T. W. Allies

“ But little will it profit to begin, if you persevere not to the end. None shall be crowned, save he who has contended lawfully; none be saved, but he who perseveres to the end. Will you remain with Me still in your temptations to come, and when I am no longer present with you visibly, to protect and exhort, will you preserve your steadfastness? Simon, Simon, behold! I see Satan exerting all his force to overcome your purpose, and to destroy the fidelity which you have hitherto shewn Me. I see the danger to your faith and your salvation approaching. ”

“ As to the preservation of its unity—and especially a unity so complex—the very analogy of human society will sufficiently teach us that it is impossible to be preserved without a strong central authority. Contentions can neither be checked as they arise, nor terminated when they come to a head, without the interference of a power to which all yield obedience. And the living example of those religious societies which have not this power is an argument whose force none can resist. Where Peter is not, there is neither unity of faith, nor of charity, nor of external regimen. ”

“ The Church is one body, not mixed up by a confusion of bodies, nor by each of these being united in an indiscriminate heap and shapeless bundle; but we are all one by the unity of faith, by the society of charity, by concord of works and will, by the one gift of the sacrament in all. ”

“ If it was, so to say, the very first act of our Lord's supreme headship over all to the Church—the very token that He had led captivity captive—to quicken the visible ministry which He had established by sending down the Holy Spirit to abide with it for ever, is the one place most necessary in that ministry to be the only one left vacant by Him? Is the one officer most fully representing Himself to be alone omitted? ”

“ Now who shall deny Abraham that superiority whereby he was made the Father and Teacher of all the faithful, or strip Judah of the dignity in which he excelled his brethren, and was in many points preferred to them? As little may any one strip Peter of his authority as supreme teacher, and take from him those singular endowments, which make him "the greater one" among his brethren the Apostles. ”

“ Rather we must look on man not as he is by, and of, himself, apart from God, and left to his own weakness, but as upborne by divine power, according to the promise, "Behold, I am with you all days, until the consummation of the world." Who can doubt that man, in union with God, may serve for a foundation, and discharge those offices in which the unity of a structure consists? It is confidently and constantly objected, that "other foundation no man can lay beside that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." ”

“ What but that he should never follow, but always be at the head; should close dissensions, weigh and terminate controversies, punish emergent offences, maintain the general discipline, give the support of his counsel and authority in need, and leave undone none of those functions which accompany the office of head and supreme ruler? Hence it is plain that there are two ways, the one absolute, the other hypothetical, by which a decisive judgment may be drawn from the history of the Acts, as to whether Peter's Primacy was instituted in the Gospels. ”

“ Che è occulta, come in l'erba l'angue,— (Dante, Inferno.)
the visible kingdom of Christ, which is His Church, lasts for ever, and is built upon the rock of Peter. The long line of descendants, from Constantine and from Charlemagne, have in their turn impugned and illustrated this glorious privilege of the Papal See. What is there so stable in an empire of commerce, or so solid in the nicely-balanced and delicate machinery of a constitutional monarchy, as to exempt them from the action of an universal law, or to ensure their victory in the doomed contest with the Vicar of Christ? ”

“ That is, the opponents of S. Peter's Primacy are one and all simply destructives; they inspire despair, and are the pioneers of infidelity, but are utterly powerless to build up. Ask the Anglican what is the source of spiritual jurisdiction, and the bond of the episcopate which he affects to defend? He makes no reply. All he can say is, it is not S. Peter. Ask the Greek, if bishops and patriarch disagree, and come to opposite judgments on the faith, or to schisms in communion, which party make the Church? ”

“ VI. The true faith and the true Church are so indivisibly united, that they cannot even be conceived apart from each other, faith being to the Church as light to the sun. But the true faith neither is, nor can be, other than that which Peter, "the first disciple of God," "the teacher of the world," "the mouthpiece of the disciples," and "the confirmer of his brethren," holds and proposes to others. No communion, therefore, called after Christ, which yet differs from that faith, can claim either the name or dignity of the true Church. ”

“ But why does Peter first rise and decide the cause? Because he was first of the Apostles, and as such supreme arbiter in controversy. But consider what he says. "Men and brethren, you know that in former days God made choice among us, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the Gospel, and believe." By my mouth, he appeals to their knowledge of his election by God to the singular privilege of receiving the Gentiles: in virtue of that election he claims and exercises authority. ”

“ For we can never sufficiently urge a point which, being in itself most true, is of itself abundantly sufficient completely to set at rest the present controversy. It is this, that Peter's Primacy proceeds from a singular association with those distinctions, in virtue of which Christ is considered the Head and Chief, and Supreme Ruler of the Church. So that the more his Primacy is depressed, the more Christ's prerogatives and dignity are lowered; nor can he be confined to a precedency of honour and order, without Christ's superiority being shut within well nigh the same limits. ”

“ No words can be more emphatic to this effect than those with which the Apostle introduces the description of the visible hierarchy, and the divine headship which called it forth. "There is one Body and one Spirit, as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all." From which he goes on to say, "Ascending up on high, He gave gifts to men—some Apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors, and teachers." ”

