Chapter IV. The Episcopate the State of Perfection

In the language of the schools, there are two states of perfection — the state of the Episcopate and the state of religious Orders. The first was of direct Divine institution by our Lord in person, the second was instituted by the Church.

The meaning of state, as S. Thomas teaches, is from stare, a permanent and immutable condition.1

The Episcopate and the priesthood are a state divinely instituted. They impress an indelible character. Once a priest, always a priest. The obligations of this state are to the precepts of charity, the life of counsels, the pontifical laws, and the living voice of the Church, speaking by legitimate superiors. The religious state of perfection is that which is constituted by the life of counsels under the three vows. In this state may be not only priests, but lay-brothers and nuns. The obligations of religious Orders bind to their rule, to the life of counsels; 1 2da 2daB, quaest. 183.

not indeed to all counsels, but to those that are expressed in the Kule,2 and to the injunctions of the living voice of their superiors.

I venerate and love the Eegular Orders; hut the scope of this hook is to speak only of Bishops and priests as such.

There are three Divine facts in the dealings of God with His people of old, which foreshadow the perfection of the priesthood of Jesus Christ.

God said to Abram, 'Walk before Me, and be perfect;'3 that is to say, the perfection of man is to be like God. To walk before God means to live in habitual consciousness of His presence; to appreciate His perfections; and to imitate them by a voluntary conformity. God is the pattern of perfection; His presence is the constraining motive to imitation, and imitation is conformity to the Divine Nature.

When Moses conversed with God in the mountain his face became luminous: it shone with the rays of Divine perfection, and he was forced to put a veil over his face.4

In the year that King Ozias died the Prophet Isaias saw the Lord in the temple, sitting upon a throne, high and elevated; and His train filled the

2 S. Thorn. 2da 2dae, quaest. 186, art. 2.

3 Gen. xvii. 1. « Exod. xxxiv. 33-35.

temple, and the angels adored Him with covered faces; and they cried, ' Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts; all the earth is full of His glory.' ' And I said, Woe is me, because I have held my peace; because I am a man of unclean lips; and I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of hosts. And one of the seraphims flew to me, and in his hand was a live coal, which he had taken with the tongs off the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said, Behold, this hath touched thy lips; and thy iniquities shall be taken away, and thy sin shall be cleansed.'5

The presence of God, converse with God, and the fire of the Holy Ghost, these are the three Divine agencies by which the perfection of God is imparted to man.

And all these were given in a manner far higher, and in a measure far more abundant, by the Eternal Son Incarnate, to those on whom He conferred His priesthood.

S. John writes of His presence: ' The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory.'6 'That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life.' 7

5 Isaias vi. 1-7. 8 S. John i. 1-14. 7 1 S. John i. 1.

The Apostles walked before God, not only by faith in an invisible presence, but also by sight of His visible human form. They heard His audible human voice; they lived in His fellowship;8 they were guided by His example as the law of their life; taught by His words as their rule; drawn into conformity of heart and will to Him, as their constraining motive and obligation. His presence changed and assimilated them to Himself. They saw His glory, as of the only-begotten Son, not visible to the eyes of sense, but perceived by their spiritual insight and by perception of the Divine Beauty. Their lips were touched by the fire of Pentecost, and they became witnesses of the perfection of God. This explains at once the language of S. Ignatius, who in priest and Bishop saw Christ Himself; and of the so-called Dionysius the Areopagite — be he who he may — who traces out the Hierarchy, celestial and ecclesiastical, as the pattern and channel and instrument of the perfection of God in the members of the Church.

There is, perhaps, no question in the Summa of S. Thomas less understood and more needed by those who are external to the faith than the treatise De convenientia Incarnationis. It is the nonperception of the manifold and eminent fitness of the 8 S. Jobn i. 6.

