De Ecclesia Christi

After the preliminary remarks and general considerations on the Church of God that we have set down, we shall now throughout this whole treatise be concerned solely with the Church of Jesus Christ, acquired by his blood and established on earth in its own proper form as the embodiment of the New Testament, as God himself has set it forth in words and deeds. We shall first treat of the very institution of this Church of Christ.

« The Church of the New Testament, to be established by Christ from all nations as universal and perennial, was foretold in the prophecies of the Old Testament and described as one kingdom: a kingdom of power in its own governance, a kingdom of truth in its own magisterium, a kingdom of sanctification in its own priesthood; which whole power is, originally and as from a fountain, in Christ the Founder, and is communicated by participation to his ministers, to govern, to teach, and to sanctify the Church in its members. »

1°. Just as in the Old Testament types and prophecies have as their chief object the Messiah the Saviour himself, so almost everywhere his work is foreshadowed and foretold together with Christ: « Behold his reward is with him, and his work before him; as a shepherd he will feed his flock, in his arm he will gather the lambs » (Is. XL. 10; LXII. 11). This work of the Messiah in effect, at once the reward and fruit of the work that merits, which the prophets foresaw as intimately joined with the Redeemer of the human race himself and in unity with him, is his universal kingdom among all nations: « All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall adore in his sight; for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he shall rule over the nations » (Ps. XXI. 28, 29). « Give your judgment to the king, O God, and your justice to the son of the king... In his days justice shall spring up, and abundance of peace, until the moon be taken away; and he shall rule from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth¹... and all the kings of the earth shall adore him, all nations shall serve him » (Ps. LXXI. 1 ff.; Zach. IX. 10).

This kingdom to be founded by the Son of God, who is also the Son of man, is foretold as universal of all nations, and likewise as perennial for all times: « And in the days of those kingdoms the God of heaven will raise up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and its kingdom shall not be delivered to another people (no other kingdom shall ever be substituted for it or succeed it, as the four worldly kingdoms will be substituted one for another and succeed one another); but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and itself shall stand for ever. In accordance with what you saw, that a stone was cut from the mountain without hands, and it broke the clay, and the iron, and the brass, and the silver, and the gold (the four worldly empires are counted, ascending from the clay and iron of the last Romans to the gold of the Assyro-Babylonians), the great God has shown the king what shall come hereafter. » « I beheld therefore in the night vision, and lo, with the clouds of heaven one like the Son of man came, and came even to the Ancient of days, and they presented him before him. And there was given him power and honour and kingdom, and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him: his power is an everlasting power, which shall not be taken away, and his kingdom which shall not be corrupted » (Dan. II. 44; VII. 13, 14, 27; Hag. II. 7, 8, 22, 23).

2°. This universal kingdom of all nations and perennial kingdom of all times is promised as one kingdom, so that, in the knowledge, adoration, and worship of the true God, there shall be one people, one holy city, as a new Israel and a new Jerusalem and a new temple on Sion. « Arise, arise, put on your strength, O Sion, put on the garments of your glory, O Jerusalem, holy city... for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem: the Lord has bared his arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God » (Is. LII. 1 ff.). « Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem, for your light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you... and the nations shall walk in your light... and your heart shall be enlarged, when the multitude of the sea shall be turned to you, the strength of the Gentiles shall come to you... and your gates shall be opened continually, day and night they shall not be shut, that the strength of the Gentiles may be brought to you, and their kings may be led... and they shall call you the city of the Lord, Sion of the Holy One of Israel »² (Is. LX. 1 f.; XL. 8–23). « And it shall come to pass in the last days,³ the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall hasten, and shall say: come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem... and the Lord shall reign over them in Mount Sion from henceforth and for ever » (Mich. IV. 1 ff.; Is. II. 2 ff.; Zach. VIII. 3–8). « And it shall come to pass in that day, living waters shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea, and half of them toward the hindmost sea (the western); in summer and in winter they shall be. And the Lord shall be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord shall be one, and his name one... And all who remain of all the nations which came against Jerusalem (formerly hostile to the Church) shall go up year by year, to adore the King, the Lord of hosts » (Zach. XIV. 8 ff.).

3°. This new people of Israel, new Jerusalem, city of the Lord, new Sion, as is promised in the prophets, shall be constituted in its own proper form of governance, of magisterium, and of priesthood, which is derived from one supreme king, teacher, and priest, Christ.

a) Christ will be the supreme king in this supernatural kingdom of peace; but since it is a perennial and visible kingdom on earth, other shepherds and princes will be constituted by him as participants in his empire, who in his name and by his power shall govern the people of God over the whole earth. « But I am appointed king by him over Sion, his holy mountain. The Lord said to me: you are my Son, this day have I begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the bounds of the earth for your possession » (Ps. II. 6). « A child is born to us, and a son is given to us, and the government is upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, God, Mighty, Father of the world to come⁴, Prince of Peace; his empire shall be multiplied, and of peace there shall be no end; he shall sit upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom (the type transferred to the antitype), to confirm it and strengthen it with judgment and justice, from henceforth and for ever » (Is. IX. 6, 7). « And I will raise up over them (the sheep of the Lord) one shepherd, who shall feed them, my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd; and I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David in the midst of them; I the Lord have spoken » (Ezek. XXXIV. 23 ff.; XXXVII. 24–28). « I will gather the remnant of my flock from all lands... and they shall grow and be multiplied; and I will raise up shepherds over them, and they shall feed them... Behold the days come, says the Lord, and I will raise up to David a branch⁵ of justice, and a king shall reign, and shall be wise, and shall do judgment and justice » (Jer. XXIII. 3–6). In the wondrous Psalm XLIV, after the notable description of Christ the bridegroom and of his bride the Church, the words are addressed to Christ: « in place of your fathers⁶ sons have been born to you; you will make them princes over all the earth » (ib., 17).

b) The same king and shepherd, promised upon the throne and the everlasting kingdom of David, is also promised as the faithful prophet, whence his kingdom is as much a kingdom of peace as of truth and of justice. Already in the institution of the ancient and typical people of Israel, God promised to Moses, the legislator and prophet of the people: « I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brethren, like to you (by the likeness of the principal thing prefigured to the figure and the image shadowing it forth — the son in his house to the faithful servant in the house of God), and I will put my words in his mouth »; and Moses announced the promise to the people: « The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet of your nation and of your brethren, like to me; him you shall hear » (Deut. XVIII. 15–19; cf. Matt. XVII. 5; John VI. 14; Acts III. 22, 23; VII. 36). This prophet, promised to Moses and through Moses, is in view when, in the last stage of the old economy, the people committed the kingdom and the supreme priesthood to the family of the Asmoneans, « until there arise a faithful prophet »⁷ (1 Macc. XIV. 41).

« Sons of Sion, exult and rejoice in the Lord your God, because he will give you a teacher of justice, and will make to come down upon you the early and the latter rain (the autumn and the spring rain), as in the beginning » ⁸ (Joel II. 23). Hence « out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem » (Mich. loc. cit.⁹); and God promises the same Jerusalem: « I will make all your sons taught by the Lord, and a multitude of peace to your sons; and you shall be established in justice » (Is. LIV. 13; Jer. XXXI. 33, 34; XXXII. 38–40). Moreover, since this divine magisterium must be perennial, « I will give you shepherds according to my heart, and they shall feed them with knowledge and doctrine... and all nations shall be gathered together to it in the name of the Lord in Jerusalem, and they shall not walk any more after the perverseness of their most wicked heart » (Jer. III. 15 ff.).

Wherefore the name of this new Jerusalem shall be city of truth, and Sion shall be called mountain of holiness. « I will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the city of truth, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts the sanctified mountain (in the Hebrew text mountain of holiness)... Behold I will save my people from the land of the east and from the land of the setting of the sun... and they shall be to me a people, and I will be to them God, in truth and in justice » (Zach. VIII. 3, 7, 8).

c) As the Church is foretold as the kingdom of peace and the kingdom of truth in Christ and under Christ the supreme king and teacher, from whom men appointed by him shall perennially share in the power of the kingdom and of the magisterium, so the same kingdom has been announced as to be sacerdotal, through Christ the supreme priest and sanctifier, from whom a ministerial priesthood is derived to the men taken up by him.

α) From the visions of the prophets, in Christ the diadem of the king and the diadem of the priest are intimately united for his perennial kingdom; and therefore the union of both holds continually in this kingdom, so that it is sacerdotal. Jesus, son of Josedech, the high priest, is expressly called a type foreshadowing the Messiah: « Hear, Jesus, great priest, you and your friends... men that foreshadow: for behold I will bring my servant the East » (צֶמַח, branch, an undoubted name of the Messiah) (Zach. III. 8). Now in this man foreshadowing, the prophet is commanded to join the priestly diadem to the royal one, so that there may be continually « the counsel of peace », that is, of unity between the two powers. « You shall take gold and silver, and make crowns (cf. Apoc. XIX. 12), and put them on the head of Jesus, son of Josedech, the great priest; and you shall speak to him, saying: thus says the Lord of hosts: behold a man, the East is his name... and he shall build a temple to the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and he shall sit and rule upon his throne, and he shall be a priest upon his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between those two¹⁰... and those who are far off shall come and build in the temple of the Lord » (Zach. VI. 11 ff.). St. Epiphanius, Heresy XXIX, nn. 2–4, discourses at length on the union of royal and priestly dignity in Christ, and through Christ in the Church.

β) Christ is foretold, in the proper sense, as priest, who by his bloody sacrifice was to acquire for himself the Church of all nations. « He was offered because he himself willed it, and did not open his mouth; he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter... if he shall lay down his life for sin¹¹, he shall see a long-lived seed... by his knowledge shall my just servant justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities; therefore I will divide to him very many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong, because he delivered his soul unto death » (Is. LIII). By this sacrifice of Christ all the ancient typical sacrifices are to be abolished. « Sacrifice and oblation you did not desire; but ears you have perfected for me. Holocausts and sin offerings you did not ask: then I said, Behold, I come... I have declared your justice in the great Church... I have not hidden your mercy and your truth from the great assembly »¹² (Ps. XXXIX. 7 ff.)

γ) The priesthood of Christ is foretold as « eternal according to the order of Melchisedech », who as priest of the Most High offered bread and wine in a type (Ps. CIX. 4; Gen. XIV. 18). According to this order of Christ's priesthood there is foretold, in his Church, a future perpetual unbloody sacrifice « from the rising of the sun to its setting », for the glorifying of God's name « among the nations » (Mal. I. 11), a prophecy of which we treated in the Tract. de Euch. sacrif. th. X.

Hence it further follows, and is foretold by the prophets too, that there is also a perpetual priesthood in the Church, certainly instituted and derived from the supreme priest according to the order of Melchisedech. « I come to gather together with all nations and tongues (Heb. all nations and tongues), and they shall come and see my glory. And I will set in them a sign¹³, and I will send of them who shall have been saved to the nations, to the sea (תרשיש, Tartessus), to Africa, and Lydia drawing the bow, to Italy¹⁴ and Greece, to the far-off islands, to those who have not heard of me, and who have not seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory to the nations... And I will take from them priests and Levites, says the Lord. For as the new heaven and the new earth... so shall your seed and your name stand » (Is. LXVI. 18 ff.; Mal. III. 3, 4). « In those days and at that time I will make David to bud forth a branch of justice (the name of the Messiah; cf. Is. IV. 2; Jer. XXIII. 5; Zach. III. 8; VI. 12)... for thus says the Lord: a man of David shall never fail who shall sit upon the throne of the house of Israel; and of the priests and of the Levites a man shall never fail before my face (ministering before me), who shall offer holocausts and burn sacrifice and slay victims all days... If my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night can be made void, so that there be no day and night¹⁵ in their time, then my covenant may be made void with David my servant, so that there shall not be of him a son who reigns on his throne; and the Levites and priests, my ministers. As the stars of heaven cannot be counted, nor the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the seed of David (those who are of Christ, whom he shall make to bud forth as the branch of justice for David), and the Levites my ministers. » (Jer. XXXIII. 15 ff.)

It is manifest that, as the eternal kingdom of Christ, of another and more sublime order than the typical kingdom of David, is here promised as foreshadowed, so in this kingdom there is promised a priesthood of another order, corresponding to the very nature of the kingdom: as there is a new earth and a new heaven, so a new priesthood, more sublime than the Levitical priesthood which was in the type (cf. Heb. VIII, IX; XIII. 10). As Paul (Heb. VII. 11–14) demonstrates, from this among other things, that Christ is not of the tribe of Levi, that his priesthood is of another order and not Levitical, so also the priests and Levites in the kingdom of Christ are promised by the prophets, in the passages cited, as future, not of the Levitical race but to be taken from all nations, to be multiplied, and to offer sacrifices until the consummation of the age, as long as there shall be day and night¹⁶. But since the priesthood is transferred and changed, it is necessary that there be a transfer and change of the law, of external worship, and in particular of sacrifice (Heb. VII. 12), which we have seen foretold elsewhere to be one, unique, according to the order of Melchisedech in the type. Therefore when Jeremiah seems to transfer to the priests in the kingdom of Christ¹⁷ the diverse species of the sacrifices of the old economy, in which the prophet himself and those to whom he was directly prophesying stood, nothing else is to be understood than that one sacrifice, foreshadowed through all those typical sacrifices, will succeed them all. « With the variety of carnal sacrifices ceasing, the one oblation of your body and blood fulfills all the differences of victims... so that as there is one sacrifice for every victim, so there is one kingdom from every nation » (St. Leo, sermon 59, c. 7; cf. sermon 68, c. 3). « The priest himself, the mediator of the New Testament, offers, according to the order of Melchisedech, the table of his body and blood; for this sacrifice has succeeded all those sacrifices of the Old Testament which were immolated in the shadow of the future. Wherefore we understand also that voice of the same mediator speaking by prophecy in Psalm thirty-nine: sacrifice and oblation you did not desire; but a body you have perfected for me; for in place of all those sacrifices and oblations his body is offered, and is ministered to participants » (Augustine, City of God, XVII, c. 20, n. 2). « The one true mediator... is also the priest, himself offering and himself the oblation. Of this reality he willed the sacrifice of the Church to be the daily sacrament; and the Church, since it is the body of that head, learns to offer itself through him¹⁸. Of this true sacrifice the manifold and various signs were the ancient sacrifices of the saints, so that this one thing was figured through many, as one thing is said in many words, so that it might be greatly commended without tedium. To this supreme and true sacrifice all false sacrifices (imperfect, in shadow and figure, cf. Heb. VIII. 7) gave way. » (Ibid., l. X, c. 20.)

The few passages we have cited suffice for us to understand that the indefectible kingdom of Christ on earth, cohering in itself with its own governance, magisterium, and priesthood, to be acquired by Christ the Redeemer himself with his blood, and to be founded from all nations for the eternal salvation of all nations, was most clearly announced in the prophets; so much so that this eternal and universal kingdom constitutes one of the most distinguished characters and most illustrious marks of the promised Messiah. Many other oracles of the prophets pertaining to this could easily be adduced, which shine with no less light: Is. XI. 1, 11, 12; XL. 2, 9; XLII. 6, 10; LI. 3–7; LIV; LXII; LXV. 16 ff.; Hos. II. 16 ff.; III. 5; Joel II. 27–32; III. 16–21; Amos III. 16 ff.; IX. 11; Zeph. III. 14; Zach. II. 10; XIV. 8, 9. A rule for distinguishing the prophecies which are referred, either in the immediate or in the typical sense, to Christ and¹⁹ to his Church, can be deduced from the manner of St. Paul's citation, Rom. XV. 8–12.

The prophecies of the promises and the completion of their execution cast light upon one another, and confirm one another by a manifest seal of divinity; so we must now pass to the consideration of that very completion.

« Although the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are not always taken in one and the same sense in the Scriptures, in the Gospels, nevertheless, 1°, by this name is announced the kingdom of Jesus Christ on earth, as a society standing in itself and through itself in its own proper form, distinct and different from other societies: of an order, namely, not earthly but supernatural, although constituted on earth out of men; which same unity, constituted in itself and in the proper form of the kingdom, 2°, is described and announced by Christ the Founder under other names and symbols of parables. »

I. The kingdom of God is indeed also the kingdom of the Creator in the natural order. « The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein; for he has founded it upon the seas » (Ps. XXIII. 1; XLIX. 12). « The Lord has prepared his throne in heaven, and his kingdom shall rule over all... bless the Lord, all his works, in every place of his dominion » (Ps. CII. 19, 22; CXLIV. 11, 12; 1 Par. XXIV. 11, 12; Tob. XIII. 1; Dan. III. 100; IV. 31). But the compound phrase kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, and kingdom simply in relation to God, in the New Testament is applied only to the supernatural kingdom, which Christ the Redeemer acquired with his blood and procured for men, and which, insofar as it is on earth, he himself formed by his own laws, institutions, and gifts, and « presented to himself as glorious. » This supernatural kingdom of Jesus Christ is considered under a threefold aspect.

1°. Directly regarded are the graces, virtues, gifts, and internal spiritual adornments; while their manifestation in the conspicuous institutions of the kingdom and in its external visible form is signified or presupposed only indirectly. To the Pharisees, who imagined the Messiah's kingdom as external, in prosperity and worldly glory, the Lord Christ replies: « The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor shall they say, Behold here, or behold there; for behold, the kingdom of God is within you » (ἐντὸς ὑμῶν ἐστιν) (Luke XVII. 20, 21; cf. XII. 31). « For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but justice and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost » (Rom. XIV. 17¹; 1 Cor. IV. 20; cf. Matt. XIX. 12).

2°. Often the kingdom consummated in eternal life is directly signified, where God reigns in all the saints and all the saints reign with him; yet in very many passages the kingdom on earth is also included at the same time, as the preparation for the consummated kingdom itself. « Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the children of the kingdom (the Jews, called first to the kingdom on earth) shall be cast into exterior darkness » (Matt. VIII. 11; Luke XIII. 28); « who has called you to his kingdom and glory » (1 Thess. II. 12); « that you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which (ὑπὲρ ἧς) you also suffer » (2 Thess. I. 5); « he will save into his heavenly kingdom » (2 Tim. IV. 18; cf. Matt. V. 3, 10; VII. 21; XXVI. 29; Mark IX. 46; X. 23–25; Luke XXII. 16, 18, 29, 30; XXIII. 42; John III. 3, 5; Acts XIV. 21; 1 Cor. VI. 9, 10; XV. 50; Gal. V. 21; Eph. V. 5; Jas. II. 6; 2 Pet. I. 11; Apoc. V. 10).

Sometimes this kingdom is celebrated insofar as, with the number of the saints now complete and with bodies also glorified, the city of God will be perfect in all its parts. After describing his second coming « with great power and majesty », and enumerating its signs, the Lord adds: « When you see these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God is near » (Luke XXI. 31). « Then the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God and the Father... but he must reign (in the kingdom on earth), until he has put all his enemies under his feet » (1 Cor. XV. 23–28). « I charge you before God and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead, by his coming and his kingdom » (2 Tim. IV. 1; Matt. XIII. 43; XXV. 34; Apoc. XXII. 5).

If the interpretation of several Fathers were true, of Matt. XVI. 28; Mark VIII. 39; Luke IX. 27, the bodily glorification of Christ himself in his still mortal life would be called the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God. « Properly and significantly he had promised that some of the disciples standing by would not taste death before they saw the Son of man coming in his kingdom, that is, in royal splendour, which he willed to be seen by those three men (Apostles), belonging specially to the nature of the man he had assumed » (St. Leo the Great, sermon 51, c. 2; Chrysostom, in Matt. hom. 56, al. 57, n. 1, and others). But the meaning of the kingdom of God is to be preferred (as Mark and Luke have it), of which we shall speak immediately; so that it is understood, with St. Gregory the Great and others, that the kingdom of God is this Church of Christ, established and widely propagated on earth (St. Gregory, in Evang. hom. 32, n. 6).

3°. This meaning of kingdom of God, kingdom of Christ, kingdom of heaven is very frequent in the New Testament: it is used to designate directly by these names the visible kingdom of its own proper name and proper form, to be established by Christ among men and from men on earth, where the discourse is of the announcing promise, or established, where it is of a fact already accomplished. In this visible kingdom there is certainly included, as dowry and inner property, that which we saw designated in the first place by the name kingdom of God; and there is connected, as term and end, what we said was signified in the second place, namely the consummated kingdom of God. Yet the kingdom directly signified in this third sense is distinguished (by an inadequate distinction) from the former, as the whole from its formal part; while toward the other it stands as the begun toward the perfect, or as the means toward its end. Here we treat of the institution of the kingdom so considered, not as already accomplished but as announced in the Gospels.

II. Just as in the prophetic announcements of the coming Messiah we saw a universal and incorruptible kingdom designated as his work together with himself, so in the announcement of the execution and fulfilment is declared the end and work of the coming of Christ: the constitution of his kingdom, which is to endure perennially among men. This constitution of the kingdom of Christ therefore comprises in summary the whole work and end of the great mystery of the incarnation: the redemption of the world, the expiation of sin, the sanctification and salvation of the human race, and the supreme glorification of God in this kingdom, in the world redeemed, sanctified, and saved, which is the Church united to its head, Christ the Redeemer and Saviour.

1°. Indeed, in the angel's announcement of the incarnation, these three things are declared as the sum of the whole mystery: the person, who is the Son of the Most High, and the Son born at once of the Virgin Mother, and therefore God and man, Emmanuel, God with us, according to the prophecy of Isaiah declared in this very announcement in words and fulfilled in fact (see de Incarnat. th. XV.); then the name of Jesus, and in it, implicitly, the end and office of the Redeemer; finally, this office and this end, described explicitly in the eternal kingdom of the Redeemer, to be established among the redeemed and from the redeemed, according to the preceding types and prophecies in the old economy of preparation. « Behold, you shall conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son (the Holy Ghost shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you); and you shall call his name Jesus; he shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High (the Holy which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God); and the Lord God shall give him the throne (τὸν θρόνον) of David his father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end » (Luke I. 31–35). In the angel's declaration to St. Joseph, the very name Jesus, Saviour comprises all those things which are explicitly preached in the announcement to the most blessed Mother. Both announcements of the angel are further illuminated by the holy Evangelist, who expressly attests in them the fulfilment of the prophecy concerning Emmanuel: « That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost; and she shall bring forth a Son, and you shall call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done that the word might be fulfilled which the Lord spoke by the prophet, saying: behold a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us » (Matt. I. 20–23).

That the throne of David and the kingdom in the house of Jacob directly signify the visible kingdom on earth as the completion of the preceding types in the people of Israel is clear from the very words, although the connection with the consummated kingdom in heaven is at the same time indicated. Hence also the duration for ever (εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας) for each form of the kingdom is to be taken according to the subject matter: in the one form it lasts until the consummation of the age and without end of corruption (Dan. II. 44; VII. 14), though not without end of perfection; in the other, simply without end, for ever.

The supernatural character of this eternal kingdom, and therefore its diversity and eminence over the kingdoms and societies of the natural order, and by this very fact its proper form and its standing in itself, is evident from the person of its founder and king, who is the Son of the Most High and the Son of man, God with us; and from its end and innermost reason, which is salvation from sins, so that it is the kingdom of sanctification in the fulness of time, and of holiness in eternity.

2°. The preaching of the forerunner to prepare the way of the Lord was this: « Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand » (Matt. III. 2). By the testimony of Christ himself, after the economy of preparation in the law and the prophets, from John onward begins the Gospel of the economy of fulfilment, which is called and is the kingdom of God. « The law and the prophets until John; from that time the kingdom of God is evangelized » (Luke XVI. 16; cf. Matt. XI. 12, 13). Hence the Gospel of Jesus Christ himself and of his disciples is comprised in this summary, that it is the Gospel, or the word of the kingdom. « Jesus came into Galilee preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying: the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand »; « Jesus went about preaching the Gospel² of the kingdom »; « he who hears the word of the kingdom »; « this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world, for a testimony to all nations »; « and I must evangelize the kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this (εἰς τοῦτο) I was sent »; To the Jews who rejected the Messiah promised and sent, he himself said: « The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation (one nation, because one kingdom) that shall bring forth its fruit » (Matt. IV. 23; IX. 35; XIII. 11, 19; XXI. 43; XXIV. 14; Mark I. 14; Luke IV. 43; VIII. 1; IX. 2, 11, 60; XVIII. 17; Acts I. 3; VIII. 12; XIX. 8; XX. 25; XXVIII. 23, 31).

3°. The Jews, not only the carnal but all also the pious and spiritual, expected the kingdom of the Messiah on earth according to the predictions of the prophets; indeed this expectation of the kingdom coincided with the expectation of the coming of the Messiah. For one of the solemn names for designating the properties and marks of the Messiah was Son of David, or Israel (John I. 49; Matt. II. 2; XXVII. 11; John XIX. 19–22). Hence, to celebrate the prophecies fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, these acclamations are held as synonymous: « blessed is he who comes, the king of Israel » (John XII. 13–16; Luke XIX. 38); « who comes, the Son of David » (Matt. XXI. 9); and « blessed is the kingdom of our father David that comes » (Mark XI. 10).

This expectation of the Messianic kingdom, although it was erroneous in men of carnal mind as to its character, nonetheless as to the thing itself, namely of a visible kingdom and of its own constitution and form to be founded among men, by which the typical kingdom of the Old Testament would be perfected and transferred into the prefigured kingdom of the New Testament, is most manifestly approved and confirmed by Christ himself and by the sacred writers: both in the manner in which we saw Christ and the Apostles declaring their whole preaching to be the Gospel of the kingdom expected by the people; and in the manner in which they presented this kingdom, prefigured and promised in the Old Testament, as the throne of David, the eternal kingdom of the Son of David, the kingdom of Emmanuel; and in the manner in which they approve and describe the expectation of the Israelites. « Joseph of Arimathea himself also (like the other disciples, cf. Matt. XXVIII. 57) was waiting for the kingdom of God » (Mark XV. 43; Luke XXIII. 51); « that these two sons of mine may sit in your kingdom... he said to them: it is not mine to give, but to them for whom it is prepared by my Father » (Matt. XX. 21); « will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said to them: it is not for you to know the times or the moments (of this restoration, certainly of a supernatural and universal kingdom); but you shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me... even to the uttermost part of the earth » (Acts I. 6).

4°. In the immediate preparation for the sacrifice of the cross, by which he was to acquire the kingdom, Christ the Redeemer professed himself a king, and a kingdom to himself, his kingdom, truly in this world; for the whole question, both of the Jews and of Pilate, was about the visible kingdom in this world; and this kingdom, which they denied, he claimed to be his own, but of another order than they imagined, namely of the supernatural order. « My kingdom is not of this world... but now my kingdom is not from hence. » Augustine comments on these words, which are sufficiently clear in themselves: « He did not say, My kingdom is not in this world, but is not of this world... he did not say, now my kingdom is not here, but is not from here; for here is his kingdom until the end of the age » (Augustine, in Ioan. tract. 115, n. 2). Of himself, the acquirer and founder of the kingdom, Christ said: « You are from beneath, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world » (John VIII. 23; XVII. 13–16). He was a true man in this world, but a man who, being a divine person, is God through his other, divine, nature; so also his kingdom, a radiant splendour and an expressed image of the God-man, is a true visible kingdom in this world, yet by all its causes and gifts a kingdom of the supernatural order; and in this sense, though visible, it is spiritual, constituted out of men and in men, a divine-human kingdom not of this world. And that the disciples, the citizens of the kingdom, should each reproduce in themselves this very image of the kingdom, expressed after the model of Christ, he himself commanded, and asked of the Father, in that testamentary prayer after the last supper: « When he had loved his own who were in the world... and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, as I am not of the world » (John XIII. 1; XV. 19; XVI. 11, 12, 16).

Moreover, the supernatural order of his kingdom Christ declares in that answer to Pilate not only negatively, that it is not of this world, but also positively, as from the first and essential property of the kingdom: that it is a kingdom of truth; for he founds his kingdom on the truth, which he himself, the King of truth, brings from above to men in the world and reveals. « You say (that is, you say what is true, cf. Matt. XXVI. 64) that I am a king: for this I was born, and for this I came into the world (cf. John XVI. 28, etc.), that I should give testimony to the truth; everyone who is of the truth hears my voice » (John XVIII. 36, 37). As Jerusalem was foretold as the city of truth and Sion as the mountain of holiness (th. VI.), so this foundation of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, who is the truth and the life itself (ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή) (John XIV. 6), is preached above all in the New Testament, as we shall see in its place. « Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ »; « he will give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of truth »; « the Spirit of truth shall teach you all truth »; « the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth » (John I. 17; XIV. 16; XVI. 13; 1 Tim. III. 15). This truth is what sanctifies the citizens in the kingdom of truth. « You shall be truly my disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free »; « sanctify them in the truth » (ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ); « he begot us by the word of truth, that we might be some beginning of his creature » (ἀπαρχήν τινα τῶν αὐτοῦ κτισμάτων) (John VIII. 32; XVII. 17, 19; Jas. I. 18).

Thus, in the very beginnings of the Gospel and in the immediate preparation, the kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, kingdom of Jesus Christ, or even simply the kingdom, is declared to be established by the Redeemer himself from men and for men on earth, to be substituted for the imperfect kingdom of Israel which prefigured this kingdom of the New Testament; and thus a visible kingdom, subsisting in its own proper form and unity, to endure perpetually (« he shall reign for ever »); universal, from all nations (« the Gospel of the kingdom in the whole world »); a supernatural kingdom of truth and holiness, whose citizens are disciples and sons of the truth, just as the kingdom itself and its king and founder are: in this world but not of this world.

III. This same kingdom of Jesus Christ on earth is exhibited under another figure, of one flock to be constituted by Christ himself, the good shepherd, out of all nations, as his sheep to be redeemed by his blood and to be fed by himself, the great shepherd, also through shepherds as ministers, for the eternal salvation of Christ's sheep. Also by manifold parables the Lord himself wished to illustrate the Gospel of the kingdom, in which, as we saw, the summary of evangelical preaching and of the immediate preparation is comprised, and to set it as before the eyes, of what kind this kingdom of God on earth, one and universal, is to be.

1°. In the Old Testament the people of Israel, the peculiar people of the true God, is often described as the flock of sheep of the Lord. « He is the Lord our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand » (Ps. LXXIII. 1; LXXVIII. 13; XCIV. 7; XCIX. 3; Jer. XXIII; Ezek. XXXIV; Mic. VII. 14, and often elsewhere). The Lord reproves the shepherds of Israel, namely the priests and princes of the theocracy of the Old Testament, who scattered the flock; and, having rejected them, he foretells that a new Israel, the flock of God from all nations, shall be substituted, over which the Lord of the sheep will raise up « one shepherd, his servant David, who shall feed them, and he himself shall be their shepherd. » « And my servant David shall be king over them, and there shall be one shepherd of them all... and I will make with them a covenant of peace, it shall be an everlasting covenant with them » (Ezek. XXXIV. 23; XXXVII. 24, 26; Zech. XI. 7). Under this one shepherd, who is « the branch of David », God promises: « I will raise up shepherds over them, and they shall feed them; they shall not fear any more, nor be dismayed » (Jer. XXIII. 4, 5). These shepherds are promised for the new Jerusalem, not of one people but of all nations. « And I will give you shepherds according to my heart, and they shall feed you with knowledge and doctrine... In that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord (not the ark of the old covenant, but the new city of God shall be wholly the throne of the Lord), and all nations shall be gathered to it in the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem » (Jer. III. 15, 17). (See th. VI.).

Now Christ the Lord declares this one flock, this promised one fold from all nations, under one shepherd, to be his flock of sheep, and himself to be the one shepherd.

a) He announces himself as the good shepherd, because by the shedding of his blood for the salvation of his sheep he gathers them, indeed he makes them his own sheep. « I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd gives his life for his sheep »; « and I lay down my life for my sheep »; « and I give them eternal life » (John X. 10, 11, 15, 28).

He gathers the sheep and feeds them by the doctrine of his magisterium, and rules them by the power of his empire; and thus men become the sheep of Christ, following his magisterium by the hearing of faith and his empire by the holiness of morals. « You do not believe, because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice; and I know them, and they follow me »; « I am the good shepherd, and I know mine, and mine know me » (John X. 14, 26, 27).

As there is one shepherd, so there shall be one fold, not only from the sons of Israel but equally also from the Gentiles, under one shepherd. « And I have other sheep that are not of this fold; and them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd » (John X. 16).

b) This one shepherd (ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός, with the article) is Christ himself. But since he willed that his fold on earth, and one fold, should perpetually exist, for he promised that no one would snatch the sheep, at least as they are collectively one flock and one fold, out of his hand, which is the very hand or power of the Father (John X. 28–30); therefore by himself, by his own authority as the one shepherd, other shepherds are to be instituted for his ministry, who in relation to his fold feed in his name and by his authority, and in relation to Christ are fed as his sheep. There will therefore be other shepherds, but none by any authority other than his, who is the one divine shepherd. But what the form of the flock and of the shepherds will be, after the Lord and good shepherd has himself ceased to feed his own sheep visibly on earth, is to be treated much more fully and distinctly in the declaration of the execution itself, which does not belong to this place. We shall then understand how the divine shepherd committed his whole fold, which we have just seen announced by him as sanctified by the sacrifice of his life, governed by his doctrine and power, gathered from all nations so as to be one under one shepherd, with power communicated by himself, to one supreme shepherd, his vicar, so that by visible ministry the unity of the visible fold might be preserved perpetually: « feed my lambs, feed my sheep » (John XXI. 15–17). But just as for unity he instituted one supreme and universal shepherd of the whole flock, so, by reason of the unity and at the same time the universality of the flock, he willed that under that one shepherd there should be many shepherds, each of whom, indeed, does not feed the whole flock, but « feed the flock of God which is among them, providing for it » (ἐπισκοποῦντες) (1 Pet. V. 2). All the shepherds³ in the earth ministering to the one Christ are members, as St. Augustine speaks, of the divine shepherd whose sheep are his own; and thus one shepherd and one fold. « Let the fold of the Lord have prelates, both sons and hirelings. But the prelates who are sons are shepherds. If they are shepherds, how is there one shepherd, unless because they are all members of one shepherd, whose own sheep they are? » (Augustine, in Ioan. tract. 46, n. 5).

2°. While Christ the Lord announces the kingdom of God that he is to found on earth, he often describes in parables of what kind it will be; in these he either explicitly declares, or implicitly indicates by the very universality of his kingdom, that this kingdom of his is to be substituted for the old typical kingdom, conspicuous in its own proper form and constitution. In it not one peculiar people, as that typical economy instituted by God was, but all nations, the transformed world, without distinction of nation and race, are embraced.

