Unity of the Church

“ Let us all meet in the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. Suffer that We should invite you to the unity which has ever existed in the Catholic Church and can never fail; suffer that We should lovingly hold out Our hand to you. The Church, as the common mother of all, has long been calling you back to her; the Catholics of the world await you with brotherly love, that you may render holy worship to God together with us, united in perfect charity by the profession of one Gospel, one faith, and one hope. ”

“ Christian people are beginning to see how much more important are those points on which the whole Church is agreed than those often obscure or trivial points which split the Church into sects. Churches are beginning to own with some sincerity that there are Christian gifts and graces in all Churches, and that no one Church comprises all the excellences of Christendom. And the only outward unity that is worth having is that which springs from inward unity, from a genuine respect and regard for all who own the same Lord and spend themselves in His service. ”

“ Therefore the reasons drawn from analogy show that the unity of the Church is to be considered the special end for which the Primacy was instituted, and the Primacy itself a principle abundantly provided with all those means by which so admirable a blessing as unity may be first produced and then maintained. ”

“ For surely the blessed Apostle St. Paul teaches the same thing, and indicates the sacredness of unity in these words: 'There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God.' This unity it is our duty to hold and vindicate with firmness, especially we bishops who preside in the Church, that we may approve our Episcopal authority to be founded in one indivisible principle. Let no man injure the brotherhood by deception; let no man corrupt the truth of our faith by faithless concessions. ”

“ Grant that your Church, being bound together in love and obedience to you, may be united in one body by the one Spirit, that the world may believe in him whom you have sent, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. ”

“ Our non-Catholic reader may say that the position we take tends to strengthen that exclusiveness, that narrowness, that aloofness with which he has always charged the Church of Rome. But we would ask our dissenting brethren, can it be otherwise? Truth is indivisible and unchangeable. Were the unity of the Church Universal to exist only in the Church of the future we would have to conclude that there was a time when the Church of Christ did not exist on earth. ”

“ Let all those, then, who do not profess the unity and truth of the Catholic Church, avail themselves of the opportunity of this Council, in which the Catholic Church, to which their forefathers belonged, affords a new proof of her close unity and her invincible vitality, and let them satisfy the longings of their hearts, and liberate themselves from that state in which they cannot be assured of their own salvation. ”

“ The true unity of a particular church, in virtue of which men are truly members of one and the same church, and by which any church abides in real identity, and is entitled to a continuation of her name, is unity in doctrine and faith and in the Sacraments, to wit, that she continues to teach and to set forth, and that her true members embrace from the heart, and use, the articles of faith and the Sacraments as they were held and administered when the Church came into distinctive being and received a distinctive name. ”

“ But furthermore, we do hereby affirm that the Christian unity . . . can be restored only by the return of all Christian communions to the principles of unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during the first ages of its existence; which principles we believe to be the substantial deposit of Christian Faith and Order committed by Christ and his Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world, and therefore incapable of compromise or surrender by those who have been ordained to be its stewards and trustees for the common and equal benefit of all men. ”

“ Common interests may seem to unite them from time to time, but there can be no true, permanent union except where the spirit and the faith are dominating forces. But where is such a bond of unity except in the Catholic Church? Mother Church folds her arms about all her children and questions not their color or their race. ”

“ This idea is necessarily common to all who profess to hold Catholic principles in the Anglican communion. The profession of the doctrine of unity in one, visible, Catholic Church, of itself qualifies the isolation of any body of Christians from the great Christian family, as an anomalous and irregular condition. A return to unity or union of some kind must necessarily become an object of desire and effort. ”

“ We may remark that what makes the attraction of a church is always what is consonant in it to the method and secret and temper of Jesus, and productive, therefore, of the saving results which flow from these. The attraction of the Catholic Church is unity, of the Protestant sects, conscience, of the Church of England, abuses reformed but unity saved. ”

“ The Unity of the Church, as Your Holinesses well know it, is the will of God and ought to be an inspiring example to all men. It should always be a help and not a hindrance to the unity of men of different religions. ”

“ Come, then, dear brethren, we most humbly beseech you, cause your light to shine upon our weak beginnings, that we may see to work by it. Evince your zeal for the glory of Christ, and the spiritual welfare of your fellow-Christians, by your hearty and zealous co-operation to promote the unity, purity, and prosperity of his Church.
Let none imagine that the subjoined propositions are at all intended as an overture toward a new creed or standard for the Church, or as in any wise designed to be made a term of communion; nothing can be further from our intention. ”

“ At this argument one is lost in astonishment, how it could have suggested itself to learned men, and gained their assent. For what had they to prove, or how could they assure themselves, or others, as to either of these two points, that external unity was necessary to particular Churches, but not to the whole Church, or that the institution of Bishops, presiding over particular Churches, came from Christ, but not that of the Primate, whose charge was to rule, administer, and maintain in unity the whole Church. ”

“ Many denominations that have walked together heart and hand for many years, each repelling the assaults of those, who attempted to extinguish their ism, have at length been separated by internal divisions and formed two opposing parties, even though they once believed the same creed, and advocated the same church government. The present is a trying period, and it stands us in hand to endeavor to "keep the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace." Let us not dream of religious union, and prosperity, unless we allow each one to think for himself in matters of scripture interpretation. ”