Incarnation that has given rise first to doubts, and then to denial, of this supreme manifestation of the wisdom of God. By what other means could the perfection of God be brought so intimately and so rationally within the reach of the human intelligence and of the human heart? By what form could God speak to man more sensibly than in the form of man? By what language more articulately than by human speech? If ' the firmament shows the work of His'hands,' the Divine humanity of Jesus Christ shows the perfections of God in His own image and His own likeness. All the works of Omnipotence, in the inanimate, animate, and rational creation, in all their beauty and in all their glories, are as the inarticulate sounds and voiceless signs of the dumb and speechless; but the Word of God Incarnate illuminates the whole rational creation with the intellectual vision and voice of the Divine Perfection. Jesus was the Light of the world, because He was the Visible Perfection of God, the law, the exemplar, the pattern of all perfection; and they that follow Him ' shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life,' because by imitation, assimilation, and conformity they become Qeiug xoivavoi (pvczag 'par takers of the Divine nature.'9

9 2 S. Peter i. 4.

Jesus was not only the Perfection of God, but also the perfection of man. The Divine manhood, in all its perfections of intelligence, heart, and will, and in all the perfections of word and deed, both in sympathising and in suffering, is a revelation of what is the perfection of man in the Divine intention. He not only redeemed the world by dying for it, but He opened the way of perfection by living among men. He fulfilled the prophecy of Isaias — ' A path and a way shall be there, and it shall be called the holy way: the unclean shall not pass over it; and this shall be unto you a straight way, so that fools shall not err therein.'10 And it was of this path that He said, 'I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No man cometh to the Father but by Me.' n There is no way to the Father but by conformity to the Son.

S. Irenaeus says that the Son of God in taking our manhood was born an infant, that He might conform Himself to man in all the stages of his being. ' To infants He became an. infant, to little ones a little one, to youths a youth.'

In all these stages of human life He manifested its perfection. So also in all its relations, as son, as kinsman, as teacher, as friend, as priest, as pastor. 10 Isaias xxxv. 8. » S. John xiv. 6.

la Him ' dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead corporally.' And in Him all human perfection was visible, intelligible, and, in relative proportion, attain able. He was not only the visible exemplar, but the assimilating power, which changed those who by faith conversed with Him into His own likeness. S. John says, 'We beheld His glory;' and S. Paul, * We all, beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory.' 12

From all these Divine truths many consequences flow.

1. First, the presence of God was manifested to mankind by the Incarnation, and is perpetuated by the spiritual presence of the Incarnate Word as Head of the Church, by His Keal Presence in the Sacrament of the altar, and by His representative presence in His priesthood.

2. Secondly, by His visible manifestation among men, the pattern and exemplar of all perfections, both Divine and human, were revealed in the most luminous and comprehensible form.

3. Thirdly, by choosing out and assimilating His Apostles to Himself, He impressed upon them the image and outline of His own perfection, and made

12 2 Cor. ill. 18.

them to be the witnesses and representatives of that perfection to the world.

4. Fourthly, by ordaining and consecrating them to be priests and Bishops, He committed to them the office of illuminating and perfecting others.

5. Fifthly, by this Divine ordinance the sacerdotal or pastoral office or state is the highest state of perfection, instituted immediately by our Lord Himself. All other states of perfection are mediately instituted by the Church, and are perfect in so far as they approximate to this state immediately and divinely instituted.18

6. Sixthly, the counsels of perfection were the law of the Episcopate and of the priesthood, impressed upon them by the example and will of our Divine Lord, and by the law of liberty written on the heart of those 'whom the Holy Ghost has placed to rule the Church of God.'14

7. Seventhly, the Episcopate as a whole — that is, the whole Ecclesia docens — is at this day in the

13 S, Thomas says, ' Summum gradum in religionibus tenent quse ordinantur ad docendum et proBdicandum, quaa et propinquissimae sunt perfection! Episcoporum.'

He quotes Innocent III., cap. Licet: ' Sicut magnum bonum minori bono praeponitur, ita communis utilitas speciali prefertur; et in hoc casu recte proponitur doctrina silentio, sollicitudo contemplation! et labor quieti.' — 2da 2daB, quaest. 138, art. 6.

" Acts xx. 28.

state of perfection which our Lord instituted. To deny this would be to affirm that the whole Ecclesia docens has departed from its Divine institution, which cannot be affirmed without heresy or error proximate to heresy.