The kingdom of God of the Old Testament is described by the prophets among a peculiar people under the symbol of a vineyard planted by the Lord God, which, separated from the forests and the wild deserts, or from all nations alien to it, constituted the kingdom of God, certainly visible in its own name and proper form. « You have brought a vine out of Egypt; you have cast out the nations, and planted it... you planted its roots, and it filled the land » (Ps. LXXIX. 9 ff.; Is. V. 1 ff.; Jer. II. 21; XII. 10; Ezek. XIX. 10 ff.). Now Christ the Lord takes up the same parable for his kingdom on earth, and to declare the transference of the kingdom of God to the nations, who will be one nation because one kingdom; and at the same time he describes the cause of this transference, or rather the removal of the kingdom from the Jewish people, foretold by the prophets: because « Christ shall be slain, and the people that shall deny him shall not be his... and he shall confirm the covenant with many » (Dan. IX. 26, 27). The Saviour's description is this: « There was a man, a householder (οἰκοδεσπότης), who planted a vineyard, and put a hedge round about it, and dug in it a winepress, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen. » Almost in the same words the founding of the kingdom of God among the people of Israel is described in Is. V. 2, concluding: « for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel. » The master of the house, the Lord of the vineyard, which he had abundantly furnished with all defences and supports, sent his servants in a continuous succession (prophets and other faithful ministers), that he might receive fruit from the husbandmen. But they struck one, killed another, stoned another. « And last of all he sent to them his Son (having one most beloved Son, in Mark; his beloved Son, in Luke), saying: they will reverence my Son. But the husbandmen... seized him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him »⁴. What will the Lord of the vineyard now do to those husbandmen? « He will destroy those evil men miserably, and will let out his vineyard to other husbandmen (he will give it to others, in Mark and Luke), who shall render him fruit in due season... Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation that brings forth its fruit » (Matt. XXI. 33 ff.; Mark XII; Luke XX).

With this parable of the vineyard there is intimately joined another, in which the kingdom of heaven on earth is represented as the marriage feast of the king's Son. We shall treat in its place of the marriage of the Son of God made flesh with the Church, and of the Church as bride; there we shall also see the espousal already described in the Old Testament with the one peculiar people of God, but so that the unfaithful bride was to be repudiated and replaced by « an everlasting espousal », in which the Lord says: « I will say to what was not my people: you are my people; and he shall say: you are my God » (Hos. II).

Each part of this symbol of the marriage corresponds to each part of the former parable, so that the one signification of both is manifest. « The kingdom of heaven is like to a king who made a marriage for his son. And he sent his servants to call them that were invited (καλέσαι τοὺς κεκλημένους) to the marriage, and they would not come. Again he sent other servants... but they made light of it... and the rest laid hold on his servants, and having treated them contumeliously, killed them. » What the husbandmen, to whom the vineyard representing the kingdom of God on earth was first let out, did to the servants sent in succession to demand the fruit, the same thing the invited guests, who were first and before others invited and thus prepared by the king himself for the marriage, did to the king's servants sent in a similar succession. But what in the former parable is the sending of the Son whom they killed, here is the marriage of the Son which they despised. Hence, as there he will destroy those evil men miserably, the vineyard of the kingdom of God is given to others, and this kingdom is transferred to the nations; so all the same things are repeated in the marriage feast of the Son, which are the kingdom of heaven itself on earth. « But the king... destroyed those murderers and burned their city (Jerusalem, the centre of the typical kingdom)... Go therefore into the highways, and whomsoever you shall find, call to the marriage. And the servants going out into the ways gathered together all they found, both bad and good⁵, and the marriage feast was filled with guests. » To this is added that great distinction among the guests: that for the present state of the marriage feast of the kingdom, among those adorned with the wedding garment there are also those who have not the garment of justice; and among the just in one visible kingdom there are also sinners. « But the king went in to see the guests, and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment » (Matt. XXII. 2–14). But concerning this stage of the one, universal, visible kingdom of heaven on earth, in which there are sinners together with the just, the Gospels present another series of parables of Christ the Saviour, which the Bishops of Africa, following Augustine, pressed especially against the Donatists; wherefore those parables are to be reserved for another place, where we shall deliberately treat of the members of the Church.

That the vineyard let out to the nations, and the guests gathered from the streets and lanes who recline at the marriage of the King's Son, signify, this very thing is exhibited through the kingdom of heaven under the symbol of the grain of mustard seed, though shadowed in very few words: « The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed... but when it is grown it is greater than all herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and dwell in its branches » (Matt. XIII. 31, 32). The kingdom of heaven, to be founded on earth by Jesus Christ, from beginnings that by human estimation are very small and despised, grows far more sublime than all earthly kingdoms, embracing all nations for their life and salvation. Thus also the transformation of the world in the kingdom and through the kingdom of Jesus Christ is shadowed, while it is said: « the kingdom of heaven is like to leaven », which, though very small in quantity and hidden, pervades and transforms the whole mass of flour: « she hid it in three measures of meal (cf. Gen. XVIII. 6) until the whole was leavened » (Matt. XIII. 33).

Without going further, from what has been said in the thesis it is sufficiently clear in what form the Saviour Christ, from his manifestation in the flesh and from the first beginnings of his preaching and preparation, declared that his divine religion, the truth revealed by him, and the holiness prescribed by him, were to be instituted and founded. Namely, the divine plan was not merely to reveal religion as in the abstract, which individuals would follow privately, each by the persuasion of faith and by the morals of his life left to himself, bound by no bonds of authority, power, obedience, and subjection, as in a philosophical school; but rather, just as we saw it foretold by the prophets, so from the promised and sent Redeemer, at the very beginnings of the execution, it was announced that out of all nations there should be founded the kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God on earth, one and universal; and this kingdom itself is to be formed by the faith and profession of the revealed truth, by the discipline and institutions of supernatural holiness; and thus in this kingdom, by social unity through authority and power, both the whole community and each individual by himself are to be preserved and governed in the profession of revealed truth and in the attainment of supernatural holiness. Therefore the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Jesus Christ, whose foundation has been announced by him in the way we have seen, is in concreto the very religion of Jesus Christ, which cannot exist without and outside this form of kingdom.

« Christ the Lord, in the very form of his preaching, displayed as in a model the form of his Church; and this form, constituted in a visible and living authority on the one hand and in obedience of faith toward that same authority on the other, he transmitted into the Church, when he began its institution by calling faithful disciples, and from all of them by the choice of the twelve Apostles, to whom, constituted into one body under himself as one head, he communicated authority to claim the obedience of faith, while at the same time preparing a perennial participation in fuller power and a hierarchical unity under one visible head, for the time when his visible presence would be withdrawn. »

I. Christ the Lord, as is manifest from the whole Gospel, from the beginning of his preaching showed himself above all to be the divine legate and the Messiah promised, and expected by the Jews at that very time according to the oracles of the prophets (cf. P. Patrizi, In Evangel., diss. 26, n. 7, and diss. 27, c. 4, p. 4), who therefore was to complete in doctrine, in worship, and in the kingdom of God what had been foretold and prefigured about the Messiah and his kingdom throughout the whole patriarchal, Mosaic, and prophetic economy. After the supernatural manifestations of the promised Messiah at his very birth (Luke II. 8–19, 25–38; Matt. II. 1 ff.), John was sent, in the spirit of Elias and more than a prophet, to show that he was now present and to prepare the way of the Lord (Matt. III. 1–14; Mark I. 1–8; Luke I. 15–17, 68–79; III. 1–17; John I. 15, 36; III. 27 ff.). In the very solemn initiation of his preaching, the visible appearance of the Holy Spirit and the voice of the Father declaring him to the whole people « his beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased » (Matt. III. 16, 17; cf. XVII. 5; John XII. 28, 30); miracles, continuous throughout his whole public life and wrought with a manifest direction and even an express declaration to the same end, of winning faith in a divine mission ¹; prophecies fulfilled in his birth, life, and teaching ²; the divine holiness of his life, repugnant to falsehood of doctrine and to the grasping or usurpation of divinity (cf. Phil. II. 6); the very doctrine and manner of teaching, in which the light of truth shone in the holiness and sublimity of the mystery, majesty in ineffable sweetness, divinity in humanity ³; all these things (subsequently completed and confirmed through the passion and death foretold in each of its circumstances, through the resurrection, through the mission of the Holy Spirit and the building of the Church) were so many rays of external light illuminating the divinity of the doctrine and of the person, by which, with the inner light of grace added, Jesus of Nazareth was shown to be evidently credible and to be believed, as the Messiah promised and sent by the Father according to the prophecies of the Scriptures: king of Israel, savior and one shepherd of the people of God, sponsor of the new and eternal covenant, father of the age to come, desired by all nations, in whom all generations were to be blessed, the Son of God begotten in the eternal day, whose going forth was both from the beginning, from the days of eternity, and last of all from Bethlehem; God himself coming to save, Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Christ, by his mission from the Father and by the supreme authority thus demonstrated, demands full « obedience of faith » to his doctrine of truth and to his precepts and institutions of holiness, under the sanction of eternal life or eternal death. « For God so loved the world, as to give his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. He who believes in him is not judged; but he who does not believe is already judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God » (John III. 16, 18, 36). « If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love; as I also have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love » (John XIV. 15, 21, 24; XV. 10, 14; 1 John II. 3, etc.).

II. This form of authority divinely given in teaching and in sacred rule, on the one hand, and of the « obedience of faith » answering to it, on the other, Christ willed not only for the time of his visible presence, in his divine person, in whom the divine authority of truth and of lawgiving in teaching and commanding was inherent originally and essentially « (the way, the truth, and the life); » but he willed the same form to be the inner and proper form of his whole kingdom on earth. He made this manifest at the very first initiation of his kingdom, both by preparing that form in deeds as it was to be, and by promising it in words.

1°. Indeed, when Christ the Lord first began to preach the kingdom of God to be established by him on earth, he at once called disciples and joined them in one society, by a lasting sharing of life, to himself as their « Lord and Master » (John XIII. 14), and from these he chose twelve, whom he constituted as one special college, distinguished by many prerogatives from his other faithful; and this with a solemnity expressly noted in the Gospel. « And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and he continued all night in the prayer of God. And when day was come, he called to him his disciples, and chose twelve of them, whom also he named Apostles: Simon, whom he surnamed Peter, and Andrew his brother » etc. (Luke VI. 12 ff.) ⁴ (cf. John VI. 67–69; Acts I. 21, 22).

It is most worth noting that from then on they are constantly called, by a collegial name proper to them, as one moral body: those twelve, with the article, οἱ δώδεκα (Matt. X. 1; XI. 1; XX. 17, 24; XXVI. 14, 20, 47; Mark III. 14; IV. 10; VI. 7; IX. 34; X. 32; XI. 11; XIV. 10, 17, 20, 47; Acts VI. 2). Indeed they retain the same name twelve as their proper name even after the death of the traitor and before the election of Matthias (John XX. 24; 1 Cor. XV. 5, in the Greek text), when elsewhere they are called eleven, οἱ ἕνδεκα (Matt. XXVIII. 16; Mark XVI. 14; Luke XXIV. 9; Acts I. 26). By this same name, οἱ ἕνδεκα, the college is called even when only ten are present (Luke XXIV. 33; cf. John XX. 24). Conversely the name twelve is kept to designate the whole college even at a time when, with Matthias and Paul assumed, there are already thirteen Apostles in the true sense (Matt. XIX. 28; Apoc. XXI. 14).

That these twelve were already distinguished from all the other disciples by a higher office is clear from the very fact and manner of their election; from the name given them, Apostles, that is, legates of Christ in his kingdom; from expressions that set this distinct college over against the other disciples and faithful of Christ, e.g. « the eleven and those who were with them » (οἱ ἕνδεκα καὶ οἱ σὺν αὐτοῖς), cf. Luke XXIV. 9, 33; and from the way in which the office of the Apostles is explicitly marked off, as authentic testimony, even before the coming of the Holy Spirit, in opposition to any other witnesses however fit by faith and knowledge: « It is necessary that of these men who have been with us all the time ... one become a witness with us of his resurrection ... show whom you have chosen to take this ministry and apostleship (κλῆρον τῆς οἰκονομίας ταύτης καὶ ἀποστολῆς) ... and he was numbered with the eleven Apostles » (Acts I. 21 f.). But of all this there is no need, for the whole economy of Christ clearly shows the special relation the Apostles have in the kingdom of God, both to the Lord by whom they are sent, and to all the other disciples, whether united or to be united, for whom they are sent.

2°. Considering therefore the Apostles in this earlier stage of preformation, of which we are now speaking, we see first of all the Lord instructing these chosen twelve, beyond the rest of the multitude of disciples, in the mysteries of the kingdom of God for their ministry as legates, expressed by the very name apostleship. The whole Gospel story bears witness to this. « Because it is given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them in parables ... But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear » (Matt. XIII. 11, 16). « I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from my Father (to be revealed to men), I have made known to you » (ἐγνώρισα ὑμῖν, either explicitly in itself or at least implicitly in the promise of the Holy Spirit) (John XV. 15; cf. XVI. 12). The purpose of this special institution is declared in the precept that what they heard apart, and as if in darkness, they should « speak in the light and preach upon the housetops » (Matt. X. 27).

Hence first of all we see them in the intimate company of Jesus as he goes through cities and villages preaching and proclaiming the kingdom of God: « he went about ... preaching and evangelizing the kingdom of God, and the twelve with him » (Luke VIII. 1). Then indeed the Lord sends the twelve themselves to « preach the kingdom of God, » enjoining on them the same form he used himself, namely that, the divine mission having been shown by signs and powers, to the authority of preaching and teaching there should correspond, on the other side, the duty of obedience of faith under the sanction of eternal damnation on the day of judgment. The form, the demonstration, the authority, and the sanction of the Apostles' preaching are the same as in the preaching of Christ himself; except that in Christ, as the only-begotten sent by the Father, the power and authority are as it were in the fountain, while in the Apostles they are the same but derived from Christ, since they are men sent by him. Of Christ's preaching it was said: « Then he began to upbraid the cities in which most of his mighty works were done, because they had not done penance ... It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you; and you, Capharnaum ... I say to you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom at the day of judgment than for you » (Matt. XI. 20 ff.). Of the Apostles: « These twelve Jesus sent, commanding them ... go, preach, saying: the kingdom of heaven is at hand; heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils ... and whoever shall not receive you nor hear your words (ἀκούσῃ – ἀκοὴ τῆς πίστεως?) ... amen I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah at the day of judgment than for that city » (Matt. X. 5–15; Luke IX. 1–6).

The divine Master established, as a general principle, the derivation of authority from Christ to his legates, as we have said. The first and most basic statement of it is found in the choice and mission of the twelve Apostles: « These twelve Jesus sent, commanding them ... go, preach ... he who receives you, receives me; and he who receives me, receives him who sent me » (Matt. X. 5, 7, 40). But so that all power in the kingdom of Christ may be understood as derived by participation from the power that exists originally and as a model in Christ himself, the King, Teacher, and Priest, and so that the distinction of degrees of the hierarchy in the same kingdom may already be shown in outline, the Lord, after the college of the twelve Apostles had already been instituted in that authority of legates ⁵, « appointed also other seventy-two, and sent them two by two before his face into every city and place whither he himself was to come. » These men, though sent by him, he did not create as Apostles, nor did he make them equal to the Apostles; yet the same principle of derivation, and consequently the reference of authority back to its very fountain, Christ, certainly holds for them too: « He who hears you, hears me; and he who despises you, despises me; and he who despises me, despises him who sent me » (Luke X. 1, 16).

3°. The college of the twelve Apostles itself, though not yet fully constituted in its final form and perfection, was nevertheless already being prepared by Christ the Lord, during his mortal life, for this full constitution, chiefly as regards the hierarchical order.

a) As long as the visible Lord and Master himself was living with the Apostles, there was neither place nor need for another visible head, or center and bond of unity. But on every occasion Christ himself warns and foretells that for the future time after his departure, one of them is to be set up over them and above them as greater, first, leader (ἡγούμενον) in the kingdom of God on earth. Whenever he speaks of his departure from the Apostles, almost always a question arises among them: « which of them seemed to be the greater? » They therefore did not yet know any « greater » among themselves, but they were quite certain that one would be such for the time of the constituted kingdom of Christ on earth. In the Lord's answers to these questions, three things are usually contained, explicitly or implicitly: that no one as yet is constituted greater among them, and that he alone is their leader and master (ὁ καθηγητής); that, however, someone from among them is to be constituted greater and leader in his place, when he will no longer be visibly with them; and that the ministry he gives, in the exercise of power, is very different from the ambitious domination of princes among the nations, so that the leader, although greater in power, nevertheless in humility feels himself the minister of all, after the example of the Lord and Master himself. That is, he exercises the power of the greater not for his own advantage and ambition, but for the common fruit and salvation in the kingdom of God. « And there was also a strife among them, which of them seemed to be the greater (for that time, namely, when what Christ said was to come to pass: the Son of man goes, according to what is determined; from which prediction this strife arose). And he said to them: the kings of the nations lord it over them, and those who have power are called benefactors ⁶. But you not so; but let him that is greater among you become as the younger, and he that is the leader as the minister. For which is greater, he that sits at table, or he that serves? is not it he that sits at table? but I am in the midst of you as he that serves » (Luke XXII. 24 ff.; cf. Matt. XX. 24–28; Mark X. 42–45). « The Lord and Master » (John XIII. 13, 14, 16) sets himself up as the example in both respects, first with regard to true power and authority. There will therefore be in the kingdom of God someone among the Apostles who is greater and leader (ὁ μείζων, ὁ ἡγούμενος), together with power and authority; which also appears from the opposition between leader and minister, greater and lesser, for he who in fact will be greater and leader is to be as the lesser and the minister, not in fact and power but in the manner of his exercise. Lastly, this is clear from the comparison drawn between the greater and the leader in the kingdom of God and the true power with its perverse exercise among the kings of the nations. Therefore the Lord, secondly, sets himself up as the example as regards the exercise of power in his kingdom. The Lord often repeats the same promise and warning about the future primacy of one, and about the manner of its exercise: « If anyone wishes to be first (πρῶτος), he shall be the last of all and the minister of all » (Mark IX. 33, 34). He had spoken of the true authority of the Pharisees and scribes, insofar as « they sat on the chair of Moses »; from this he infers: « all things, therefore, whatsoever they shall say to you (ὅσα ἐὰν εἴπωσιν ὑμῖν τηρεῖν), observe and do. » Then indeed he rebukes their manner of exercising authority and their works: for they bind heavy and insupportable burdens, do all their works that they may be seen by men, love (φιλοῦσι, with ambition and pride) the first places at table, the first seats, greetings in the marketplace, and to be called Rabbi by men (καλεῖσθαι ῥαββί, ῥαββί). From this he passes to authority, and to the manner of exercising it in his own kingdom: « But you, do not be called Rabbi; for one is your Master (ὑμῶν ὁ καθηγητής), and all you are brothers; and call no one father upon earth, for one is your Father, who is in heaven; nor be called masters (καθηγηταί), for one is your Master (ὁ καθηγητής), Christ. He who is greater among you (ὁ δὲ μείζων ὑμῶν) shall be your minister » (Matt. XXIII. 8–11; cf. XVIII. 1; Luke IX. 46 f.). Thus there is one Master, Christ, in a twofold way: one visible Master for the time in which he spoke, of his visible presence on earth; and one Master for all future time, for which he chiefly spoke. For all authentic magisterium and all power (τὸ καθηγεμονικόν) in his kingdom is only a participation derived from him, and this external teaching has no efficacy except from his internal teaching; therefore « all shall be taught by God » (θεοδίδακτοι, cf. Tract. de Trad., ed. 2, p. 107 ff.). Just as there is one Master, Christ, so there is one Father in heaven, in the sense, namely, of eminence (καθ' ὑπεροχήν). This does not exclude but includes, just as in the natural order so in the kingdom of Christ, fatherhood and teaching through participation. Therefore the Lord adds, « He who is greater among you »; yet this very thing is not for pharisaic pride « (do not be called Rabbi) », but for ministry unto salvation « (shall be your minister). »

b) This greater, first, leader among and over the Apostles the Lord, in this stage of his mortal and bodily presence, had not yet constituted, but he clearly designated Simon, and prepared the very reality of this primacy, and declared its ground and manner.

This preparation is already contained in Simon's very first calling, when Jesus gave him the name Peter, or foundation: « Jesus, looking upon him, said: You are Simon the son of Jona; you shall be called Cephas, which is interpreted Peter » (John I. 42). In the choice, and again in the mission of the twelve Apostles, this name Peter is noted more expressly; and by reason of this name and of the thing signified, Peter is not only everywhere placed first in order, but is also explicitly declared first among the Apostles. « He chose twelve of them, whom also he named Apostles: Simon, whom he surnamed Peter, and Andrew his brother, James, and John » etc. (Luke VI. 14). « And calling together his twelve disciples he gave them power over unclean spirits ... Now the names of the twelve Apostles are these: the first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, James ... These twelve Jesus sent » (Matt. X. 2 ff.; Mark III. 16). By the facts themselves the Lord set him apart from the other Apostles as leader. Not only among those whom he admitted to a special confidence is Peter everywhere noted as first, but the divine Master seems to act almost always with him alone, above the rest. At the raising of Jairus's daughter, « he did not allow anyone to enter with him but Peter, and James, and John »; at the transfiguration, « he took with him Peter, and James, and John ... But Peter and those who were with him (Πέτρος καὶ οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ) ⁷ were heavy with sleep; and waking they saw his majesty ... Peter said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here »; at the agony on the Mount of Olives, « he took with him Peter, and James, and John ... and he came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter: Simon, are you sleeping? could you not watch one hour with me? watch and pray » (Luke VIII. 51; IX. 28 ff.; Mark XIV. 33 ff.). He bids Peter let down the nets for a catch of fishes, and when « astonishment had seized him, and all who were with him (πάντας τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ), and likewise James and John ... Jesus said to Simon: Fear not; from now on you shall be a catcher of men » ⁸ (Luke V. 10). When the Apostles, seeing Jesus walking on the sea, were troubled and said it was a phantom, « Peter, answering (to the word of the Lord, It is I, fear not), said: Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you upon the waters; and he said: Come ... and immediately Jesus, stretching out his hand, took hold of him » (Matt. XIV. 28). When those collecting the didrachma (the temple tax) ask, « Does not your master pay the didrachma? », the Son of God works a miracle to pay it for himself and for Peter at once, as one juridical person together with him: take the fish, « and when you have opened its mouth you will find a stater; take that and give it to them for me and for you » ⁹ (Matt. XVII. 27).

These first outlines, as it were, of the greater, first, leader among the Apostles are not to be considered singly but all together, so that they may finally be understood as converging on the explicit declaration of this primacy. For the Lord Christ, in the last year of his preaching, when he first began to foretell to the disciples his departure, his passion and death (Mark VIII. 31–33), and a few days before he displayed his glorification in the transfiguration on the mountain, and again at the last supper, when he was about to pass from this world, promised in plain words and with solemn testimony that he would build his Church upon Peter alone, chosen from all the Apostles, a name then first used in the Gospels for the Church; and that in this one city of God, to be built so upon the rock that the gates of hell would never prevail against it, since it is an eternal kingdom which will not be given to another nation, and Christ himself will reign in the house of Jacob for ever, he would give to this same Peter the supreme power of the keys, to loose and to bind whatever pertains to that visible kingdom of heaven on earth, so that just as this kingdom itself, begun on earth, looks to the consummated kingdom in heaven, so also the power looks to that end and has force and value in relation to it (Matt. XVI. 18). The reason for the rock and for the promised power of the keys in the kingdom of heaven is explained according to one¹⁰ inner element at the last supper, when Christ, the corner stone and foundation, promises of himself that he will so strengthen Peter's faith that through Peter he will confirm the brethren, that is, the whole brotherhood in the world that is to be strengthened in faith (1 Pet. V. 9), that is, the whole Church; and thus the Church, founded upon the rock, will be the pillar and firmament of truth (Luke XXII. 32). But since these things are already a declaration of the inner reason of the kingdom of God on earth, according to its monarchical form, we must treat of them elsewhere, in the explanation of the very constitution¹¹ of the Church.

4°. When Christ promised and prepared the supreme power in the city of God, in the kingdom of heaven, to be future in one first and leader, and designated Simon Peter for this, he certainly did not dissolve the college of the twelve Apostles. But just as then it was one under Christ as visible head, so he willed its unity to be firm and to be preserved for all future time, as long as the Church persists against which the gates of hell will not prevail; and therefore also in apostolic succession, under one visible head substituted for himself, with vicarious and participated power. Hence, a short time after the promise of that supreme power of the keys made to Peter alone, before all and over all the Apostles, Christ also declares the power of sacred rule in the Church, insofar as it is to be constituted in the apostolic college, not separately from Peter, but together with Peter and in subordination under him, just as this subordination is already contained in the promise made earlier to Peter alone ¹².

It is manifest that by Christ the Lord, Matt. XVIII. 17, 18, judicial power and power of rule in general for and in the Church is designated as future; but the question is to whom in the Church that power is to be conferred, and what is, as they are wont to say, its determinate subject. The whole discourse of Christ in that chapter of Matthew (compare Mark IX. 34 ff.) is directed to the Apostles. « In that hour the disciples (οἱ μαθηταί) came to Jesus » (Matt.); « sitting down, he called the twelve » (τοὺς δώδεκα) (Mark). To this college of twelve disciples, in the course of his discourse, he announces among other things the matters that now concern us. « If your brother shall offend against you, go and rebuke him ... if he will not hear you, take with you yet one or two more ... And if he will not hear them, tell the Church; and if he will not hear the Church, let him be to you as the heathen and the publican. Amen I say to you, whatever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven. » In those words, tell the Church; if he will not hear the Church, there is signified a judgment and a juridical sentence to be pronounced by the Church, so that the obstinate may be excluded as heathens and publicans, in contrast to the private correction from the duty of charity, which is treated in the immediately preceding verses. But such juridical power already presupposes, of itself, not the whole Church as subject of power, but certain persons in the Church who are invested with that right and office, and this by no one other than the very author of the Church, who here speaks and announces the institution to come in the Church ¹³. But there is no need for this deduction, since the meaning of the name Church is clearly determined by the words themselves in the immediately following context: amen I say to you (to the Apostles, τοὺς δώδεκα), whatever you bind, whatever you loose upon earth, shall be bound, loosed in heaven. In the preceding verses the Church is indicated less explicitly as binding and loosing; here that power is explicitly promised to those twelve alone, the Apostolic college in the Church, that is, for all future times as long as the Church persists. So the question is about ordinary power, and power to be propagated to the succession of the Apostolic college, as already promised by Christ the founder to be ordained and disposed with Peter and under Peter; for extraordinary power, which was in the individual Apostles and does not pass to successors, must be established not from this and similar passages but from elsewhere. Moreover, the words of Christ, whatever you bind, whatever you loose, certainly refer also to the judicial power indicated in the immediately preceding verses, and include it, but they extend much more widely to the government of the Church, of which we shall speak in their proper places.

Therefore, just as the hierarchy under one visible head was prepared by Christ the Lord, while still living his mortal life with the Apostles, to preserve unity in the Apostolic college itself, as we saw a little while ago, so in the same stage of mortal life the whole Church was predisposed, so that the one Church itself, for the preservation of unity, is distinguished according to that part which has the power of binding and loosing, and according to that part which is not the subject but only the object and end of that same power. The Church that rules and the Church that is ruled are not two Churches but one Church, with members unequal in rights and duties, distinguished by Christ the founder himself.

III. The economy in the preaching of Christ the Lord appears manifestly so arranged that, just as hierarchical authority and unity in the Church, of which we have spoken, so also universality, the abolition of the synagogue of the one Jewish people, and the substitution of the Church of all nations, were prepared and preformed in the mortal life of Christ, yet not consummated before the sanction of the new Testament through the death of the testator and the effusion of his blood (cf. Luke XXII. 20; Heb. IX. 15 ff.). Of his own personal preaching the Lord declares: « I was not sent but to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel » (Matt. XV. 24). At the same time he declares, concerning his death: « I lay down my life for my sheep; and I have other sheep that are not of this fold, and them I must bring » (John X. 16). He prefigures this future universality of the fold in the facts and deeds of his mortal life: in the calling of the Magi to adore the King of the Jews, whose star they had seen in the east (Matt. II); in the commendation, confirmation, and hearing of the faith, both of the Samaritans (John IV; Luke XVII. 18), and of the Syrophoenician woman (Matt. XV. 28), and of the centurion asking the healing of his servant (Matt. VIII. 5 ff.), and of other Gentiles (John XII. 20, 23); in the first fruits of the confession of the Gentiles (the centurion and those with him), already in the very death of Christ, according to the symbolic preaching, in the languages of the Gentiles of the Roman world and through it of the whole world, inscribed on the standard of the cross (Matt. XXVII. 54; Luke XXIII. 38).

Moreover, during the time of his mortal life the Lord commends, by word and deed, the sanctity of the Temple at Jerusalem, the observance of the ceremonial law, and the authority of those teaching the law of Moses in the chair of Moses (Matt. XXI. 12, 13; XXIII. 2, 3, 17–21, 23; XXVI. 18; John II. 16; V. 35; XVIII. 20). But at the same time he announces that the time is near when the Temple at Jerusalem will no longer be the sanctuary of public worship and sacrifices; the house of that old economy will be deserted; the city, with its temple as the seat of Mosaic worship, will be destroyed by perpetual desolation; and the kingdom of God is to be taken from the Jews. Hence he declares and promises that a new, universal economy is to be substituted for the particular old one: for public worship will not be restricted to one place, but is to be celebrated everywhere; the kingdom of God will be given to a nation that bears its fruit; the Gospel will be preached as a testimony to all nations; many will come from east and west into the kingdom of heaven, while the children of the kingdom will be cast out into exterior darkness (Matt. VIII. 11, 12; XXI. 43; XXIII. 38; XXIV. 2, 14, 15; John IV. 21–24). What Christ foretells in words, he shows in particular deeds: the transformation of the synagogue. For the judicial Mosaic law he substitutes mercy ready for penitents, in the absolution of the adulteress (John VIII. 8, 11). He takes into his communion among the faithful the one cast out of the synagogue (John IX. 22, 35–38; cf. XVI. 2). He shows the old liturgical and ceremonial law as subject to himself as lawgiver, changeable and to be changed, because he is « greater than the temple, » and « the Lord also of the Sabbath » (Matt. XII. 6, 8).

By the same reasoning by which the preaching of the Savior himself, directed immediately to the sheep of the house of Israel, at the same time preformed the universal Church, the mission of the Apostles, too, though in this earlier stage still particular, contained the preparation of the future universal mission, after the redemption was accomplished, for establishing the kingdom of God among all nations. « These twelve Jesus sent, commanding them, saying: go not into the way of the Gentiles, and enter not into the cities of the Samaritans; but go rather to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel. » This preaching is enjoined: « the kingdom of heaven is at hand »; but since this kingdom will be not only among the sheep of the house of Israel, but among the nations, and will be the promised kingdom of the Son of man, the Lord soon adds: « You shall be led before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations ... amen I say to you, you shall not finish the cities of Israel till the Son of man come » (Matt. X. 5–7, 18, 23). When he himself foretells his death for the redemption of the world, he declares that this coming of the Son of man is the coming of his kingdom: « Amen I say to you, there are some of those standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom », or as in Luke, « till they see the kingdom of God », and in Mark, « till they see the kingdom of God coming in power » (Matt. XVI. 28; Mark VIII. 39; Luke IX. 27). « Because some of the disciples were to live so long in the body that they would see the Church of God built and raised against the glory of this world, by a consoling promise it is now said: there are some standing here who shall not taste death until they see the kingdom of God » (St. Gregory the Great, in Evang., hom. 32, n. 6).

IV. Just as the external form of authority and of hierarchical distinction, of the visible unity and universality of the Church, such as was to be constituted for all future time, was still contained in promise and preparation, so also the internal charisms and gifts of the Holy Spirit, whether considered in the individual Apostles or in all of them in unity, had not yet in this earlier stage been conferred in their fullness. They were still promised as the price of Christ's blood, and before the redemption was complete were only partly tasted in advance, as it were by way of a pledge. « For the Spirit was not yet given (in the promised fullness), because Jesus was not yet glorified » (John VII. 39). « It is expedient for you that I go; for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you ... I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; but when that Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you all truth » (ibid. XVI. 7 ff.). St. Gregory Nazianzen declares this donation of the Holy Spirit, by certain stages, as follows: « The Spirit was given to the disciples in three ways, and as much as they could receive, according to three times: before Christ was glorified by the passion; after he was glorified by the resurrection; after his ascension into heaven. » The first donation, as Gregory continues there, was more hidden, for the expulsion of diseases and demons (Matt. X); the second more manifest, by insufflation for the remission and retention of sins (John XX); the third in a certain way substantial (οὐσιωδῶς, as one might say), namely in visible form, in tongues of fire on the day of Pentecost, and with the effect of the fullness of gifts (Gregory Naz., Orat. 41, al. 44, n. 11).

In the economy of redemption, then, Christ the Savior first merited, by the price of his blood, the very sanctification of the world and therefore the full constitution of his Church, which is the sanctified world; and therefore he reserved it to the work of the Holy Spirit, whose mission, as the proximate cause of the full building of the Church, is thereby understood as the principal effect of the merits of Christ, containing in itself, as in a beginning, all the other effects for the kingdom of grace and of truth. « As the Savior, coming, became the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, so the fulfilment of the Gospel is the Holy Spirit. Christ coming established what is from the Father, namely the things said in the law and the prophets; therefore Paul says, Christ is the fulfilment of the law. The Holy Spirit coming fulfilled the things of the Gospel. Whatever is in the law, Christ fulfils; whatever is in the teaching of Christ, the Spirit fulfils ... The Son fulfils the things of the Father, and does not speak of himself; the Spirit fulfils the things of the Son, and does not speak of himself » ¹⁴ (Serm. de Spir. S., among the works of Chrysostom, ed. Maurin., T. III, pp. 808, 809). Atonement for the world comes first, in the work of mercy through the death of the incarnate Son of God; the sanctification of the redeemed world, through the full constitution of the Church in all graces and gifts, follows from that death as a work of love, and is therefore appropriated to the Spirit of holiness and sanctification. « Why did the Spirit not come before he departed? Because the curse was not yet removed, sin not yet loosed, but all were still liable to punishment; for that reason he did not come. He himself (Christ) could do these things, but he allows him (the Spirit) to work miracles, so that they may learn his dignity ... For this reason he himself was made flesh, reserving the operation for the Spirit » ¹⁵ (Chrysostom, in John, hom. 78, al. 77, n. 3).

