that is the Holy Spirit, the earnest of incorruption, the means of confirming our faith and the ladder of ascent to God. For in the Church,' it is said, 'God hath set some apostles, prophets, teachers,' and all the other means through which the Spirit works; of which all those are not partakers who do not join themselves to the Church." (Adv. Haeres. iii, 24.) The same author writes, "Wherefore it is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church -those who as I have shown possess the succession from the Apostles; those who together with the succession of the Episcopate have received the certain gift of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father; but to hold in suspicion others who depart from the primitive succession and assemble themselves together in any place whatsoever, either as heretics of perverse minds, or as schismatics or again as hypocrites For all these have fallen from the truth." The heretics, he declares, those "who bring strange fire to the altar of God-namely, strange doctrines" and "those who cleave asunder and separate the unity of the Church," shall receive punishment from God." (Ibid. iv, 26.) St. Cyprian, the great martyr bishop of Carthage, in the middle of the third century draws the same sharp line between the Church and those without, and asks bluntly, "But if the flock is one, how can he be numbered among the flock who is not in the number of the flock? Or how can he be esteemed a pastor who-while the true shepherd remains and presides over the Church by successive ordination-succeeding to no one and beginning from himself becomes a stranger and a profane person, an enemy of the Lord's peace and of the divine unity, not dwelling in the house of God, that is in the Church of God." (Epistle lxxv. To Magnus.)

Many other passages in the writings of the Fathers show

that the situation was perfectly clear to them. Christ had founded one Church, the identity of which was perfectly plain. Denominations separate from that Church carried with them by that very fact their own condemnation. St. Irenaeus (Adv. Haeres. iii, 4) states the case exactly. Previous to Valentinus there were no Valentinians; the sect and the doctrines of the Marcionites originated with Marcion. The Gnostics owed their origin to one human founder, the Marcosians to another. The doctrines of these denominations are human opinion. The Church, on the other hand, was founded by Christ through His Apostles, and its teaching is divine truth. "How can anyone be following Christ rightly," these early Fathers asked, "if he is in separation from the Church which Christ founded?"

Now it was to designate the Church which Christ established as distinguished from these various sects of later origin and different belief that the word Catholic was used in the Creed and elsewhere. One sometimes hears the statement that the word in the Creed is meant to include all Christian denominations; but that is to take it in a sense exactly opposite to its intended one. The purpose of it in the Creed, so far from being broadly inclusive, was definitely exclusive, distinguishing the Church which Christ founded from all other religious bodies. A quotation from St. Cyril of Jerusalem (A. D. 347) makes this perfectly clear. "And if ever thou art sojourning in any city inquire not simply where the Lord's house is-for the sects of the profane also attempt to call their own dens houses of the Lord-nor merely where the Church is, but where is the Catholic Church. For that is the peculiar name of the holy body the mother of us all." And St. Irenaeus points to the fact that whereas the various heretical and schismatic bodies differ widely in their teachings, "the Catholic

Church possesses one and the same faith throughout the whole world." (Op. cit. i. 10.)

De

So the Catholic Church that organized fellowship founded by Christ through His Apostles-continued in existence down through the centuries, administering the sacraments and teaching the divinely revealed Faith. nominations setting forth the ideas of human founders arose, lasted for a time, and finally perished, but there was no doubt which body it was that alone maintained historic continuity with the Apostolic Church. Such was the situation, for example, in the year 500 A. D.

It may be well at this point to take note of the two highly important matters of the faith and the ministry of the Church.

(A) The Faith of the Church. In the fifth century, for example, the abundance of extant documentary evidence leaves no doubt what the religion of the historic Church was. It was certainly Catholicism as distinguished from Protestantism; not distinctively Roman, to be sure, but a Catholicism such as is held in common by the Roman and Greek Churches today.

This brings us face to face with the following question: In the fifth century was the Church which Christ founded and entrusted with the propagation of His Gospel, and to which He promised His continued presence and the guidance of the Holy Spirit-was that Church teaching the Christian religion as He intended or not? For the writer only one answer can be possible so long as he believes Christ to be God incarnate. Individual teachers there were from time to time who were in various points mistaken, and some local peculiarities here and there; but as for the Church as a whole, that which it unanimously agreed in setting forth as the Christian religion, in the fifth century, or the tenth,

or the fifteenth, must have been what the Christ Who had brought His Gospel for the tenth century as well as the first intended should be taught,-unless we can believe that the promises of incarnate God were unfulfilled, and His purposes were thwarted, and the Holy Spirit failed to guide the Church.

The entire system of the Faith-all the implications and the deductions which necessarily followed from its primary truths-was not formulated at once. Such formulation, the work of the whole Church, was a slow process, extending over many centuries, and was in fact brought about only as the result of question and attack. The Church has never been eager to put forth definitions, but when the faith has been assailed and vital doctrines have been challenged the Church has had to define. Such definition does not add to the original faith; it simply re-asserts the original faith exactly and unmistakably by defining its terms and showing its necessary implications.

A fairly good analogy is seen in the action of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court does not enact laws; it cannot add anything to the United States Constitution; but it is given the absolute and final power of interpretation. It defines a clause of the Constitution or a law (never on its own initiative, nor until the meaning is questioned and the case brought before the Court), and such definition is in no sense an addition to Consitution or law, nor does it give them any new meaning. It merely states explicitly the meaning which is involved in their phraseology and which therefore they have always had. So it is with the Church and the definitions and formulations of dogma which from time to time it has put forth. To be sure, the Church's function is far broader than this merely interpretative and didactic one, but in

this sphere alone the parallel is fairly good; only that the Church's office in this matter is of divine commission and is divinely guided.

The Church as thus referred to means of course the Church which Christ founded-i. e., the Catholic Churchnot sects originated by human founders, such as the Marcionites, or Valentinians, or Gnostics, or Donatists, or Waldenses, or modern denominations; and moreover it means the whole Church, for it was of course the whole Church to which Christ gave His commission and His promises, and obviously only the whole Church acting unitedly, or a part only when in agreement with the whole, could rightly claim to be acting by Christ's authority and by divine guidance.

It is important to note also the sphere of the Church's infallibility as teacher. God the Son did not come into the world to satisfy mere curiosity or to relieve men from the duty of study. He came to reveal truths about God and man and their relations sufficient for man's assurance and comfort and guidance. And this was the teaching sphere of the Church which He left to carry on His work. The Church was not given commission or promised guidance to teach natural science or archæology. It was commissioned and divinely guided in teaching the Christian religion. If the Church attempted to answer questions outside its province it might expect to blunder; and if men went to the Church (or to the Bible) with such questions they deserved no better answer than in many cases they got. One does not go to a chemist's laboratory to settle the interpretation of a clause of the Constitution, nor to the Supreme Court to learn how to grind lenses. So in setting forth the Christian religion the Church is a sure guide. On other subjects her spokesmen voice merely fallible human opinion.