These truths are contained in the Divine tradition of the Church. They are taught especially by S. Thomas; 15 and though some of the schoolmen may have passed them over, none have denied them. I will not inquire into the causes of their silence. Many are obvious, and others might easily be found; but there is one so patent and sufficient that I will dwell on that alone.

One main reason why the world has forgotten, or refuses to recognise, the Episcopate as the divinely instituted state of perfection, is because so many Bishops have lived imperfect lives, and some even notoriously evil lives. When I say this, I need not speak of gross vices. I speak of worldliness, love ot courts and honours, secularity, self-indulgence, love of money, indolence, negligence, omissions of duty, fear of men, desire of their favour, lack of pastoral zeal for souls. A Bishop may be spotless of grosser vice, and yet be a hireling. Fugisti quia tacuisti. If he is silent when he ought to speak out; if he

15 Summa Theol. 2da 2dse, quaest. 184, art. 5.

N rebukes the sins of the weak, and holds his peace when strong men offend God; if he be a respecter of persons, a companion of the rich, a dependent on the great; if his foot be in the houses of the wealthy and noble, and his service prompt for them, but tardy, though not refused, to the poor; if for those who can reward him he is willing and ready, and for those of whom he can expect nothing he has little forwardness, how shall he escape S. Paul's sentence, ' All men seek the things that are their own; not the things that are Jesus Christ's'?16

It would be hard indeed to recognise in such men the state of perfection. And yet if we look at the Episcopate in the time of S. Bernard and S. Thomas of Canterbury and S. Gregory VII., at the courtly and royalist and imperial and feudal Bishops, and at so many Bishops immersed in the world, for the world's sake indeed, but to the unutterable diminution of the spiritual dignity of the Episcopate, we can hardly wonder that the world is half-incredulous and half-irritated when it is told that Bishops are in the state, and in the highest state, of perfection.17

The following, then, is the doctrine of S. Thomas: 'Dionysius attributes perfection to Bishops as per- 16 Phil. ii. 21. " 2da 2<te, qutest. 184, art. 5.

fecters; and in the same book he attributes it to religious.

'For the state of perfection is required the perpetual obligation to the means of perfection with a certain solemnity., Both these are to be found in religious and Bishops. The religious bind themselves by vow, &c.

' In like manner Bishops bind themselves to the means of perfection in assuming the pastoral office, to which attaches the obligation that the pastor lay down his life for the sheep. Consecration and the profession are the solemnity.'11

And so also Bellarmine teaches. In the Gemitus Columbce he says: ' There are three chief members of the Church. The first is of those who are described as in the state of perfection already attained, and they are Bishops, the rulers and teachers of the Church; to whom we join presbyters, who are of the lesser priesthood, and the fellow-helpers of Bishops.'19 So, again, he says: ' A Bishop, therefore, who is in the state of perfection already attained, is bound to be perfect.'

And Suarez also says: ' It must by all means be asserted that Bishops by reason of their pastoral

18 2da 2dae, quaest. 184, art. 5.

19 Gem. Columba, lib. ii. c. v. In Admon. ad Nepotem, 4, p. 37.

office are in a state of perfection; not as if in the way to it, but as in the end itself, which is properly called the state of perfecters, or of those that make others perfect.' 20 Suarez has in mind the language of the patristic period, and specially of the so-called Areopagite and of S. John Chrysostom.

The Apostles instituted the diaconate that they might no longer serve tables, but give themselves to the Word of God and prayer.21 But the temporal state and jurisdiction of the Middle Ages burdened their successors with more than tables and almsgiving. And even now where the Church is happily poor a Bishop is burdened with the worldly cares of a diocese. It never did good even to an Apostle to bear the bag. Moreover, the office of a Bishop is full of distraction and entanglement with affairs and persons. It is inevitable that the dust of this world should cleave to more than his feet. S. Bernard knew how to discern and to distinguish between the needless and the inevitable contact with the secular state. But the world is not S. Bernard, nor has it his discernment or his charity. In writing of the abbots of his Order who sometimes complained of Bishops, he says: * I am astonished that certain abbots of monasteries in our Order break the rule of humility with odious

