Peter's Rock in Mohammed's Flood, from St. Gregory the Great to St. Leo III. T. W. Allies

I have hitherto conducted the history of the Throne of the Fisherman built by the Carpenter's Son in unbroken succession from St. Peter to St. Gregory the Great. It is a period of 575 years from the Day of Pentecost a.d. 29 to St. Gregory's death in a.d. 604. This period is very nearly bisected by the conversion of Constantine. The first half contains the action of the Primacy over against a hostile heathen empire. The second half contains its action upon an empire which, at least in principle, acknowledged union with the Catholic Church as a duty, a privilege, and a necessity. The testimony rendered by Councils and by Fathers to the Roman Primacy may be said to be complete in the time of St. Gregory. Subsequent Councils can only add a closer precision to the testimony of the Council of Chalcedon. Subsequent acts of the Eastern empire can scarcely go beyond the submission of its episcopate, its emperor, and its nobles to Pope Hormisdas. The point of that submission consists in the solemn acceptance of the line [pg 002] of Roman bishops as inheriting the charge given by our Lord to St. Peter. Subsequent legislation can but apply in detail the acceptance by Justinian of the Pope's right to examine everything which belongs to the doctrine or concerns the conduct of the Church throughout the world. And force is even added to this acceptance, because it was made when the Pope, John II., to whom it was made, was not in fact his temporal subject.

I propose to treat in this volume of a period embracing two hundred years. It runs from the time of St. Gregory the Great to the founding of the holy Roman empire, in the person of Charlemagne, by Pope St. Leo III.

But, before entering on this treatment, it seems to me called for to make one remark on all which I have hitherto written or am hereafter to write, and to draw out distinctly a principle which affects every line of my narrative. This is the necessity of considering the Church as the one kingdom of Christ in all ages: one and the same polity from the Day of Pentecost to the Day of Judgment. This idea has always been before me as the rule of faith in writing the six preceding volumes. It has been the major premiss of my whole argument. To a Catholic the unity of the Church is as necessary as the unity of God; and, equally, to say that the Church is fallible is to deny the existence of any such thing as the kingdom of God upon earth. The sooner that anything which is fallible is swept away the better. The one duty which we owe to fallibility is to label it. The thing called public opinion1 is fallible, and, [pg 003] accordingly, every generation sweeps it away and substitutes a fresh fallibility, destined to disappear after a similar ascendency, which waxes and wanes in varying durations of time. Division is the strongest proof of fallibility in that which is divided, as unity is of truth in that which remains one mass. For this cause those who substitute national churches in a particular country under the political head of that country, whether king, president, or parliament, for the one divine polity in all countries, are divided from my argument by an impassable gulf. They no more believe in the Church which is “the house of God, the pillar and basis of the truth,” than he who sets up three gods believes in one Infinite Creator and Rewarder of His creatures. The decrees of a General Council in matters of faith are not recognised by them as part of the divine deposit; for to them they are not acts of the Sovereign Lord in His plenary council. The lessons of history fail to convey any definite impressions to minds in which this idea is wanting. Rather the lessons of history affect them as the heathen was affected who heard the description of our Lord's sufferings undergone for his redemption only to exclaim, “Was it not a long time ago?” There are facts, but no connection. A strong instance of this is that the want of written records in the first three centuries is not made up to them by the acts of the Church in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, because to them the Church is not a polity instinct with one life and following from the beginning identical rules of government. On the contrary, they argue from the [pg 004] silence of perished documents in the three earliest centuries against the recorded practice of the three centuries following. Thus to them the acts of the Church in the Council of Ephesus in 431,2 the next ecumenical council to the Nicene, throw no light upon the acts of the Church in the Nicene, of which no full record exists. Nor, again, do the acts of the Council of Chalcedon illustrate to them the antecedent constitution of the Church. And the supplication of the Eastern emperor, Marcian, to Pope St. Leo to confirm those acts tells them nothing as to the relation of the Council to the Pope in the time of the Nicene Council. Less even than infidels, who reject the Christian revelation altogether, but have a regard for historical sequence, do the nurslings of a national church, especially if it was in origin a queen's love-child, and then dandled on the knees of successive kings, understand the majesty of the Apostolic See, as set forth in the words of our Lord, or as unfolded in the course of ages. If the political constitution under which they live be a system of compromise, they are tempted to make the constitution of the Church a similar system, in which a change of ministry alters or even reverses the policy of a kingdom. “The holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints,” is not an entity to such minds. Therefore they fail to appreciate the proof of the one polity at the head of which St. Peter's successor stands. [pg 005] For some that polity ceased to exist in the fifth century; for others in the ninth; for others in the sixteenth; for all such it is non-existent in the nineteenth. It is for them as the human soul for the infidel surgeon: he cannot find it under his knife. Or as God for the infidel astronomer: he cannot see God in the order of the universe, though he will receive what physicists tell him, that the universe is absolutely one.

But I write for those to whom history is intelligible, because it is an order of events unrolling itself as a drama at once human and divine; to whom the human soul makes itself known by its acts; to whom “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork—day unto day utters speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.” To whom likewise there is one “Jesus Christ yesterday and to-day, and the same for ever”: yesterday at Pentecost with St. Peter and

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