The Formation of Christendom, Volume IIAllies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Religion
The Formation of Christendom, Volume II
Allies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Christianity; Christianity -- Miscellanea
unmistakable among them all? We think the epistles of S. Ignatius furnish
us with a reply to this question. As we have seen above, he views the
Church in each place as a community closely bound together under a
spiritual government which is summed up in the bishop, while the bishops
in their several dioceses are as closely linked to each other, and all
form one society, wherein is Jesus Christ. And these two truths are not
separated from each other, but the unity of the part is deduced from the
unity of the whole, and is subordinate to it. See, first, with what force
he states the unity of the diocese.(161) “Avoid divisions, as the
beginning of evils. Follow all of you the bishop as Jesus Christ the
Father, and the presbytery as the Apostles, and reverence the deacons as
God’s command. Let no one without the bishop do aught of what appertains
to the Church. Let that be deemed a sure Eucharist which is under the
bishop, or under him who has the bishop’s authority for it. Wherever the
bishop appears, there let the multitude (of the faithful) be.” But this
strict unity of the diocese is derived from that of the whole Church; for
he adds as the reason of the foregoing, “just as wherever Jesus Christ is,
there is the Catholic Church.”(162) This is the first time when the word
“catholic” is known to be used, and it is applied to the Church as its
distinctive character, to convey the two attributes of unity and
universality, in connection with the Person of Christ, exactly as it has
been used, an unique term for an unique object, from that day to this. S.
Ignatius further views the Church in each place as having one faith; and
not only so, but the same faith in every place; one faith at Antioch, one
at Rome, one at every city between them, beyond them, around them. Here,
then, is a double unity, inward and outward. As the double unity of body
and spirit makes the man, so the double unity of government and of faith
makes the Church. 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. What S. Paul(163) lays down in dogma, history
exhibits in fact. A hundred years after his words are written, the Church
has stretched her limits beyond the empire, has multiplied incessantly,
has been attacked by a crowd of heresies striving to adulterate her
doctrine, and has cast them out of her by this double unity of her faith
and her government, and so is one Body and one Spirit. Her victory lies
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