20 Suarez, De Statu Perf. lib. i. c. xx. 5. 21 Acts ii. 4.

contentions, and, what is worse, under the habit of humility and the tonsure are so high-minded that, while they will not allow the least word of their commands to be transgressed by their subjects, they themselves refuse to obey their Bishops. In what, then, 0 monks, does the authority of priests (Bishops) weigh heavily on you? You fear their molestations? But if you suffer anything for justice' sake, blessed are you. You despise their worldliness? But who was more worldly than Pilate, before whom our Lord stood to be judged: " You would have no. power over Me unless it were given thee from above." Already He said and had experience in His own person of that which afterwards He declared by the Apostles: "There is no power but of God; and he who resists the power resists the ordinance of God." ' 22

We have already, in the third chapter, collected the doctrine of the patristic period as to the state of perfection instituted by our Divine Lord.

From this it is evident that the exemplar of all perfection, as the Fathers believed, was the mind and life of Jesus Christ; and that He chose -out the Apostles to be the reflection of His mind and life to the world. To this end He taught, trained, and assimilated them to Himself. He made them to be 22 De Ojficio Episcoporum, ch. ix. Opp. torn. ii. pp. 1127, 1128.

perfect by the gift of the Holy Ghost, and He sent them out to he aliorum perfectores, the agents hy whom His perfection should he impressed upon all His disciples. The state of the Apostles was, there fore, the state of perfection instituted directly hy our Lord Himself; and the Episcopate is the Apostolate, less only its extraordinary commission and powers. Such was the faith of the first thousand years.

Now, as the Fathers implicitly, and the theologians of the Church explicitly, teach that Bishops are in the state of perfection, we will examine in what they define that state essentially to consist.

All Fathers and theologians agree that the essential perfection of God and of man, both in via et in termino, is charity. ' God is charity, and he that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in Him.' 2*

Bellarmine, following S. Thomas, says that there are four degrees of charity, and therefore of perfection.

1. The first is to love God quantum est diligibilis, in the full measure of His own perfection as an object of love. This degree, therefore, is possible only to God Himself, who is the object of His own uncreated Intelligence and Love.

2. The second degree is in quantum potest creatura, so far as the creature finite in itself can

23 1 S. John iv. 16.

love Him who is infinite. This love is possible only to the hlessed in heaven, in whom the whole capacity of our nature is filled with chanty. This, therefore, is only possible in immortality to those who have attained their eternal end.

3. The third degree is quantum potest creatura mortalis, quce a se removet omnia divini amoris impedimenta, et totam se Dei obsequio consecravit; that is, so far as the creature in this mortal life can love Him by putting away all that hinders the love of God, and by consecrating itself wholly to the service of God.

4. The fourth degree is the state of those who love God appreciative super oinnia, in whom, there fore, the love of God reigns, though they be still in many ways imperfect.

This last is the state of those who are united with God by charity, and live in the state of grace.

It is the third degree of which we now speak, which is the highest state attainable in this mortal life. Such is the perfection of Saints. Bellarmine says of them that respectu beatorum — compared with the blessed — they are imperfect, but respectu aliorum hominum — compared with other men — they are perfect. He then adds: ' This is the perfection of which theologians speak when they say that the state of

Bishops is the state (perfectionis jam adepts) of perfection already attained; and that the state of religious is the state (perfectionis adquirendce) of perfection to be acquired. He adds that religious are not bound at once to be perfect, but that Bishops are: tenentur continue esse perfecti.23 In his book called Gemitus Columba, Bellarmine says that there are in the Church three chief members. The first are those who are said to be in the state (perfectionis jam adepts) of perfection already attained — that is, the Bishops, the princes, and teachers of the Churches, to whom we add presbyters, who are priests of the lesser degree. The second chief members of the Church are those who are in the state (perfectionis adipiscendce) of perfection to be acquired; such as regulars, hermits, coenobites, both men and women. The third are laity and seculars in general who bear authority in the Christian commonwealth.24

This is only a brief exposition of the doctrine of the schools.