Thus from Christ himself as head, in his still mortal life and before his blood was poured out as the price of acquisition (Acts XX. 28), we see the institution of the Church begun and preformed, both according to its external and conspicuous form and according to its internal and spiritual form, or, as Paul says (Eph. IV. 4), according to the unity of body and spirit. The visible form is established by Christ himself in visible authority, which living men are to exercise, on the one hand, and thereby the obedience of faith (which is founded in faith and exercised by faith) toward that same authority, on the other, by which the whole body and society of the faithful is contained and ruled. For those who exercise the authority communicated to them by Christ are themselves, constituted together into one body, bound in turn to obedience of faith toward a higher authority. While Christ himself was still visible on earth, the one leader and master (εἷς ὁ καθηγητής) teaches, rules, and holds together the whole body of teachers and of the obedient by his supreme authority, and comprises all of it in himself, communicating to the Apostles only for particular ends and as it were at intervals. But by these very acts of communication, and by explicit promises, he prepares the Apostles and the whole Church for a fuller and perennial communication of his authority, by which, since he would no longer visibly converse with men, he would substitute both one vicar in the supreme power and, in hierarchically arranged power, all the Apostles and the Apostolic college joined in unity. By this substitution and communication it comes about that the one Master, Christ, through the visible authority instituted in his legates (2 Cor. V. 20), himself perennially teaches, rules, and holds together his Church. To this full institution of the Church of Christ, whose preparation we have considered so far, we are now led by the very order of doctrine.

Now that the redemption of the world has been accomplished through the bloody sacrifice and the price of the acquisition of the Church has been paid, the divine Savior, « until the day on which, having given commands through the Holy Spirit to the Apostles whom he had chosen, he was taken up » ¹, « presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them for forty days and speaking of the kingdom of God » to the same men, Acts I. 3. Therefore the Lord, present, spoke to them frequently, not only to demonstrate his resurrection but so that he might complete the institution and the constitution of the kingdom of God on earth; for the words declare clearly both the frequency of the appearances and their purpose. « Staying with them (the disciples) for forty days, he opened their hearts... and ordered and instructed them for the preaching of his doctrine and teaching, arranging the solemn discipline of the New Testament » Lactantius, de mort. persecut. l. I. c. 2. « Those days, then, which passed between the Lord's resurrection and his ascension did not pass in idle course, but great sacraments were confirmed in them, great mysteries were revealed » S. Leo, sermo 1 de Ascens. Although, however, as with the other deeds and words of Christ, so also about these appearances and instructions during those forty days, not everything has been written (John XX. 30; XXI. 25); yet those things which pertain to the institution and constitution of the Church, of which we now speak, are so comprehended as to the thing itself in the written Gospels that the Catholic tradition seems necessary not so much for their completion or enlargement as for a secure and distinct understanding. The appearances of the Lord during those days to the Apostolic college, though not always in full, are described in the Gospels as five: the first on the very evening of the day of the resurrection, the second after eight days, both at Jerusalem (Luke XXIV. 36–43; John XX. 19–29; cf. 1 Cor. XV. 5); the third in John XXI; and the fourth in Matthew XXVIII. 16–20, in Galilee ²; and the fifth finally at Jerusalem, when the Lord ascended into heaven (Mark XVI. 14–19; Luke XXIV. 44–51; Acts I. 4–9; cf. 1 Cor. XV. 7). Of these epiphanies, the second is mentioned in the Gospels only insofar as it pertained to showing the truth of the resurrection; it was made for the sake of Thomas, and can be regarded as a part or supplement of the first. In the remaining four Christ, « speaking of the kingdom of God, » completed that institution and constitution of the kingdom which we have mentioned. We shall therefore consider them in the very order in which they occurred; for there is no more suitable order of exposition to be found than that which incarnate wisdom arranged in the events themselves and in the teaching connected with the events.

« As Christ was sent by the Father, so the Apostles were sent by Christ (John XX. 21); wherefore this mission of the Apostles is to be understood as containing, taken together, the office and power of ruling, teaching, and sanctifying the Church visibly in the name and place of Christ. »

We must consider first, more generally, the proper force of this great mission of the Apostles, insofar as Christ himself declares it from his own mission by the Father; then, from this very comparison of the principal mission in Christ with the derived mission in the Apostles, we shall try to understand more specifically the offices included in this mission and instituted in the Apostles through it.

I. It is manifest first of all that the words of the Lord contain not merely a theoretical doctrine or promise, but a legislative and efficacious institution; and therefore they actually confer and effect what they signify.

1°. The propositions of John XX. 21–23 are two: one, set down as a principle, « As the Father has sent me, I also send you; » the other, by way of a consequence, which is contained implicitly in that principle and is deduced from it, and is stated explicitly: « Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose you shall retain, they are retained. » But this consequent proposition is evidently practical, containing a legislative institution and conferring power; therefore the premise also, in which it is contained as in a principle, and from which it is deduced as a consequent, is practical. Certainly, in act and by its very effect, the mission is conferred on the Apostles by Christ, as he himself was sent by the Father.

2°. This mission of the Apostles by Christ was made in the likeness of the mission of Christ himself by the Father: « As the Father has sent me, I also send you. » In a mission, and so also in the likeness of mission expressed here by Christ, three things are to be considered: the relation and communication of the sender to the one sent, for a mission is (as St. Thomas says, I, q. 43, a. 1) « a certain procession; » then what is communicated, namely the authority and power of the one sent, derived from the sender; and finally the end and term of the mission, or the work to which one is sent. The Lord therefore first expresses the likeness in the relation of communication: as the Father sends me, so I send you; the mission and communication are derived from the Father to me, from me to you. « Here we recognize the words of the Mediator; for he shows himself as intermediary when he says: he sent me, and I you » (St. Augustine, in John, tract. 121). Moreover, from this very mediation, that Christ is sent by the Father and in turn the Apostles are sent by Christ, there is necessarily understood a likeness, not indeed an identity, because of the infinite difference of the subject, but a likeness in the very reality of the mission: in the power, I say, which is communicated by sending, and in the work to which they are sent. Unless it were so, the word to send in the first clause, the Father sends, and in the second, I send, would have to be taken in a wholly different or equivocal sense, which is already absurd in itself, and is excluded by the very comparison by which the likeness or analogy is expressly stated: in the mission itself, in the work (as we have said) to which they are sent, and thereby also in the power necessary for the work of the mission: as the Father sent me, so I send you. « Then, he says, since all impediments are now removed, and I have determined a splendid victory, and all things have been restored (through the death of the cross), he finally says: as the Father sent me, so I send you... Here he lifts up their minds and shows them most worthy of faith, since they were to undertake his own work; nor is it now an invocation of the Father, but by his own proper authority he gives them power » ¹ (Chrysostom, in John, hom. 86).

3°. From these very things it is established that the proposition by which the mission is imparted to the Apostles is universal, and cannot be restricted to that particular power of forgiving or retaining sins which is stated and conferred in the consequent. For it was not said, I send you, that whose sins you forgive, they shall be forgiven; the words of Christ, the Redeemer and founder of the Church, are quite different. There are two distinct parts in the saying, each of which, containing a complete sense, stands on its own; the Evangelist shows this the more clearly by the division of one sentence from the other: « He said therefore to them again, Peace be to you; as the Father sent me, I also send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them, and said: Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them. » In the former sentence the power and work of the mission of the Apostles is determined in no other way than by the mission of Christ himself by the Father. Now this mission is certainly general with respect to the salvation of the human race; therefore the mission of the Apostles too, which Christ says corresponds to his own mission and is like it, must be understood as general, which indeed includes implicitly the particular power of forgiving sins instituted in the second part, but not that alone, nor is it restricted to it. If any sophism should cast obscurity on this, by saying that from our reasoning the Apostles seem to be sent also for the redemption of the world, for the merit and bestowal of graces, the answer is plain. The redemption and merits of Christ are presupposed as complete, and are the foundation of the mission of the Apostles itself, which pertains to the application of the redemption and of the merits of Christ (see above the doctrine of Chrysostom): namely to the ministerial application of the merits and graces, and therefore by means and modes instituted by Christ, borrowing their whole force from Christ the Redeemer himself; for the mission of the Apostles is said to be not equal but similar. But these things will be explained more distinctly a little later.

4°. The subjects of the mission are all, and only those who belonged, and insofar as they belonged, to the Apostolic college, and (which holds always for the power to be exercised perennially in the kingdom of Christ, and therefore ordinary) the lawful successors of that college. John relates distinctly (XX. 19, 24) that the appearance took place « where the disciples were gathered together » (οἱ μαθηταὶ συνηγμένοι), but Thomas, « one of the twelve » (εἷς ἐκ τῶν δώδεκα), was not with them, that is, one of the college of Apostles, although at that time, with the traitor now cut off, they were not twelve but eleven in number (th. VIII.). Luke (XXIV. 33) names « the eleven gathered together, and those who were with them » (συνηθροισμένους² τοὺς ἔνδεκα καὶ τοὺς σὺν αὐτοῖς). Although others were present at the appearance as if concomitantly, the very manner of speaking shows that the Apostolic college is directly regarded at the epiphany (οἱ ἔνδεκα καὶ οἱ σὺν αὐτοῖς). And the words by which the mission, as Christ himself was sent, is declared, and the power in the kingdom of God is conferred through the mission, cannot pertain to anyone other than « the eleven gathered together.» This is clear from the very purpose of the choice of the Apostles and the institution of the Apostolic college: that there be an authority of mission or apostleship derived from Christ on the one hand, and obedience of faith on the other, about which enough has been said in the earlier thesis. Paul calls Jesus « the Apostle and High Priest of our confession » (Heb. III. 1); and just as in John Christ imparts the mission as he himself was sent by the Father, so Paul declares the apostleship, or mission (ἀποστολήν), and its power, to have been received through Jesus Christ: « through whom we have received grace and apostleship, to bring about the obedience of faith among all nations, for his name » ³ (Rom. I. 5). Moreover, that this mission pertains to all who are, and insofar as they are, in the Apostolic college, and to their succession, considered in common, is clear also from the fact that the words of Christ certainly hold no less for Thomas, though then absent, than for the others present, for they are addressed to those eleven (πρὸς τοὺς ἔνδεκα). St. Cyril of Alexandria explains this lucidly: « How, then, one may rightly ask, if Thomas was truly absent then, did he come to share the Holy Spirit, when the Lord appeared to the disciples and breathed on them, saying: Receive the Holy Spirit? We reply: the power of the Holy Spirit flowed into all who received the grace (of the Apostolate), and fulfilled the purpose of the giver. Christ gave it not to some separately, but to all the disciples in common (viewed as one whole). Therefore they receive him (the Spirit), even though some were not present, the generosity of the giver not being restricted to those present only, but penetrating the whole chorus of holy Apostles » ⁴ (Cyril of Alexandria, in John, lib. XII, T. IV, p. 1100). St. Augustine reasons to the same sense (to Hesychius, ep. 199, n. 10), who, demonstrating in another matter that the words said by Christ to the Apostles pertain also to Paul, gives this reason: « For although he was not yet among them when this was said to them, we do not doubt that he too pertains to their college and fellowship. »

II. Since the mission is conferred on the Apostles by Christ, as he himself was sent by the Father, we are bound by this very fact first to consider the proper reasons of this mission of Christ by the Father, and then to establish from these a norm, so that we may understand more fully the mission of the Apostles by Christ as like to it.

1°. Since mission is a procession from the sender to some term, in the mission of Christ both must be considered.

a) The mission presupposes and includes origin from the sending Father (see the Treatise on the Trinity). « I did not come of myself, but he who sent me is true... I know him, because I am from him, and he has sent me » (John VII. 28). But since this procession is that of the Son from the Father by generation, and therefore the Son is consubstantial and one with the Father according to the divine nature, all things that belong to the sending Father are the Son's who is sent, but communicated to him by the Father. « Now they have known that all things which you have given me are from you... and they have known in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me... and all my things are yours, and yours are mine » (ibid. XVII. 7–10). Therefore also the teaching, works, authority, and power in the one sent are from the sender. « My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me » (ibid. VII. 16). « He that hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has eternal life... I cannot of myself do anything; as I hear, so I judge... The works which the Father has given me to perfect, these very works bear witness of me, that the Father has sent me... and his word you have not abiding in you, because him whom he sent, you do not believe » (ibid. V. 24–38).

b) As the term to which one is sent, the offices in the mission of the Son must be considered. Although these belong to the Son in his humanity, in which he is formally understood as sent, they have a mode of incommunicable excellence from the divinity of the person, who is sent in the assumed nature and through this nature exercises these offices. These offices, and their excellence in the Son who is sent, are in general: α) power of rule: « he has given him power to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man »; « he gave him power over all flesh »; « all power is given to me in heaven and on earth »; « he gave him a name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth »; β) authority of teaching: « one is your Master, Christ »; « teaching them as one having power »; « in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things »; « the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him »; « what we have seen, we testify » (John III. 11); « you believe in God, believe also in me »; « they shall all be taught by God »; γ) sanctification of the priesthood, in which he offered himself as victim, and is redeemer and sanctifier by his own infinite merit and his own power: « he did not glorify himself, that he might be made a high priest, but he who said to him: You are my Son, this day have I begotten you »; « a faithful high priest before God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people »; « coming into the world he says: sacrifice and oblation you would not, but a body you have fitted to me... then I said, Behold I come, that I may do your will, O God... by which will we are sanctified through the oblation of the body of Christ once »; « who through the Holy Spirit offered himself without spot to God, shall cleanse our conscience from dead works »; « by one oblation he has perfected for ever those who are sanctified »; « and for them I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. » δ) These offices of the Son sent by the Father are taken together and understood in their excellence, insofar as by his rule, his teaching, and his priesthood he constitutes the Church for himself and the Church as his own: « I lay down my life for my sheep; my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life; » « I will build my Church; » « he loved the Church and gave himself up for it... that he might present to himself the glorious Church »; « the Church of God, which he acquired for himself with his own blood » (τὴν περιεποιήσατο διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος); « Christ is the head of the Church, he himself the savior of his body » (σωτὴρ τοῦ σώματος).

c) From these things also the end of the mission of Jesus Christ is clear. The proximate end and work of the Son of God sent into the world is redemption, sanctification, and salvation in and through the kingdom of God to be established on earth. « I must evangelize the kingdom of God, because for this I was sent » (Luke IV. 43).⁵ « As you have given him power over all flesh, that to all whom you have given him, he may give eternal life; and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent... I have finished the work which you gave me to do » (John XVII. 2 ff.).

Finally, the ultimate end of the mission is the glorification of the Father in the Son, and of the Son by the Father. « That all may honor the Son, as they honor the Father, who has sent him » (John V. 23). « Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you... I have glorified you upon earth; I have finished the work which you gave me to do; and now, glorify me, you, Father, with yourself, with the glory which I had before the world was, with you » (ibid. XVII. 1 ff.).

2°. Now, to this most excellent mission of Christ by the Father there corresponds, in his express words, the mission of the Apostles by Christ, as has been shown above, not indeed according to equality in essence, but according to likeness by participation: « as the Father sent me, so I send you. »

a) First, therefore, the mission of the Apostles necessarily implies some origin and procession from Christ as sender; but on account of the difference of subject, not by communication of nature as between the Father and the Son, but as between a supreme Lord and his legate, by participation of power and communication of the gifts required for his administration. In nearly the same way the Son is only-begotten by generation in unity of nature, and yet is the first-born among many brethren, who are sons by adoption, « partakers of the divine nature » and supernaturally made like to him through the gift of grace; « for of his own will (βουληθεὶς, not naturally) he has begotten us by the word of truth. »

b) This procession of the Apostles from Christ, and their likeness to the mission of Christ by the Father, we now consider in the communication of holy rule, teaching, and priesthood, which we saw to be in the Son who is sent originally and pre-eminently, while in the Apostles who are sent they are derived and ministerial. We have as our leader, in a matter otherwise certain, St. Cyril, Doctor of the Church. « As the Father sent me, so I send you. By these words our Lord Jesus Christ appointed the leaders of the world, and its teachers, and stewards of his divine mysteries ⁶, whom he also bids to shine now as lights and to illuminate not only the region of the Jews... but rather everything that is under the sun... The blessed disciples became the pillars and firmament of truth; for he says he sends those whom he sends as the Father sent him, showing at once the dignity of the Apostolate and the incomparable glory of the power handed to them, and at the same time, as was fitting, showing the way of the Apostolic duties. For if he decided that his own disciples should be sent just as the Father sent him, how was it not necessary that those who were to be imitators of like things should discern for the accomplishing of what the Father sent the Son?... After he made them illustrious with the great dignity of the Apostolate, and, as I have just said, appointed them stewards and priests of the divine altars ⁷, he at once sanctifies them, bestowing on them his own Spirit by a manifest breathing » (Cyril of Alexandria, in this place, T. IV, pp. 1093–1095).

α) Since mission is, as it were, of legates on behalf of Christ in the kingdom and toward the kingdom of God, therefore, just as the power of rule is communicated by the Father to the Son according to his humanity in the very mission⁸, but on account of the divinity of the person is in him principal, as in a fountain, so Christ, by the very mission, communicates this his power⁹, yet in such a way that, while remaining in him principally, it is derived to the Apostles as his legates, as participated and ministerial. Christ exercises and applies his own proper power of rule in his kingdom through the Apostles as legates; the Apostles, sent, have no power except to be exercised in the place and name of Christ who sends them.

The holy and true one, who received from the Father and has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, shuts and no one opens (Apoc. III. 7; cf. II. 28), he, for this his kingdom of David, promised to the Apostles: « but if he will not hear the Church, let him be to you as the heathen and the publican; amen I say to you, whatever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven. » Now, however, he actually sends them, for his kingdom upon earth, as he himself was sent by the Father. Whence indeed this mission from him¹⁰ who opens and no one shuts, shuts and no one opens, contains that promised power (and in the power, the office) of binding and loosing whatever in the Church, pertaining to its proper nature and end, upon earth by judicial sentences, which shall be ratified in heaven. Hence it is more clearly shown how the Lord infers and determines from that general mission the special power of judgment for forgiving¹¹ or retaining sins; and conversely, this conferral of special power¹² of judgments confirms what we have said about the inclusion of general jurisdiction (or sacred rule) in the mission of the Apostles by Christ, analogous to Christ's mission by the Father. Therefore when the Apostle declares that the exercise of his jurisdiction holds good in the name and power of our Lord Jesus Christ, this itself signifies that the power is participated from the mission of Christ and is to be exercised in the place and name of Christ. « I have judged, as present... in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together and my spirit ¹³, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved » (1 Cor. V. 4). « If I come I will not spare; or do you seek a proof of him who speaks in me, Christ? » (2 Cor. XIII. 3).

β) The mission in the kingdom of truth, for whose testimony Jesus came into the world (John XVIII. 37), includes the communication of teaching from the sending Christ to the Apostles sent, just as the doctrine in the teaching of Christ himself is the doctrine of the sending Father. But to the Person of the Word according to his divinity wisdom is communicated by generation; according to his humanity it is communicated by the mission itself, which is the hypostatic assumption of human nature; whereas to the Apostles, Christ sending communicates his doctrine by external word, and much more by inner illumination through the Holy Spirit. From the very nature of mission it is clear, moreover, that this communication of doctrine is not personal only for the Apostles themselves, but constitutes the internal form of the public office of the apostolate for teaching all nations. Hence, just as this magisterium of the Apostles is wholly exercised by the authority and in the name of the sending Christ, so Christ, by sending, himself teaches through his legates; and in this way remains « one Master, Christ, » and in the Church « all are taught by God. » Sent by the Father, he says of himself: « my teaching is not mine, but his who sent me »; the sent of Christ declare: « we are ambassadors for Christ, as God exhorting through us; we beseech you for Christ, be reconciled to God » (2 Cor. V. 20).

The same reason holds for the signs of the mission. As in the teaching of the Son sent by the Father the demonstration and confirmation of divine authority by divine works is included, so the same demonstration pertains to the mission of the Apostles. He says: « the works that the Father has given me to perfect; the very works that I do bear witness of me, that the Father has sent me » (John V. 36). The Apostles say: « I dare not speak of anything which Christ does not effect through me for the obedience of the Gentiles (εἰς ὑπακοὴν ἐθνῶν), by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Spirit » (Rom. XV. 18). But Christ does them as the Son and power of the Father, and so by his own power; the Apostles work only as legates, by the power not of themselves but of the sender. « Why do you look at us, as if by our own power or might we had made this man walk?... by faith in his name, this man whom you see and know, his name has strengthened » (Acts III. 12, 16).

γ) The mission in the kingdom of sanctification and in the ministry of the New Testament undoubtedly includes the priesthood; for sanctification is not accomplished without priesthood (Heb. IX. 22, 23), and the divine testament among men has an essential connection with priesthood (ibid. VII. 12; VIII. 6). Christ, the great priest and founder of the new testament, was sent by the Father to save the world by eternal redemption through the one bloody sacrifice; « for by one oblation he has perfected (τετελείωκεν) for ever those who are sanctified » (Heb. X. 14); and likewise, that this redemption, once completed (ἐφάπαξ), the same priest should bring to effect continually for ever, according to the order of Melchisedech, through his perpetual unbloody sacrifice and through his sacraments in the Church, acquired for himself by the blood of his sacrifice, and founded by him with visible institutions and invisible gifts of the Holy Spirit.

This application of the redemption and the sanctification of the members of the Church was entrusted to the Apostles in their mission, as ministers of the great and eternal priest, though as yet in a confused way, and in a manner determined, or to be determined, more distinctly by other commands of Christ. For if their mission had nothing to do with these chief and inner reasons of the mission of Christ by the Father, how, I ask, would the meaning of the word and institution of Christ the Savior remain whole: « as the Father sent me, so I send you? »

They were sent, then, so that they might apply continually, by their ministry, the sacrifice of redemption offered on the cross by the great priest, without a minister, through the unbloody sacrifice (already explicitly instituted and committed to them at the last supper) and through the sacraments (instituted or to be instituted by Christ). But through the sacrifice and sacraments not their own but Christ's, since, as they were instituted by him from the merits of his bloody sacrifice, so by him principally the unbloody sacrifice is offered and the sacraments are performed through the ministry of his legates (Tract. de Sacram. in genere, th. X). They are sent to sanctify the Church, not theirs but of Christ the Redeemer and founder, and that by the power which, principal in Christ, is derived to them by the mission as participated. This priestly power in them is therefore ministerial, by which the great priest continually carries out his eternal priesthood in his Church. « Let a man so account us, as the ministers of Christ and dispensers of the mysteries of God » (1 Cor. IV. 1). « Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?... What then is Apollo, or what is Paul? Ministers of him in whom you believed » (ibid. I. 13; III. 5). « And all things are from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation » (2 Cor. V. 18, 19).

c) Now it is easily seen how sacred rule, teaching, and priesthood, from the very nature of the mission, are wholly for the praise and glory of the sender. Just as the Son sent (in his humanity) is the glorification of the Father who sent him, and he himself testified of this: « he who seeks the glory of him who sent him, he is true » (John VII. 17); so of the Apostles he says: « the words which you have given me, I have given to them... and I am glorified in them... as you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world... I in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one, that the world may know that you have sent me » (ibid. XVII. 8 ff.). And the Apostles declare: « the illumination of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God; for we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ our Lord, and ourselves your servants through Jesus » (2 Cor. IV. 1–6).

The mission of the Apostles is therefore, from the very mission of Jesus Christ, like an emanation, by which, now glorified and no longer to be with us in visible presence, he takes them to himself as ministers of sacred rule, teaching, and priesthood in his kingdom upon earth, and substitutes them for himself, so that they may discharge these offices for him, and he through them, for ruling, teaching, and sanctifying his Church, acquired by his blood, as long as the Church shall remain on earth.

« Christ Jesus so established his kingdom on earth that, both in the immediate preparation (Matt. XVI.; Luke XXII.) and in the corresponding execution (John XXI.), he chose one Simon Peter from the rest and above the other Apostles, and invested him with supreme and universal power, both over the individual parts and individual members of the Church and over the whole body of the Church. This power is vicarious, derived from Christ; immediate, with an immediacy of power, over the whole and over the parts; full with respect to the proper object of the kingdom of heaven on earth. For this reason, by this very power, there is constituted the principle forming and holding together the visible unity of the Church, from the institution of Christ the founder himself, and therefore by divine right. »

After, in the first appearance (John XX. 21), the mission was given by Christ to the Apostles according to the analogy of Christ's mission from the Father, and the apostolic power was thus instituted as a whole in the kingdom of God on earth, the Lord, in the two later epiphanies as the Evangelists relate them, now distinctly determines and declares the order and manner of power in the Church, and by this very fact determines and declares the form of his visible Church.

According to the Evangelists (Matt. XXVIII. 7, 10; Mark XVI. 7) the disciples, and in Mark expressly Peter, are bidden to await the Lord's manifestations in Galilee: « tell his disciples and Peter that he goes before you into Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you » (l. c.). From this admonition it can rightly be conjectured that these appearances in Galilee would be the more notable, and of the greatest importance, for the Apostles and especially for Peter.¹ In fact, since by far the chief aim of these manifestations was to complete the institutions and constitution of the kingdom of God, we see this kingdom fully constituted in its fundamental principles in these two epiphanies which the Gospels relate as having taken place in Galilee, John XXI. and Matt. XXVIII.: with one supreme shepherd instituted over all the sheep of Christ, and power over all nations handed over to the college of Apostles and explained.

John deliberately notes that the manifestation he narrates in chapter XXI was the third among those made to the disciples (τοῖς μαθηταῖς). From this, first of all, it is understood that the Evangelist had a special way of counting the appearances made to the college of Apostles; for if all the other appearances narrated in the Gospels were counted, this would not be the third but the seventh. Further, we learn that appearances are counted as made to the whole college, whether all the Apostles were present, as in the second, or some were absent, as in the first and this third. Whence again is demonstrated both that the Apostolic college is constituted as one body, and (which follows from this) the principle of representation², inasmuch as not only those present but also those absent are included in the rights conferred and the offices imposed, as we have already noted above from Saints Cyril and Augustine. Lastly, from this numbering of John it is clear that this manifestation, directed to the establishment of the visible head both for the Apostles and for the whole fold of Christ Jesus, was prior to the other in Matthew XXVIII.; in that later one, therefore, the power and mission to all nations can be understood as given to the Apostolic college now constituted under one head, and not except in union and subordination under that same head. It is well worth noting that the Founder of the Church observed this same order constantly in the promise of power in Matt. XVI. and XVIII. Whence it is also plain that in the mission given to the Apostolic college, with Peter included, of which we treated in the preceding thesis, the internal constitution and subordination within the college itself was presupposed and reserved by the Saviour, from the earlier promise (Matt. XVI.) and from the institution about to follow (John XXI.); so that there was no need to state it explicitly in that mission, which he there determined only in general terms from his own mission by the Father.

With these things noted in passing, we come to consider the institution itself made in this third manifestation of Christ, so far as a more distinct understanding of the institution of the Church requires. For we are not now writing about the principate of Peter and his successors in its full extent. But since the divine founder of the Church expressly declared the reasons for the visible head he had established in Peter, not only in the institution itself, which we are now considering, but also in a really parallel explanation, under another and different scheme, in the promise for the future (Matt. XVI.; Luke XXII. 31, 32), therefore, as we forewarned above, it is necessary to join these divine testimonies together, so that one may illuminate the other for our understanding.

Certainly between the promise and the institution itself there is a manifest parallelism. Everywhere the same person testifies and institutes, Christ the founder of the Church; the same person, to whom alone, above all others, both the testimony and the institution refer, Simon Peter; the same term of persons, in preference to whom and over whom Peter is constituted, namely the college of Apostles and the universal Church of Christ, under different names: « my Church, the kingdom of heaven; your brethren, my sheep and my lambs; » the same real object, namely the same power, promised and instituted, under the differing metaphors of the rock of the Church, the keys of the kingdom, the firmament of faith, the pastorate of the fold of Christ; and finally the same end in both promise and institution. The end, I say, is the proper form, the unfailing security, the visible unity of the Church.

« He asked his disciples... but you, who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answering said..... And Jesus answering said to him: you are blessed, Simon Bar Iona.... and I say to you, that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church... and to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven » Matt. « Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired you... but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, once converted, strengthen your brethren » Luke. « This is now the third time that Jesus has appeared to his disciples, after he rose from the dead. So when they had dined, Jesus says to Simon Peter: Simon, son of John³: do you love me more than these?..... He says to him: feed my lambs... feed my sheep » John.

Four things come into consideration, determined by the promise and institution of Christ the founder of the Church: the subject of the power; the terminating object, or extension of the power; the formal object, or intension of the same power; and finally, and for our present purpose most of all, the end of the power, which is the form of visible and indefectible unity, constituted through this supreme power by Christ and inserted into the universal Church.

I. As to the subject, it is clearer from the explicit words of both the promise and the institution than to admit of further demonstration that it is one Simon, son of John, to whom are promised and conferred the things contained in the three passages cited, and who is formally constituted Peter: namely, « Peter, called the rock on which the Church is to be built, who obtained the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the power of loosing and binding in heaven and on earth » (Tertullian, Prescriptions, c. 22.). Equally clear is that he alone is the subject above the other Apostles, since he is evidently chosen alone from all, considered together in the manner of one body or college, in whose presence, and in which college, the office expressed there is promised and conferred on that one Simon Peter. Nevertheless, two points deserve some clarification: first, what is held in the double passage of Matthew and John about the fitting disposition of the subject of promise and institution; and second, certain sayings of the holy Fathers which, if taken in a backward sense, could introduce obscurity.

1°. As a fitting disposition for the promise, the profession of faith in Christ, the Son of the living God, made by Peter before all the Apostles, with charity included, is elicited by the Saviour himself. « But you (all the Apostles, with Peter viewed among them), who do you say that I am? » Above all the rest, « Simon Peter answering said (by a special revelation of the Father who is in heaven): you are Christ, the Son of the living God. » In the same way, the very conferral of the promised power is preceded by a threefold solemn challenge to Peter, above the other Apostles, to a profession of charity in Christ, the Son of the living God, certainly with faith supposed as its foundation. « Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He answered him: Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. » Faith is laid first as the groundwork for the promise, charity then for its execution: « faith and charity are the beginning and the end of life; the beginning is faith, the end is charity; these two, joined in unity, are of God » (ἀρχὴ μὲν πίστις, τέλος δὲ ἀγάπη. τὰ δὲ δύο ἐν ἑνότητι γενόμενα θεοῦ ἐστιν), St. Ignatius Martyr, Letter to the Ephesians n. 14. To this double profession, therefore, of faith in charity and of charity in faith, proclaimed by Peter alone among all and above all the Apostles, the Lord responded directly with the words of his promise and institution: « You are Christ, the Son of the living God; and I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church. » « You know that I love you: feed my lambs... feed my sheep. » Now you see what weight belongs to the difficulty usually raised: that Peter made the profession in the name of all the Apostles, and so what is given by Christ in return for the profession pertains equally to all, so that just as they were equal in profession, so too they should be made equal in power. But this profession supposed to be made in the name of others is explicitly excluded in the very conferral of the office in John; for there the Lord asks about the love of Peter alone, and about his love above all the other Apostles: « Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? » Hence, since the promise certainly corresponds to the execution, and the office is conferred on the profession of love of Peter alone, it must necessarily be held that the office promised was also promised to the profession of faith of Peter alone. As for the profession of faith itself in Matthew, Christ had indeed asked all, « you, who do you say that I am? » and after the profession was made « he commanded his disciples that they should tell no one (for that time) that he is Christ; » nevertheless the profession was Peter's alone; nor did he answer, as he had a few months earlier in John VI. 70, « we have believed and known that you are the Christ, the Son of God » ⁴; but he testified simply concerning the firmness and fervour of his own faith: « you are Christ, the Son of the living God; » indeed Christ himself declared that this special gift of faith comes from the revelation of the Father, and declared it for Peter alone at that time, and for that very reason pronounced him blessed above the other Apostles: « blessed are you, Simon Bar Iona, because flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven. » Moreover, even if, with all these things taken into account, we were to suppose altogether the same disposition of faith in all the Apostles, and concede besides that Peter wished to express not only his own faith but that of all, as their leader in the confession ⁵, it would still be utterly absurd to conclude equality of office from supposed equality of faith. For the promise of office is not a promise of wages owed to all who would be in the same disposition; but a profession of faith cannot be conceived except as a fitting disposition, to which, freely and evidently not to all but to Peter alone, with clear distinction from all the others, the office of the rock and foundation of the whole Church is promised (as a gift freely given).

Although, however, theologians customarily bring forward this profession, by which the one Peter is distinguished from all the other Apostles and is himself disposed to the promise and conferral of the office, as an evident argument, on the basis of certain sayings of the Fathers, to demonstrate that Peter himself is the immediate subject of the office, nevertheless the divine Saviour, in requiring so solemn a profession in the very foundation of the Church, undoubtedly wished to signify something greater, by which the end, dignity and property of the office he was instituting in Peter might be made manifest. « The Lord asks (do you love me more than these?), not in order to learn, but to teach, whom he was leaving to us as vicar of his love, about to be raised up into heaven » Ambrose, on Luke, Bk. X, n. 175. Clearly a profession of faith and charity is required, because the office itself is constituted as the foundation of the unity of faith and of the communion of charity in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. For upon the rock is founded « the congregation of the holy Church, which rises as one connected and compact body (cf. Eph. IV. 16) by the unity of faith and charity » Ambrose, On the Duties III, c. 3, n. 19. Explicitly we are taught about Peter's own profession, that he confessed Christ the Son of the living God with the Spirit of the Father working in the heart of the believer, « so that, prepared for the governance of the whole Church, he might first learn what he was to teach, and for the stability of the faith he was to preach, might hear: you are Peter » etc. St. Leo the Great, Sermon 60 (al. 62), c. 2. « Therefore blessed Peter, who confessed Christ with true faith, and followed him with true love, specially received the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the principate of judicial power, so that all believers throughout the world might understand that whoever in any way separates themselves from the unity of faith or the fellowship of it, such persons..... cannot enter the gate of the heavenly kingdom » Bede, on Matthew XVI. 19. This same thing, about the special Church of Peter, certainly on account of Peter, in whom the privilege of the see is identified in faith and charity while he presides (on which we shall speak later), the most ancient Fathers have already said: that in the faith handed down « all the Church must come together to it, » and that it « presides over charity » (προκαθημένη τῆς ἀγάπης). St. Ignatius, Letter to the Romans; Irenaeus III. 3.

