episcopate, namely (1) government, and (2) the power of consecration and ordination.

Either of these definitions is sufficient to deter mine that the essence of the Episcopate is government.

Macedo, whose opinions on the prerogatives of Peter and his successors are in the main those of Turrecremata, and therefore certainly not inclined to diminish the pontifical or unduly to exalt the episcopal office, after pointing out the dependence of the Episcopate on the primacy of the Roman Pon tiff, sums up his statement with these words, with which we may conclude this part of our subject: ' It must hy no means be passed over that Bishops, though they receive jurisdiction from the Pontiff, are yet ordinary pastors, and have ordinary jurisdiction in their Churches, which they can delegate to others, as Suarez and Azorius note; of which, though it be certain, yet the reason is less clear. These two authors give a certain reason, which I repeat. The episcopal power in its root is Divine; for it rests upon the Divine Sacrament of Order instituted by God, and it is spiritual and sacred, and not of human right, but Divine. Wherefore, though it be immediately conferred by the Pontiff, it is not conferred by him as a human person, but as Vicar of Christ, bearing the person of God: therefore, when it is given, it is given in the name of God, not of man; and it is therefore not delegated, hut ordinary; because, though it be given by man, it is not human, but sacred, and of a higher order, of which the Pon tiff is not the lord, but the administrator.' 105

105 Macedo, De Clavibus Petri, lib. i. cap. iii. p. 39 (Rome, 1660).

Footnotes

1. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory.'G ↩

2. Unity of the Church and of his epistles, but by ↩

3. It is necessary, therefore, as I conceive, that they who are being purified be wholly pure and free from the mixture of all that is unlike (to purity), 'and. that those who are illuminated should be filled with the Divine light, and elevated by the purest mental vision to the habit and power of contemplation, and that those who are made perfect, being translated from imperfection, should become partakers of the sacred objects (realities) of the perfect science which they contemplate. It is fitting also that they who cleanse others should give to them out of the abundance of their own purity, and that those who enlighten, as minds more luminous both to receive the light and to give of its own, being more profusely filled with the Divine radiance, should shed abroad their light on all who are most meet for it, and that those who make perfect, as being skilled in communicating perfection, should perfect those whom they perfect in the sacred science of the Divine things which they have seen. ↩