S. Thomas teaches that a Bishop is bound by the life of counsels to chastity, poverty, and obedience, whereby the body and the soul are both offered per-

23 Bellarm. De Monachis, cap. ii. Opp. torn. ii. (ed. Yen. 1721).

24 De Gem. Columba, p. 395.

fectly to God, and the hindrances which come between God and the soul are removed.25

The obligation of chastity needs no words: the counsel and spirit of poverty make a Bishop debtor to his flock, so that beyond his own sustenance all ecclesiastical revenues are due to his Master's service: the obligation of obedience is twofold. He owes it in all its amplitude to the Vicar of Jesus Christ: and he owes it to every soul committed to him. He is bound to them in charity: and obedience to the law of charity binds him to lay down his life by martyrdom, by pestilence, by labour, as it may be, for his sheep. ' Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' 26 Charity is perfection, and to give even His life for the sheep is the perfection of the Good Shepherd.

Suarez, as we have seen, teaches that it is altogether certain that the Episcopate is the state of perfection: he proves it (1) by the tradition of the Church, (2) by the authority of Dionysius, (3) by the authority of Fathers. He affirms it to be the state of perfection ratione pastor alls muneris — by reason of the pastoral office. Such is the doctrine of S. Thomas and of Ger-

25 2da 2d£e, quaBst. 184, art. 5; De Perf. Vitce Spir, ch. xvii.

26 S. John xv. 14.

son; nor does any schoolman deny it.27 He quotes from Dionysius the passages given above in the third chapter; adding the words of S. Ignatius to the people of Smyrna: ' There is nothing greater in the Church than the Bishop, because he is consecrated to God for the salvation of the whole world.' Suarez further quotes S. Ambrose, who sa}7s, ' The episcopal honour and dignity cannot be reached by any comparisons.' The Bishop is bound to his Church immutably by a contract made with his Church, which binds both in mutual obligation.

S. Francis of Sales, with his special facility, expresses this doctrine as follows: ' Charity alone can place us in perfection; but obedience, chastity, and poverty are the three principal means to attain to it. Obedience consecrates our heart, chastity our body, and poverty our means, to the love and ser vice of God. These three branches of the spiritual cross are grounded upon a fourth, namely, humility. I shall say nothing of these. three virtues as they are solemnly vowed, because that subject concerns the religious only, nor even as they are simply vowed; for though a vow gives many graces and merits to virtues, yet, to make us perfect, it is not necessary that they should be vowed, provided they

27 DC Statu perfectionis, lib. i. cap. xv. 5.

be observed. For though being vowed, and especially solemnly, they place a man in a state of perfection, yet, to arrive at perfection itself, it suffices that they be observed, being a material difference between the state of perfection and perfection itself; since all Bishops and religious are in the state of perfection, and yet, alas, all are not arrived at perfection itself, as is too plainly to be seen.' 28

It is needless to multiply quotations in proof of a doctrine theologically certain, and universally taught by schoolmen and theologians.

From all this it follows:

1. That the state of perfection ordained by our Lord Himself to be the continuity of His own state on earth, and the exemplar of all perfection, and therefore of all states of perfection, is the Episcopate.

2. That to this state our Divine Lord bequeathed His own example as the rule of life.

3. That to this life of perfection the Apostles were bound by every obligation of faith and charity. Into that state of perfection Bishops have succeeded. The whole Episcopate of the Church in all the world, and through the eighteen centuries of its existence, has for its law the life of counsels, by the law of liberty and by the state itself. If it be thought

28 Introduction to a Devout Life, part iii. ch. xi. Of Obedience.

that vows were attached to the Apostolate itself, it will be necessary to consider that one of two things would he therefore certain and inevitable. Either our Lord instituted the Apostolate and the Episcopate under the obligation of vows, and that the whole Episcopate has fallen from His institution — a proposition injurious to the note of sanctity and open to grave censures: or our Lord instituted the Apostolate and the Episcopate without vows, as it has ever been, and is at this day in all the world. From this it follows further:

4. That vows are not essential to the state of perfection. They belong to the instrumental perfection — that is, they are among the means and helps whereby perfection may by certain persons and in certain states be more easily attained.