For one must carefully distinguish the personal disposition through the profession of faith and charity, and the exercise of that same profession, as it is contained in the office itself promised and instituted. For when faith and charity are regarded as referred to the visible Church, and so in the visible external exercise, it is not a personal disposition but the property of the office that comes from Christ's own institution. This property of the office is declared when the Church is said to be built upon the rock in such a way that the consequent effect follows from this very thing, that « the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; » likewise when the author and finisher of faith promises Peter: « I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail, » to the end that is subjoined: « and you, once converted, strengthen your brethren; » and when finally he appoints Peter to « feed his sheep, » to whom he had already testified that a fold would never fail (« one fold and one shepherd »): « no one shall snatch them out of my hand..... out of the hand of my Father » (John X. 16, 28, 29.).

2°. From what has been said, that the subject of the promises in Matthew, as of the institution in John, is the one Peter is so clear that it can in no way be believed that there were among the Fathers any who denied that the words of the promise pertain to that same Simon, son of Jonah, named and to be constituted from his office Peter of the Church of Jesus Christ. If, therefore, some seem at times to have said otherwise, it can easily be shown that they did not disagree in substance, but, for some special aim of their own, in their manner of explanation.

There are very many Fathers who say that the Church is promised to be built upon the faith or confession of Peter (see the Fathers as cited by Ballerini, On the Primacy, c. 12). Clearly they mean that the foundation of the Church is constituted not by faith taken generally or abstractly, but by the faith of Peter in concrete, and that faith as proposed in confession and teaching; which is the same as saying that Peter, under the formal aspect of one who professes and teaches the faith, is constituted the rock upon which the Church is built, the kingdom of truth, whose inner form uniting and enlivening it is faith itself. Not the man, son of Jonah, in his natural order, but Peter in the supernatural order of faith is placed as the foundation of the Church, which is chiefly to be built in faith, so that, from the solidity imparted to the foundation by Christ the builder, the gates of hell may not prevail against the Church itself. « Faith therefore is the foundation of the Church; for it was not said of the flesh of Peter but of faith that the gates of death shall not prevail against him; but the confession conquered hell (namely the confession of Peter, on account of which it was said to him: you are Peter, and the gates of hell shall not prevail).... for since the Church is often beaten by many waves, like a good ship, the foundation of the Church must hold against all heresies » Ambrose, On the Incarnation c. 5. It is not an abstract confession, you are Christ, the Son of the living God, that is the foundation holding against all heresies, but Peter confessing, made in this confession⁶ the rock of the Church. « Peter had confessed him the Son of God, and in that confession had been called a rock, upon which the Church would be built » Augustine, on Ps. 69, n. 4. « He who for an hour had denied, the holy Peter, the supreme prince of the Apostles, has become for us a truly solid rock, founding the faith of the Lord, upon which the Church has been built in every way (Peter made the rock, the foundation of faith, upon which, the faith being thus firmed, the Church is built, that is, built upon a rock, the foundation of faith, derived and ministerial). First indeed, because he confessed Christ, the Son of the living God, and heard: upon this rock of infallible faith I will build my Church » ⁷ Epiphanius, Heresies 59, n. 7 (T. I, p. 500, ed. Patav.). « I think that by a derived name he called nothing else the rock than the unshakable and firmest faith of the disciple, upon which the Church of Christ has been established and fixed, without falling, and remains unconquerable even by the gates of hell itself... Peter was adorned with such excellent gifts (so that he might be the rock of the Church, which he had called a little before the reward, ἀντέκτισιν, of the confession), having confessed him to be the Son of God » ⁸ Cyril of Alexandria, Dialogue on the Trinity IV, T. V, P. I, p. 507. « Although I am an inviolable rock..., yet you too are a rock, because you are made firm by my power... upon this strength I will build an eternal temple, and the sublimity of my Church, to be carried to heaven, will rise in the firmness of this faith » St. Leo, Sermon 3, n. 2, on his assumption.

If at any time, by a certain consequence drawn from the firmness of faith and confession, some faithful person is called a rock, nevertheless he cannot be called the rock upon which the Church is built, except by transferring the name Church to some quite different and allegorical meaning. This once pleased Origen ⁹; but he would certainly be laughable who inferred from this that this sense is proper to those words of Christ, or at least was supposed by Origen.

3°. When the Fathers treat of the power of the keys promised to Peter, in order to show that it was not so personal to Peter as to end in him (which the Montanists, and with them Tertullian, asserted), but that a perpetual power of loosing and binding must be understood to exist in the Church, they sometimes say that Peter, in the promise and receipt of the keys, bore the person of the Church. Three things are contained in this doctrine. a) The Church indeed received the keys, but only in Peter, insofar as they were promised to and conferred on Peter as bearing the person of all his successors; so the subject of the power is Peter, and in the same way each of his successors in the whole series, as long as the Church, or the kingdom of God on earth, shall endure. β) The whole power was promised and conferred for the Church, that is, for the good of the Church. Therefore the Church received it in two ways: if taken as a whole, the body with its visible head, the Church received it as subject, but in its head as in the immediate subject, as man is the subject of intellect and will, though these faculties are in the soul as their immediate subject. If, on the other hand, the Church is considered in distinction from its visible head, it received the power as the object for which it was conferred, whose subject is the visible head of the Church itself. Thus God promised and conferred an everlasting kingdom on David and on the people of Israel, but in different ways. Lastly, γ) the power instituted in Peter is the plenitude and archetype, of which all the lesser powers instituted in the Church by the same divine founder are participations and derivations. In accordance with these reasons, therefore, when the Fathers said that Peter bore the person of the Church in receiving the power, they not only did not deny but more expressly explained that the one Peter, and in Peter each of his successors, is and has been the subject of the promised and entrusted power of the keys.

The ancient author of the Questions on the Old and New Testament (q. 75) compares the representation of the Church in Peter as Supreme Shepherd with that by which Christ himself, as head, while still in mortal life, represented the Apostles. « As in the Saviour all were contained by reason of his magisterium, so after the Saviour all are contained in Peter; for he appointed him to be their head, that he might be shepherd of the Lord's flock » (Augustine, Opp. T. III, appendix, p. 61.). St. Leo the Great, reciting the words « I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven », etc., explains how the archetypal and exemplary institution in the one Peter is extended, by participation of the power, from that one to others also. « The right of that power indeed passed also to the other Apostles, and the constitution of this decree went out to all the leaders of the Church; but it is not in vain that what is made known to all is entrusted to one; for this is entrusted singularly to Peter, because the form of Peter is placed before all the rulers of the Church » Sermon 3 on his assumption; cf. letter 10, c. 1, to the bishops of the province of Vienne.

Augustine sometimes, in the words of Christ about the power of the keys, supposes a twofold sense: so that in the literal sense they pertain indeed to Peter and « the primacy of his apostolate », but by a certain extension, and in a somewhat typical sense, they are also referred to the Church, or to the universality of the faithful, of which he was the archetype by reason of the primacy of his apostolate. And so he understands the signification of the words, or the thing signified by the words, as one thing in the literal sense of « the first Apostle », and another in that extended sense in the universality of the faithful. Thus in Tractate 124 on John he considers Peter as a figure of the Church, in which the solution of sins is given, and John as a figure of blessed contemplation. The keys are promised to Peter for loosing sins, but in another sense they pertain also to the universality of the faithful, signified in Peter, insofar as these concur by prayer and good works in loosing sins. But who does not see that this method of interpretation is akin to that accommodation we noticed above in Origen? « Because even those walking in the way itself are not without sins, which creep in through the weakness of this life, he gave saving remedies of almsgiving, by which their prayer is aided, when he taught them to say: forgive us our debts... This the Church does in blessed hope in this sorrowful life, of which Church the Apostle Peter, on account of the primacy of his apostolate, bore the person, by a figured generality. For what pertains to him properly, he was by nature one man, by grace one Christian, by a more abundant grace one and the same first Apostle; but when it was said to him (surely in his primacy of apostolate): I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven... he signified the universal Church... The Church therefore, founded in Christ, received from him the keys of the kingdom of heaven in Peter, that is, to bind and loose sins... Therefore to all the saints who inseparably belong to the body of Christ, for the steering of this most stormy life, the first of the Apostles, Peter, received the keys of the kingdom of heaven to bind and loose sins; and to these same saints, by reason of that most sacred and quietest bosom of that life upon the breast of Christ, John the Evangelist reclined. For neither he alone, but the whole Church (though in different ways) binds and looses sins; nor did he alone drink from the fountain of the Lord's breast, the Word, God with God, in the beginning, and the rest about divinity..., but the Lord himself poured out the Gospel itself, for each one's capacity, to be drunk by all his own throughout the whole world. » By a nearly similar method of interpretation, to prove that « in the person of Peter the good are signified in the Church, as in the person of Judas the wicked in the Church », he brings in the keys by which in the Church one is loosed and bound: « if this is done in the Church (though in different ways), Peter when he received the keys signified the holy Church » (Tractate 50 on John).

4°. Lastly, as to those words of Christ, « upon this rock I will build my Church », it is well known that Augustine (whom afterwards some others followed, such as Isidore of Seville, Origines, Bk. VII, c. 9; the author of a homily on the feast of St. Peter, sometimes thought to be Eucherius of Lyons; the Synod of Friuli under Paulinus of Aquileia) more often referred them to Christ himself, as if it were said: upon this rock, which you confessed by your faith as the Son of God, I will build my Church. This interpretation, if separated from the manner in which Augustine insists upon it, could perhaps be reduced to that by which we have seen many Fathers teach that the Church was built upon the faith of Peter. So Adrian I joined these together (letter to the bishops of Spain, Harduin T. IV, p. 867): « Upon this, he says, rock which you confessed, and from which you received the dignity of your name, upon this solidity of faith I will build my Church. »

Augustine is also accustomed, to recommend his interpretation, to use an argument from philology which is certainly not very suitable ¹⁰; but the chief reason of the holy Doctor was certainly that in those passages he took up and described the building of the Church not according to the visible body but according to the spirit, treating namely of faith from its principal object, of the merits of redemption, of the virtue of the sacraments and of grace, by which the Church is built in Christ as in the foundation, besides which no one can lay another. Therefore Peter himself, with the whole Church which he, « holding the principate of the apostolate, was figuring », is built on the rock Christ. « Because you said to me, you are Christ, the Son of the living God, and I say to you, you are Peter... This name was imposed on him by the Lord that he should be called Peter, and this so that by that figure he might signify the Church. For since Christ is the rock, Peter is the Christian people. For the rock is the principal name; therefore Peter is named from the rock, not the rock from Peter, just as Christ is not called Christian from Christian, but Christian from Christ. You are therefore, he says, Peter; and upon this rock, which you confessed, which you knew... I will build my Church; that is, upon myself, the Son of the living God, I will build my Church, I will build you upon me, not me upon you. For men wishing to be built upon men said: I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I indeed of Cephas, he is Peter; and others who did not wish to be built upon Peter but upon the rock; but I am of Christ. But the Apostle Paul, when he learned that he was chosen and Christ scorned, said: is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul? In the same way, not in the name of Paul, nor of Peter, but in the name of Christ, so that Peter might be built upon the rock, not the rock upon Peter. The same Peter, therefore, named from the rock, blessed, bearing the figure of the Church, holding the principate of the apostolate... In that one Apostle, that is, Peter, in the first and principal place among the Apostles, the Church was figured » Augustine, Sermon 76, n. 1 (al. On the words of the Lord, sermon 13; cf. on John, tractate 124.).

From these reasonings of Augustine we hold the following. α) Augustine openly acknowledges in Peter « the principate of the apostolate », both in this and in several other places; wherefore he professes theologically the very truth that the visible Church is built upon Peter as a relative foundation, by derivation from Christ the absolute foundation. Indeed he even interpreted hermeneutically more than once, and elsewhere granted that the words of Christ in Matt. XVI. could be understood, and were understood by the faithful, in such a way that Peter is the rock upon which Christ promised that the Church would be built. « Count the priests, or from the very see of Peter, and see in that order of fathers who succeeded whom: it is the rock, which the proud gates of hell do not overcome » Augustine, Psalm against the party of Donatus; cf. letter 53, n. 2, to Generosus. « Peter, who a little before had confessed the Son of God, and in that confession had been called the rock, upon which the Church would be built » Id., on Ps. 69, n. 4. Certainly, against the schism of Novatian and Donatus, the Fathers Cyprian, Pacian, Optatus, and after them Augustine, appealed to the rock in which the visible unity of the Church is founded. Nor does he indicate, in the books of his Retractations, that this opinion ever needs correction or is to be set below the other, about Christ the rock; which itself is evidence that the thing itself was always theologically ratified and certain to Augustine, and that his doubts could be referred only to hermeneutics and the mode of interpreting, for the reasons indicated above. « In the book (against the letter of Donatus, now lost) I said in a certain place about the Apostle Peter that upon him as upon a rock the Church is founded, which sense is also sung by the mouth of many in the verses of the most blessed Ambrose, where he says of the cock-crow: by this very rock of the Church crowing, he washed away the fault ¹¹. But I know that afterwards I very often expounded it thus... so that upon this rock might be understood as whom Peter confessed... as if Peter, named from this rock, bore the person of the Church, which is built upon this rock, and received the keys of the kingdom of heaven. For it was not said to him, you are rock, but you are Peter; the rock, however, was Christ, confessing whom, as the whole Church confesses him, Simon was called Peter. Which of these two opinions is the more probable, let the reader choose » Id., Retractations I, 21.

β) In that interpretation by which Augustine refers the rock to Christ, the direct sense of the words is indeed inverted into the indirect; yet by this very thing theological truth is preserved, though the order of the statement is changed. For Augustine certainly felt that not only the empty name of Peter, but the reality signified by the name, is given by Christ to « the first and principal of the Apostles ». But from the doctrine repeated so often by Augustine, the name Peter, and therefore the reality or property expressed by the name, is a derivation: a property derived into Peter from the principal rock of the Church, Christ. These are Augustine's words: « because you said to me, you are Christ; and I say to you, you are Peter. » « For the rock is the principal name; therefore Peter from the rock. » Therefore in Augustine's doctrine the word of Christ, « you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church », is equivalent to this sentence: I, the rock of the Church by my own virtue and principal, say to you, for your confession: you are the rock of the Church by participation, derived from me: « Peter from a rock. » St. Leo the Great later explained this very thing most clearly, circumscribing the words of Christ thus: « You are Peter, that is, since I am the inviolable rock... yet you too are a rock, because by my virtue you are made solid, so that what is by power proper to me may be in common with me by participation to you (Peter from a rock) » St. Leo, Sermon 4, c. 2. So also other Fathers, both before and after Augustine: « Christ is the rock..... he did not deny to his disciple the grace of this name, so that he himself might be Peter, because he has from the rock the solidity of constancy and the firmness of faith » (namely in relation to the Church to be built upon him), Ambrose, on Luke VI, n. 97. « When he heard, you are a rock, he was ennobled by the proclamation. Although he is a rock, it is not as Christ is rock, but as Peter is rock; for Christ is essentially an immovable rock, but Peter through the rock (Χριστὸς γὰρ ὄντως πέτρα ἀσάλευτος, Πέτρος δὲ διὰ τὴν πέτραν). For Christ bestows his dignities, and is not exhausted, but what he gives, he keeps. He is light: you are the light of the world; he is priest: he makes priests... he is rock, he makes rock » Homily on Penance, n. 4 (among the works of St. Basil, T. II, p. 606). « As he himself gave light to the Apostles, that they might be called the light of the world... so also to Simon, who believed in the rock Christ, he gave the name Peter; and according to the metaphor of the rock it is rightly said: I will build my Church upon you » Jerome, on Matthew, Bk. III, c. 16 (T. VII, p. 124). « Who does not know this most strong rock, which from that principal rock took the communion both of its power and of its name? » On the Calling of the Gentiles (among the works of St. Leo, T. II, p. 241). « For who does not know that the holy Church is established in the solidity of the chief of the Apostles, who drew firmness of mind in his name, so that he was called Peter from the rock? » St. Gregory the Great, Bk. VII, letter 40, to Eulogius of Alexandria.

Nor does this bear against the true sense of Augustine, as we set it forth in this commentary, that the holy Doctor sometimes seems to place the reason for the name Peter in this: « so that this figure might signify the Church; for since Christ is the rock, Peter the Christian people. » For he considers two things connected in Peter, as is clear from everything said so far. The first is that Simon himself was constituted Peter, that is, in the property of the rock of the Church, participated and derived from the principal rock Christ, so that by this participated property he might form the visible unity of the Church or of the Christian people; the second is that Peter, by reason of this principate, figured, or juridically represented, the Church to be built together with him upon the principal rock Christ. In one way, therefore, the Church is built in its visible unity upon Peter, « who was called the rock on which the Church would be built »; and in another way Peter himself, with the Church, is built in all his visible and invisible gifts upon the principal rock Christ: « so that Peter should be built upon the rock, not the rock upon Peter; the same Peter, therefore, named from the rock, bearing the figure of the Church, holding the principate of the apostolate; in that one Apostle, in the first and principal place among the Apostles, the Church was figured. »

Therefore none of the holy Fathers denied what is most manifest in the very words of the Gospel: that the one Peter is the immediate subject of the promises which Matt. XVI. records as made by Christ the Saviour for the founding of the Church. In the passages usually opposed, they either considered¹² the firmness of Peter's faith and his confession, and this in relation to the Church, which was to be built upon Peter not as considered according to flesh and blood, but formally as one who confesses and teaches the faith; or they regarded the relation and connection of Peter with Christ, the principal rock, and taught that everything by which the rock by participation is formed depends upon the proper virtue of this rock, as upon an exemplary and efficient cause.

II. The object of the power committed to Peter alone, as to its extension, or terminating object, to which he is referred as to what is subject to him, is clearly the Church of Christ, both in its individual parts and members and as a whole considered together as one body. It is indeed possible for power to be given to someone over individuals who constitute one moral body, without its necessarily following that the same power is valid over all taken together, formally as one body; but a power given over the moral body itself, considered in its totality, cannot be or be conceived without comprehending all and each who inhere in it as members, or who are bound to that whole body to which the power is said to be given. Now, both in the promise and in the institution of the power given to Peter, the terminating object is expressly declared by the Lord Christ: his Church, considered as one body. Therefore this power, by Christ's institution, comprehends both the whole Church in its unity, and all and each who pertain to the Church or are bound to it. Certainly, when the words of promise and institution are compared together, Christ first designates as the object, by the express name, his Church; then he sets it forth under a threefold scheme by which the Church is also commonly signified in other places: house or city of God, kingdom of heaven, his fold; lastly, he names the unity of brethren (the fraternity that is in the world, as the Apostle later called it, 1 Pet. V. 9). In the first way, the Church of Christ simply so called, and therefore the whole Church on earth, is built by Christ the founder himself upon the rock, which is the one Peter; in the second way, the keys to bind and loose everything that pertains to the kingdom of heaven on earth are given to that same one Peter, and this power of the keys therefore has as its object the whole kingdom of heaven on earth; in the third way, to the one Peter is committed the power and office of feeding the lambs and sheep of Christ, that is, the whole flock or fold of Christ considered in its entirety. « My sheep, he says; who does not see that he designated not some, but assigned all? Nothing is excepted, where nothing is distinguished; and perhaps his fellow disciples were present when, in committing it to one, he was entrusting unity to all in one flock and one shepherd » (Bernard, On Consideration II, 8.). To this metaphorical locution, feed my sheep, at least as regards the extension of which we are now speaking, there clearly corresponds another, proper one: strengthen your brethren. So Chrysostom (In John, hom. 88, n. 1) has one equivalent to the other: « feed my sheep..... He was outstanding among the Apostles, and the mouth of the disciples and the head of that chorus..... the denial now being removed, he entrusts to him the leadership of the brethren..... and he says to him: if you love me, preside over the brethren » ¹³.

Therefore, in the first place, the whole Church considered as one body (city or house of God, kingdom of heaven, fraternity in the world, fold of Christ) is, by the institution of the divine founder, held together by the rock as its foundation; it lies under the keys of Peter; as one fraternity it is to be confirmed in faith by Peter; as the flock of the one Christ ¹⁴ it is to be fed by Peter. Hence there are no parts of the city of God on earth, no members of the universal Church, that do not depend by divine right upon the rock, because the divine builder has erected his whole Church upon it as a foundation; no one can pertain to the kingdom of heaven or the fraternity on earth, or to the fold of Christ, or be bound to this kingdom and fold, without thereby being, by divine institution, subject to the keys given to Peter to bind and loose, and to the right and duty of confirming in faith and feeding entrusted to him.

Specifically, therefore, the Apostles themselves, whether considered singly or in the college, either were not part and members of that which the Lord calls his Church, the city of God, the kingdom of heaven, the fraternity, the flock of Christ; or, together with the whole Church, they depended on the rock by the institution of Christ, and were subject to the keys and pastoral office of Peter. As certain as it is that the Apostles and the Apostolic college were by far the chief part of the Church built by Christ upon the rock, the firstfruits among the sheep of Christ, of all of whom one shepherd, Peter, was constituted before all the Apostles, so certain is it that they, both singly and all together, and in themselves, and even more in their successors, were subordinated to Peter and his successors.

As for the Apostles themselves: the extraordinary gifts of the apostolate, that is, those not transmissible to successors, of which kinds are the revelation of truth and a mission of governance not restricted to individual churches but extended to founding and ruling churches among all nations, given to individuals immediately by Christ and the Holy Spirit; the infallibility of individuals in faith against errors, and impeccability in charity against schisms: these gifts of the apostolate, I say, did not abolish the right divinely instituted in the visible head, Peter. But because of the perfection of the members, they made the directive and coercive exercise of the rights on Peter's side less necessary and rarely, or never, to be brought into act; and on the side of the Apostles they made the recognition of these rights indefectible. This is nearly analogous to that right (if the comparison were not unbecoming) which the Son of man had conceded over himself to the Virgin Mother and St. Joseph: « subject to them. » Hence the Apostles, by divine right instituted in Peter and by indefectible recognition of the instituted right, both themselves and all the Churches to be founded and ruled by them united and subordinated themselves, as members, to one universal Church under one visible head, Peter, « so that unity might be kept by all in one chair, lest the other Apostles should each defend a separate (divided) chair for himself, so that he who set up another chair against the single chair would already be schismatic and a sinner » St. Optatus, Against Parmenian, Bk. II, c. 2. But when those extraordinary gifts of the apostolate ceased in apostolic succession, for whose sake especially the perpetual right and office of the rock of the Church was instituted, that the gates of hell may never prevail against it, then just as the right itself and the office have persisted, so the application of the exercise, though at different times not always in the same way, has been made due and necessary.

III. When a principate is declared committed to one over all, considered both singly and in unity, from this extension it can indeed be deduced, but it has not yet been sufficiently explained, of what kind in intension that power is, from which it is manifest that the visible form of the Church itself depends. This, therefore, as far as the present place is concerned, still remains to be inquired into.

1°. The power communicated to Peter is first, as in a source, original and exemplary in Christ himself. He himself is and remains the good shepherd of his sheep according to a threefold mode: of priesthood, in the sacrifice of redemption and in the sacraments of sanctification: « and I lay down my life for my sheep... and I give them eternal life; » of teaching, in the doctrine of saving truth: « and they will hear my voice, and there will be one fold and one shepherd; » of rule, in the law of holy conduct ¹⁵: « and I know them, and they follow me... and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. » He himself is placed in Sion, the city of God, as the chief cornerstone, precious, in whom all the faithful, like living stones, are built up into one spiritual house; and the same stone is a stone of offence: « whoever falls upon that stone (made the head of the corner of the whole Church) will be broken; but upon whomever it falls, it will crush him » (1 Pet. II. 1-9; Matt. XXI. 42-44; Acts IV. 11, 12; Rom. IX. 32, 33; Eph. II. 20-22.). He himself is « holy and true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts; shuts and no one opens » (Apoc. III. 7; cf. Is. XXII. 22.) ¹⁶

One who considers will see that these properties, by which Christ the founder and head of the Church is called the cornerstone of the whole spiritual house, and holds the key of the house of David with absolute power to shut and open, as they are referred to the Church on earth, ultimately resolve into those which we said belong to Christ the good shepherd, although in three different schemes one or another notion predominates. For the cornerstone, in which the whole Church is built up as a spiritual house and by which hostile assailants are crushed, is understood as Christ, insofar as the Church derives its origin from him, and has in him indefectible firmness and unity in faith and doctrine, in holiness and the means of sanctification, in discipline of conduct and in government. Further, the key, to shut and open by absolute power in the house of David of the New Testament, generally expresses supreme government or rule; but particularly, for the very end and character of this house of David, it signifies the power of shutting and opening in saving doctrine and in all institutions of sanctification. And these are precisely the things which we have seen Christ assume for himself as the offices of the good shepherd.

Christ the Word incarnate feeds, sustains, strengthens and unites, shuts and opens, in a twofold manner: first indeed according to the divinity, by invisible work of illumination, direction or motion, and sanctification through the Holy Spirit, whom therefore he promised and sent as another Paraclete, and whom, in this sense, Tertullian (Prescriptions c. 28.) called « Christ's vicar », and Irenaeus (III. 24.) called « the communication of Christ ». Then, according to the humanity, Christ perennially remains the good shepherd, the rock, the confirmer of his brethren, holding the key of David « in his house » (Heb. III. 6.), by visible work through a visible vicar and minister.

For to this end, that these same offices, which always remain his own originally and exemplarily, may persist without interruption and be manifested even in visible form, as the visible Church requires, he promised participation in the rock, the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the confirmer of his brethren; and he comprehended and fulfilled the whole communication of his power by instituting the pastorate of all his sheep in the one Peter. « The Word had been made flesh and was already dwelling among us, so that in restoring the human race Christ would give himself wholly; nothing was ill-disposed to wisdom, nothing was arduous to power; the elements were subservient, the angelic spirits served... and yet out of the whole world one Peter is chosen, who is placed before both the calling of all nations and all the Apostles and all the fathers of the Church, so that although there are many priests among the people of God, yet Peter properly rules them all, whom Christ also rules principally..... And I say to you, that you are Peter; that is, since I am an inviolable rock, I the chief cornerstone who make both one, I the foundation beside which no one can lay another, nevertheless you too are a rock, because you are made solid by my power, so that what is by power proper to me may be common to you with me by participation » St. Leo, Sermon 3, c. 2. This firmness of the rock through Christ the rock is declared without metaphor in the other promise, Luke XXII. 31, 32: « I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; » then is added the end to which this unfailing firmness is established, namely the function of the rock, the keys, the pastorate toward the brethren: « and you, once converted, strengthen your brethren ¹⁷ ». « Finally, Peter is placed before the Church after he was tempted by the devil; and therefore the Lord signified beforehand what it was that he later chose him as shepherd of the Lord's flock; for to him he said: but you, once converted, strengthen your brethren » Ambrose, on Ps. 43, n. 40 (cf. Questions on the New Testament q. 75, among the works of Augustine, T. III, appendix, p. 61.). Nevertheless, what is said in more general terms in the scheme of rock, keys and pastorate is here stated directly about the function of the divinely enjoined teaching office, for the confirmation of faith and doctrine. « A special care of Peter is undertaken by the Lord, and for Peter's faith especially supplication is made, as if the state of the others would be surer if the mind of the prince were not overcome: in Peter therefore the strength of all is fortified, and the aid of divine grace is so ordered that the firmness which is given to Peter through Christ (in his perpetual office) is conferred on the Apostles through Peter » (representing their whole succession) St. Leo, Sermon 4, c. 3.

2°. Since from all that we have said about the congruence and connection of the various formulas by which the power of Peter is described in the Gospels, and still more from the fact that to all the promises of the Son of God, who is « the Amen, the faithful and true witness » (Apoc. III. 14; 2 Cor. I. 19, 20.), there necessarily corresponds the fulfilment, it is abundantly clear that all and each of the things he had promised concerning the rock, the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the confirmation of his brethren were fully comprehended by the divine founder in the institution itself: « feed my lambs, feed my sheep. » It now remains for us to consider the words of the institution itself more distinctly.

a) Christ (as we have already shown) is the good shepherd toward his sheep and the one shepherd toward his one fold; and he not only invisibly feeds the Church himself, according to his divinity and through the Holy Spirit, but he also willed to exercise this office of feeding visibly in the visible Church, through a power derived from him and instituted in Peter: « feed my sheep. » Therefore Peter receives this office of shepherd of Christ's sheep to be exercised by vicarious power, on behalf of Christ, the shepherd of his sheep.

b) Since, from what has been demonstrated above, one man receives, above all others, the office of feeding toward all and over all the sheep of Christ, and over the whole fold as one; and therefore both individuals within the whole, and the whole in its individuals, or the whole unity, are subject to him as to a shepherd: consequently this power of Peter can be subject to Christ alone, the prince of shepherds, before whom he himself remains indeed a sheep to be fed, and to no one of the sheep, nor to the whole fold. It is therefore, in the whole fold and over the whole fold, a visible power, supreme.

c) This power of feeding is indeed « supreme, but not alone » (St. Bernard, Consideration III, c. 4, n. 17.), and in no way excludes the powers, to be instituted by Christ, in other pastors, whether singly or in the unity of the whole, as we shall see shortly in another thesis; these, however, both in individuals and in the whole body of pastors, insofar as this is distinguished from its visible head and supreme shepherd, are necessarily subordinated to that one supreme shepherd. But since this supreme pastorate has been instituted by Christ so as to reach the whole, considered as all together, and also each of his sheep, therefore the subordinate powers of feeding, though intermediate in degree and amplitude by Christ's institution between the supreme shepherd and the flock to be fed, are not, however, intermediate by mediation of power in this sense, as if that supreme power reached the whole flock and could be exercised over it only through these inferior powers, and the sheep, whether all or each, were subject to it only through these intermediate powers. « Feed (you whom I asked, do you love me more than these? you therefore, by your own power, not only through another) my lambs, my sheep. » So Bernard, with others (cited above in the note), reasons from these words: « Bishops have assigned to them flocks, each his own; to you all are entrusted, one to one; nor only of sheep but also of pastors, you are the one shepherd of all. You ask how I prove this? From the word of the Lord... feed my sheep » (On Consideration II, c. 8.). Therefore the power of feeding in Peter, as supreme and universal, is so instituted by Christ as immediate over all and each of Christ's sheep.

d) From these same things it is understood that it is an ordinary power in the juridical sense ¹⁸, and this not only in that it is not exercised by the delegation of another man, but is held by virtue of the divinely instituted office, to be exercised in the place and name of Christ; indeed also in the sense that it is not only put forth in extraordinary circumstances and as a support of the inferior powers, should they perhaps fail; but, with divine norms preserved, it is always valid and puts itself forth, with due duty, whenever the good of the sheep requires.

e) The amplitude of this power in relation to its real objects, or as considered intensively, is determined by the very fact that it is the supreme, vicarious power of visibly feeding the sheep of Christ, communicated by him who is and perpetually remains the good shepherd and the one shepherd of his sheep. Now Christ feeds his sheep, as we have seen above, both invisibly and visibly: by the doctrine of truth in faith, by the law of conduct in hope, by the gifts of sanctification in charity. But now, at least according to the ordinary economy, the Prince of shepherds himself exercises this pastorate visibly in the visible Church wholly and uniquely, through the vicarious and ministerial powers instituted by him. Whence there can indeed be in the Church inferior powers, restricted as to the extension of persons, and in intension as to real objects within certain limits, now wider, now narrower; but a universal, supreme and immediate vicarious power of Christ for feeding his whole fold can neither exist nor be conceived without comprehending all the things by which Christ visibly feeds his sheep in the visible Church. Therefore the vicarious power in Peter, according to the threefold object of the pastorate of Jesus Christ (in doctrine, in law, and in the means of sanctification), comprehends the power of supreme teaching for feeding the whole fold with the doctrine of salvation; of supreme governing, to rule the whole fold ¹⁹; and of supreme priesthood, or the liturgical power to guard and regulate the holy administration of the mysteries of salvation in the sacrifice and sacraments and in divine worship, for the whole fold ²⁰. The power instituted in Peter is therefore also universal in its real object, and in this its object is not limited by other inferior powers but is valid in itself, having those powers subject to it; that is, it is full power. « For this is the plenitude of power: to be able to do all things for edification » (Robert of Lincoln, anno 1253, quoted by Matthew Paris).

f) Hence the same pastoral power is also called, by a name derived from the Scriptures, episcopal (Acts XX. 28; 1 Pet. V. 2, in the Greek text), just as Christ himself is called, synonymously, the pastor and bishop of his sheep (1 Pet. II. 25.). It is therefore the same to say that the power of feeding the sheep of Christ was instituted in Peter as to say supreme, universal, immediate and full episcopal power; and just as Christ, by his own and principal power, so Peter, by derived and vicarious power, is constituted pastor and bishop of the whole visible Church. See the Council of the Vatican, session IV, ch. 3.

IV. All that has been said so far, considered together, demonstrates what is chiefly asked of us: how, namely, the supreme pastorate communicated to Peter by Christ, the prince of shepherds, constitutes the centre and uniting principle, and so determines the visible form of the whole visible Church.

1°. The Lord himself declared expressly that the Church of all nations would become one fold because there would be one shepherd of the whole fold: « And I have other sheep, which are not of this fold (of Israel); but I must bring them, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one fold and one shepherd » (μία ποίμνη, εἷς ποιμήν.) John X. 16. Christ himself is indeed the one shepherd, and by his pastorate the effector both of visible and invisible unity: « I in them, and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one » (ibid. XVII. 23.); but just as all the visible offices in the Church, so also his one and unifying pastorate, in order that there may come to be and remain one fold and one shepherd now that he is no longer in the world (ib. XVII. 11–13), he exercises visibly only through vicarious powers instituted by him, as the elements of visibility and the principles of unity of his Church.

The Church is therefore one body, compact and connected in its head and from its head, Christ; but the connection is supplied through manifold visible joints (of which we shall speak deliberately further on): « for he himself gave some as Apostles, some as Prophets, others as Evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, for the perfecting (καταρτισμόν) of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ » (Eph. IV. 11–16; 1 Cor. XII. 12–28.). Hence, since in an organic whole the individual parts as it were absorb and show forth the nature of the whole, first the particular Churches, as members of the universal Church, each have unity in themselves through their particular pastor: « feed that which is among you, the flock of God, providing for it » (ἐπισκοποῦντες) (1 Pet. V. 2.). Individual pastors therefore feed the individual flocks in which they are placed, and they give to those who are in them the form of a flock and the unity or perfection (καταρτισμόν, intimate connection) proper to the parts and members of the whole body. But precisely because they are members of the whole, the pastors themselves must all constitute one among themselves; for individuals do not form separated Churches separately. But just as individuals form the unity of the parts, so all together, cohering, bring all the parts into one universal Church as one body of pastors; and thus, considered in unity, pastors and teachers are given for the building up of the whole body of Christ, and are placed there by the Holy Spirit to rule the whole Church of God, which he acquired with his own blood (Acts XX. 28.). « They are the Church, the people joined to the priest, and the flock adhering to its shepherd; whence you must know that the bishop is in the Church and the Church in the bishop, and if anyone is not with the bishop, he is not in the Church; and in vain do those flatter themselves who, not having peace with the priests of God, creep in and secretly believe that they communicate with some, when the Church, which is catholic and one, is not split nor divided, but is certainly connected and joined together by the glue of priests cohering with one another » Cyprian, letter 69 to Florentius Pupianus, p. 123. « Where the bishop appears, there let the multitude also be; just as where Christ Jesus is (in the whole episcopate, and in the individual bishops, insofar as they are united with the whole), there is the catholic Church » St. Ignatius Martyr, letter to the Smyrnaeans c. 8.

