The Church of England cleared from the charge of Schism. Allies Thomas William
in exile, and about a hundred Western Bishops, after the secession of the Eastern or Arian portion, Hosius proposed, "If two Bishops of the same province have a disagreement, neither of the two shall take for arbitrator a Bishop of another province: if a Bishop, having been condemned, feels so assured of his right, that he is willing to be judged anew in a Council, let us honour, if you think it good, the memory of the Apostle St. Peter: let those who have examined the cause, write to Julius, Bishop of Rome; if he thinks proper to order a fresh trial, let him name judges; if he does not think that there is reason to renew the matter, let what he orders be kept to. The Council approved this proposition. The Bishop Gaudentius added, that, during this appeal, no Bishop should be ordained in place of him who had been deposed, until the Bishop of Rome had judged his cause."32
"To make the preceding Canon clearer, Hosius said, 'When a Bishop, deposed by the Council of the province, shall have appealed and had recourse to the Bishop of Rome, if he judge proper that the matter be examined afresh, he shall write to the Bishops of the neighbouring province to be the judges of it; and if the deposed Bishop persuade the Bishop of Rome to send a priest from his own person, he shall be able to do it, and to send commissioners to judge by his authority, together with the Bishops; but if he believes that the Bishops are sufficient to settle the matter, he will do what his wisdom suggests to him.' The judgment which Pope Julius, together with the Council of Rome, had given in favour of Athanasius and the other persecuted Bishops, seems to have given cause to this Canon, and we have seen that this Pope complained that they had judged St. Athanasius without writing to him about it."
Such is the modest commencement of that power of hearing episcopal causes on appeal, which has been the instrument of obtaining the wonderful authority concentrated by a long series of ages in the see of Rome. However conformable to the practice of preceding centuries, as Thomassin says, this may have been, this power is here certainly granted by the Council, not considered as inherent in the see of Rome. And this one fact is fatal to the present claim of the supremacy. To use De Maistre's favourite analogy, it is as though the States General or Parliament conferred his royal powers on the Sovereign who convoked them, and whose assent alone made their enactments law. Accordingly, like the whole course of proceedings in these early Councils, it is incompatible with the notion of the Pope being the monarch in the Church. We may safely say, history offers not a more wonderful contrast in a power bearing the same name, than that here conferred on Pope Julius in 347, and that exercised by Pope Pius the Seventh in 1802. On the bursting out of the French revolution, out of a hundred and thirty-six Bishops more than a hundred and thirty remained faithful to God and the Church: some offered the testimony of their blood; the rest became confessors in all lands for Christ's sake, in poverty, contempt, and banishment. After ten years, the civil governor, who had lately professed himself a Mahometan, proposes to the Pope to re-establish the Church, but on condition of himself nominating to the sees, and those not the ancient sees of the country, but a selection from them, to the number of eighty. Thereupon the Pope requires those eighty Bishops and Confessors who still survived, and whom he acknowledged to be not only blameless, but martyrs for the name of Christ, to resign into his hands their episcopal powers. Of his own single authority he abolishes the ancient sees of the eldest daughter of the Western Church, constitutes that number of new sees which the civil power permits, and treats as schismatics those few Bishops who disobey his requisition. I do not presume to express any blame of Pope Pius; I simply mention a fact. But it seems to me, certainly, that those who would entirely recognise the power and precedence exercised by Pope Julius, are not necessarily schismatics because they refuse to admit a power not merely greater in degree, but different in kind, and to set the High Priesthood of the Church beneath the feet of one, though it be the First of her Pontiffs.
The restrictions under which, according to the Council of Sardica, the Pope could cause a matter to be reheard, are specific. Much larger power is assigned in the fourth General Council, that of Chalcedon, to the see of Constantinople, in the ninth Canon, which says, "If any Bishop or Clergyman has a controversy against the Bishop of the province himself (i. e. the Metropolitan), let him have recourse to the Exarch of the diocese, or to the throne of the Imperial city of Constantinople, and plead his cause before him."