It will be well to examine more closely what is this perfection.

To avoid needless prolixity, I will take the doc trine of S. Thomas as given by Suarez.

Perfection consists essentially in the love of God and our neighbour. The essential perfection is a quality of the person: the instrumental perfection is the state in which the person is placed. Both the state, therefore, of Bishops, and that of religious, have the instruments or means of perfection.

The perfection of charity is determined by its extension.

The first extension is to persons — as to friends and to enemies.

The second extension is to acts — that is, to the fulfilment of the commandments and of the coun sels.

But the new commandment, which is twofold, includes all commandments and all counsels.

Now, this personal perfection does not mean a sinless state, which, in this mortal life, has been granted only to the Blessed Virgin and to certain elect servants of God.

It is compatible with infirmity. (1) It does not exclude all venial sin: nor (2) all inordinate motions of the fomes peccati, or sin that dwells still even in the Saints; nor (3) certain indeliberate adhesions or inclinations of nature. But it excludes all deliberate affections to sin. The first passive responses of nature to trial or temptation, such as a swift anger roused by a sudden blow or a ' sudden insult, the primiprimi motus, are not as yet human acts, and they do not as yet fall under the law of morals. The intellect has not deliberated and the will has not assented to them. The first conditions of human action and human responsibility are not as yet fulfilled. They become personal, and therefore sinful, only when we have accepted or welcomed them. And the love of God reigning in the heart hinders all acceptance or welcome of anything contrary to the Divine Will, by making such thoughts or affections hateful, bitter, and terrible.

Such, then, is the nature of perfection to which all are called. And to this, before ordination, all who enter the priesthood ought to have attained.

The means whereby this perfection may be at tained are manifold and various: prayer, mortification of self, grace of the Holy Sacraments, and the life of counsels freely practised by ' the law of liberty.' S. James says, * So speak ye, and so do, as being to be judged by the law of liberty.' 29 This liberty, in the Epistle to the Galatians, is contrasted with the bondage of the Mosaic law; 30 but in the Epistle to the Romans it is contrasted with the bondage of sin and death.31 The true and ultimate meaning of this liberty is the freedom from sin and death which we receive by regeneration, and adoption into ' the liberty of the glory of the children of God.' 3: This liberty consists of the five following degrees of spiritual perfection: First, in the law of

29 S. James ii. 12. ™ Gal. iv. 25, 26.

31 Bom. viii. 1, 2. « 15^. 21.

God, written by the Holy Ghost upon the heart.33 Secondly, in the will set free from sin — that is, from its guilt, power, and love.34 Thirdly, in the love of God leigning in the will, and moving it in its free obedience.35 Fourthly, in the union and conformity of the will with the will of God.36 Fifthly, in the will elevated and confirmed as a law to itself.37

But this law of liberty binds by the highest bond of obligation; and this obligation is above all the most searching and constraining. We are bound by the law of nature to obey our Creator in all the powers and affections of our being; and by our redemption we are not our own, but bought with a price, and therefore bound to glorify our Redeemer. By our regenerate life we are bound to follow the Spirit by whom the sons of God are led; by faith we are bound to obey the revealed law of God; by hope we are bound to use the means of attaining the end for which we were created and redeemed; by charity we are bound to return love for love; by penance we are bound to mortification and reparation; by gratitude we are bound to thanksgiving and its fruits; by generosity we are bound in gratitude to return to Him as He has given to us; by devo-

33 Heb. x. 16. 3< Eom. vii. 35 2 Cor. v. 14.

36 1 S. John iii. 9. 37 Gal. v. 22.