Many pastors, then, singly, are the form of unity in each of their particular Churches, that is, in parts of the whole; all together they are not the glue forming the visible unity of the whole catholic Church, except insofar as they themselves have visible unity among themselves and constitute one body. Now, for this visible cohesion of the pastors among themselves, and of all the partial flocks, by which they constitute one catholic Church, there is need, as the form and visible glue of catholic unity, of one supreme pastor of the whole Church; or, as Cyprian and other Fathers speak, of one chair. « God is one and Christ is one, and one Church and one chair founded upon the rock by the voice of the Lord » Cyprian, letter 40, p. 53. In fact, that in the supreme power of the one Peter this principle of unity was established by Christ is already clear from what has been demonstrated above. For in the words of the promise it is declared that the Church of Christ, simply so called, is to be built upon one rock; this Church, which is therefore understood as universal of all nations and by this very fact one. Wherefore, just as all the faithful, so first of all all the pastors, as partial joints, are united and contained in the unity of the catholic Church ²¹ through that one foundation, to which Christ communicates his own property of rock in relation to the whole visible Church. This very principle of unity is exhibited both by the supreme power of the keys over the whole kingdom of heaven on earth, and by the indefectibility of faith by which one man is constituted confirmer of his brethren, that is, of the whole fraternity which is in the world (1 Pet. V. 9.). Yet all these things, which are contained in the promises, are fulfilled (as has been shown above), though in another verbal form, in the institution itself. For all the sheep of Christ, to which indeed also belong those who, in relation to other sheep, are pastors, are subordinated, for the unity of the flock of Christ, to one supreme and universal shepherd.

The sum of all this is: just as individual particular flocks have their uniting bond in each one's own pastor, so the supreme and universal pastoral power instituted in Peter, according to its threefold function of teaching, governing and priesthood, joins all these flocks with their particular pastors into one flock and one fold: « feed my sheep. » The original shepherd is one, Christ, whose own sheep they are; the one shepherd instituted by Christ is Peter, to whom all these same sheep are committed. No one is in the one fold of Christ, and no sheep is fed by Christ, who is not to be fed by Peter. This universal and supreme power, subordinated to Christ alone, in Peter by Christ's institution is therefore the « glue » and visible principle by which both the flocks and the pastors are formed and held together as one body and one flock. You have this same thing clearly expressed in the words of Bernard cited above (n. III, c.).

2°. In this way the visible form of the unity of the Church was understood, from the very words of Christ the Institutor, throughout the whole Christian antiquity. But since we shall have to speak of the doctrine of the Fathers when we treat of the perpetuity of Peter's power, here we may be content with fewer.

The complete explanation of the principle of unity which we have given stands in the celebrated passage of Cyprian (On the Unity of the Church, pp. 194, 195) ²². There Cyprian declares the unity not only of a particular but of the universal Church ²³, which, with the unity of the body remaining, « stretches its rays over the whole world, and extends its branches into the whole earth in abundance of fruitfulness. » In it alone, he says, is the true Christian faith and salvation found; it must therefore be sought how this Church is constituted both as one and one in itself, and is distinguished by its own unity from all sects, as branches broken and streams cut off from the source. For knowing both the genuineness and the unity of the Church, and in it the whole doctrine of faith, « the proof is easy by the compendium of truth » ²⁴. Now this compendium of easy proof Cyprian places in this: that Christ, both by the promise of Matt. XVI. and by the institution of John XXI., founded his whole Church in one Peter, as in the beginning and foundation, from which unity flows and is made, both of all pastors as one body, one episcopate, and of the whole Church extended throughout the earth, one mother abundant in the successes of fecundity. Just as, therefore, by those words of Christ, by which he constituted the apostolate, addressed indiscriminately to all the Apostles, equal power was conferred on all, so by the words pertaining to the one Peter, as the beginning and foundation containing the unity of the episcopate and of the Church, this special power, forming and conserving visible unity, was instituted not as common to the others but as proper to the one Peter. That this is the genuine sense of Cyprian's words will be plain from the reading itself, provided they are not twisted to an alien meaning that contradicts the context. They read thus, in the recension of Maranus:

« This (that heresies and schisms rend unity under the very title of the Christian name) happens when one does not return to the origin of truth, nor seeks the head (the origin and fontal principle of unity), nor keeps the doctrine of the heavenly teacher. Whoever considers and examines these things (here enumerated: origin, head, doctrine of the heavenly teacher) has no need of a long treatise or of arguments. The proof is easy for faith by the compendium of truth. The Lord speaks to Peter: I say to you, he says, that you are Peter... and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven... And again to him after his resurrection he says: feed my sheep. Upon that one he builds his Church, and to him he entrusts his sheep to be fed. And although after his resurrection he gives equal power (of apostolate) to all the Apostles and says: as the Father sent me, so I send you... yet in order to manifest unity (to make it manifest and visible), he disposed by his own authority the origin of that unity, beginning from one (not merely presenting a symbol of unity, as if theoretically, but by the act of his authority disposed, that is, instituted, the origin, the fountain and effective principle of unity). Indeed the other Apostles were also what Peter was, endowed with equal fellowship of honour and power (of apostolate), but the beginning proceeds from unity (not only a beginning in time in conferring power, but a permanent and effective beginning for maintaining the unity of the Apostles and of their successors and of the whole Church, as Cyprian immediately explains), and the primacy is given to Peter, so that one Church of Christ and one chair may be shown. And all are pastors, and one flock is shown (shown effectively through that beginning of unity), which is fed by all the Apostles with unanimous consent, so that the Church of Christ may be shown as one... he who resists and opposes the Church, who abandons the chair of Peter, upon which the Church is founded, does he trust that he is in the Church?... This unity we must firmly hold and defend, especially we bishops who preside in the Church, so that we may also prove the episcopate itself one and undivided... The episcopate is one, of which a part is held by each in solidum ²⁵ The Church too is one, which spreads out in multitude by the increase of its fruitfulness. As the sun has many rays but one light (he soon calls it the body of the sun), and the branches of a tree are many but one strength, fixed in a tenacious root; and when from one fountain many streams flow forth, though the multitude seems diffused by the overflowing abundance, the unity is nevertheless kept in the origin. Sever a ray of the sun from its body, and the division of light does not admit unity; break a branch from a tree, and the broken branch cannot sprout; cut a stream from its fountain, and the severed one dries up. So too the Church of the Lord, bathed in light, extends its rays over the whole world (through the particular Churches); yet it is one light which is spread everywhere, nor is the unity of the body separated; it extends its branches into the whole earth in abundance of fruitfulness, it spreads its flowing streams more widely, yet there is one head and one origin, and one mother abundant in the successes of fecundity. »

Cyprian therefore recognizes a twofold series of biblical texts. In one, which pertains to all the Apostles, equal honour and power of apostolate is given to all; the other pertains to the one Peter, where Christ builds his Church upon that one and gives him the primacy, and this for the purpose that by his own authority he might set in Peter the origin and beginning, the head, the tenacious root for holding unity together, both of the Apostolic college in its perpetual succession, that is, of the whole episcopate, and of the universal Church; so that the rays, with one origin in the body of the sun, the streams with one head in the fountain, and the branches with one strength in the root, are brought back to unity.

This principle of unity so clung to Cyprian's mind that he scarcely ever mentions either the unity of the episcopate and of the universal Church, or on the other hand Peter and the chair of Peter, without at once proclaiming that this principle of unity was established in Peter and his perpetual chair, and the effect of perpetual unity in the episcopate and the Church. « Our Lord, arranging the honour of bishops and the constitution of his Church, speaks in the Gospel to Peter: I say to you, that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church... thence, through the succession of times and the course of successors, the ordination of bishops and the order of the Church run on, so that the Church is constituted upon the bishops, and every act of the Church is governed by these same leaders » (letter 27, to the lapsed, p. 37.). « To Peter first the Lord, upon whom he built the Church, and whence he instituted and showed the origin of unity, gave this power, that what he should loose on earth would be loosed in heaven... The Church, which is one, is founded by the Lord's voice upon one, who also received its keys » (letter 73, to Jubaianus, pp. 131, 132.). « God is one, and Christ is one, and one Church and one chair founded upon the rock by the voice of the Lord » (letter 40, to the people, p. 53.). « One baptism, and one Holy Spirit, and one Church founded by Christ the Lord upon Peter, as to the origin and principle of unity » (letter 70, to Januarius, p. 125.) ²⁶ cf. letter 69 to Florentius, p. 123; On the Dress of Virgins, p. 176.

Other Fathers agree with Cyprian, and if anything in him were obscure, they illuminate this same ordering of unity, instituted by Christ in Peter, in the clearest words: « The Lord spoke to Peter, to one, that he might found unity from one » Pacian, letter 3 to Sympronianus. « You cannot deny (Donatist Parmenian) that you know that in the city of Rome the episcopal chair was first conferred on Peter, in which sat Peter, the head of all the Apostles, whence he was also called Cephas, in which one chair unity might be kept by all, lest the other Apostles should each defend a separate chair for himself (divided from the unity of the whole, or from the solid), so that he who would set up another chair against the single chair would already be schismatic and a sinner » Optatus, Bk. II, c. 2, against Parmenian. « There is a reading about the person of the most blessed Peter, from which a form for retaining or making unity is recited..., by the good of unity blessed Peter... and merited to be preferred to all the Apostles, and alone received the keys of the kingdom of heaven to be communicated to the others... so many innocent stand, and the sinner receives the keys²⁷, so that the business of unity might be formed » ibid. Bk. VII, c. 3. « He says to Peter, in whom alone he forms the Church: Peter, do you love me? feed my sheep » Augustine, sermon 137, c. 3. This form of unity and this formation of the Church in the one Peter Ambrose expressed in other words: « He is Peter, to whom he said: you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church. Where Peter is, therefore, there is the Church » (on Ps. 40, n. 30.).

What Cyprian says, that from Peter, upon whom the Church is built, the ordination of bishops and the constitution of the Church run down; and more explicitly, what Optatus says, that Peter alone received the keys for the good of unity, to be communicated to the others: other Fathers repeat this very thing. « Through the holy Apostle Peter both apostolate and episcopate in Christ took their beginning » Siricius, letter 4 to the bishops of Africa; Innocent I, letter 2 to Victricius. « From the Apostle (Peter) the principate itself and all the authority of this name emerged » Innocent I, letter 24 to the Council of Carthage; letter 25 to the Council of Milevis. « The sacrament of this office the Lord willed to pertain to the office of all the Apostles, in such a way that in the most blessed Peter, the chief of all the Apostles, he principally placed it, and wished his gifts to flow from him as from a kind of head into the whole body » St. Leo the Great, letter 10 to the bishops of the province of Vienne. « The divine condescension granted this man (Peter) a great and wonderful partnership in his power; and if he wished anything to be common with him to the other princes, it never gave, except through him, whatever it did not deny to the others » Id., Sermon 3 on his assumption.

Lastly, the other Fathers, in those same places in which they demonstrate more zealously the primacy in Peter as the foundation of unity, also profess the dignity of the apostolate as common to all, which Cyprian preaches together with the power in the one Peter for forming unity. « The connection of the whole body makes one health, one beauty; and this connection of the whole body requires unanimity, but especially demands the concord of priests. Although they have a common dignity, there is not a general order; since even among the most blessed Apostles, in the similitude of honour, there was a certain discretion of power; and although the election of all was equal, yet it was given to one that he should excel the others » St. Leo the Great, letter 12, c. 11, to Anastasius of Thessalonica. Citing first the words of promise and institution, Matt. XVI., Luke XXII., John XXI., St. Gelasius I draws this conclusion: « Why, then, is the Lord's speech so often directed to Peter? Were not the other holy and blessed Apostles girded with similar virtue? Who would dare to affirm this? But so that, a head being established, the occasion of schism might be removed ²⁸, and one structure of the body of Christ might be shown (cf. Eph. IV. 16), which might come together to one head in the most glorious society of love, and so that there might be one Church, to which faithful credence might be given... Certainly there were twelve Apostles, supported by equal merits and endowed with equal dignity; and although all shone equally with spiritual light, yet Christ wished one of them to be the chief » Gelasius, letter 8, or treatise against the Acacian schism (Harduin T. II, p. 893 ff.).

3°. All that we have demonstrated in the thesis is summed up in this. The divine Saviour, preparing to found his Church, foreshadowed by clear promises, and in the foundation itself, fulfilling the promises in clear words, instituted this and no other visible form of the Church: so that she, both in all her parts and members, and insofar as she constitutes one body, should be subject to be governed and fed by a certain power, supreme in intension, universal in extension, immediate, ordinary, and from these very things full; and that this power should reside in one man, whom he himself, from among all and over all the Apostles, endowed with that power. Not indeed that they should be deprived of their power and dignity of apostolate, either extraordinary or ordinary, but that, subordinated to this supreme head, they should be united both with him and among themselves. For in one Peter, as a rock, the Church of Christ simply so called is built, and so the universal and whole Church on earth as one « spiritual house »; to him alone is given the supreme power of keys, so that by binding and loosing the visible kingdom of heaven may be administered by him as one « holy nation and royal priesthood »; and finally he alone is appointed who feeds the sheep and lambs, so that in visible form also « there may be one shepherd and one fold. » This supreme and universal pastorate of one, therefore, was in the very foundation, and by the divine founder himself, inserted into the Church to form and hold together her visible unity in all her constituting elements: so that there may be « one body and one spirit » under the supreme rule of one head; « one faith », and the teaching of the faith under the supreme teaching of the same head; « one baptism », and the lawful administration of the sacraments and sacred worship under the same supreme priesthood. For these are the things by which the Church is perennially built and the sheep of Christ are fed. Now all these offices, as participations, are derived into the visible head, instituted and substituted for himself by Jesus Christ himself, who yesterday and today is himself and remains for ever « the cornerstone », holding « the key of David », « the author and perfecter of faith », « the great priest and mediator of the New Testament », « the head of his body, the Church. »

Just as certainly as it is established that the Church was instituted by Christ, so certain is it that its visible form was not left to human disposition but was determined by the divine founder himself, and that this form is monarchical; for the visible institution of the Church and the determination of its form coincide and converge into one. To what extent aristocracy is, not mixed, but joined with the monarchy, we shall consider below. Meanwhile, it is now clear from what has been demonstrated that the form of which we have spoken, since it is of divine and unchangeable law, and therefore essential to the Church of Jesus Christ, must necessarily also be perpetual, and to be propagated and preserved as long as the Church itself persists, all days even to the consummation of the age. Nevertheless, this perpetual propagation, and the mode of propagation, still require special consideration.

« 1°. Christ God himself, just as he instituted the primacy in Peter, so with no less divine right instituted this primacy as perpetual in his visible Church, so that in a perpetual series single successors take up single predecessors; this institution of perpetuity and succession, described in the Gospels, is to be believed with divine faith. 2°. After Peter, bearing in his own person the primacy entrusted to him by Christ, had founded and taken to himself the episcopate or Roman see, and dying had left it vacant with the claim of succession both in the primacy and in the Roman episcopate, the very mode of succession in the primacy was determined, so that legitimate succession in the Roman episcopate is succession in the primacy over the universal Church; for the universal Church has always and everywhere understood the divine right of succession in this way, as the agreeing teaching of Councils, Roman Pontiffs and the other Fathers demonstrates, which declares the evident and perpetual fact of the union of the primacy with the Roman see of Peter. »

I. The visible institution of the rock of the Church, confirmer of the brethren, shepherd of the sheep of Christ, in the single person of Simon Peter, as demonstrated in the preceding thesis, also contains the institution of a perpetual succession in the same office and the same power, created by Christ God in Peter as at the beginning and, as it were, the first member of the whole perpetual series of successors. « You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven. I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and you, once converted, strengthen your brethren. Feed my sheep. »

a) The object assigned to and made subject to the power and acts of Peter, as shown above, is expressed in four equivalent ways, one and the same thing. For all the brethren who are to be confirmed, viewed together, « the brotherhood that is in the world, » the sheep of Christ to be fed, viewed together, « one flock and one shepherd » signify the same thing as the Church of Christ built upon the rock, and the kingdom of heaven in which all things pertaining to it are bound and loosed by the keys given to Peter. Now this Church of Christ (the kingdom of heaven on earth, one brotherhood, one flock of Christ the chief of shepherds), by his promise and institution, will persist until the consummation of the age, which we rightly presume here and shall demonstrate further below; and moreover, in this very declaration of the rock, it is promised, since the end and office of this foundation, once established, is said to be that the gates of hell never prevail against the Church. Therefore Christ joins with his Church, which is to be perpetually preserved, and institutes in it, as the ministerial and instrumentally efficient cause of its perpetual preservation, the office and power of Peter, as visible rock, administrator of the keys, confirmer of the brethren, shepherd of the sheep. Therefore, just as the perpetuity of the Church, so no less the perpetuity of Peter's office and power was promised and instituted by Christ; finally, indeed, this office is for the sake of that Church, but efficiently this office is in some way prior to that Church.

b) Let us consider the acts of this office and power instituted in Peter. The Church of Christ built upon the rock is understood not in a material sense but in the theological sense, as the « spiritual house » of the faithful, namely those whom the Apostles call « called into the fellowship of the Son of God Jesus Christ, » and who have « fellowship with one another » (1 Cor. I. 9; 1 John I. 3, 7). Accordingly also the rock, in a sense homogeneous with this spiritual house, is understood to be the one who, by supernatural power and by the acts of that power, sustains this fellowship of the faithful against the gates of hell, rules it, and holds it in unity; acts which Christ himself designates as binding and loosing whatever pertains to the kingdom of God, confirming in faith, feeding in the sense explained above. But these acts toward the Church are enjoined by Christ not only as past acts, which, once exercised by Peter, have since ceased; indeed they cannot be understood except as exercised, through all the age in which the Church to which they refer as to their object endures, by a man instructed with that power and that office. Therefore Peter, as instructed by Christ with that power and that office toward the Church, living perpetually, by his acts sustains, as the one visible rock, the one Church; governs it by binding and loosing with the supreme power of the keys; confirms in faith; feeds by teaching, ruling, sanctifying, by the norms and modes instituted by Christ. But this perpetuity is not in the person of Peter, to whom it was foretold, in the very institution of the office, that he would glorify God by his death (John XXI. 19). Therefore, in Peter, to whom singularly, above all the other Apostles and in express distinction from all of them, that supreme office in and over the Church was committed as to one, perpetuity was instituted in such a way that, in the same power and the same offices, single successors always take up single predecessors by perpetual succession, from Peter as the first root of the whole series, for as long as the Church stands, built upon this rock, whose force and nature remain the same from the institution itself in each successor, confirmed by Christ through the rock itself, so that the gates of hell do not prevail against it. Since therefore the power instituted in Peter, to be propagated to successors, was instituted equally for these individuals, and is perpetually derived from Christ, the head of the Church and prince of its shepherds, to be exercised in his name in his Church; each one, equally with Peter, is and is called Vicar of Christ in the kingdom of Christ on earth. Nevertheless, because, as we have seen, in the very institution of the power, under the name of Peter as the first root of the whole series, all his successors are comprehended; and because, therefore, Peter can rightly be said, and is said by the Fathers, not indeed in his own person but in his power, « to live until this time and always in his successors » (Philip the legate, at the Council of Ephesus), « whose power lives in his see and whose authority excels, » as St. Leo says (sermon 2, c. 3): the Fathers signify this succession in the same power when they call the successors of Peter Vicars of Peter, or even Vicars of the apostolic see (St. Gelasius, letter 4 to the emperor Anastasius). They are Vicars of Christ because they act in the place of Christ, in a power originally proper to him and to be exercised in his name; they are Vicars of blessed Peter, insofar as they receive his place, succeeding in the same power instituted by Christ; and in the same sense, Vicars of the apostolic see, insofar as, in the power which the Apostle, adorned with the glorious effusion of his blood, left to be propagated in this his see, they succeed in the place of that same Apostle.

II. This perpetual succession in Peter's primacy, which we have shown to be contained in the very words of the promise and institution, has always been celebrated in the faith and profession of Christian antiquity; indeed, what we chiefly look at here, the mode of succession itself, has been recognized as certain and indefectible, both by the common profession of all ages and by historical facts. For just as the power instituted in Peter, as we described it in the preceding thesis, was always believed and proclaimed to be in force in each successor of Peter, so the succession of Peter was never heard of or acknowledged except as the succession in the Roman see of Peter, which he himself, consecrating it by martyrdom as his own chosen episcopate, and so by his deed already unchangeable, raised from the see or episcopate of a particular Church to the see and episcopate of « a more powerful principality, » as Irenaeus says; so that in the heirs of this Roman see Peter always lives, namely by reason of the full power instituted in him, and is recognized and proclaimed by Councils, by the Roman Pontiffs themselves, and by the other Fathers.

1°. Concerning the profession of the erection of the Roman see by Peter, and therefore of the office and power of Peter in the successor of this Apostolic see, the Fathers of the Council of Sardica say that they « honour the memory of the holy Apostle Peter » in Julius, the Roman bishop (can. 3); which they explain in their synodal letter to Julius himself: « for this will seem best and most congruous, if from each province the priests of the Lord refer to the head, that is to the see of the Apostle Peter » (Coustant, letter 3 among the letters of Julius) ¹. At the Council of Ephesus, Philip, legate of the apostolic see, in order to confirm the solemn definition and condemnation of Nestorius, declared as a profession notorious to all ages that all the prerogatives instituted in Peter remain the same in the successors of his Roman see. « You holy members (the Fathers of the ecumenical Council) have joined yourselves to the holy head (Celestine) in condemning the heretic; for your blessedness does not ignore that the blessed Apostle Peter is the head of all faith, and even of the Apostles... It is doubtful to no one, or rather it is known to all ages, that the holy and most blessed Peter, prince and head of the Apostles, and pillar of faith, and foundation of the Catholic Church... lives and exercises judgment in his successors, to this time and always (in all the time elapsed hitherto and all future time). Of him, therefore, the successor in due order (namely in the perpetual series ordained by Christ) and locum tenens (κατὰ τάξιν ὁ διάδοχος καὶ τοποτηρητής) ² our holy and most blessed Pope Celestine, the bishop, sent us, as supplying his presence, to this holy synod. » (Hard. T. I, pp. 1471, 1478.) At the Council of Chalcedon, after the letter of Leo, the Roman Pontiff, had been read, the Fathers professed by acclamation: « anathema to him who does not believe thus; Peter has spoken through Leo » (Hard. II, p. 306.). The profession of the Fathers of the sixth Council about the Roman Pontiff Agatho is the same: « the chief of the Apostles contended with us; for we had as supporter the imitator of him and successor of the see... the ink seemed (in both letters, to the council and to the emperor), and through Agatho Peter was speaking » (Hard. III, p. 1422; cf. pp. 1159, 1287.). To the apostolic legates at the seventh Council, Hadrian I gave two letters, one to the emperor Constantine and his mother Irene, the other to Tarasius, bishop of Constantinople. Both being read in the Council, « the holy synod said: the whole most sacred synod thus believes, thus thinks, thus defines dogmas. » Then, to the explicit question put by the two legates of the Pontiff, whether they admit the letters of the most holy Pope of elder Rome, « the holy synod said: we follow, and receive, and admit. » Tarasius then professed in his own letter to the Pontiff that by the same letters he had « directed the whole body, as the eye, into the path of rectitude and truth, and so the Catholic Church had received unity. » Now in each letter the Pontiff expressly declares the perpetual succession, in the Roman see, of the whole power of Peter instituted by Christ. « The prince of the Apostles, blessed Peter himself, who first presided over the apostolic see, left to his successors, who are to sit perpetually in his most sacred see, the principate of his apostolate and of pastoral care; to whom also the power of authority, just as it was conceded to him by our Saviour the Lord God, he himself also conferred on his successors the Pontiffs and handed it down by divine command » ³ (Hard. IV, pp. 82, 94, 102, 510.). In the eighth Council the Fathers published the profession of faith proposed by the Roman Pontiff Hadrian II (drawn from the formula long since prescribed by the Pontiff Hormisdas against the Acacian schism), by which it was declared that the things said to Peter pertain equally to the apostolic see of Peter. For, they say, « in the apostolic see the Catholic religion has always been kept unstained and the holy doctrine celebrated »; and therefore it is necessary « to be in the one communion which the apostolic see proclaims, » « because the sentence of our Lord Jesus Christ, who says you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, cannot be passed over » (Hard. V, pp. 773, 774.) ⁴ cf. Council of the Vatican, session 4, c. 4.

2°. In the same way the Roman Pontiffs, not only with bishops and Churches to which they wrote not contradicting but readily agreeing, claimed that the whole power instituted by Christ in Peter was conferred on themselves just as on Peter himself, and that this was and is to be recognized always by the universal Church, for no other reason than that they are the successors of Peter in the Roman see, or in this particular Church which Peter singularly took to himself. St. Siricius professes himself the heir of Peter's office and power, and therefore as one person with him. « We bear the burdens of all (in the whole Church) who are weighed down; nay rather, the blessed Apostle Peter bears these in us, who, we trust, protects and guards us, heirs of his administration, in all things » (letter 1 to Himerius of Tarragona, n. 1). Hence to violate « the rule » prescribed by Peter's heir is the same as to be torn away from « the solidity of the apostolic rock, upon which Christ built the universal Church » (ibid., n. 3). Thus the supreme power of blessed Peter, of the apostolic see, and of whichever Roman Pontiff is then in office, is always traced back to one and the same in the letters to the Churches of the West and of the East. Let there be consulted Innocent I (letter 29, n. 1, to the Council of Carthage), Zosimus (letter 2, n. 1; letter 12, n. 1, to Aurelius and the bishops of Africa), Boniface I (letters 4, 5, 13, 14, 15, to Rufus of Thessalonica), Celestine I (letter 3, to the bishops of Illyria; letter 25, n. 9, to the people of Constantinople), and Xystus III (letter 6, n. 5, to John of Antioch).

« In seeking out the affairs of God, says Innocent, keeping the examples of ancient tradition, you have resolved that the matter is to be referred to our judgment, knowing what is owed to the apostolic see, since all of us who are placed in this position (in the series of Pontiffs) wish to follow the Apostle himself, from whom the episcopate itself and all the authority of this name emerged. Following him, we know how to condemn evils as well as to approve what is praiseworthy. » For indeed the ancient Fathers « decreed not by human but by divine judgment that whatever was to be dealt with, even in provinces separated and remote, they would not deem finished until it came to the knowledge of this see, so that by its whole authority whatever just pronouncement had been made would be confirmed, and the other Churches would take it from it. » These words of Innocent, spoken in condemnation of the Pelagian heresy, were afterward repeated in almost the same words by the African bishops, asking the condemnation of monothelitism, in a letter to Pope Theodore, which was read and approved in the Lateran Council under Martin I (Hard. T. III, p. 734.). Innocent asserted for himself full and universal authority (so that whatever was dealt with in distant and separated provinces would be confirmed by the whole authority of this see) in condemning evils and approving goods, because the Roman See is the Apostolic See (of the Apostle Peter, namely), in which all desire to follow the Apostle. The Africans express this on their own part thus: to the apostolic see, « in honour of the most blessed Peter the decrees of the Fathers decreed a peculiar reverence, in seeking out the things of God, which must altogether and carefully be examined, and most of all rightly by the very apostolic summit of the prelates, whose ancient care it is to condemn evils as well as to approve goods... so that by its authority whatever just pronouncement had been made would be confirmed, and the other Churches would take thence, as from their native fountain of preaching, the beginning, and through the diverse regions of the world the sacraments of saving faith would remain incorrupt » (the mysteries and dogmas of saving faith). When here and elsewhere the « decrees of the Fathers » are invoked, it is evident that these must be understood as decrees declaring (through the key of teaching and doctrine) the power divinely instituted in Peter, not as decrees constituting it (through the key of jurisdiction properly so called and of ecclesiastical legislation alone), just as Innocent said of the whole power of Peter in the Roman Pontiff, that « the Fathers decreed not by human but by divine judgment. » This very thing, and the inheritance of Peter's power over the universal Church by reason of succession in the particular see of the Roman episcopate, the others we have cited taught luminously. « So great a power has canonical antiquity, by the judgments of all, wished this Apostle to have (namely by declaring it), from the very promise of Christ our God, that he could both loose what was bound and bind what was loosed; a like condition of power was given to those who had merited the inheritance of the see; for he himself has care both of all the churches and especially of this one where he sat ⁵; nor does he suffer anything of the privilege (of the Church where he had sat) to waver by any breath of opinion (that is, to be called into doubt), the Church for which he himself established the foundations of his name, firm and dulled by no disturbances ⁶ and which no one rashly attacks without peril to himself. Since therefore Peter, of such authority, is the head, and the following zeal of all our forebears has confirmed it (after the promise and institution of Christ God, the zeal of the forebears confirmed it by theoretical and practical tradition), so that the Roman Church, whose place we govern and whose name of power we hold (Peter's, the apostolic successor in the power of Peter), is strengthened by human as much as by divine laws and all disciplines, it is not hidden from you;... nevertheless, since we have so much authority that none may retract our judgment, we have done nothing that we did not of our own accord report to your knowledge by our letters. » Boniface I (letter 4) says that the rights of the power received from Peter by the Lord's voice constitute the Roman see, because it is the see of Peter, « the foundation and spiritual rock of the Church. » For (from letter 14), « the universal institution of the newborn Church took the beginning of its honour from blessed Peter, in whom its governance and foundation consist... The precepts of the Nicene synod testify to nothing else, so that it dared to establish nothing above him (Peter, who then was, and in every age is, the Roman Pontiff), since it saw that nothing could be conferred above his merit (above what he merited to obtain from Christ); it knew, finally, that all things had been granted to him by the Lord's word. It is certain therefore that this (the Roman Church) is, to the Churches spread throughout the whole world, as the head of its members, and whoever cuts himself off from her becomes an exile from the Christian religion, since he has not begun to be in the same compact » ⁷. Thus also from letter 15: « there remains (for Boniface, and for any time before or after) the care of the universal Church, received by the blessed Apostle Peter from the Lord's sentence, from him; since it is known, the Gospel bearing witness, that it is founded in him; nor can its honour ever be empty of cares, since it is certain that the sum of things depends on its deliberation (of Peter, namely, not deliberating and judging in heaven but on earth). These things extend my mind even to the regions of the East. » He then demonstrates that « the greatest Churches of the East, in great affairs in which greater disputation was needed, always consulted the Roman see, » and proves it by the examples of the Churches of Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople, and of all the East in general. In agreement with all these predecessors, Celestine I (letter 3) says: « we are chiefly bound by care for all, to whom Christ, when he gave the keys of opening and closing to the holy Apostle Peter, granted the necessity of dealing with all things. » Hence Celestine (letter 25) simply attributes his judgment against Nestorius to blessed Peter, just as we have seen the Councils profess that the most blessed Peter always lives in his successors and exercises judgment and contends and speaks. « Nor, however, did the blessed Apostle Peter forsake those so gravely labouring (the clergy and people of Constantinople); for when the rot, horrible to all, had persuaded that such an ulcer must be cut off from the ecclesiastical body, we offered a fomentation with the iron (Celestine promising pardon to the one who returns to his senses); but he, abusing our zeal... spurning the remedy, chose to be cut off. » In the same cause, after John of Antioch, a supporter of Nestorius, at length agreed with his Eastern bishops to the condemnation of the heresiarch, Sixtus III, successor of Celestine, wrote to John congratulating him on his return to the unity of the Church: « you have learned by the outcome of the present business what it is to think with us: the blessed Apostle Peter, in his successors, has handed down what he received... Not a little burden, not a little labour, lies upon us, that the Church of the Lord may be without stain or wrinkle. »

St. Leo, in the same way as the Pontiffs before him whom we have seen, distinguishes in every place these two things: first the merits and intercession of blessed Peter before God, which are proper and personal to him in heaven; then the power, the office and the duty of governing the universal Church, which, as they were conferred on him by Christ, so remain always the same in Peter's see and in Peter's heir, that is, in the Roman see for each of its successors. « Nor is the pious condescension and faithful love of the most blessed Apostle Peter absent from this assembly... proving the most orderly charity of the whole Church, which in Peter's see receives Peter, and from the love of so great a shepherd does not grow lukewarm even in the person of so unequal an heir » (sermon 2, c. 2). « The disposition of truth therefore remains, and the blessed Peter, persevering in the received strength of the rock, has not left the governance of the Church that he had taken up... If therefore anything is rightly done by us, and rightly discerned by us, if anything is obtained from the mercy of God by daily supplications, it is of his works and merits, in whose see his power lives and his authority excels... in the person of my humility let him be understood, let him be honoured, in whom both the care of all the pastors and the keeping of the sheep committed to them perseveres, and whose dignity does not fail even in an unworthy heir » (sermon 3, cc. 3, 4). « To the see of the blessed Apostle Peter men gather from the whole world, and that universal love of the Church, commended to him by the Lord (John XXI. 15–17), is also demanded by our dispensation... There is joined to this, moreover, not only the apostolic but also the episcopal dignity of the most blessed Peter, who does not cease to preside over his see, and obtains an unfailing fellowship with the eternal priest; for that solidity which he himself, made a rock, received from the rock Christ, has passed over also into his heirs » (sermon 5, cc. 2, 4; cf. sermon 82, c. 1; letter 6, c. 2; letter 10, cc. 1, 2). That is, the episcopal dignity in the particular Church of the Roman see is already joined with the apostolic dignity conferred by Christ on Peter over the universal Church; and this dignity is the indefectible participation or fellowship of Peter in both, with the eternal priest Christ. But how the apostolate can be and is indefectible in the Church with the episcopate of Peter, now deceased, the holy Pontiff gives the reason: for the solidity of the rock, that is, the whole prerogative by which Peter was made a rock by Christ the rock, passes into the individual heirs of Peter.

