Church and State as Seen in the Formation of ChristendomAllies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Religion
Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom
Allies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Church and state; Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600; Religion and state
upon the cross, and in His name taught by the Fisherman and the
Tentmaker. Was it not the One Episcopate with its one doctrine planted in
all these lands, and imposing a uniform rule of life on men and women of
every degree, attested by its hosts of martyrs, the purity of its
virgins, the patience of its people, which seemed to them a miracle, the
force of which they were never tired of proclaiming? That stately fabric
in which doctrine and government permeate each other, "that unity coming
from the strength of God, and seated in heavenly sacraments," was it not
this to which St. Augustine appealed in combating a heresy in the errors
of which he had long been himself ensnared?—an appeal couched in words
the force of which is vastly greater when they can be applied with equal
truth in the nineteenth as in the fourth century. "I am held in the bosom
of the Catholic Church by the agreement of peoples and nations; by the
authority which took its rise in miracles, was nurtured in hope, reached
its growth in charity, is confirmed by antiquity. I am held by the
succession of bishops, down to the actual episcopate, from the very See
of the Apostle Peter, to whom after His resurrection the Lord intrusted
His sheep to be fed. Lastly, I am held by the very name of Catholic,
which, not without reason, among so many heresies that Church alone has
possessed; so that though all heretics would like to be called Catholics,
yet if a stranger ask where the Catholic Church is, no heretic would
venture to show him his own church or house."[78]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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