tion we are bound to offer ourselves to Him as He offered Himself to God for us. This is what is called the virtue of religion, or the binding of the creature in body, soul, and spirit to obey, to serve, and to be conformed to God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Within this law of religion there are many degrees of free obedience and free self-oblation; there is a libertas specificationis — a free dom to choose the kind, and even the measure and degree, according to the condition, state, and powers of each, but always ' as being to be judged by the law of liberty.' All then are bound: none are free; for the service of God is like God Himself, both law and liberty. It is in this sense that S. Paul said that ' necessity was laid upon' him; that he was 'a debtor to both Jew and Gentile;' that 'the charity of Christ pressed' him; and S. John, that 'we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren;' and S. James, ' So speak ye and so do as being to be judged by the law of liberty.' This Divine, universal, and primary law of our freedom and probation is the foundation on which repose all lesser and secondary obligations of ecclesiastical laws, of canonical obedience, and of special vows of religion or of devotion, of human justice and of contract. These are acts of our liberty, injunctions, or resolutions ab homine, instrumental as means to the end; and the end is conformity to God in the law of liberty, which binds all men. We are apt to narrow and lower our conception of obligation to the written canons of contracts or laws or vows, thereby losing sight of the highest of all obligation, which is Divine and universal. From this none are free: by this all are bound. It is the law which demands the sanctification of body, soul, and spirit by the free obedience of their whole will in its highest liberty.

When, then, it is said that Bishops and priests are bound to perfection, it is not so much by the letter of ecclesiastical laws or by positive contracts — though these also bind them — as by an antecedent and primary law, issuing from the relation in which they stand to their Divine Master, and from the state in which He has placed them.

When S. Alphonsus says that the Fathers and theologians with one mouth require interior spiritual perfection as a condition to receiving holy orders, he intends what is here described. And such is evidently the doctrine of the first thousand years, from the close of the inspired writers to S. Bernard.

The life of the priesthood is a life of chastity in the spirit of poverty and of obedience, freely chosen and freely persevered in by the sustained renewal of a perpetual oblation of self. 'With Christ/ S. Paul says, ' I am nailed to the Cross; yet I live, not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Him self for me.' 3 ' Be ye followers of me,' he said, ' as I am also of Christ.'39 < God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.' 40 Such a life freely anticipates all obliga tions to the highest aims and acts. ' Christ did not please Himself 41 is a law of life which imposes a law of mortification by our own will, whensoever it is not conformed to His. Love, gratitude, generosity, all three bind us to obey it. If these fail, what can constrain us? S. Paul gives as a rule to all Christians these words: ' The charity of Christ presseth us, judging this, that if one died for all, then all were dead. And Christ died for all, that they also who live may not now live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again.' 42 Now all these rules of Christian aspiration were given by the Apostle, not to Apostles only, or to recluses, or to a select company of the perfect, but to Christians as such, to all the

38 Gal. ii. 19, 20. 39 1 Cor. xi. 1.

40 Gal. vi. 14. 41 Rom. xv. 3.

42 2 Cor. v. 14, 15.

faithful in Galatia and Kome and Corinth, and in all the world, and in all times. By some strange illusions of human thought and worldly tradition, such axioms of the spiritual life have been held to helong only to saints. But all are called to be saints;43 all are called to be perfect.44 And if all Christians are bound by love, gratitude, and generosity to aim at perfection, how much more are they who bear the priestly and pastoral office bound by the obligations of that office to be perfect. All who aspire to receive it are bound to attain that state before they seek that so sacred an office should be laid upon them: and to persevere for ever in that perfection.

When God calls to any state, He gives a grace measured out in proportion to the needs of that state. Every state, therefore, has its grace proportioned to its duties and its dangers. The sacra mental grace of Baptism is proportioned to the duties and dangers of the sons of God; that of Confirmation to the warfare of the soldiers of Jesus Christ; the sacramental grace of priesthood is proportioned to the needs and duties and dangers and warfare and responsibility of the sacerdotal life. In no trial can a priest fail, save through his own fault. God never fails- on His part. He has provided His

43 1 Cor. i. 2. « S. Matt. v. 48; 2 Cor. xiii. 11.

priest with all he needs, and God guards him with an especial care. It were well that this law of the Divine government were more thoughtfully weighed. We should hear less of mistrust and hesitation and fear, which do not honour the goodness and generosity of our Divine Master. He who calls His priests to perfection will give them all the means to be perfect. He does not set them to make bricks without straw. The duties, the dangers, the anxieties, the trials, the temptations of a priest's warfare in the world are great indeed; but the grace to bear them is always present, always equal to the need, always greater (if we be faithful) than all perils without or within. In the strength of this sacramental grace, and of all that God has provided, the pastors and priests of the Church have perpetuated the life and mind and work of their Divine Master in all ages and in all lands. Whatever be the dimness of individuals, the Episcopate and the priesthood have been the light of the world; with all the infirmities of men, they have been the salt of the earth to this day. They have perpetuated in the world the perfection of Jesus Christ.

