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
All that we have hitherto said as to the emanation of power from the
Person of Christ is comprehended by St. Peter when he calls our Lord,
"the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls," and by St. Paul when he calls Him
"a High Priest over the house of God," "the Apostle and High Priest of
our confession," "called of God High Priest after the order of
Melchisedek." And by Himself when He bade His disciples to have no other
Master, that is, Teacher, "for one is your Master, Christ;" and when,
treating on the eve of His passion this very subject, He said to His
Apostles, "I dispose to you, as my Father disposed to me, a kingdom;" and
after His resurrection, saying to them collectively, "As my Father sent
me, even so send I you;" and "Behold I am with you all days, even to the
consummation of the world;" and when He said to Peter on the shore of the
Lake of Galilee, after He had drawn in the unbroken net full of great
fishes, "Lovest thou me more than these? Feed my sheep."[21] For is He
not in priesthood, teaching, and government the prolific Father of the
age to come? He remains not solitary in His triple dignity, but is the
Adam of His race, and rules in it from His resurrection by those whom He
appoints.
It may further be observed that in the supernatural regimen thus
established by our Lord, viewed as the one indivisible power which
constitutes it, there is an image traced upon His spiritual kingdom of
the ever-blessed Trinity, its royalty representing God the Father as the
source: its priesthood, wherein lies the whole economy of human
redemption, God the Son, who carries it out; its teaching, God the Holy
Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, whose ever-abiding presence guides its
subjects, as by the hand, into all truth. The regimen is the generative
power in His kingdom; and this image, wrought indelibly upon its society
in all lands and times, is as distinctly Christ's work upon the Christian
commonwealth as the image traced upon individual man in the soul's triple
constitution of memory, understanding, and will, when it has been
sanctified by His grace, is His work upon the individual.
That in the Episcopate there should be a triple power: of priesthood,
comprehending the whole divine worship, and the imparting of grace
through the sacraments; of teaching, which contains the communication of
the whole divine truth; and of ruling, that is, over the whole region of
action comprised by the priesthood and the teaching, the prototype of
which exists in the eternal relations of the Blessed Trinity, while
itself is that one undivided power which represents the divine unity,
seems to shadow out the very citadel in which the Divine Wisdom set up
His kingdom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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