Gelasius I, the most courageous defender of faith and of catholic unity, vindicated this same doctrine against the Emperor Anastasius and the bishops of Constantinople in the Acacian schism and the monothelite heresy. « For by what reason or consequence is it to be deferred to other sees, if the first see of the most blessed Peter does not receive the ancient and venerable reverence, through which the dignity of all priests has always been strengthened and confirmed (what St. Gregory later said: my honour is the solid vigour of my brethren), and to which the most ancient honour was adjudged (al. vindicated) by the unconquered and singular judgment of the three hundred and eighteen Fathers (of Nicaea) ⁸? since they remembered the Lord's sentence: you are Peter... I have prayed for you... feed my sheep (Matt. XVI.; Luke XXII.; John XXI.)... so that one structure of the body of Christ might be shown, which might come together to one head in the most glorious fellowship of love;... and our elders, those reverend masters of the Churches (the Nicene or Sardican Fathers), to that see which the prince of the Apostles, Peter, had occupied, filled with Christ's charity, sent the principles taken of their priesthood (cf. the Fathers cited in the preceding thesis, n. IV. 2.), asking thence the weightiest strengthenings of firmness for their own solidity. » Among other things he concludes thus: « Christ willed that one of them (the Apostles) should be prince, and by a wonderful dispensation he directed him to Rome, the mistress of the nations, that in the chief city, or the first, he might direct Peter first and chief; and there, adorned with the glorious effusion of his blood, he rests in an external hospice, granting to the see which he himself blessed, that it may never be conquered by the gates of hell, according to the Lord's mission, and that it may be the safest harbour for all who are tossed about (for the firmness of faith and the unity of communion). » (letter 8, or the treatise against the Acacian schism). « If it is fitting that the hearts of the faithful submit to all priests who treat divine things rightly in general, how much more must the consent of the prelate of that see be sought, whom the divine highness willed to excel all priests, and whom the continuing piety of the general Church has ever celebrated? Where your piety (the emperor's) evidently observes that by no human counsel whatsoever can anyone raise himself against the privilege or confession of that one (namely, against the supreme power of Peter or the doctrine of faith abiding in each successor), whom the voice of Christ placed above all, whom the venerable Church has always confessed and has as primate » (letter 4 to the emperor Anastasius Augustus). The Roman see is that which « both confirms by its authority each of the synods and keeps them in continued moderation, for its principate, namely, which blessed Peter the Apostle received by the Lord's voice, and which the Church, subsequently following, has held always and holds » (letter 7, to the bishops of Dardania; Hard. T. II, pp. 893, 907, 919). In the Roman Council of the year 496, under Gelasius, what had already been declared by other Fathers about the primacy of the Roman Church is repeated: « Although there is one bridal chamber of Christ in all the Catholic Churches throughout the world, yet the holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church is preferred to the other Churches by no synodal constitutions, but obtained the primacy by the evangelical voice of the Lord and our Saviour: you are Peter, he says, and upon this rock I will build my Church » (Hard. T. II, p. 938.).

St. Gregory the Great, to pass over others for the moment, derives the power and pastoral care which he exercised in many ways over all the Churches from nothing else than this: that the Roman see which he holds is the see of Peter, the Apostolic see. Ordering a council to be held in Numidia to discuss the cause of Bishop Maximian, opposing the general snares of the old enemy against « the shepherds of the Lord's sheep » with his own general care of the Churches, he says: « but we, who though unworthy have undertaken the Apostolic see to be governed in place of Peter, prince of the Apostles, are compelled by the very office of the pontificate to resist the general enemy with the efforts we are able to make » (book II, letter 48, to Columbus). So too, he praises John, Bishop of Syracuse, who had reported something about the cause of the primacy in the province of Byzacena in Africa to the Pontiff, because « he does not cease to show his love for the blessed Apostle Peter. » About that Byzacenian primate he says: « because he says he is subject to the apostolic see, if some fault is found in bishops, I know not what bishop is not subject to it; but when no fault calls for it, all are equal according to the reason of humility » (book IX, letter 59, to John of Syracuse). « Yet we admonish that the reverence of the apostolic see be disturbed by the presumption of no one; for then the state of the members remains whole, if no injury strikes the head of the faith » (book XIII, letter 37, to John, bishop of Palermo). Treating of the confirmation of the election and the permission of the consecration of the Bishop of Milan, he says: « by how much the apostolic see, by God's authority, is known to be preferred to all Churches, by so much, among many cares, does it also very greatly trouble us, where our decision is awaited for consecrating a bishop »; but he orders his delegate, the subdeacon John, to act in this matter so that « the apostolic see may keep its own vigour, and may not diminish for others their rights granted by itself » (book III, letter 30, to John, subdeacon). The authority by which his predecessor Pelagius II, and Gregory himself, most sharply opposed the usurpation of John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople, who boasted that he was ecumenical patriarch ⁹, he derives from St. Peter. « John held a synod in the city of Constantinople, in which he tried to call himself universal; which my predecessor Pelagius, as soon as he learned of it, by letters sent by the authority of the holy Apostle Peter, annulled the acts of that synod » (book V, letter 43, to Eulogius of Alexandria and Anastasius of Antioch, patriarchs).

Gregory saw, and declared sufficiently, that the statement by which a patriarch or bishop is called universal can have a double sense: the first, that only the supreme power over the universal Church is expressed. In this sense the appellation is owed, as to Peter, so to his successors alone, and it was attributed to them, not unreasonably but with every right, in the Council of Chalcedon and by other Fathers ¹⁰; yet they did not want to use it because of the other sense, which could be suggested by it: as if there were one bishop in the Church, and no others were bishops of their own peoples, but only vicars of that universal bishop. In this second sense, therefore, neither can Peter be called universal apostle, as if the other Apostles were not true Apostles, nor can the successors of Peter be called universal bishops, lest the name and power of bishops be taken away from all the others. But in the case of the Constantinopolitan or any other bishop, the name and the thing signified by the name, in either sense, is « against the evangelical sentence, against the blessed Apostle Peter also (whose rights over the universal Church are thereby violated), and against all the Churches (each of which has its own bishops), and against the statutes of the canons » (which declare the Alexandrian see second and the Antiochene third after the Roman) (book V, letter 21, to Constantina Augusta). Hence he adds in the same place: « in this cause your piety must in no way despise me, because although the sins of Gregory are so great that he ought to suffer such things, the sins of the Apostle Peter are nil, so that he should deserve to suffer these things in your times... and on account of our sins, who serve him (Peter) unworthily, let his honour among you in no way be diminished. » Moreover, if anyone in a synod does not guard himself against attributing this appellation to the bishop of Constantinople, « let him know himself separated from the peace of blessed Peter, the prince of the Apostles » (book IX, letter 68, to Eusebius of Thessalonica).

What we have said about the thing and the name universal in the Roman Pontiff, we have as declared in the words of Gregory: « It is clear to all who know the Gospel that the care of the whole Church was committed by the Lord's voice to the holy Apostle Peter, prince of all the Apostles. » Adducing the texts of John XXI., Luke XXII., Matthew XVI., he goes on: « Behold, he received the keys of the heavenly kingdom, the power of binding and loosing is given to him, the care of the whole Church and the principate is committed to him, and yet he is not called universal Apostle... Certainly, for the honour of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, it was offered to the Roman Pontiff through the venerable Council of Chalcedon ¹¹; but none of them ever agreed to use this name of singularity (as long as the suspicion of singularity, that is, that a single bishop in the Church might be signified, could lie hidden), lest, when something private were given to one (a private episcopate, that is, proper to one in the sense of singularity), all priests should be deprived of the honour owed to them... I am the servant of all priests, insofar as they live as priests; for he who, through the swelling of empty glory, raises his neck against the omnipotent Lord and against the statutes of the Fathers, I trust in the omnipotent Lord, because he will not bend my neck to himself, not even with swords » (book V, letter 20, to Maurice Augustus). He repeats nearly the same in book V, letter 43, to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch: « through the holy Council of Chalcedon this title of universality was offered to the Pontiff of the apostolic see, which, by God's disposition, I serve... but far be it, far be it from the mind of a Christian to wish that anyone should take this for himself, whereby the honour of his brethren would seem diminished in however small a part. » Meanwhile this appellation of the successor of Peter had so clung to minds that Eulogius of Alexandria, in one and the same letter to Gregory, in which he promised that « he would no longer write to certain persons (to John of Constantinople) the proud titles which came from the root of vanity, » nevertheless called Gregory himself « universal Pope. » About this the holy Pontiff complains, replying to Eulogius: « I do not count it an honour, in which I know my brethren lose their honour. For my honour is the honour of the universal Church; my honour is the solid vigour of my brethren. Then I am truly honoured, when the honour due to each one is not denied to them ¹². If indeed your holiness calls me universal Pope ¹³, you deny that you yourself are this (namely a bishop), which you profess me to be as universal (the sole bishop in the Church)... And indeed your holiness knows that in the holy Council of Chalcedon, and afterward by the following Fathers, this was offered to my predecessors (in another, genuine sense); but nevertheless none of them wished to use this word, so that, while they loved the honour of priests in this world, they might keep their own with almighty God » (book VIII, letter 30, to Eulogius).

I will still recall Gregory's most friendly letter to Eulogius, Bishop of Alexandria, in which, as he often does, he joins the doctrine of the whole power of Peter, always living in his Roman see, with a profession of profound humility and of intimate charity and special union, out of regard for the Apostle Peter, with the see of Alexandria and that of Antioch. There are, he says, three sees of one Peter, but in a manner certainly diverse: the Roman, in which he rested, is raised properly into the see of Peter, so that he himself, with the power divinely instituted in himself, perpetually sits in it in each of his successors; the Alexandrian is Peter's, through his disciple Mark, whom Peter himself set up as bishop there; and lastly the Antiochene is Peter's, because he instituted it and sat in it for a while, though he was to depart; but in that departure he left as bishop there a disciple (Evodius), as he left Mark at Alexandria, and he did not share with him, nor could he share, the supreme power over the universal Church, instituted by Christ, and therefore by divine right, in a singular way in his own person. Therefore, just as the three sees are Peter's in different ways, so too the three are truly one see only by a moral unity, insofar as, for the reasons mentioned, the disciple sees are bound by special bonds of obedience and charity toward the master see, out of regard for Peter; as Gregory elsewhere writes to Eulogius: « there is something which binds us, by a certain peculiarity, toward the Church of Alexandria, and compels us by a special law to be more ready in her love; for, as is clear to all, the blessed Evangelist Mark was sent to Alexandria by the holy Apostle Peter, his master; so we are bound by the unity of this master and disciple, so that I myself seem to preside over the see of the disciple on account of the master, and you over the see of the master on account of the disciple (with this difference, namely, that between the master, who teaches and rules, and the disciple, who learns and obeys). And moreover we are bound to this unity of hearts also by the merits of your holiness, whom we know to follow the institutions of their author for salvation, and whom we feel to turn with all devotion to the bosom of their master, whence the preaching of salvation there arose » (book VI, letter 60). The words of Gregory in that letter, of which we began to speak, are these: « Your most sweet holiness has said much in your letters about the chair of the holy Peter, prince of the Apostles, saying that he himself sits in it even now in his successors. And indeed I... have gladly received all that was said there... For who does not know that the holy Church has been established in the solidity of the prince of the Apostles, who carried the firmness of his mind into his name, so that he was called Peter from the rock (petra)? To whom it is said by the voice of truth: to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven (the text of Matt. XVI., Luke XXII., John XXI. is cited). Therefore, though there are many Apostles, yet for the principate itself the single see of the prince of the Apostles has prevailed in authority, which in three places is the see of one. For he himself raised up the see in which he deigned to rest and to end the present life; he himself adorned the see to which he sent the Evangelist, his disciple; he himself established the see in which he sat for seven years, though he was about to depart. Therefore, since the see is of one and is one, over which by divine authority three bishops now preside, whatever good I hear of you I impute to myself; if you believe anything good of me, impute it to your merits, because in him we are one, who said: that they may all be one, as you, Father, in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us » (book VII, letter 40, to Eulogius) ¹⁴. (On the preaching of the title universal bishop and on the unity among the three sees, see the learned remarks of Hincmar of Reims, opuscules against Hincmar of Laon, cc. 16, 17; Migne T. CXXVI, pp. 334–337, 345–350.).

3°. After the lucid doctrine of the Gospels themselves, that the supreme power instituted in Peter is to be propagated perpetually through each of his successors; and after the manifold declaration of the Councils and Pontiffs, who were recognized by the universal Church as heirs of Peter in the same power, of the same propagation, together with the very mode of succession through the Roman episcopate, which Peter, taking it to himself peculiarly, left empty in dying; there is no need to bring in other witnesses to the same fact, which has always been notorious, public and perpetual in the whole Church.

They demonstrate the truth of the Church of Jesus Christ, and the foundation of its unity in faith and communion, from the principate of Peter in the Roman Church; with which, because of that principate instituted by Christ, all who are everywhere, in one faith handed down, and in communion, must necessarily agree with acknowledgment of that principate. They acknowledge that this whole right and office of the principate belongs to the successors of Peter in that very Roman Church, whom they either enumerate singly down to their own times, or comprehend in general and implicitly. Irenaeus, showing what is the one true faith handed down by the Apostles in all the Churches, and how all of these are one Church of Jesus Christ, demonstrates it from the Roman Church alone, because the more powerful principality from the founding Apostles Peter and Paul ¹⁵ established in this Church makes it necessary for all Churches to come together with it in faith and communion. The integrity of faith in the Roman Church was handed down for all Churches from the Apostle founders onward and is kept through the succession of the individual Bishops; and so, as in these individuals the episcopate is propagated from the first Bishop and founder Peter, so in this episcopate of the Roman Church is included, for each of them, that more powerful principality, by which alone the integrity of faith and tradition is kept for all Churches, because it is only on account of that principality that it is necessary for all to come to the Roman Church and be united with it in faith and communion. « Since it would be very long in such a volume to enumerate the successions of all the Churches, we confound all those who in any way... gather otherwise than they ought (who set up their synagogues, whether heretical or schismatic), by indicating the tradition from the Apostles which the greatest and most ancient (ἀρχαιοτάτης, most ancient, not in time but in authority) and to all known Church, founded and established at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, has, and the faith proclaimed to men, coming down to us through the successions of Bishops. For to this Church, on account of its more powerful principality, every Church must necessarily come, that is, the faithful who are on every side; in which (through which, or by whose help) the tradition which is from the Apostles has always been kept by those who are on every side. The blessed Apostles, therefore, founding and instructing the Church, handed to Linus the office of the episcopate for governing the Church (τὴν τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς λειτουργίαν ἐνεχείρισαν)... Anacletus succeeds him (enumerating the individuals in order he concludes): now in the twelfth place Eleutherius holds the episcopate from the Apostles (τὸν τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς ἀπὸ τῶν Ἀποστόλων κατέχει κλῆρον). By this order (τάξει) and succession, the tradition which is from the Apostles and the proclamation of truth have come down to us. And this demonstration is most full, that there is one and the same life-giving faith, which has been kept and handed down in the Church from the Apostles until now in truth » (Irenaeus, book III, c. 3).

Through the same « compendium of truth », as we saw above (thesis X, n. IV. 2.), Cyprian demonstrates the unity of the faith and of the Church against all heresies: « the proof is easy for faith by the compendium of truth. The Lord speaks to Peter: I say to you, that you are Peter... and the primacy is given to Peter, so that one Church of Christ and one chair (over the whole Church) may be shown » (see the rest cited there by us). In a similar account of the successors of Peter, Optatus of Milevis puts the chair of Peter as the first gift of the Church: « Therefore you cannot deny that you know that in the city of Rome the episcopal chair was first conferred on Peter, in which sat Peter, the head of all the Apostles..... in which one chair unity might be kept by all. » He says that this centre of all Catholic unity, the very same chair of Peter, always remains and is recognized by all, through the perpetual succession of the Roman Bishops. « Therefore the one chair, which is first among the gifts, was occupied first by Peter, to whom Linus succeeded, to Linus Clement (he enumerates the following)... to Damasus Siricius, who is our associate today (namely, an associate in the episcopal order, not in the power of the chair, in which, being one, its one holder can have no associate), with whom, together with us, the whole world agrees in one fellowship of communion through the exchange of letters of communion. » Anyone can see that Optatus expresses the same doctrine as Irenaeus, in words, if not the same, certainly most similar. Then against the Donatists he concludes, which holds equally against all others, whether heretics or schismatics, because all of them do not agree with the one Roman chair of Peter in one fellowship of communion. « Give the origin of your chair, you who wish to claim the holy Church for yourselves... If Victor (the first of their own whom the Donatists had sent from Africa to Rome under the name of bishop) were asked where he sat, he could neither show that anyone had been there before him, nor point to any chair except one of pestilence; for the disease of pestilence sends dead men to the underworld, which underworld is known to have its gates, against which gates we read that the saving keys were received by Peter, our prince, to whom it was said by Christ: to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the gates of hell will not conquer them. Whence then is it, that you strive to usurp the keys of the kingdom of heaven, you who, against the chair of Peter (against the successors in the chair of Peter, with whom in one fellowship of communion you did not agree, setting up for yourselves in the city of Rome a chair of pestilence against the chair of Peter, as the centre of your sect, without predecessors reaching back to Peter), fight sacrilegiously with your presumptions and audacities? » (Optatus, book II, nn. 2–5.).

Augustine argues in the same way. « If the order of bishops succeeding one another is to be considered, how much more certainly and truly healthfully do we count from Peter himself, to whom, bearing the figure of the whole Church, the Lord said: upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not conquer it. For to Peter Linus succeeded, to Linus Clement... to Siricius Anastasius. Into that order of bishops, which is led from Peter to Anastasius, who now sits in the same chair, even if some traitor (of the sacred books, whose crime the Carthaginian bishop Caecilian was falsely accused of, by which they covered their schism), had crept in at those times, it would prejudice nothing to the Church nor to innocent Christians, for whom the Lord, foreseeing, said of the evil prelates: what they say, do; but what they do, do not do, for they say and do not. That the hope of the faithful may be certain, which, placed not in man but in the Lord, may never be scattered by the tempest of sacrilegious schism » (letter 53, nn. 2, 3.). Namely, in the chair of Peter, there is one thing, the infallibility of the magisterium and the authority of the sacred rule, which the Lord conferred on Peter perpetually as representing the Church; and another thing, the holiness of morals, to which he gave grace but did not promise impeccability. In the same sense Augustine elsewhere shows that perpetual succession in the chair or see of Peter, with the power of feeding all the sheep of Christ, is a bulwark against the storm of heresy and sacrilegious schism. « Count the priests even from the very see of Peter, and in that order of the Fathers see who succeeded whom; this is the rock which the proud gates of hell do not overcome. » (Psalm against the party of Donatus.) « In the bosom of the Catholic Church... from the very see of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord committed his sheep to be fed after the resurrection, up to the present episcopate (of the city of Rome, namely in the see of Peter) the succession of priests holds me » (against the letter of the foundation, c. 4).

The same connection of the Roman Church or chair with the succession in the power or see of Peter is found among other Fathers; for the Roman see itself, and no other ever, is acknowledged and celebrated as the see of Peter with all the prerogatives instituted in Peter. Cyprian: « Cornelius was made bishop... when the place of Fabian, that is, the place of Peter and the step of the priestly chair, was vacant » (letter 52, p. 68, to Antonianus). Hence he proclaims the Roman Church « the root and mother of the Catholic Church » (letters 42 and 45, to Cornelius); « the chair of Peter and the principal Church, whence the unity of priests arose » (letter 55, p. 86, to the same). Firmilian, though led astray in error about baptism among heretics and angry against the Pontiff, confesses the same connection: « Stephen, through succession, claims to hold the chair of Peter, and glories in the place of his episcopate, and contends that he holds the succession of Peter, upon whom the foundations of the Church have been laid » (letter 75, p. 148, among those of Cyprian). To defend Damasus, the Roman Pontiff, against the anti-pope Ursinus (Ursicinus), the Bishops of the Council of Aquileia write to the emperors: « The Roman Church, the head of the whole Roman world, and that most sacred faith of the Apostles, your clemency should have been asked not to let them be disturbed; for from it the rights of the venerable communion flow forth to all » (among the letters of St. Ambrose, letter 11, n. 4, T. II, p. 811). Hence the same Ambrose praises his brother Satyrus, because, about to be baptized by an unknown bishop, he first asked « whether he agreed with the Catholic bishops, that is, with the Roman Church » (On the death of his brother, T. II, p. 1127). In the same cause against the anti-pope Ursinus, the bishops of the Roman Council of the year 378 write to the emperors. Damasus: « although he is equal in office (in episcopal or order power), yet the prerogative of the apostolic see (of the Apostle Peter) excels » (Hard. I, p. 841). Jerome held the Roman Pontiff Damasus and the chair of Peter and the rock of the Church as one and the same thing, when the matter was the magisterium of doctrine (whether the divine hypostases are to be called one or three) and catholic communion. « I associate myself with your beatitude, that is, with the chair of Peter; I know the Church is built upon that rock; whoever eats the lamb outside this house is profane... whoever does not gather with you scatters; that is, whoever is not Christ's is Antichrist's » (Jerome, to Damasus, letter 14; cf. letter 16). So too St. Chrysologus proclaims Pope Leo as Peter living and presiding in his own see, and therefore warns the heresiarch Eutyches to submit himself to his judgment: « since blessed Peter, who lives and presides in his own see, gives the truth of faith to those who ask it » (among the letters of St. Leo, letter 25, c. 2). The bishops of the province of Arles write to the same St. Leo: « Through the most blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, the most holy Roman Church holds the principate over all the Churches of the whole world » (among the letters of St. Leo, letter 65, c. 2).

III. All that has been demonstrated in this thesis is reduced to this summary.

Christ God himself, by words and deeds recorded in the Gospel, instituted in Peter the supreme and universal power of the rock and head of the Church, to last perpetually; and so he instituted it to be propagated to each of the successors and heirs of Peter. For the words of promise and institution, « upon this rock I will build my Church; I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; confirm your brethren; feed my sheep, » were indeed spoken to Simon; but insofar as he became Peter, destined always to live by reason of the office, the perpetual charge and the power instituted in the same words, and therefore in their whole meaning and efficacy they pertain equally to each of the successors of Peter, who are to succeed one another in a perpetual series.

Therefore the perpetual succession in the supreme power was declared and instituted in the Gospel words no less than the power itself; but the mode of succession is not signified by the words themselves in the individual. Yet it is contained in the very nature of a visible office that is to endure through succession in the visible Church: the mode of succession must be visible, that is, easily knowable and manifest to all; and so far the mode of succession in general can be said to be determined by the divine institution itself. But indeterminate genera do not exist concretely in the nature of things; determinate individuals do. Therefore it pertained, from the very institution of the primacy and of perpetual succession in it, to the divine supernatural providence of Christ the founder toward his Church built upon the rock, that the mode of succession itself, by which this rock perdures perpetually, should be determined as manifest and certain, and so determined in the individual, not fluctuating but constant. Now it is established from the witnesses cited above that this one mode of succession, and no other, has always, everywhere, and by all, been recognized and proclaimed in the Church:

a) That the Roman Bishop succeeds to all the rights of sacred teaching and rule, which were instituted by Christ in Peter as perpetual and to be propagated to each of the successors of Peter; whence, as regards these rights and offices, the individual Roman Bishops are one moral person with Peter. « In Julius the memory of the Apostle Peter is honoured, so that the priests of the Lord refer to the head, that is, to the see of the Apostle Peter; » « the blessed Apostle Peter bears the burdens of all in Siricius; » « Innocent and Theodore are the summit of prelates in the honour of the most blessed Peter; » « what is the authority of Peter, there is a like condition of power in Zosimus; » « the universal care of the Church remains with the blessed Peter in Boniface; » « the most blessed Peter lives and exercises judgment in Celestine; » « to Celestine Christ granted the necessity of dealing with all things in the holy Apostle Peter; » « Peter has spoken through Leo, through Agatho; » « in Leo, Peter has not abandoned the helm of the universal Church; » « the principate received from the Lord's voice, blessed Peter held always, and holds in Gelasius. »

b) This succession into the whole power divinely instituted in Peter is asserted and believed from this very thing, and from this alone, that someone legitimately succeeds in this particular episcopate, which Peter, prince of the Apostles, took to himself as bishop. Namely, Peter, invested by Christ God with primatial, apostolic and ordinary power (that is, supreme, universal, and perpetually remaining in legitimate successors), taking to himself the Roman episcopate or Roman see, by this very act made that see the apostolic, primatial, or Petrine see; which he, dying, left vacant not only negatively, in that no one now sat in it, but with a right and positive exigency, so that another and another, according to the divine ordinance, perpetually succeed in that same ordinary Petrine power. Hence there is not a double succession, one in the Roman episcopate instituted by Peter, another in the primacy instituted by Christ; but since the fact of Peter is posited, who, dying, left his whole power, both primatial and the episcopal power of the City included in it, in his apostolic Roman see, now vacant, that is, requiring a successor to the primacy and to the included episcopate of the City, the succession is now one, not separated but distinct according to a twofold reason. We shall say more about this below. You have the doctrine, confirmed sufficiently above by the universal profession of the Fathers. « When the place of Fabian is vacant, the place of Peter is vacant, and Cornelius succeeds in the place of Peter; » « Siricius, the heir of Peter's administration; » « the Africans knew what is owed to the apostolic see, in which place Innocent is set; » « the successor and locum tenens of Peter, the most blessed Pope Celestine; » « an equal condition of power (taught in the Gospel as conferred on Peter by Christ) is given to those who have merited the inheritance of the see; for he himself has care both of all the Churches and of this, the Roman, most of all, where he sat, on which he established the foundations of his name; » « moreover there is joined not only the apostolic (of the primacy over the universal Church) but also the episcopal (of the Roman Church and see) dignity of Peter, who does not cease to preside over his see; for that solidity which he himself, made a rock, received from the rock Christ, has also poured itself into his heirs; » « the most orderly charity of the whole Church (so that all may be one visibly in the visible head, invisibly in the invisible head Christ), in the see of Peter receives Peter, and from such love of the shepherd (the love in question is formally love of him as furnished by Christ with the right and office of shepherd) does not grow cold even in the person of so unequal an heir; » « to the first see of the most blessed Peter the ancient and venerable reverence is paid... which see, by the sentence of the Lord (in the Gospels), received the principate in the blessed Peter, so that there might be one head, one structure of the body of Christ, one Church; » « whom Christ willed to be one prince of the Apostles, Peter, by a wonderful dispensation he directed to Rome, the mistress of the nations, and there, adorned with the glorious effusion of his blood, rests in an eternal hospice, granting to the see which he himself blessed that it may never be conquered by the gates of hell, according to the Lord's mission (in Peter, who was sent, the see has a mission and a promise from the Lord himself), and may be the safest harbour for all who are tossed about; » « although there are many Apostles, yet for the principate itself the single see of the prince of the Apostles has prevailed in authority » (which see, therefore, is apostolic not only historically, like the sees of other Apostles, for example of James, in that its first bishop was an Apostle, who could not leave the extraordinary prerogatives of the apostolate to his see; but it is the apostolic primatial see, because the primacy, or principate, or more powerful principality, was in Peter an ordinary office, equally valid for his successors). The sum of all is what Hadrian I, embracing the doctrine of the Gospels, of the Councils and of the preceding Fathers, wrote to the seventh Council, and what « the whole most sacred synod, believing thus, thinking thus, defining dogmas thus » accepted: « the prince of the Apostles, blessed Peter himself, who first presided over the apostolic see, left the principate of his apostolate and of pastoral care to his successors, who are to sit perpetually in his most sacred see; to whom he himself also, by divine command, conferred and handed down the power of authority, as to his successors the Pontiffs, just as it was granted to him by our Saviour the Lord God » ¹⁶.

c) On account of this union of succession in the fullness of power divinely instituted in Peter with succession in the particular Church or Roman see, the primacy of the Roman Church itself over the universal Church is celebrated by the Fathers. For since Peter, reserving for himself the episcopate of the particular Roman Church, held it as included in his divine primacy over the universal Church, it is most truly said, by reason and only by reason of this inclusion of the Roman episcopate in the universal divine primacy, that the Roman Church itself holds the primacy over the universal Church. This union of the Roman episcopate with the primacy is therefore the only thing the Fathers teach when they celebrate the primacy of the Roman Church over the universal Church. Given this union, posited by the fact of Peter, whoever succeeds Peter in the Roman Church holding the primacy, by that very fact succeeds in the primacy; and conversely, no one can succeed Peter in the primacy without by that very fact succeeding in the Roman episcopate, which is already included in the primacy.

Because the Roman Church, founded by the Apostles Peter and Paul, has Bishops as successors of Peter in a perpetual series, therefore in it is the more powerful principality: « to this Church, on account of its more powerful principality, every Church (in faith and communion) must necessarily come together, that is, those who are faithful from every side; » « it is the chair of Peter and the principal Church, whence the unity of priests arose; » « the root and mother of the Catholic Church; » « the Roman Church, from which the rights of the venerable communion flow forth to all; » « Peter has the care both of all the Churches and most of all of this one where he had sat, for which he himself established the foundations of his name, firm and dulled by no disturbances, so that the Roman Church may be made firm by human as well as divine laws and by all disciplines; » « it is certain that the Roman Church is, to the Churches spread throughout the whole world, as the head of its members; » « through the most blessed Peter the most holy Roman Church holds the principate over all the Churches of the whole world; » « the holy Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church is preferred to the other Churches by no synodal constitutions, but obtained the primacy by the evangelical voice of our Lord and Saviour. »

Let it therefore stand, as in the thesis we undertook to demonstrate from the doctrine of all Christian antiquity, that the perpetual succession in the primacy which Christ himself instituted was always understood and proclaimed in the Church, in such a way that the Roman see of Peter is already the apostolic primatial see over the universal Church; and therefore legitimate succession in this Roman episcopate, in this see of Peter, is succession in the primacy of Peter divinely instituted.

« 1°. The same truth of the union of the primacy over the universal Church with the Apostolic Roman See is demonstrated from the definitions of the Councils and the professions of faith. 2°. From the doctrine premised it follows that the mode of union is such that, by a distinction of reason, succession in the Roman See is the visible sign of succession in the primacy, while in reality the one Roman See has been raised to the dignity and power of the primatial See over the universal Church. Further, 3°. there follows the theological truth that the primacy is never to be separated from the Roman See and transferred elsewhere, not even by the supreme power of the successor of Peter himself; 4°. and that such a translation can be effected by any other power, whether ecclesiastical or secular, is a doctrine that has been condemned, and it is connected with errors against the divine constitution of the Church itself. »

I. We have so far seen the doctrine, asserted and preached always and everywhere in the Church, of the union of Peter's primacy and of its perpetual inheritance in the Roman See of Peter. For a clearer and more pressing demonstration, and at the same time for a more certain deduction of the solution by which the other question, about the separability of the primacy from the particular Church and Roman See, is cleared up, we shall now consider the formal definitions and professions of faith themselves, insofar as in them the union of the primacy with the Roman Church and the perpetual succession of the Roman Bishops are contained no less in the primacy of Peter than in the episcopate.

a) The definition of the Council of Florence reads thus. « Likewise we define that the holy Apostolic See and the Roman Pontiff hold the primacy over the whole world, and that the Roman Pontiff himself is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and the true Vicar of Christ and head of the whole Church, and father and teacher of all Christians; and that to him, in blessed Peter, was handed down by our Lord Jesus Christ full power of feeding, ruling and governing the universal Church; as is also contained in the acts of the ecumenical Councils and in the sacred canons » (1).

Therefore what has been defined is not only, in general, the right of the Roman Pontiff to the primacy over the whole world, but specifically the right and mode of succession. He who succeeds in the holy Apostolic See of Peter, and is therefore the Roman Pontiff or successor of Peter in the Roman episcopate, by that very fact is successor not only of Peter as bishop but at the same time of Peter as prince of the Apostles, and therefore the true Vicar of Christ and head of the whole Church. For to the Roman bishop himself, that is, to each of those who are legitimate Roman bishops, in blessed Peter, who as the first root represented the whole series of successors (the series, I say, composed, at least for the present order, of all and only the successors in the Apostolic Roman See), full power of feeding, ruling and governing the universal Church was handed down by our Lord Jesus Christ.

The definition of the Council of Vatican is explicit. « The holy and most blessed Peter... up to this time and always lives and presides and exercises judgment in his successors, the Bishops of the holy Roman See founded by him and consecrated by his blood. Wherefore whoever in this¹ chair succeeds Peter, he, according to Christ's own institution, holds the primacy of Peter over the universal Church... If therefore anyone shall say that it is not by the institution of Christ the Lord himself, or by divine right, that blessed Peter has perpetual successors in the primacy over the universal Church; or that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in the same primacy, let him be anathema » (Const. Pastor aeternus, ch. 2).

b) This unity of succession in the particular episcopate of the Roman Church of Peter and in the full power of Peter over the universal Church is no less expressly declared, while the Roman Church itself is defined to have received and to hold the primacy over the Catholic Church namely through its bishop, who is the successor of Peter, prince of the Apostles.

So reads the profession of faith prescribed by Clement IV and Gregory X, and put forward by the Greeks at the Second Council of Lyons, for union with the Catholic Church. « The holy Roman Church itself holds the highest and full primacy and principate over the universal Catholic Church, which it truly and humbly acknowledges to have received from the Lord himself in blessed Peter, prince or head of the Apostles, of whom the Roman Pontiff is the successor, together with the fullness of power. » At the Council of Constance, by Martin V, proposition XLI of Wyclif was condemned: « it is not necessary for salvation to believe that the Roman Church is supreme among the other Churches. » In the form prescribed by Pius IV « for making the profession of orthodox faith according to the arrangement of the Council of Trent, » and in the same words in the other form prescribed by the Holy See for the Greeks, all Catholics pledge: « I acknowledge the holy catholic and apostolic Roman Church as mother and teacher of all Churches, and to the Roman Pontiff, successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ, I promise and swear true obedience. » Finally, in the Council of Vatican (Const. Pastor aeternus, ch. 3) it is defined: « We teach and declare that the Roman Church, by the disposition of the Lord, holds the principate of ordinary power over all other Churches (1), and this² power of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, which is truly episcopal, is immediate, to which all pastors and faithful of whatever rite and dignity, both singly and all together..., are bound. »

From these definitions and professions of faith, the Roman Church itself holds the primacy, the principate of power over all other Churches, over the universal Church, is mother and teacher of all Churches; but all this it has in its bishop, because he is the successor of Peter, prince of the Apostles, that is, successor in that very principate. Hence you see that in the Vatican definition the principate of ordinary power of the Roman Church is said to be nothing other than the jurisdictional power of the Roman Pontiff, and in the Lyons and Tridentine professions that the highest and full primacy of the Roman Church, its motherhood and magisterium of all Churches, are founded on this, that the Roman Pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and therefore Vicar of Jesus Christ. The subject of supreme power is the bishop of the Roman Church alone, who, succeeding Peter, prince of the Apostles, in the episcopate of this Church, by that very fact succeeds him in the principate over the universal Church. On account of this unity of succession according to two distinct reasons, « the holy Roman Church itself truly and humbly acknowledges that it received the highest and full primacy and principate from the Lord himself in blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, of whom the Roman Pontiff is the successor »: namely, through its own Pontiff, successor of the prince of the Apostles, it received the primacy not only by final reason, by which the primacy was instituted for the good both of the whole Church and of the Roman Church, but in some manner formally, insofar as the primacy is united with the Roman episcopate, and thus succession in the primacy is inserted, through the continuous series of its own bishops, into the Roman Church itself. « You ought to know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop » (Cyprian, letter 69, to Florentius Pupianus, p. 123).