Chastity is attached to sacred orders by the law of the Church, so that it annuls the status liber and invalidates the contract of marriage.

Sacred orders do not render a man incapable of holding his patrimony or of administering the revenues of the Church; but the life of counsels lays on him the obligation of charity, gratitude, and generosity so to co-administer what he holds, as to be content with food and raiment,45 and to devote all that remains to works of charity and piety.

S. Ambrose says: ' If any one who is in the priesthood, or any ministry, from unwillingness to be a burden to the Church, does not consecrate the whole of his possessions, but honestly satisfies his office, to me such a one does not seem to be imperfect.' 46

And S. Bede: ' The precept of having no purse in this world is not to be understood as if the saints could not retain any money for their own use, or for that of the poor; for even our Lord, to whom angels ministered for the instruction of His Church, had a bag, as we read, and kept the offerings of the faithful for the needs of His disciples and of others.'47

Moreover, the canons of the Church declare that

45 1 Tim. vi. 8.

45 De Officils Ministrorum, cap. xxx. s. 152, torn. ii. p. 41 (ed. Ben.).

47 Horn. lib. iv. c. liv. in Luc. xii.

the endowments of the Church are ' the patrimony of the poor.'

And moral theology prescribes that when a priest has received his lionesta sustentatio, all that remains of his benefice is to be applied to pious uses.48 A priest cannot hoard or enrich himself out of hoardings without violation of conscience.

And for obedience, the authority to which obedience is due was instituted by our Lord in His own person: from Him derived to the Apostles, and from them to the Episcopate, which has jurisdiction over the whole Church. The living will and voice of the Church is the first and supreme authority, to which obedience is due by Divine obligation. And this authority has unfolded itself in the continuous and undivided legislation of the Church by its Pontiffs and Councils, in the Church Universal, and in every province and in every diocese. Every priest in his ordination places his hands in the hands of the Bishop and promises obedience. This is not a mere form. It is a sacred homage, whereby the priest binds himself to a filial obedience to his Bishop, who

48 Gury, torn. i. p. 494, ss. 560, 561, 562: cf. p. 170 note (Romas, ed. Ballerini). Bellarmine, Ad Nepotem, says of the Bishop, ' ita ut divitias Ecclesiae suae non suas existimet: et non habeat ad possidendum tanquam proprias sed ad dispensandum ut alienas.' — Ad Nep. p. 37.

represents to him the authority of the Universal Church and of its Divine Head. The pontifical and canon law is the explicit delineation of the obedience which he promises. But heyond this is an oral law of living government, to which he also binds himself. As in an army much of the discipline is fixed and traditionary, but the handling and wielding of armies depend upon the living mind and voice of its commanders, so in the Church, from the supreme majesty of the Holy See down to the humblest Bishop in the poorest diocese of the Catholic unity, the chief daily responsibility of a Bishop is the care, oversight, and direction of his priests. The application of the written discipline of the Church needs to be tempered and supple mented by the prudence and judgment of the Bishop. Much of his government rests upon the obedience which his priests promised to him in their ordination. He cannot exceed or abuse his authority without immediate appeal to the Holy See, to which he owes an obedience of the strictest obligation under pain of sin.

If it be said that Bishops and priests as indi viduals have declined from this life of counsels, we will thank those who rebuke us for our humiliation and amendment. It were well that every Bishop and every priest lived by rule; and that every Bishop's house and every presbytery were as orderly as a seminary. Bishops and priests may have declined from their primitive fervour, but neither the Episcopate nor the priesthood have declined from the life of counsels. It is recognised, reproduced, and manifested in both, and the gratia status will preserve it to the end.