The Church of England cleared from the charge of Schism: Upon Testimonies of Councils and Fathers of the first six centuriesAllies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Religion
The Church of England cleared from the charge of Schism: Upon Testimonies of Councils and Fathers of the first six centuries
Allies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Continuity of the church -- Anglican Communion; Episcopacy -- History of Doctrines; Papacy -- History -- To 1309
since been accused of schism by the rest of the Latin communion. This
decision of the African Bishops, in the year 426, is a proof that the Canon
of the Council of Sardica, conferring, in certain cases, the power of
ordering a cause to be reheard on the Pope, and the most favourable to his
authority of any Canon of an ancient Council, was yet not received even
throughout all the West.
In the year 402, St. Augustin wrote a letter to the Catholics, commonly
called his treatise "on the Unity of the Church." The bearing of this book
on the controversy respecting schism between ourselves and the Roman
Catholics is very remarkable. The Saint refers triumphantly to most express
passages from the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, our Lord's own teaching,
and that of His Apostles, bearing witness to the catholicity of the Church,
an "Ecclesia toto terrarum orbe diffusa." He challenges his adversaries,
the Donatists, to produce a single passage, which either restricted the
Church to the confines of Africa, or declared that it would perish from the
rest of the world, and be restored out of Africa. His test seems decisive
against the Donatists, and against all those who in after times have
restricted the Church to one province, or have declared the Roman Church to
be so corrupt that it is not a part of the true Church. For if it be not,
then the promises of Christ have failed. But while it annihilates the
position of the Donatists, and of the Puritan or Evangelical faction in
these present times, it leaves unassailed that of Andrewes and Ken. St.
Augustin every where appeals to the Church spread throughout the whole
world, as being, by virtue of that fact, the one communion in which alone
there was salvation, and this upon the testimony of the Holy Scriptures
only. "To salvation itself, and eternal life, no one arrives, save he who
has Christ for his head. But no one can have Christ for his head, except he
be in His Body, which is the Church, which like the Head itself we ought to
recognise in the Holy Canonical Scriptures, nor to seek after it in the
various reports, opinions, doings, sayings, and sights of men."[49] But in
the whole book there is not one word about the Roman see, or the necessity
of communion with it, save as it forms part of the one universal Church. It
is not named by itself any more than Alexandria, or Antioch. Any one will
see the force of this fact who has but looked into the writings of late
Roman Catholic authors. He will see how unwearied they are in setting forth
the necessity of the action of the Roman see; how they consider it, and
rightly, the centre of their system; how they are ever crying, "Without the
sovereign pontiff there is no true Christianity."--_De Maistre._ The
contrast in St. Augustin is the more remarkable. The creed of the Council
of Trent says, "I acknowledge one holy, catholic, and apostolic Roman
Church, the mother and mistress of all Churches: and I promise and vow true
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