“ God says to Abraham, "And multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the sea-shore." But Christ to Peter, "and upon this rock I will build my Church." Secondly, the blessing thus bestowed from above upon each was not one which should rest in their single persons, but from them and through them should be extended to the universal posterity and society of the faithful; so that all who should believe, to the consummation of time, should gain through them blessing, stability, and victory over the assault of enemies and the gates of hell. ”

“ As the mystery of the Incarnation consists in the union of the divine and human natures, in one Person, and in the assumption of a body, that is, matter, by the one uncreated, incomprehensible, and invisible Being, whereby He becomes visible, so Unity and Visibility are the unfailing marks of His Church, and enter into every image of it, in such a manner that without them the image loses its point and significancy. ”

“ And with what face especially can those maintain that the bishop is the visible head of each diocese, and in being such does not contradict, but illustrate, the headship of Christ, who yet deny that there is one in the whole Church put in the like place over bishops, and see in such an appointment an infringement on the office of Christ? Such an argument is so profoundly illogical and inconsistent, that one has difficulty in believing it to be seriously held, or is hopeless of bringing conviction to those who cannot see an absurdity. ”

“ The house must have its head, the family their father; the knowledge of that father's will is the truth which rests upon the family as its support and pillar. Outside of the family that knowledge may be lost, together with the will to obey the father and to love him; but within it is a living tradition, "familiar to the ear as household words." ”

“ Whereas, then, all unity in the Body of Christ, the Church, is derived ultimately from the person of its Head, the Word Incarnate, that unity is yet four-fold in its operation, and the efficient principle of one sort is not to be confounded with that of another. There is the mystical unity, which consists in the perpetual divine influx from the great invisible Head to His members; there is the moral or spiritual unity of charity, consisting in the presence of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers, and these two are internal, and in closest correspondence. ”

“ In the arguments of Greeks and Anglicans, Lutherans and Calvinists, and all the Protestant sects, the gates of hell have long ago prevailed against the Church, and the devil has built up at his ease a city of confusion on the rock which Christ chose for her foundation. [Pg 258] If we listen to them, never has victory been more complete than that of the evil one over the Son of God: the promised unity he has scattered to the winds: the doctrine of truth he has utterly corrupted: the charity wherewith Christians loved one another he has turned into gall and wormwood. ”

“ Our Lord's divine headship over the Church, all encompassing, as it is, and the spring of all blessing and unity, does not dispense with the establishment of a visible hierarchy, but rather is specially shown therein. And again, the Holy Spirit is the source and superior principle of all spiritual gifts to all, but yet He acts through this hierarchy. He is the spirit who maintains faith and truth, but it is by the instruments of His own appointing. ”

“ Yet S. Paul declares that "there are many members, but one body." How can the distinct and diverse members be reduced to the unity of a body, but by the unity of the head, as the efficient principle? In accordance with which we may observe that never is the image of a body used in Scripture to represent the Church, but it is thereby shown to be visible; and never is it compared with a body as a type, but that body is shown complete with its head. Such are the well-known images of one House, Kingdom, City, Fold, and Temple, to which we have had so often to appeal. ”

“ We see the fervent Apostle treading in his master's steps, the centre and the support of his brethren, the first before the Council, and before the people, ready with his words and his deeds, uttering to the dead, as the echo of his Lord, "Arise," and healing the sick with his shadow. ”

“ Secondly, the Church shares her Lord's prerogative of unchangeableness, and as He is "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," so She, His mystical Body, in her proportion, remains like herself from the beginning to the end. The Church and Christianity are bound to each other in a mutual relation; the Church is Christianity embodied; Christianity is the Church in conception: the consistency and identity which belong to Christianity belong likewise to her; neither can change their nature, nor put on another form. ”

“ His distinction is private, and in the nature of personal affection: Peter's is public, and in the nature of Church government. To one is committed the Mother of the Lord, the living symbol of the Church, the most blessed of all creatures, and that, when her full dignity and blessedness stood at length revealed in the full Godhead of her Son, yet whose throne was intercessory, apart from rule on earth: to the other is committed the Church herself, her championship in the time of conflict, the rudder of the vessel on the lake, till with Christ it should reach the shore. ”

“ He stands apart and alone no less in the fulfilment than in the promise. And under another image, but one equally expressive with the first, the Lord conveys an authority as absolute and as exclusive. The "bounds which its terms convey" are the whole fold of Christ: "the sheep" no less than "the lambs:" "to govern" no less than "to feed." [27] As the great Architect of the heavenly city said to Peter, "Thou art the Rock;" as "the King of kings," who "hath the key of David," and "on whose shoulder is the government," said to Peter, "To thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven;" ”

“ Tradition and history become illuminated with a light which exhibits all objects in their due proportion and true grouping, when they are shown to be but the realisation of what the Incarnate Word, His Church's one only Lawgiver, decreed from the beginning, set forth not only in prophetic image, but distinct command, and stored up in words of such exceeding power, that they bear the whole weight of the kingdom of God, stretching through all ages and nations, without effort or pressure. ”