“ On this account let them consider how injurious to Christian unity is that error, which in various forms of opinion has ofttimes obscured, nay, even destroyed the true character and idea of the Church. For by the will and ordinance of God, its Founder, it is a society perfect in its kind, whose office and mission it is to school mankind in the precepts and teachings of the Gospel, and by safeguarding the integrity of moral and the exercise of Christian virtue, to lead men to that happiness which is held out to every one in heaven. ”

“ It is impossible, however, that the work which they strive singly to accomplish, whether for education, philanthropy, political reform and progress, or the promotion of the Christian religion, should be successfully performed except through Catholic unity and organization in the communion of the one true Church. ”

“ But in the movement of the churches toward a truer charity, a grander catholicity, a larger liberty, and a higher unity, foreshadowing the ultimate attainment of a form of the church on earth akin to that of the church in heaven, it cannot be denied that the new organization, so far as it is faithful to the revealings it accepts, is leading all the others. ”

“ As neither mind nor body alone make the man, so neither faith nor government alone make the Church, but the coherence of both. The Incarnation is the joining a human soul and body with the Person of the Divine Word; after which pattern the Church, which is His special creation, is the joining of one faith and one government in a moral unity. It is by this force, by the same hierarchy everywhere guarding the same faith, by the principle of authority and tradition planted in this one living organisation throughout the earth, that the attacks of heresy are everywhere resisted. ”

“ Assuming that visible unity is essential to the Church on earth, it sanctions the startling inference that whoever is not connected with a certain ecclesiastical society must be out of the pale of salvation. ”

“ Does not the visible Scriptural unity of the Christian Church consist in the unity of her public profession and practice, and, under this, in the manifest charity of her members, one toward another, and not in the unity of private opinion and practice of every individual? ”

“ Church with the Church of God, and seeks the fusion of all denominations into one external body on account of difficulty in conceiving of the Church as one amid a multiplicity of forms of organization, creed, and life. The last few years have given birth to many schemes to secure Church unity by some external means, or in some external sense—by inclusion in a common organization, as if unity were attainable "by building a great house around a divided family," or by enforced uniformity in forms of worship, or the like—none of them the product of a truly liberal spirit. ”

“ Now, I profess that I do not see how this argument can be met, if the institution of the Primacy, and its proper function to form and maintain unity, be rejected. For, without this, by what visible token among so many Christian societies, divided by intestine dissension, and condemning each other, can you distinguish the one which has the character of the true Church, and the right to exact communion with itself? There is none to be found ”

“ It is the absolute rejection of every foreign element that has crept into the Christian system and the return to that primitive conception of the church as made up of the entire brotherhood of Christ, organized and controlled by the Holy Spirit. For true unity we must turn from hierarchies and apostolical successions and priestly corporations and church synods and human creeds to THE CHRIST who alone is the head of the church. ”

“ But as amidst all diversities of government and customs it is the duty of States to remember and maintain their common brotherhood and abstain from tyranny, oppression, and war, so it is the duty of Churches, however separate in creed or form of government, to maintain and exhibit their unity. If the sects of the Church will frankly and cordially recognise one another as parts of the same whole, if they will exhibit their relationship by combining in good works, by an interchange of ecclesiastical civilities, by aiding one another when aid is needed, this is, I conceive, real union. ”

“ A revival of religion is a better cure for church quarrels than any change in church organization could effect. In the early church, though there was no common government, unity was promoted by active intercourse. Hospitality, regular delegates, itinerant apostles and prophets, apostolic and other epistles, still later the gospels, persecution, and even heresy, promoted unity—heresy compelling the exclusion of the unworthy and factious elements in the Christian community. ”

“ Furthermore, Deeply grieved by the sad divisions which affect the Christian Church in our own land, we hereby declare our desire and readiness, so soon as there shall be any authorized response to this Declaration, to enter into brotherly conference with all or any Christian Bodies seeking the restoration of the organic unity of the Church, with a view to the earnest study of the conditions under which so priceless a blessing might happily be brought to pass. ”

“ None but a spiritual unity can preserve the rights both of the individual and the Church. All other systems of unity, except the apostolic, either sacrifice the Church to the individual, or the individual to the Church.
Some have claimed the right of private judgment in such a way that every individual opinion becomes truth, and every utterance of private conscience right: thus the Church is sacrificed to the individual; and the universal conscience, the common faith, becomes as nothing; the spirits of the prophets are not subject to the prophets. ”

“ It appeals to the manifest fact that Protestants are divided among a multitude of differing sects and doctrines, without any principle of unity or certain criterion of truth; whereas the Catholic Church, in communion with the See of Peter, possesses that unity and universality which are the sure and evident marks of the presence of the Holy Spirit within her body, leading her perpetually into all truth, according to the promise of Christ. ”

“ This does not mean that we should assume an "I am holier than thou" attitude toward the Christian world. It does demand that we issue a clarion call to all who honestly desire to see denominationalism die, to unite with us in our program of restoring the lost unity of the church by restoring New Testament Christianity. We are worse than wasting time in flirting with denominations, as such. Naturally, leadership in any party will go into the hands of those who most ardently love it and work for it. ”