II. From all things demonstrated in this and the two preceding theses, it follows how the union of the primacy with the Roman episcopate, or see, or Church, is to be understood.

a) Just as the Church of Jesus Christ was instituted as visible, and thus easily recognizable by certain and constant signs or marks among all the false-named Christian societies as the one and true Church of Christ, so also all the elements that pertain to the visibility of the Church and constitute it as visible must surely be visible. Among these elements the first place is occupied by the visible head itself, the visible foundation instituted by Christ, Peter from the rock, in perpetual succession; therefore, in the very institution of the visible Head of the Church, which was to remain perpetually and by continuous succession, is contained that the succession itself must be visible, that is, easily recognizable by a certain, constant and manifest sign. But from the glorious death of Peter onward, through all the ages of the Church, succession in the Roman See of Peter has always and by all been held and believed as the certain, constant and manifest sign of succession in the primacy of Peter; which he himself, dying, left vacant, as St. Cyprian said, that is, to be held by his successors in order, in all their rights. Therefore, just as the visible sacrament is valid for the perpetual succession of the visible episcopate and priesthood by the prior divine institution, so for the perpetual succession in the visible primacy the visible sign of succession in the Roman See of Peter avails, by a divine ratification at least subsequent upon the fact of Peter. « Blessed Peter, who presided first over the Apostolic See, left the principate of his apostolate to his successors, who are to sit perpetually in his most holy See, to whom also he himself gave and handed down the power of authority, just as it was granted to him by our Saviour the Lord God, to his successors the Pontiffs by divine command. » In this explanation, drawn from all the ecclesiastical documents cited above, we have distinguished theologians in agreement. « Just as from the reasoning, institution, and end of the Church we have shown it to be necessary that she be visible in the individual and in the particular, says Suárez, so from the institution and end of the office of the Vicar of Christ it is necessary that he be visible to the Church in particular, in a determined see and succession. » Suárez against the English King, bk. III, ch. 13. « The primacy of Peter, that is the universal pontificate or governance of the whole Church, had to be attached to some certain see. For although this primacy by itself (that is, a priori and by its own intrinsic nature) did not demand any particular episcopal see to which it would be attached, yet the fixed succession in this primacy required it (which was itself divinely instituted together with the primacy to endure perpetually), which could and ought to persist for the good of the Church and be easily arranged... Hence Peter necessarily chose some particular episcopate to which the person of the primacy would be attached. He was indeed the founder and ruler of the see of Antioch for some years; but when he thence passed to Rome, he transferred the primacy, undivided from his person, to this place, and retaining the Roman episcopate until death, he transmitted the primacy to his successors in the same see. » Laurent. Veith, On the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff, Position VIII, §18; Pet. Ballerini, On the power and nature of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, vol. I, ch. 1, n. 2; the Würzburg Theologians, vol. I, On the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff, §170, n. III; Franc. Ant. Zaccaria, On the primacy of St. Peter, ch. 5, n. 7.

b) Further, from those documents especially in which the principate of the Roman Church itself, or of the Apostolic Roman See, is taught, it follows not only that there is a union between the primacy and the Roman episcopate, as between two separate things joined in some third thing, but that there is already one Roman See of the principate over the universal Church, which principate contains within itself the Roman episcopate, as the particular is contained in the universal. Indeed, two sees of Peter are not to be distinguished, of which one would be understood as the supreme pastoral power over the universal Church, instituted by Christ and given to Peter, and another would be the see of the particular Roman Church instituted by Peter, separate from the former, subsisting in itself and joined only by reason of one person who administers both. Rather, since Peter, already instituted by Christ as pastor of the whole Church, not only for himself but for each of his successors in the perpetual series, chose and established this Roman Church as his episcopal see, and so made it the Apostolic Petrine See, by this very fact one Roman See has been constituted, and at Peter's death it was consecrated, by perpetual hereditary right³ as the primatial See, in the dignity and power of the principate over the universal Church instituted by Christ. I shall say this same thing in the words of Bellarmine. « It is to be observed, he says, that the Roman episcopate and the prefecture of the universal Church are not two episcopates nor two sees, except potentially. For Peter, the Pontiff of the whole Church instituted by Christ, did not join to himself the episcopate of the city of Rome, as a bishop of some place joins to himself another episcopate or canonry or abbey; but he raised⁴ the episcopate of the city of Rome to the supreme pontificate of the world, just as when a simple episcopate is raised to an archbishopric or patriarchate. For an archbishop or patriarch is not twice or thrice a bishop, but only once... and the supreme Pontiff, even though he be bishop, archbishop, patriarch and supreme Pontiff, all these things are one in act, and many only in potency. From which it follows that whoever is elected Roman bishop is by that very fact the supreme Pontiff of the whole Church, even if perhaps the electors do not express it » (Bellarmine, On the Roman Pontiff, bk. II, ch. 12). What the great theologian says about « many in potency and unity in act » is to be rightly understood. For it was not necessary, from the nature of the thing and as it were a priori, that Peter should make for himself, as shepherd of the whole Church, this determinate Roman See; so, speaking absolutely, a Roman episcopate subsisting by itself could have been instituted without that elevation to the supreme pontificate of the world. But once the fact is posited, the inferior particular power of the Roman episcopate is already included in one supreme and universal power. Nor were the metropolitan rights over the Roman ecclesiastical province, and the patriarchal rights over the patriarchate of the West, any less already contained in the supreme universal power, when the Pontiffs specially reserved them to themselves⁵, with exclusion of others, or rather by not granting these rights to any other metropolitan or patriarch. For, as we have already seen above, such metropolitan sees or patriarchates derive not from divine but only from ecclesiastical institution, by the direct or indirect concession of the Roman See of Peter, and can subsist only in communion and dependence upon it. Moreover, just as the Pontiff does not always act with the whole intensity of his supreme power, so he can also exercise more restricted acts of episcopal, archiepiscopal or patriarchal jurisdiction, within the limits specially reserved and designated for these rights. In this way those things which Bellarmine recalled are understood as « many in potency, » both in exercise and a posteriori, and a priori through the exclusion of absolute necessity; and they are « all one in act » in the supreme universal power instituted by divine right.

III. From all that has been discussed, someone may perhaps conclude that the union of the primacy with the Roman episcopate already exists in such a way that it is a dogma of Catholic faith that the separation and transfer of the primacy to another See cannot be effected even by the supreme power of the Roman Pontiff himself.

1°. These three things are without doubt of Catholic faith: α) that Christ instituted in Peter the power of primacy over the universal Church; β) that he instituted this primacy to remain perpetually as the visible foundation and rock placed by Christ the principal rock, and therefore belonging to the divine constitution of the Church itself, for as long as this Church, indefectible, shall stand until the consummation of the age; and consequently that together with the primacy was instituted a perpetual succession in it, so that always (in a morally continuous series) one visible and recognizable successor of Peter should be in the visible Church; γ) that these successors in the primacy are the Roman Pontiffs, to whom alone the legitimate succession of Peter actually pertains, and always has pertained. See above the definition of the Council of Vatican.

That the first and second dogmas are contained in the very words of the promise and institution made by Christ to Peter, as they have always been understood in the Church of God everywhere, and that from them, without assuming any proposition not revealed, they can be deduced by simple analysis, you have seen demonstrated in the preceding theses. The third is nothing but the concrete expression and application of each preceding dogma. The words of Christ God, by which he promised and instituted the primacy and perpetual succession in it by continuous series (You are Peter... I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven... Strengthen your brethren, feed my sheep), do not express only an abstract truth, nor regard indeterminate persons; they were spoken concretely and directly to the person of Peter and to each of his successors in the whole series. They are not merely theoretical and speculative words, but practical words, effecting what they signify in Peter and in his successors, whom Christ, keeping each one in mind, was addressing. Now, either these successors in the primacy of Peter are none, and the words of eternal truth would not now be true; or they always were, and in the present order are, the only successors of Peter in the Apostolic Roman See. For by the constant fact, evident through the most universal tradition, those alone were always practically acknowledged and are acknowledged, and theoretically proclaimed and are proclaimed, by the very fact that they succeed Peter in the Roman See, as successors in the primacy, which Christ, by efficacious divine words, instituted in Peter together with perpetual succession. Therefore the words of Christ, at least for the present order, implicitly comprehend and announce as successors in the divinely instituted primacy all and only the Roman Pontiffs; and that truth is explicitly applied and proposed as credible and to be believed by an evident fact from the most universal tradition. Therefore, by Catholic faith, the divinely instituted primacy and its perpetual conservation, and the succession of individuals in it, must be believed; and no less must the succession of Roman Pontiffs in the same be believed, at least for the present order. « So that it may be certain to the Church, says Suárez, that in such a See the institution made by Christ and revealed in Scripture has been and is still being fulfilled, it is enough that the application, so to speak, of that institution and dignity to such an episcopate be sufficiently proposed to the same Church through evident tradition and continuous and most notorious use... Just as therefore the visible Church is believed to be the Church (the true Church of Jesus Christ) not only by human faith but also by divine faith, because the sensible signs by which it is seen are not the reason for believing, but propose it as evidently credible that she is the true Church which God revealed would always be in the world; so it must be believed not only by human but also by divine faith that the Roman Pontiff is the visible head of this Church in the place of Christ, because those signs by which we show this head make it evidently credible that he is the one whom Christ, by virtue of his institution, constituted as his Vicar. In this way we say that the assertion laid down is of faith, and is sufficiently contained in Scripture, with the addition of the tradition of the Church » (Suárez, against the English King, bk. III, ch. 13). Indeed this very dogma of the succession of Roman Pontiffs in the primacy divinely conferred on Peter, for himself and his successors, has been expressly declared and defined in the decrees and professions of faith described above in this thesis (n. I). Now then, after what we have just said, notice please that in the Florentine definition the last clause serves not only to confirm the fullness of power instituted by Christ in the primacy, but also contains the mode by which the revealed doctrine of succession in the primacy is applied and shown to refer to the Roman Pontiffs. « We define... that the Roman Pontiff himself is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles... and that to him, in blessed Peter, full power of feeding, ruling and governing the universal Church was handed down by our Lord Jesus Christ; as is also contained in the acts of the ecumenical Councils and in the sacred canons. » For it is contained in these acts and canons, or in the universal tradition, both the declaration of right concerning the fullness of power and the showing of the fact of succession, by which the right is shown to pertain, and to be applied, to the Pontiffs of the Roman Church alone.

2°. Now, if these things are so, must not also the fourth dogma we mentioned be believed simply as of faith: that the union of the primacy with the see and Church of Rome is so absolute and already belongs to the very unchangeable constitution of the Church, that the primacy cannot be separated and transferred elsewhere, not even by the supreme power of the Roman Pontiff himself? We reply that this dogma has not so far at least been defined as of faith; yet it is a theological truth, which is legitimately deduced from the manner in which the dogma itself of the primacy of the Roman Pontiffs, or of the Roman Church, is enunciated in ecclesiastical documents.

a) The first part of this proposition is granted by those very weighty theologians who vigorously defend against Dominic Soto the inseparability of the primacy from the Roman See; but when the question concerns separation by the supreme authority of the Church, which resides in Peter's successor himself, they use milder modes of speaking. Of the supreme power of the Roman Pontiff himself, I say, I understand both Soto, who (4 dist. 24 q. 2 a. 5) defends that separation can be effected by the authority of the Church, and those other theologians who impugn Soto's opinion; for if the question were about inferior ecclesiastical power, I think Soto would not have defended that view, and his opponents would have used a severer censure.

Gregory of Valencia, against Soto's arguments, kept within the following disapproval: « although⁶ these things can be subtly disputed in favour of Soto's opinion, it certainly seems to me that that opinion, in a matter so grave, is too singular, and indeed not sufficiently safe » (Analysis of the faith, bk. VII, ch. 12). Suárez sets the question aside, in the sense we have stated, as a hypothesis: « Whatever be the case with that question which is disputed by theologians, whether the Supreme Pontiff can separate the primacy from the Roman See, and either place it in another episcopate or leave it separated from every particular episcopate, I think it certain that, while no Supreme Pontiff has done this, the universal Church cannot, the Papacy being vacant, accomplish it; because an inferior power cannot change what has been constituted by a superior; and because, just as the primacy was given to Peter alone, for himself and his successors, so it pertains to him alone, or to the Supreme Pontiff, to determine the Pontifical See (in the hypothesis which Suárez permits, that the determination has not yet been made irrevocably), and to prescribe the mode of its election and succession » (bk. III, ch. 19, against the English King). Bellarmine speaks more cautiously and clearly: « The privilege of Peter is attached to the city of Rome, as long as Peter's successors keep their See at Rome. For if by divine command the See were transferred elsewhere, the Roman bishops would no longer be bishops of the whole Church; if, I say, the See itself were transferred, so that those who are now Roman Pontiffs should be called bishops of some other place; for the mere absence of the Pontiffs from the City is not said to transfer the See. And these things are said on the hypothesis; for we do not believe it will ever happen that the See be transferred elsewhere » (bk. II, ch. 12, On the Roman Pontiff). Concerning the supreme power of the Church that is in the Supreme Pontiff himself, the more temperate mode of speaking is also to be understood, which Benedict XIV expressly uses, appealing to Gregory of Valencia, Suárez and Bellarmine: « although it can in some sense be said that the supreme monarchy of the Church is annexed to the Roman See by human right alone, because indeed the union, connection and binding of the two arose from the fact of Peter, nevertheless the opinion of those who asserted that the said connection is by human right to such an extent that it can be dissolved by the Church (namely by the supreme power of the Pontiff in the Church), and one separated from the other, does not seem to be able to be sustained » (bk. II, ch. 1, n. 1, On the Diocesan Synod). See also Peter Ballerini, Vindications against Febronius, ch. 8, §2; Laurentius Veith, On the Roman Pontiff, sect. I, §19.⁷

b) The other part of our proposition, that the primacy must never, not even by any supreme power, be separated from the See and Church of Peter at Rome, has so manifest a foundation in the definitions and professions of faith described in this thesis, and in the doctrine of the Pontiffs and other Fathers proposed in the preceding thesis, that it is rather necessary to warn that this truth is not held by theologians as certain of faith, than that it could be doubted to be a theological truth supported by very weighty arguments and documents.

α) Surely in that hypothesis the universal and constant reasoning and teaching of the whole Church of all ages would have to be changed. The whole ecclesiastical tradition, which shines most brightly not only in decrees of legislation through the power and key of jurisdiction, but in definitions and professions of faith through the infallible magisterium and the key of doctrine, would not be immutably true for every age, but only hypothetically, as long as the very foundation and object of the definition and profession of faith, which is supposed mutable, remains unchanged. But all that tradition, all those definitions and professions of faith, state the truth absolutely, and in them there is no trace of that merely hypothetical truth and mutability of the object. They therefore state an immutable truth; nor is a value and meaning merely hypothetical, and a mutability of the object, drawn from those most sacred documents, but it is attributed to them without solid reason, which is surely impious.

Let us suppose the primacy translated from the Roman See of Peter and already joined to another See, Naples, Paris, or Cologne. Then for that supposed future age it will no longer be true what has been defined, and what until that time had to be believed by all by Catholic faith: « that the Roman Pontiff himself is (not only was at some time) the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles and head of the whole Church »; and therefore at that time it will not be anathema, « whoever says that the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in the primacy »; nor will it any longer have to be professed, « that the Roman Church, by the disposition of the Lord, holds (not only has held, but without limitation of time) the principate of ordinary power over all others, » and that this is nothing other than « the jurisdictional power of the Roman Pontiff, to which pastors and faithful, both singly and all together, are bound. » What was to be believed until then in the Lyons and Tridentine professions will have to be changed: « the holy Roman Church itself holds the highest and full primacy over the universal Church; » « I acknowledge the Roman Church as mother and teacher of all Churches, and to the Roman Pontiff, successor of blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ, I promise and swear true obedience. » In sum, the true Church of Jesus Christ will no longer be the Catholic Roman Church, but the Catholic Neapolitan or Parisian Church. The absurdity of these consequences, intolerable to Catholic ears, which nevertheless are all necessarily contained in that supposition of a transferred See, demonstrates the immutability of the object which is proposed in the definitions and professions of faith to be believed.

This same clear doctrine of the definitions and professions of faith is also evidently contained in the whole ecclesiastical tradition, from which therefore arises the same unavoidable argument for the immutable firmness by which the Roman See of Peter always is and remains the Apostolic Petrine See, namely heir of all the right and power instituted by Christ in Peter, as we demonstrated in the preceding thesis XI. Hence the things demonstrated there are to be recalled, and there is no need to repeat them here; but I would like you to notice that from those documents the immutable firmness of the principate in the Roman See of Peter is not only deduced by inference but also proclaimed in express words. The bishop of the Roman Church, Celestine, at the Council of Ephesus is called « successor according to the order and locum tenens of Peter, prince and head of the Apostles »; it is therefore of Peter's succession in the Roman Church, and of no other, that what is there said of Peter's successors, as known to all ages, is said or can be understood: « It is doubtful to no one, nay it is known to all ages, that the holy and most blessed Peter... up to this time and always lives and exercises judgment in his successors »; which were repeated and cited in this sense also by the Council of Vatican (ch. 2). The power of binding and loosing, which canonical antiquity recognized in Peter from the promise of Christ, Zosimus not only claims for himself, but declares it to be the power of all the heirs of Peter's Roman See, always the same, because he himself has the greatest care of this his Church and has established for it the foundations of his name, so that just as for the perpetuity of the universal Church the gates of hell shall never prevail against it, so for the perpetuity of the privilege of the Roman Church Peter is in his successors: « The same condition of power is given to those who, with him (Peter) assenting, had merited the inheritance of the see; for he himself has care both of all Churches and especially of this one, where he had sat; nor does he suffer anything of its privilege to waver by any breath of opinion (in that Church where he had sat), for which he himself established the foundations of his name, firm and weakened by no disturbances, and which no one rashly attacks without peril to himself... so that the Roman Church may be strengthened as much by human as by divine laws and all disciplines. » The doctrine of St. Leo is the same, concerning the indefectible fellowship of Peter with the eternal priest, both in the Apostolic and in the episcopal dignity in his see, because the solidity of the rock, derived from Christ the rock, remains in Peter's heirs: « there is joined, moreover, not only the Apostolic but also the episcopal dignity of most blessed Peter, who does not cease to preside over his see, and obtains an indefectible fellowship with the eternal priest; for that solidity which he, himself also made a rock, received from Christ the rock, has poured itself into his heirs as well. » Gelasius repeats the same doctrine of the eternal solidity of the Roman See, that by the gates of hell this very see may never be conquered: Christ directed Peter « by a wonderful dispensation to Rome, mistress of the nations... and there, adorned with the glorious effusion of his blood, he rests in an eternal hospice, granting to the see which he blessed that it may never be conquered by the gates of hell, according to the Lord's mission. » In a letter read and acclaimed at the Seventh Council, Pope Hadrian I professes: « the blessed Peter himself, prince of the Apostles, who first presided over the Apostolic See, left the principate of his apostolate and of pastoral care to his successors, who are to sit perpetually in his most holy See... and the power of authority to his... handed down by divine command to his successors the Pontiffs. »

β) The falsity of the supposition we are attacking appears from another consideration, on the constitution of the Church and on the visible foundation of the Apostolic Roman See. In that hypothesis of a primacy separated from the Church and the Roman See, either this Church and Apostolic See is said to remain still as an episcopal See, now stripped of the rights of the primacy, or it is supposed to have perished entirely.

If the Roman episcopal See still remains, it can in no way happen that it is not an Apostolic See: not only in that historical sense, that the episcopate of this particular Church was founded by an Apostle (as were many other sees founded by Peter, Paul, John and the other Apostles), but an Apostolic Petrine See, that is, raised to be a primatial See over the whole Church by Peter, as he had been equipped by Christ, for himself and for the whole series of his successors in order (κατὰ τάξιν), with the rights and offices of the primacy. For, as we have seen above, there are not two sees, one of the primacy and another of the Roman episcopate; but the one Roman Apostolic See itself was made primatial by Peter, for himself and his successors in order, in the same See; which he, dying, left vacant with all its divinely instituted rights, that is, to be occupied by the legitimate successors in this one Roman See. Hence we have seen that succession in the Roman episcopal See has always and everywhere been held and acknowledged by all, without any controversy, as identical with succession in the primacy over the whole Church, or (with the distinction made according to a twofold reason) as the authentic visible sign of succession in the primacy: whoever succeeds Peter in the Roman episcopate, or in one Roman chair or See, by that very fact and by that alone is, and always has been, theoretically proclaimed and practically regarded as, heir of Peter, prince of the Apostles. As long, therefore, as the Roman See remains, whoever succeeds in it is successor and heir of Peter in the primacy; nor can the right of inheritance be understood in another See, which is not and cannot be made Apostolic Petrine. It is true of any other See, and much more true in comparison with the Roman See, what St. Leo said of the Church of Constantinople in comparison with Alexandria and Antioch: « nor, beside that rock which the Lord placed as the foundation,⁸ will any stable structure be... Let not (Anatolius) disdain the royal city, which he cannot make an Apostolic See » (ep. 104, ch. 3).

The other supposition, that this Roman Church would wholly perish or its See be abolished, is excluded by the constant tradition on the meaning and effect of the promises of Christ. Let the preceding testimonies be re-read, or even those alone which we have adduced in this number, on the firm foundations of Peter's Church; on the indefectible priesthood of Peter in it; on the blessing of Peter upon his see, that it may never be conquered by the gates of hell; on the perpetual session of Peter's successors in the same See. For the confirmation and illustration of these, it should be noted that to the visible mark of the apostolicity of the Church of Jesus Christ it also belongs that there always be in it some See manifestly apostolic, whose series of bishops, never interrupted, indubitably reaches back to the Apostle founder. Indeed, in order that this mark of Apostolicity remain constant and certain for all times, and immutably safe from all danger, it is necessary that this apostolic See not only has never historically failed, but that it be dogmatically established that it cannot fail. « Let them therefore (the heretics) produce the origins of their Churches, unroll the order of their bishops, so running down from the beginning by successions, that the first bishop had as author and predecessor some one of the Apostles or apostolic men who yet persevered with the Apostles. For in this way the apostolic Churches bring forward their registers: as the Church of the Smyrnaeans, having Polycarp placed there by John, relates; as the Church of the Romans publishes Clement ordained by Peter; and so the others likewise exhibit those whom, appointed to the episcopate by the Apostles, they have as transmitters of the apostolic seed... These, though they produce no Apostle or apostolic man as their author, as being much later and finally established every day, yet agreeing in the same faith with the Apostolic Churches, are deemed no less apostolic on account of the kinship of doctrine » (Tertullian, Prescriptions against heretics, ch. 32).

Now indeed, such an Apostolic Church, which manifestly and without interruption exhibits the succession of bishops descending from the Apostle, while also preserving the kinship of doctrine, there is now none apart from the Roman Church of Peter; and all the more is she alone the one to whom the Fathers and Councils, as we have seen, ascribe that solidity, so that she can by no means fail, « according to Christ's mission », and is able to restore other sees, if they have failed, as the patrician Bahanes argued at the Eighth Council. « God has placed his Church in five patriarchates, and has defined in his Gospels that they never at any time fall utterly, because they are the heads of the Church. For what is said, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, announces this: when two fall, they run (the pastors and the flocks of the faithful) to the three; when three fall, they run to two; but when perhaps four fall, the one which remains in the head of all, Christ our God, calls back the rest of the body of the Church again » (Hard. T. V, p. 880). The different mode and the different right by which the five patriarchates or sees are the heads of the Church, and the gospel text brought in for proof, clearly show that this one, or this one See, which Bahanes shows by this twofold argument to be indefectible, can be none other than the See and Church of Rome of Peter. Hence also we have seen above how the Fathers Irenaeus, Optatus, Augustine, Epiphanius and others adduce, as a « compendium of proof » for the truth of the Catholic Church in the profession of faith, and for unity in the communion of charity, the perpetual uninterrupted succession of Roman bishops descending from the prince of the Apostles, Peter. That succession, in the Church of « a more powerful principality, » in the « principal Church, » « with which it is necessary that every Church agree », not only has not failed up to the times of the Fathers; but, on account of the very purpose for which that more powerful principality of Peter's Church was instituted, namely to exhibit visibly the perpetuity of the one and true Church of Jesus Christ, and so to serve as the visible mark of apostolicity, it can at no time fail. Whence also Optatus says that « the first of the gifts » of the Catholic Church is « the one chair, which Peter first sat in. »

I think it has been sufficiently demonstrated what we proposed: namely, that it is a certain theological truth, grounded in the principles and documents of faith, that the primacy is never to be separated from the Church and See of Peter at Rome, not even by the supreme power of Peter's successors.

γ) Some difficulty remains, not as to the truth itself considered in the concrete, in the manner in which we have stated and demonstrated it, but as to the power of separation in the Supreme Pontiff considered absolutely and abstractly, in the manner in which certain theologians consider the divine omnipotence itself, absolutely and abstracting from the other attributes of wisdom, justice and goodness, by which they say God can do many things which, in ordained power (as they themselves put it), that is, with all the divine attributes considered together, he cannot. The difficulty we have mentioned is this. Peter could separate, and in fact did separate, the primacy from his former Antiochene see by transferring it to the Roman See adopted by him afterwards; and no reason appears why he, while living, could not also have transferred it from this Roman See to another. But in the successor of Peter there is altogether the same ordinary power that was in Peter himself, except indeed the extraordinary charisms, not to be passed on to heirs. Therefore, just as Peter could, so the successor of Peter can transfer the primacy to another See. Indeed, whoever denies this, while he seems to exalt the privileges of the See, sets against the power of the one sitting in it a limit contrary to right. The response and explanation of the difficulty is contained in the following. 1°. If what the holy Pontiffs Leo, Gelasius, Gregory, Hadrian and other Fathers preach, namely that Peter, by divine pre-ordinations, had gone before, in the Roman citadel, to the honour of power⁹; that by Christ himself he had been directed by a wonderful dispensation to Rome, mistress of the nations; that the Roman See of Peter, by God's authority, is set above all Churches; that Peter had handed on to his successors in the Roman See, by divine command, the power which he himself had received from Christ; if, I say, all this were understood of a divinely revealed command, and so of the union of the Roman See with the primacy by divine right, which the Apostle Peter had consigned to the Church as a Catholic revelation, at least in practice and by the fact itself: then that perpetual union would itself be of Catholic faith, and it is manifest that, this being supposed, it could not have been and cannot be dissolved by Peter himself or by his successors. But such a truth of Catholic faith we do not, from what has been conceded, assert; nor therefore do we assert a revealed command and properly speaking divine right. Nevertheless, since it is a question of the Apostle and of the prince of the Apostles, and of an institution concerning the whole Church, indeed of an institution intimately connected with the very visible foundation of the Church, which was placed by Christ in Peter and in Peter's succession; from this very nature of things it follows, and is taught also by all the testimonies of the Councils, Pontiffs and Fathers cited, that at least by special supernatural assistance and direction Peter united the primacy with this his Roman See and left the primacy united to his successors in the same¹⁰. 2°. Constituted under this « wonderful dispensation » of God, neither could Peter himself have separated the primacy from his Roman See, not indeed for lack of power considered in itself and absolutely, but by the privilege of apostolic indefectibility in following divine direction, especially as regards such great institutions concerning the whole Church and its very visible foundation, although these be supposed not immediately divine but only of apostolic right. But for the successors of Peter, whatever be the case with power considered in itself and abstractly, the union, considered in the concrete with all its circumstances, made not in transition but in consummation by Peter, as St. Innocent says, and the succession in the primacy constituted by succession itself in the Roman See, must be deemed far more immutable by right. Let the documents cited above be recalled, from which it has been proved that the whole mode of thinking and teaching about the succession of Peter, about the Church and the Apostolic See of Peter, expressed in the definitions and professions of Catholic faith and in the universal tradition of all ages, would in the hypothesis under discussion be changed and turned aside. What greater and, to put it most mildly, more perilous disturbance in the Church of God can be imagined, I do not know. Therefore that translation of the primacy, and that change of the visible sign for succession in the inheritance of Peter, can never, whatever conditions of things and times be supposed, be for the building up of the body of Christ, but would always be to its perpetual and universal detriment. But « the fullness of power is to be able to do all things for the building up of the body of Christ, » and that power is bound by divine norms. And that it may always in act itself be governed by these norms, indefectible divine assistance is promised to the successor of Peter, not only for infallibility in defining matters of faith and morals, but also for the universal¹¹ governance of the Church, insofar as the very preservation of faith and morals depends on it. Therefore the very fidelity of God in his promises makes us secure that never, not even by the supreme power of the successors of Peter, is the union of the primacy with the Apostolic See and Roman Church of Peter to be dissolved.

In the argument, therefore, as it is put forward, both the major and the minor premise must be granted, insofar as in it the power of Peter and of his successors is considered in itself and abstractly. But insofar as it is considered under the indefectible direction and assistance of God, together with all the modes and conditions by which the union of the primacy with the Apostolic Roman See of Peter has been made, and always understood and proclaimed, it must be denied that it could have happened, or could ever happen, that this same union was dissolved by Peter himself or is dissolved by his successors.

Another difficulty was raised by an anonymous writer, against whom Francesco Antonio Zaccaria published a dissertation « on the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. » If the divine prerogative of the primacy, he said, is bound in the successor of Peter to the place where this Apostle died, « what will become of that primacy, when Rome, by the prophecies of the prophets and of John, will remain sunk in perpetual abyss? » Indeed Catholic interpreters too deduce from Apocalypse XVII–XVIII that the defection of the city of Rome from the Christian religion will come in the last times, and finally its ruin¹².

The response, insofar as it is required for such uncertain interpretations and suspicions, is this. 1°. It is certain that in those chapters of the Apocalypse, in the literal and immediate sense, the destruction is foretold of the idolatry that persecutes the saints in the Roman empire and of its centre, that great Babylon; but what is read into the text, in a supposedly fuller and higher sense, about the destruction of the city, and much more about its defection, for the future last times, is uncertain. 2°. One must distinguish between the city of Rome considered materially and politically (that is, in its institutions and political men) and the Roman Church. This does not consist of walls and buildings and political institutions, but is « the people of the faithful gathered around the bishop. » The Church, indeed, which in its bishop through the continuous succession of the Roman Pontiffs from Peter, and in its clergy and faithful people from the Apostolic Church founded by Peter, runs on, remains the Roman Church, even if the overthrow of the city of Rome were supposed. Since it has been demonstrated that the successors of Peter in the primacy will always be Roman bishops, by the same reason and in the same sense of morally continuous succession connected with the Church first founded by Peter, it will always be deemed the Roman Church, « the Church in the bishop. » Indeed moral perpetuity of persons, not physical perpetuity of place, is required. Indeed, even if the overthrow of the Roman Church gathered and united, as distinguished from its bishop, were supposed, and there remained only the condition of the Church to be gathered, as it was when the first Roman bishop « entered that forest of roaring beasts and the most turbulent ocean of the deep » (St. Leo, sermon 82, ch. 4), the Roman bishops would nevertheless not cease to be successors of Peter, both in the universal Apostolic and in the particular episcopal dignity (cf. above cited St. Leo, sermon 5, ch. 4). F. A. Zaccaria, loc. cit., ch. 5, n. 6, expressed this order of succession in the primacy and in the Roman episcopate thus: « The primacy of Peter is bound to the place in which this Apostle died only in this sense: that those alone who can be called Roman Pontiffs ought to be regarded as his successors; but the succession of the Roman Pontiffs does not depend on the place where they reside, but on the place where they first sat, to whom they have succeeded in an uninterrupted series. Hence if Rome were overthrown, they would migrate elsewhere, yet they would be Roman Pontiffs, as belonging to the order of the Roman Pontiffs who preceded them »¹³ IV. Much graver is the error which in the Syllabus, Proposition XXXV, was proscribed by the Holy See. But that the poison of that proposition may be more fully understood, it is useful to premise a few things about the principles and doctrines of the Innovators, to which that thesis of John Nepomucene Nuytz is intimately connected.

Already a century ago, when a fierce war against the Apostolic See had begun to be waged almost everywhere, both by atrocious deeds and by impious writings, Febronius (Nicolaus von Hontheim), in his book « on the state of the Church and the lawful power of the Roman Pontiff, » which was proscribed not only by the Sacred Congregation of the Index but also by several letters given to the bishops of Germany by Clement XIII, asserted among other heretical and schismatic errors that « by the authority of the Church the primacy can be transferred to another bishop, e.g. of Milan, of Paris » (ch. 2, §3). By the authority of the Church, however, he understands an authority distinct and separated from that of the successor of Peter, the Roman Pontiff. This doctrine rests on a heretical principle which, after Alphonsus Tostatus, was introduced by Edmund Richer and the Jansenists, and was, no less than for Febronius, a foundation for assailing the ecclesiastical monarchy and the supreme authority of jurisdiction and magisterium of the Apostolic See over the whole Church. The keys of ecclesiastical power, they said, were given by Christ not immediately to Peter, and through Peter to the Apostles, for themselves and their successors, but were given to the universality of the faithful; and from this universality they were committed to the sacerdotal body of bishops and presbyters, and finally to individual bishops, and among these first to the Roman Pontiff among the bishops. So the power always remains radically and essentially in the universality of the faithful, while in the bishops and in the Roman Pontiff it is only instrumental and ministerial for execution, so that they carry out the acts of power dependently on the body of the faithful, and as ministers, to whom the power has been derived from that same body of the faithful. Richer (On ecclesiastical and political power, ch. 1) lays down this principle: « Christ, in founding the Church, first and more immediately and more essentially gave the keys, or jurisdiction, to the whole Church than to Peter; or, what comes to the same thing, he conferred the keys on the whole Church, so that they would be exercised ministerially through one; since all ecclesiastical jurisdiction belongs primarily, properly and essentially to the Church, but to the Roman Pontiff and the other bishops only ministerially and as to execution. » See Petavius, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, bk. III, chs. 14–16.¹⁴ With these is connected the doctrine of Quesnel and of those Jansenists who defended it in their Hexaples (cf. Mamachi, Origins and Antiquities of the Christian Church, vol. V, p. 257). For proposition XC among those condemned in the bull Unigenitus is this: « The Church has the authority of excommunicating, so that she may exercise it through the first pastors, with the consent at least presumed of the whole body. » The principle of Febronius is exactly the same as the Richerian, and even more clearly expressed: « The Church itself principally and radically holds the power of the keys, which is derived from her into all her ministers and the Supreme Pontiff himself, and is communicated to each and all according to their portion... The keys were given by Christ to the whole Church, collectively taken, so that the right of them is exercised by prelates and chief pastors according to the good pleasure and destination of the same Church. » Febronius, loc. cit., ch. 1, §11; ch. 2, §4. See F. A. Zaccaria, Antifebronius, vol. I, Introduction, ch. 4; Antifebronius vindicated, Dissertation I, ch. 2.

