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Hunter's History of the Deanery of Doncaster

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Lyons' (C. J.) History of S. Andrews, Episcopal, Monastic, Academic,
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Pastoral Address of the Bishop of S. Andrews

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Prayers for Children and Young Persons

Plumer's (M.) Manual of Family Prayer

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Rogers's (H.) Calendars of All-Hallowen, Brystowe

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Sermons preached in S. Saviour's Church, Leeds, the week following the

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Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, Fasts, and other Liturgical Occasions . 119
Shakspeare's Plays

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Sharpe's London Magazine

Sick, Short Instructions and Devotions for the

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Wilberforce's (Robert) Charge to the Clergy of the East Riding, 1845 32, 34
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THE

ECCLESIASTIC.

THEORIES OF CATHOLIC UNITY.

In times like the present, when there is, without all question, an earnest seeking after truth, there is this danger connected with the good :— that a particular truth once attained, those who have successfully pursued it may be carried on to embrace with it some error, which may have been arbitrarily connected with it. In such cases grievous loss occurs to the Church; for not only are those brought into peril who are enticed beyond the limits of truth, but the truth itself comes to be suspected by the half learned, and its pursuit depreciated by coldhearted and timid Christians.

The subject of the present paper affords a fair example of this. Although the doctrine of the visible unity of the Church was never really lost, and although there was always a witness, and a protest, and what is more, an earnest deprecation, against the sin of schism in the Liturgy, yet certain it is that the necessity of a visible unity in the body of CHRIST had ceased to be held in any adequate sense, and in any influential manner, by the great majority of our Church priests and people. We are now, however, pretty well convinced that unity in the Church of CHRIST, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all, is necessary; and that that unity is both visible and spiritual, both of fellowship and of doctrine: we have learned to confess that breach of unity, in either of these respects, involves sin and danger; in other words, that schism and heresy are not only ecclesiastical and political, but moral and religious offences,-offences against GoD and the souls of men.

But here, as ever, our faith is tried by the great difference between the newly recognized truth, the present aspect of affairs, and the sanctions, so far as they are present and visible, of the Divine law. Assuming the necessity of unity and the sin of schism, we expect sufficient safeguards of Divine authority, sufficient barriers erected and No. I.JANUARY, 1846.

B

maintained by GoD, and the Church of GOD,-His instrument in spiritual things,—not against cases of individual error,-these are never guarded against in this state of probation, but-against an overwhelming flood of error and of passion, sweeping through the Church and dividing her fairest regions, and carrying away portions of her best inheritance.

Not that divinely appointed safeguards are wholly wanting, though they are more discernible to the eye of faith than to the outward senses, more cognizable by obedience and love, than by any merely intellectual faculty. The rule and law of unity set forth in the Sacred Scriptures is the voice of GoD in this behalf: the providence of GOD ruling all things for the Church will surely, somehow or other, and some time or other, effect what is so greatly for her eternal welfare, and this also is a safeguard, a warrant of unity; and perhaps more than all, the prayer of our Blessed LORD Himself is at the same time a law, a sanction, a safeguard, a promise, an efficient power of unity, which we cannot believe will ever be overborne, though, as yet, its fruit is but imperfectly manifest. Considering the time, the manner, the solemnity, the earnestness of the expressions, and the infinitely prevailing Person who uttered them, we cannot believe that this prayer of our Blessed LORD shall really be without effect; "As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world, And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word: That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us : that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me."*

But all these are spiritual and invisible, whereas men naturally seek some sensible, tangible safeguard against danger so great as that of schism, when once it has been admitted to be a sin. Nor are we to assume that God will not grant such a safeguard; for in condescension to our mixed nature, He often does both provide such succour to His spiritual children, and sanctions those which man has devised, in faith and love, as aids to holiness and obedience. Whither, then, are we to turn for those safeguards of Church unity, which may be as the body, of which the prayer of the LORD while on earth was the soul; the visible presentment, the lines and figures, of which the spiritual realities of the heavenly Jerusalem are the substance and the truth.

And here is the danger which we began by deprecating: lest when men have found the truth that to separate is wicked and dangerous, they go on to embrace some unauthorised polity, arbitrarily connected with the necessity of unity, as its correlative and safeguard. We think, therefore, that it will not be useless to examine the claims of one such system, which loudly invites attention, and to state that which has been

* S. John xvii. 18-23.

accepted as the true one from the beginning, though not without partial interruption.

That there is no actual formal scheme evolved and proclaimed in all its parts, and in plain words, in Holy Writ, is admitted on all hands: and yet there are two theories, each claiming the implied support of Sacred Scripture, and pretending to other sufficient indications that they are of Divine appointment, or at least sanctioned by the Divine approval. The first of these (last in point of time, but that which we shall find it most convenient to examine first,) is this:

I.

That the Pope, as the successor of S. Peter in the See of Rome, is, as an individual, the visible Head on earth of the visible Church, and the safeguard of unity, visible and spiritual in fellowship and in doctrine.

The second theory, the most ancient, and, as it seems to us, every way the most worthy of our regard, is this :

II. That the Catholic or sound Episcopate throughout the world, as the successors of the Apostles, are the visible bond and safeguard of such unity.

I. Before we descend to examine the proofs of the first, or Romish scheme, we shall premise a few very material objections to it; objections which must indeed be admitted to be fatal to it, even by its most zealous upholders, if they be well founded; and as they are matters of history, not of speculation, we know not how their truth can be denied.

1. First, then, there was no such scheme of an individual visible Head of the Church of CHRIST on earth acknowledged, or so much as dreamt of, for several centuries; and yet during all that time, not only was the doctrine of unity held most earnestly, but the bond of unity was more religiously and more effectually maintained than it ever has been since.

2. But secondly, so far was the Papal scheme from being necessary to unity, or conducive of unity, that the very advancing of it tended more than any one thing to the breach of unity, the unity of the body, of faith, of love, and indirectly of doctrine.

Where there is sufficient power to resist, nothing so much stimulates to resistance as the arrogation of superiority in an individual; and we find that the first aggressions of the Bishops of Rome were resisted by men at least equal to them in personal authority, and not far inferior to them in the weight of their sees. In a word, the first Bishops of Rome, who arrogated to themselves this eminence, had over-estimated their influence, and excited opposition when they would have originated authority. The name of Victor in the Church of CHRIST will not bear comparison with that of Irenæus, the Bishop of a remote northern see; and the pacific measures of Irenæus prevailed, when Victor would rashly have excommunicated, or threatened to excommunicate, the Churches of Asia, for their difference from the greater body of the Church in their keeping of Easter. Here unity, endangered by the assumption of a Bishop of Rome, was restored by the general sense of the Church, expressed by a Bishop of Lyons. On another memorable occasion, Stephen, inferior in all respects as a man to those against whom he

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