But, between these two Councils of Nicea, A.D. 325, and Chalcedon, 451, the whole Patriarchal system of the Church had sprung up, and covered the provinces of the Roman Empire with as it were a finely reticulated net. The system may be said to be built on two principles, recognised and enforced in the Apostolic Canons, and consistently carried out, from the Bishop of the poorest country town up to the primatial see of Rome. These principles are, "the authority of the Metropolitan over his Bishops in important and extraordinary affairs, and the supreme authority of Bishops in the ordinary government of their particular bishoprics. With this distinction, that the Metropolitan even cannot arrange important and extraordinary affairs but with the counsel of his suffragans, whilst every Bishop conducts all the common and ordinary affairs of his Diocese without being obliged to take the advice of his Metropolitan."33 This latter principle, it will be seen, expresses the essential equality and unity of the High Priesthood vested in Bishops by descent from the Apostles, to which St. Cyprian bears such constant witness, so that it may be said to be the one spirit which animates all his government: while the former, leaving this quite inviolate, builds together the whole Church in one vast living structure. For as the Bishops of the province have their Metropolitan, and their spring and autumn Councils under him, so the Metropolitan stands in a like relation to his Exarch, or Patriarch; and of the five great Patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, who are found at the Council of Chalcedon to preside over the Church Catholic, that of Rome has the unquestioned primacy, and is seen at the centre, sustaining and animating the whole. "The most important of all the powers of Metropolitans, Exarchs, and Patriarchs, was the election of Bishops, the confirmation and consecration of Bishops elected. For all the other degrees of authority were founded on this one, which rendered the Metropolitan the Father, Master, and Judge of all his suffragans."34 "And so that famous Canon of the Council of Nicea, (the 6th,) which seems in appearance only to confirm the ancient right of the three first Metropolitans of the world to ordain the Bishops of all the provinces of their dependence, establishes in effect all the rights and all the powers of the Metropolitans, because it establishes the foundation on which they all rest. 'If any one be made a Bishop contrary to the sentence of his Metropolitan, the great Synod declares that he should not be a Bishop.' Nothing is juster than to found the right of a holy and paternal rule on the right of generation. For by ordination the Bishops engender not children indeed, but Fathers, to the Church." This system continued unimpaired in the whole Church, at least to the time of St. Gregory the Great. It offers, I think, an unanswerable refutation to what must be considered the strongest argument of the Roman Catholics for the Supremacy, that there could be no unity in the Church without it, as a living organized body; history says, there was unity, with five co-ordinate Patriarchs, and an Episcopate twice as numerous as that of the present Latin Communion. In the Latin Church itself, this system was only gradually overshadowed by another system which sprang from the excessive development of one of its parts; in the Greek and Russian Church, it continues down to this day; whatever ecclesiastical constitution we still have ourselves, is a part of this system. And by reference to, and under cover of this, which if not strictly of Divine right, as is the High Priesthood of Bishops, approaches very nearly indeed to it, and was the effluence of the Spirit of God ruling and guiding the Church of the Fathers, we must justify ourselves from the damning blot of schism. We cannot, dare not, do this upon principles such as "the right of private judgment" – "The Bible alone is the religion of Protestants," – and the like, which lead directly, and by most certain consequence, to dissent, heresy, and anarchy. God forbid that they who profess to be members of the One holy Catholic Church should, urged by any unhappiness of their provisional and strange position, take up Satanic and Antichristian arms. No! if we may not hope for that system under which Augustin and Chrysostom laboured and witnessed, we will have nothing to do with those who destroy dogmatic faith altogether, and break up the visible unity of the Church of Christ into a multitude of atoms. Quot homines, tot voluntates. We cannot so relapse into worse than a second heathenism, and with the unity of Pentecost offered us, deliberately choose the confusion of Babel.
Fleury, Liv. xii. xxix. Conc. Sard. Can. 3, 4, 7.
Thomassin, Part I. liv. i. ch. 40. sect. 2.
Idem, ut supra.