From these principles it is manifest that the power of the primacy and of the whole ecclesiastical order, as it was instituted by Christ in Peter and the Apostles, is utterly subverted. Nor does Peter, or Peter's successor, preside as the shepherd of the sheep of Christ; he is rather subject to the sheep to be fed by them, and is subject to the Church and to the Council, which they say represents the Church¹⁵, insofar as it has power derived from the Church itself; and that not in union, since neither is it in subordination under the Roman Pontiff, but in distinction and opposition to the Pontiff¹⁶. Dupin (On ancient ecclesiastical discipline, dissertation VI, §1) laid down these as the necessary consequences of those principles: « Therefore the Supreme Pontiff does not have power over the universal Church, although he has it in the universal Church; but on the contrary the Church has power over the Pontiff; and just as on death another is substituted, so she can correct and depose him; not indeed herself by herself, for it is not possible for the whole society of the Church to assemble or judge, but through a general Council, which, since it represents the universal Church, has the whole power of the universal Church united in itself, especially since it has the assent of the universal Church. »¹⁷

At the beginning of this section I said that the doctrine of Febronius on the transfer of the primacy from the Roman See to another episcopate rests on these very heretical principles; hence it comes about that the words in which that proposition itself is stated by Febronius carry an erroneous sense, insofar as he says that « by human authority the primacy was entrusted to the Roman Pontiff. » For it is a dogma of faith, demonstrated above, that by the institution and authority of Christ, and by divine right, the primacy was and is entrusted both to Peter and to each of his successors, the Roman Pontiffs. But when by these sectarians all power of the keys is said to be committed by Christ immediately to the universality of the faithful, so that from this universality it is finally derived to be exercised instrumentally and ministerially by the Roman Pontiff and the bishops, the subject of power by divine institution will be the whole body of the faithful; and hence they could further infer that by human authority (namely of the body of the faithful) the primacy was entrusted to the Roman Pontiff. « Since therefore (the words of Febronius, ch. 2, §3) it remains firm that, as regards the person and place of the successor in the primacy, nothing was provided and established by God, it remains that with the Church, to which, as has been said, the power of the keys and all ecclesiastical authority was handed over, there has stood and still endures the right to determine by whom she wishes one or the other part of the keys to be administered, and so by whom the first office in the Church, and by whom the lower duties, are to be performed in conformity with the institution of Christ. Hence (it remains firm) that, just as by reasons of fitness the sacred primacy was entrusted by human authority to the bishop of the city of Rome, so also by rational motives it can be transferred by the authority of the Church (which he had called shortly before human authority) to another bishop, e.g. of Milan, of Paris, etc. »¹⁸

Now indeed the Nuytzian proposition is the same in sense, and expressed almost in the same words, as that of Febronius; and it either contains the same principles as Febronius or certainly coheres with those errors by which the author aims, as is said in the Apostolic letters proscribing his books (Ad Apostolicae Sedis, 22 August 1851), « to pervert the constitution and government of the Church... For with the greatest wickedness he asserts that the Church is so subject to the civil power that he assigns to the civil power, directly or indirectly, whatever is established by divine institution or by ecclesiastical laws concerning the government of the Church, concerning sacred persons and things, and the judicial forum of the Church. » Indeed he denies that the Roman Pontiff can « be compared to a free prince, » who has the power of acting « in the universal Church; » and so a fortiori his power over the universal Church is denied. From these principles, and even from the very words in which the proposition is expressed, where consent or « the fact of the peoples » is joined as equivalent to a « general Council », it is clear that the Council is understood by Nuytz as without and even against the Roman Pontiff, in the sense of Dupin, Febronius and the other Innovators; not one celebrated and sanctioned by the authority of the Pontiff, without which there can be no true and legitimate general Council. The proposition, condemned in the aforesaid Apostolic letters and afterwards in the Syllabus, is expressed in these words: « Nothing forbids that, by the sentence of some general Council or by the fact of all peoples, the supreme pontificate be transferred from the Roman bishop and city to another bishop and another city. » Thus it falls at least under one of the censures by which the Pontiff, of his own motion, from certain knowledge and mature deliberation, and from the fullness of apostolic power, reprobated and condemned the books of Nuytz, « as containing propositions and doctrines respectively false, rash, scandalous, erroneous, injurious to the Holy See, derogating from its rights, subverting the government of the Church and its divine constitution, schismatic, heretical, favouring Protestantism and its propagation, and leading into heresy and into a system long since condemned as heretical in Luther, Baius¹⁹, Marsilius of Padua, Jandun, Marco Antonio De Dominis, Richer, Laborde and the Pistoians, and in others likewise condemned by the Church, and destructive of the canons of the Council of Trent. »

« Setting aside the distinction, which is evident in itself, between the personal merits of the one sitting and the prerogatives of the See, 1°. the distinction introduced¹ by the Innovators, regarding prerogatives which, divinely instituted, would belong to the Apostolic See but not to the individuals sitting in it, is wholly to be rejected; since all the prerogatives were instituted by Christ as proper to Peter and to his successors one by one, and through them and by them they belong to the See. Nevertheless 2°. if the perpetuity of the Apostolic See and the mortality of the individual occupants are considered, some distinction between the See and the individual occupants must be admitted, from which the different condition of infallible teaching and of supreme governance in the Church is understood in time of a vacant See and in time of a full See. »

By the name See, whether Apostolic or generally of any episcopal see, we understand the complex of rights and pastoral offices which, either by divine institution to endure perpetually or established by ecclesiastical law, have been arranged for some bishopric, so that they inhere in the lawful successors in that bishopric, one after another. When therefore the occupant or presiding person is named, there is understood in the concrete the very person who, for the time being, is endowed with those rights and discharges the offices; but by the name see, in comparison with the presiding person, the rights and offices themselves are signified in themselves, abstracting from the person in whom they actually inhere, inasmuch as by divine or ecclesiastical institution they are perpetual in this determinate bishopric according to the order of succession of persons. Hence it is clear that the designation see, when qualified by adjuncts or predicates expressing the exercise of rights and offices, is determined to the concrete signification of the presiding person who has and actually exercises the rights and offices; conversely, the presiding person can be signified formally and reduplicatively as far as he is endowed with those rights; or merely nuncupatively who is endowed with the rights, but considering him according to his personal good or bad merits.

These things being laid down, and the matters demonstrated in the three immediately preceding theses being assumed, there follows as a corollary in what true sense the comparison and distinction between the See and the presiding person takes place, and which distinction is altogether false, and indeed heretical.

1°. The distinction between the presiding persons, if they are regarded not formally according to their pastoral rights but materially according to their good or bad merits, and between the See regarded as the rights remaining in a given bishopric in the order of succession, is evident in itself; and we mention it only because the Innovators abused the words in which St. Leo the Great expressed it, to lend some quasi-patristic colour to their erroneous distinction between the Roman See and those sitting in it, of which we shall speak presently. Against the ambition of Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople, whom we have already mentioned above, the holy Pontiff declares that the rights and privileges of the See of Alexandria stand firm, nor ought it to suffer any loss from the crimes of Dioscorus, who had held that See; and so too the See of Antioch is to be preserved in the dignity of the third rank, not reduced to the fourth by the unjust usurpation of the Bishop of Constantinople, who, though in the lesser see he ought rather to strive to excel in the merits of virtue. « Let nothing of the dignity of the See of Alexandria perish, which it earned through St. Mark the Evangelist, disciple of blessed Peter; nor, with Dioscorus collapsing through the obstinacy of his impiety, let the splendour of so great a Church be darkened by alien shadows. Let the Antiochene Church also, in which the Christian name first arose when the Apostle Peter preached, persist in the order of its paternal constitution, and, placed in the third rank, never let itself become inferior. For the sees are one thing, the occupants another. And each one's integrity is great honour, which, since it loses none of its ornaments in any places, how much more could it be glorious in the magnificence of the city of Constantinople, if through your observance, and your defence of the paternal canon, and your example of uprightness, many priests should have it » ep. 106, c. 3, ad Anatol. CP. In defence of the paternal canon, by which in the Council of Nicaea (can. 6, 7) the rights of the Eastern sees were confirmed, Leo also exhorts Maximus of Antioch against the machinations of the same Anatolius. « For it is fitting that you should be a partner of the Apostolic See in this solicitude, and, confidently acting, recognise the privileges of the third see (Antioch), which shall be diminished by no one's ambition; for such is my reverence for the canons of Nicaea that I have neither permitted nor will permit what was established by the holy Fathers to be violated by any novelty. For though the merits of prelates are sometimes diverse, the rights of the sees nevertheless remain, on which, though rivals may perhaps bring some disturbance, they cannot diminish the dignity » ep. 119, c. 3, ad Maxim. Antioch.

Therefore St. Leo compares and distinguishes sees and presiding persons only in this sense: that the rights, since they are either from unchangeable divine institution or at least from a stable ecclesiastical ordinance, in no way depend on the merits of the presiding persons; just as conversely these merits do not depend on the greater or lesser rights of power and dignity, which are instituted finally for the good of the Church, in roughly the way one must think and speak of graces freely given in comparison with sanctifying graces.

2°. The Richerists, Jansenists, Gallicans and Febronians, with an intolerable abuse, appealed to the words of St. Leo in order to cast a veil over their error², by which they claimed that the rights and privileges divinely instituted and conferred on Peter were referred to the See of Peter, and not at all to the individual occupants of Peter's chair; that the See is indefectible in true faith, so that it never obstinately falls away from the universal Church; and that the individual occupants can even in definitions of faith and morals sometimes err and mislead, although the error is afterwards soon to be corrected by their successors. From this doctrine, accordingly, indefectibility in faith belongs to the Church or the Roman See of Peter, if it is regarded as a morally continuous succession, and in the same way to the continuous series of Peter's successors; but infallibility in teaching, and hence the supreme infallible magisterium, belongs solely to the universal Church, or to the ecumenical Council, which represents the universal Church. From this they further inferred that the Roman Pontiff is subject to the power of the universal Church and therefore also to the Council of the universal Church; from which it further followed that a Council, as it is above the Pope, so can be lawful apart from and against the Roman Pontiff. By this reasoning not only the infallible magisterium but also the supreme government over the universal Church, both powers instituted by Christ in Peter, are plainly denied to the successors of Peter, and the constitution given to the Church by Christ is overturned.

The refutation, not indeed the more detailed one, which is to be given in the Treatise on the Roman Pontiff and has been given by distinguished theologians, but nevertheless sufficient, as far as may rightly be required in the Treatise on the Church, is wholly contained in the preceding theses. For three things have been demonstrated. a) Christ the Lord instituted the supreme power of teaching and of sacred rule, or the primacy, with all its rights, in one person, Peter, in a distinction expressly drawn from all the other Apostles and from the whole remaining Church of Christ; indeed in the subordination of the whole Church, and therefore also of the Apostles, under the one Peter; not only the individual parts or members of the Church, but directly, looking at the whole Church together, which is to be built upon the one Peter; the whole kingdom of heaven on earth, the keys of the whole of which are promised to the one Peter; all brethren together, or the brotherhood which is in the world, whose confirmation in faith is committed to the one Peter; the whole fold of Christ, of the whole of which the one Peter is instituted shepherd. b) This unity of person, to which the fullness of power over the whole Church is promised and given, is indicated and instituted by Christ to the exclusion of division among many; but the power, in the very manner in which it was first instituted, and therefore in the unity of the person, is to be propagated by perpetual succession for as long as the Church itself persists on earth, so that the gates of hell do not prevail against it. For in the very words of Christ is included a perpetual succession of individuals in the same power of Peter; the words of promise and institution pertain in the same way and with the same efficacy to the one Peter in the foundation as to the one person of each of Peter's successors in the perpetuity of the foundation³. c) When the perpetual succession in the power of Peter is joined with the particular Roman Church, with the Roman See of Peter; from the very words of Christ instituting the perpetuity of the succession of individuals, the subject of the power, rights and privileges instituted in Peter is nothing other than this single Roman Pontiff, at any time, as successor of Peter. In the see, the chair, the Roman Church are not those divinely instituted rights of power, except insofar as they are in the Roman Pontiff, and insofar as it is an unchangeable right that no one other than the Roman Pontiff succeeds Peter in the power of the primacy instituted by divine law. Nor do the words of Christ the Founder pertain to the series of successors considered collectively only, insofar as they are many, but to each who in act succeeds in the series; and therefore also the subject in act of the power and privileges which are expressed in Christ's words (of infallible magisterium and supreme governance over the whole Church) is not the many Pontiffs who have been or will be, or the whole series, as the Gallicans feigned, but one only, all days until the consummation of the age, when he in act succeeds Peter in the series. See the arguments of the demonstration in thesis X and following, the summary of which is contained in the words of St. Jerome (ep. 15, n. 2): « Following no first one except Christ, I am joined in communion with your Beatitude (Damasus), that is, with the chair of Peter; upon that rock I know the Church is built. »

Evidently, therefore, when the supreme power of the Apostolic See is named, whether in infallible teaching or in universal governance over the whole Church, nothing else is signified than the power of the one holding the Apostolic See, that is, of the occupying Roman Pontiff; but the distinction, drawn in this sense, between the See and the Roman Pontiff actually occupying it leads into all the heresies condemned, which we have recalled. Moreover, from this crafty distinction of see and occupant also, with the errors that follow from it and are connected with it, it appears how necessary was the definition of the Council of the Vatican, by which heresies almost latent concerning the very foundations and the divine constitution of the Church were drawn out from all their wrappings and circumlocutions and explicitly condemned (sess. IV, chs. 1–4).

3°. Nevertheless there is some true sense in which, even with the rights and prerogatives of power regarded, the see or chair may and ought to be considered as distinct from the individual occupants κατ' ἐπίνοιαν (in conception). We speak of the see and occupants of the Roman Church, because in these both the supreme power and the perpetuity of succession are of divine right and therefore of far greater moment; moreover, from these very things an apt application spontaneously presents itself to other patriarchal or episcopal sees, in which privileges and the right of succession are indeed firm in their own way, but by ecclesiastical law alone.

Supreme power, therefore, by the act of Peter, prince of the Apostles, of which it was said above, having become unchangeably joined with the Roman bishopric, if it is considered in itself and formally according to its divinely instituted perpetuity, is properly and is called the Apostolic See; but the individual heirs of this power, instituted in Peter and joined with the Roman bishopric, are and are called occupants of the Apostolic See.

a) Hence arises the distinction between the see and the occupant by reason of perpetuity. The see, that is the perpetual right of the primacy, on God's part in his unchangeable law and supernatural providence, and on the Church's part in the right and duty always to keep as a deposit the power divinely instituted for each successor of Peter and to provide succession by a fixed law, never ceases; but the individual heirs or occupants of the Apostolic See are mortal men; and so the see can never fail, but can be vacant, and often is. Then indeed the divine law and institution of perpetuity remains; there remains by this very fact the right and duty in the Church of providing succession according to the established law; there also remain the participations of powers, insofar as they are communicable to others and have been communicated, or legitimately established, by the surviving successor of Peter and not abrogated. But the supreme power itself, with its rights and prerogatives, which can exist nowhere except in the one single heir of Peter, now belongs, with the see vacant, to no one in act.

b) From these things, moreover, there is understood the distinction in the condition of the Church itself in time of vacant see and in time of full see. In the former time, when the Apostolic See is vacant, there is owed by divine law, but is not yet, a successor of Peter, the visible rock and visible head of the Church; in time of the full see he is by divine law now in act seated. Chiefly to be considered is the very root of the whole life of the Church: namely, the indefectibility of faith and the infallible custody of the deposit. Certainly not only indefectibility in believing (they call it passive infallibility) but also infallibility in preaching the revealed truth, already sufficiently proposed for the catholic faith, remains in the Church, even while for the time being she is deprived of her visible head; so that neither the whole body of the Church in believing nor the whole Episcopate in teaching can fail from the faith handed down and fall into heresy; because such a permanence of the Spirit of truth in the Church, the kingdom and bride and body of Christ, is comprised in the very promise and institution of the indefectibility of the Church all days until the consummation of the age. What is to be said about the truth of faith against heresy must also be said, by the same reasoning, about unity of communion against universal schism. For the divine law and promise of perpetual succession in the See of Peter remains, as the root and centre of catholic unity; and to this law and promise there corresponds, on the Church's side, not only the right and duty but also the indefectibility in legitimately procuring and receiving succession, and in keeping unity of communion with the Petrine See even when it is vacant, in view of the successor to be expected in it and indefectibly future: « and the glory (τὴν δόξαν) which you gave me I have given to them, that they may be one, as we are one: I in them and you in me, that they may be perfected into one » (τετελειωμένοι εἰς ἕν) Jn XVII. 22.

But if we speak of infallibility in defining, that cannot take place while the See of Peter is vacant, as long as there is no Roman Pontiff. As is evident in itself, there cannot take place the infallibility of definition with which, through the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, we believe « the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, discharging the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, by his supreme Apostolic authority he defines a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the universal Church » to be endowed. Nor can infallibility of definition take place in an ecumenical Council, since such a Council, without its visible form, which is the head of the Church itself, to which the Bishops are united and subordinated as « members to a head », cannot exist at all (cf. Tract. de Tradit. post thes. XII, Schol. I, Princip. I). Therefore those things which, for example, seemed to be proposed as definitions in the Council of Constance have the character of conciliar definitions only so far, and only in those matters in which and insofar as the definition or confirmation of Pope Martin V, rightly elected after the forty-first session, was added. « With the Pontiff dead, says Canus, one Church without doubt remains, and in it remains the Spirit of truth; but it is left maimed and diminished without the Vicar of Christ and the one shepherd of the catholic Church. Wherefore, although the truth is then also in the Church; yet if controversies of faith and religion arise, the judgements of the Church without a head on earth will not be so certain » (Can. de Loc., bk. IV, ch. 6, ad obiect. 12). Bellarmine, however, treating of the Council of Constance: « A Council, he says, without the Pope cannot define new dogmas of faith⁴; yet it can, in a time of schism, judge who is the true Pope, and provide the Church with the true Pastor, when there is none or he is doubtful; and this is what the Council of Constance rightly did » (de Concil., bk. II, ch. 19, ad obi. 3, Gerson). Suarez speaks to the same effect; for what he argues about the dependence of the jurisdiction of a Council on the Roman Pontiff is a fortiori certain of its dependence in the infallibility of its magisterium. « We believe it entirely true that in a general Council (apart from the Pontiff) there is no jurisdiction conferred immediately by Christ; and therefore, while a lawful and indubitable Pontiff lives, the jurisdiction of a general Council depends on him, and therefore it is subject to him... In the time of the Council of Constance there were three so-called Pontiffs... Whence it could also happen that none of them was a certain Pontiff, and so not a Pontiff, because none of them yet was received by sufficient consent of the Church... But in such a case a general Council, though without a head, has the right to inquire into the true and lawful Pontiff, and if it finds that none of the claimants is a lawful and certain Pontiff, it can depose them all, or rather declare that none of them is the true Pontiff, and thereafter provide the Church with the true Pontiff » (Suarez, contra Reg. Angl., bk. III, ch. 18, ad obi. 2).

c) Since the Apostolic See, by divine law and ordinance, can never cease in its perpetuity, while individual mortal occupants cease at intervals, the Apostolic See itself, as the necessary foundation and centre of the Church's unity, can never be called into doubt without heresy. It can, however, happen in great disturbances, and history shows that it has happened, that many truly catholic people, devoutly holding faith and reverence toward the Apostolic See, through no fault of their own are unable to recognise the one occupying the Apostolic See, and so fall not into heresy in any way, but only into material, not formal, schism. Thus in the lamentable disturbance for forty years, from Urban VI to Gregory XII, Catholics, divided into two and then three « obediences », as they were then called, all acknowledged and cherished the divine rights of the Apostolic See; yet, not recognising the right of the occupant of the Apostolic See through blameless ignorance of the legitimate succession, and so adhering either to no one or to a pseudo-pontiff, they were involved in material schism, among them even holy men, such as St. Vincent Ferrer for a time, and his brother Bonifacius, Prior of the Carthusians.

Scholion. It seems fitting in this place to set out very briefly our opinion on the manner in which, as it seems to us, the ending of this most baneful schism and the restoration of the full unity of the Church, or rather of the actual communion of all Catholics with the lawful heir of the Apostolic See, is to be explained. For although all theologians, indeed the whole Church, most fully agree as to the fact itself that the schism was ended by the lawful and indubitable election of Martin V as the one true successor of Peter, the same agreement is not found as to the manner by which that happy outcome was lawfully reached; on the contrary, no slight diversity of opinion occurs between theologians and interpreters of law. Now especially, after the clear and explicit definitions of the Council of the Vatican concerning the divine rights of the primacy and the relations between it and the whole remaining Church, to settle the question proposed more surely and firmly, the dogmatic principles must be kept before our eyes, which are contained in those very definitions of the Council or follow from them necessarily.

1°. Since the primacy is instituted by divine law in Peter, to be propagated in a perpetual series to each of his lawful successors, as long as the Church built upon this rock endures, a lawful election to the Roman Pontificate is only the condition, by the positing of which the one so elected enters the series of Peter's successors; and by this very fact he receives the whole divinely instituted power of the primacy, not from the electors, who do not have it, but by virtue of Christ's institution and from Christ the Founder, as a rock by a participated power, from Christ who is the rock by his own native power.

2°. Once the Pontiff has been so constituted, the Church, just as with individual pastors and flocks and sheep, so the whole Church considered together with all pastors and flocks and sheep at once, is subject to the Pontiff so constituted as one flock to one supreme shepherd. The Church, even if considered as a whole together, has no power of jurisdiction over its own supreme shepherd; but he has over it the fullness of power, as over his own flock, according to the norms divinely laid down.

Therefore there exists in the Church no power which, once the Pontiff is constituted, can diminish or take away the supreme power divinely conferred on him with all its rights. The power instituted by Christ and conferred on the successor of Peter can cease in him only by spontaneous renunciation, whose validity is established, especially since the definition of St. Celestine V, by doctrines and facts notorious in the whole Church⁵; or by spontaneous defection from the Church through manifest and obstinate heresy. Whether such a scandal could occur in one who, formally as pastor and teacher of the Church, by Christ's promise and institution through divine assistance cannot err in definitions, even as a private person, though it has never happened, theologians doubt, not without reason, looking to the gentle providence of Christ toward his Church and to the divine promises themselves (cf. Bellarmine, de Rom. Pont., bk. IV, chs. 6, 7).⁶

4°. Neither into formal heresy nor into material heresy, by positively denying what has been revealed, or by affirming as revealed what is not revealed, can the Church as a whole, the kingdom of truth, fall, by the promise of the Spirit of truth abiding in her forever; by the same reasoning, by the promise of perpetual unity, whose centre and visible bond is the Roman Pontiff, the Church as a whole, the body of Christ, can never be separated from the true and lawful Roman Pontiff, her visible head, by either formal or material schism. If at any time such a secession of the whole Church seems to have occurred, as in the last years of Peter de Luna, who had been called Benedict XIII, that is not a defection from the true and lawful Pontiff depriving him of his power, which cannot happen (n. 3); but it is a certain sign that he never was the true and lawful Pontiff⁷. Therefore the saying that many put forward to explain the acts of the assemblies of Pisa and Constance, as if it were an axiom: « a doubtful Pontiff is no Pontiff », is true only if the doubt, and the secession on account of the doubt, is that of the whole Church; but it cannot be admitted if, after a Pontiff has been lawfully constituted, doubts and secessions arise in a part, indeed in the greater part, of the Church on account of the disturbances introduced.

5°. When a part of the Church, without its own fault, because of the obscurity of affairs introduced, adheres in material schism to someone as the lawful Roman Pontiff, some of his jurisdictional acts, especially those touching the internal forum, may acquire validity from a colourable title⁸; but neither by him nor by any even legitimate lower power can the laws established by the true Roman Pontiff be validly abrogated or changed, especially those that determine the validity of an act concerning the visible foundation of the Church itself, such as the election of the head of the Church (n. 2).

Having laid down these principles, we cannot understand how the opinion can be admitted of those who, to explain the acts of Constance, say with Bellarmine and Suarez that the right of all three who then claimed the pontificate was doubtful, because the individual obediences (as the parties adhering to different Pontiffs were called) each had two of them as illegitimate; and that thus a doubtful Pontiff is not a true Pontiff; or, as we heard Suarez speaking: « it could happen that none of them was a certain Pontiff, and so not a Pontiff, because none of them yet was received by sufficient consent of the Church. » But he who is lawfully elected is, by that very fact, constituted the true Pontiff not by the Church but by Christ himself (n. 1), and no « sufficient consent » of the Church is required or awaited as a condition for his being the true Pontiff; but « sufficient consent » follows with certainty from the prayer and promise of Christ for the unity of his Church, in accordance with the due obedience, because he is the true Pontiff (n. 4). Moreover, it is evident that at Constance, as regards the manner of election and as regards the lawful electors themselves, many things were established and carried out which were contrary to, and outside, the laws for valid election laid down by the supreme power of the Roman Pontiffs Alexander III, Gregory X and Clement V. But such a change and suspension of the laws of the supreme power could not have been made except by the supreme power of the Roman Pontiff itself, as follows from the divinely established relation of subjection of the whole Church under the power of the supreme Pastor; and we saw Suarez also admit it: « because a lower power cannot change what has been established by a higher, and because the primacy was given to Peter alone, for himself and his successors, it belongs to him alone, or to the Supreme Pontiff, to prescribe the manner of his election and succession » (see above, th. XII, n. III). Now indeed, if at that time there was no true Pontiff, because (as those theologians say) there was none indubitable and certain, it would have been manifestly done by an inferior power of the Constance assembly contrary to the manner of election prescribed by the supreme power of the Supreme Pontiffs. Nor was the prescribed manner of election changed only by adding to the electors, besides the Cardinals, also other Bishops and simple priests, who did not even belong to the clergy of the Roman Church; but there were difficulties concerning even the Cardinals taken from the three obediences, which I see those theologians have neither solved nor even mentioned, nor do I see how they can be solved on their hypothesis. For if for nearly forty years (from 27 March 1378, when Gregory XI died, until the election of Martin V on 11 November 1417) no one is said to have been the true Pontiff, how could all those Cardinals created by those pseudo-pontiffs be regarded as lawful, who, although taken from different obediences and created by opposing pontiffs, recognised one another as lawful in the assemblies of Pisa and Constance, and, against the pontiffs who had created them, claimed for themselves all the rights of Cardinals? Further, if the election of Urban VI (8 April 1378) was invalid, how was the other, that of Clement VII (20 September 1378), not valid? But if, as can no longer rightly be called in doubt, Urban was truly created and, by public acts and written letters of the same Cardinals who afterwards defected, was recognised as the lawful successor of St. Peter at least until June, how could he himself fall from the pontificate, which he held conferred not by the Cardinals nor by the Church but immediately by Christ God, on account of the subsequent secession and the doubt gradually spread by evil arts to many people? If therefore he could not be stripped of the pontificate divinely conferred by the acts of any men, but remained the true successor of Peter until his death (15 October 1389, in his Roman See), then without doubt his successors, elected in accordance with all the established laws, Boniface IX, Innocent VII, Gregory XII, were the true and lawful successors in the See of Peter. Those doubts, however, raised and spread after Urban's election and recognition was already established, by the offended Cardinals, which were then in fact extended to his successors, could only bring about what we have said above: that those who adhered to the parties of Robert of Geneva (Clement VII) and of his successor Peter de Luna (Benedict XIII), or afterwards of Alexander V, elected by the Pisans (26 June 1409), and of his successor John XXIII, were not formally but only materially schismatic, so that among them men even holy could be found. But neither those doubts, nor what followed from them in the assembly of Pisa by the election of yet a third who took the name of Roman Pontiff, could take away from Urban VI and his validly elected successors the dignity and power over the whole Church. The accusation of schism and of « notorious heresy », brought by the Pisans against Gregory XII, namely that as a supporter and defender of an inveterate schism he denied the revealed truth of the unity of the Church, and therefore had fallen from the pontificate, involves a contradiction; for if he was the true Pontiff, having from Christ supreme power over the whole Church, by defending this power against adversaries who were at least materially schismatic he did not in fact oppose the unity of the Church, and much less did he deny in his judgement the unity of the Church instituted by Christ, especially in its head and under its visible head. Nor afterwards was that « notorious heresy » of Gregory, or the truth of the Pisan judgement, in any way acknowledged by the Constance fathers, as will soon appear. Yet it is not therefore necessary to deny that Gregory, in that disturbance of the Church, was bound to resign spontaneously and could have sinned by resisting this obligation; but that the Pontiff, for sins other than heresy, could be deprived of his power, is a proposition that was condemned in article 8 of Wycliffe and in articles 12, 13, 20, 22, 24 of John Hus, by Martin V, defining in the Council of Constance itself.

It seems therefore that the lawful process of the Council of Constance for ending the schism must be explained in another way, especially now, after the Catholic understanding of the faith concerning the force and nature of the primacy has been notably illustrated and confirmed by the definitions of the ecumenical Council (Vatican Council, sess. 4, ch. 3). The explanation, moreover, shines out clearly from the acts themselves, so that there is truly reason for us to admire, with humble praise, the providence of Christ the King, Bridegroom and Head of the Church, by which he composed those huge disturbances, introduced and sustained by human greed and ignorance, with all laws preserved, showing most clearly that the indefectibility of the rock on which he built his Church, that the gates of hell may not prevail against it, rests not on human help but on the divine faithfulness in his promises and the omnipotence in his governance.

Gregory XII, the lawful successor of Urban VI, to his legates Cardinal John de Dominicis and Charles de Malatestis:

1°. He gave « of the fullness of power, full and free faculty » of constituting the Constance assembly, « insofar as it was convoked by the royal serenity (Sigismund) and not by Balthasar, who has himself called John XXIII, » into a true and lawful Council « for the extirpation of the horrible schisms and the complete union, rightly desired and to be brought about; » or, in Gregory's words, « to convoke and authorize a general Council for the said purpose. »

2°. With the same « fullness of power » he gave his legates the faculty of approving in advance, in the Pontiff's name, what the Council, once lawfully convoked, should arrange for that end: « in our place (he says) likewise to authorize, approve and confirm whatever shall be arranged for the true restoration and union of the Church and the extirpation of the said schisms by the same assembly » (namely, after it has already been convoked and authorized as a general Council).

3°. The Constance fathers admitted both the convocation of the Council and the grant of power to arrange everything opportune for the true union of the Church, made by Gregory, « in all things and through all, so far as it seems to pertain to him (Gregory). » And so Cardinal de Dominicis, his legate, solemnly promulgated both of Gregory's dispositions in the fourteenth session (4 July 1415). « In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. By the authority of Our Lord the Pope, so far as it pertains to him... that Christians divided under the profession of different Pastors may be joined in the unity of the holy Mother Church and the bond of charity, I convoke this holy general Council, and I authorize and confirm all things to be done through it, according to the manner and form more fully contained in the letters of Our Lord the Pope. »

4°. Having done this, the Council, among the things « authorized by Gregory », at once performed the one step most necessary for ending the schism: it decreed that the two obediences, those of Gregory and of John, are now joined⁹ and united « in one body of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of this holy universal general Council ». For this very purpose it dissolved and absolved all censures and penalties imposed on either side on account of the schism, and it « enabled all the persons of the said obediences in their states, dignities and offices, and dispensed with them, as far as it was expedient or they needed ». Moreover, by the same authority granted to it, it decreed that the manner and form of the future election of the Roman Pontiff, after the vacancy of the Holy See, was reserved to be settled by the Council itself on this occasion: « so that, under the pretext of any cession or vacancy of the Apostolic See or of the papacy made or to be made while the present Council is in session, no procedure for the election of a Pontiff shall take place, except « in the manner, form, place, time and matter to be ordained by the holy Council (those having the right to elect being understood) ».

Who can now doubt that these acts and decrees, concerning the highest matters, could not have had validity except through the power of the Roman Pontiff alone, the supreme power in the Church instituted by Christ? And yet Gregory XII, who had not yet resigned and was the true Roman Pontiff, « authorized, approved and confirmed whatever shall be arranged by the Council », without other limitation, except that they be arranged for the union of the Church and the extirpation of the schisms, as we saw a little before. Therefore, since these acts and decrees are evidently for that very end, they had certain and full validity through the Pontiff's own confirmation.

5°. The last act, in this fourteenth¹⁰ session, was the free abdication of the pontificate. « I, Charles de Malatestis..., purely, freely and sincerely, in the procuratorial name of the Most Holy Lord our Lord Gregory Pope XII, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, renounce and expressly cede in these writings, really and with effect, the right, title and possession which he has in the papacy, and in the name of our aforesaid Lord I resign the papacy and every right of the papacy, title and possession, which he has, before our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Bridegroom and Head of his Church » (Harduin VIII, pp. 384–400).

By this renunciation the Apostolic See was truly left vacant, and therefore the Council, from the faculties attributed to it by the supreme power of the Pontiff, could lawfully proceed in the manner, form, place, time and matter ordained by the Council itself, « for the canonical and certain election of the one future supreme Pontiff », as Gregory himself had declared in his mandate to Charles de Malatestis as the purpose of his renunciation (Hard. VIII, 387). And two years later (11 November 1417) it happily brought this to completion in Martin V.

These things, which may perhaps seem πάρεργα (incidental digressions), I judged not inopportune to insert here, for a further clarification of the ecclesiastical monarchy, of which we treated in the preceding theses. Now we proceed to consider the fact of the constitution of the Church in the very Apostolic age.