De Ecclesia Christi

« According to the form prescribed and instituted by Christ the founder, the Church is presented to us as established by the Apostles: 1°. as one Church, first from the Jews, then without distinction from the Jews and the Gentiles; 2°. as a Christian Church altogether distinct and separated from the synagogue; 3°. cohering in itself by unity of profession of faith, of sacraments, and of communion; 4°. thereby disposed and governed by its own power of teaching and of rule. »

We have considered the personal efficiency of Jesus Christ, by which he instituted his Church on earth; now let us turn the eyes of the mind to the effect itself, namely the Church, as it is presented to us already constituted in the apostolic writings. Christ God, the founder of the Church, is infinitely true, faithful and omnipotent, so that, however much we should not find what was instituted, insofar as we have it described in the books of the Apostles, to correspond perfectly to the institution demonstrated above, it ought nevertheless to remain certain to every Christian either that in those first beginnings the mustard seed, preserving the fruitful power implanted by Christ, had not yet fully unfolded into a tree, and therefore does not yet appear in its whole amplitude; or that the Apostles did not at all need to comprise in their books, which they handed down to us as very few and written as occasion offered (cf. Tract. de Tradit., th. VII), the facts which were before the eyes of all. In truth, however, we see the Church already in those beginnings established in the world, and described in the apostolic books themselves, as far as is sufficient, according to those principles and according to that form which, we read in the Gospels, Christ the founder impressed upon her.

I. We consider the outlines of the Church of that first age, coalescing both from Jews and from Gentiles.

1°. After Christ's ascension, the Apostles, the number of the twelve already completed by the election of Matthias, gathered together with Mary the mother of Jesus and with the other disciples, were waiting for the promise of the Father, that they might be clothed for the office entrusted to them with power from on high. Soon, under visible signs, on the first Pentecost after the first Passover of the New Testament, they were filled with the Holy Spirit and abundantly furnished with all gifts for carrying out their apostolate. Then indeed, at the first preaching of Peter, « there were added (προσετέθησαν) about three thousand souls. » Further, « the Lord was adding (προσετίθει) daily to the number those who were being saved » ¹. After the second discourse of Peter, so many already believed that « the number of men became five thousand. » Moreover, « the multitude of men and women believing in the Lord (προσετίθεντο πιστεύοντες τῷ κυρίῳ) was increased more and more; » and « the word of the Lord grew, and the number of the disciples (τῶν μαθητῶν) in Jerusalem was multiplied greatly; a great crowd also of the priests was obedient to the faith. » The description of this προσθέσεως (addition), or increase, is conceived in very brief words, but it sufficiently presents the form of the Christian Church in its principal elements. They were bidden to separate themselves from the synagogue: « save yourselves from this perverse generation. » Having received the faith preached by the Apostles, they were united by baptism into a society of their own, which is signified by the very name of addition; by the laying on of the hands of the Apostles all were filled with the Holy Spirit ². Under the Apostles they persevered in « the obedience of faith », in the doctrine and in the religious worship proper to the New Testament, instituted by Christ at the last supper: « and they were persevering in the teaching of the Apostles, and in the communion of the breaking of bread, and in prayers » ³. Acts II. 40–42, 47; IV. 4, 31; V. 13, 14; VI. 1, 7.

Thereafter, with the great persecution stirred up from the martyrdom of Stephen against the Church, which until then was in the one city of Jerusalem (ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τὴν ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις), « they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the Apostles » Acts VIII. 1. Indeed not all the faithful were scattered, but all who had been placed under the Apostles in some rank and in the office of preaching the word of God; for this is the introduction to what is narrated in what follows about the preaching of the gospel and the propagation of the Church. These are the deacons, among whom Philip, after Samaria had « received the word of God » through his preaching, « passing through, evangelized all the cities until he came to Caesarea »; others, who are called presbyters, leaders or heads among the brethren (ἡγούμενοι ἐν τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς, cf. Heb. XIII. 7, 17, 24), teachers and prophets (Acts VIII. 1, 4, 12, 14, 40; XIII. 1; XV. 6, 22). From this preaching we see Churches soon constituted. « The Church ⁴ indeed throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace, and was built up, walking in the fear of the Lord and in the consolation of the Holy Spirit » Acts IX. 31. Further, « those who had been scattered by the tribulation which arose under Stephen went as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word (τὸν λόγον, the word, namely, of the gospel) to no one except to Jews alone » Acts XI. 19. They were indeed establishing Churches only for believers from circumcision, both in Palestine and in the other neighbouring regions. For thus the Lord had commanded: « you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and (afterwards) to the uttermost part of the earth » Acts I. 8; and so the Apostles understood it, and the teacher of the Gentiles himself, Paul, Acts XIII. 46.

2°. Finally, at the close of the year 40 of the common era, that is, in the twelfth year after the death of the Redeemer, it was revealed to Peter, prince of the Apostles, not indeed the dogma itself that the gospel is destined for all nations and of the universality of the Church, which, as it was announced by the prophets, so had often been declared by Christ in very clear words (cf. Acts II. 39; III. 26); but the time was made manifest, together with the manner and method of the admission of all nations, and of the execution of the Saviour's testament ⁵, that the Apostles should preach the gospel to all nations, to every creature, and be witnesses to the uttermost part of the earth. Hence, when Cornelius, the first of the Gentiles, was joined with his household to the Church, this was received with great joy by the Church itself, which until then had been constituted from Jews alone. « They glorified God, saying: then God has given repentance also to the Gentiles unto life » Acts XI. 18.

From this time, first indeed at Antioch, where the Church from circumcision had already been founded long before, « they spoke also to the Greeks ⁶ announcing the Lord Jesus..... and a very great number of believers was converted to the Lord..... and a great crowd was added to the Lord..... and they taught a great crowd, so that the disciples were called Christians at Antioch » (about the year 41 of the common era) ⁷ Acts XI. 20, 26.

Not long after this, Paul, who had already been chosen in his first wonderful calling to carry the name of Jesus before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel, Acts IX. 15, and with him Barnabas, ordained by the laying on of hands ⁸ in the Antiochene Church, and sent by the Holy Spirit, established Churches in the island of Cyprus and in Asia Minor, without distinction of Jews and Gentiles; and the same work, for which he had been taken up, the Apostle of the Gentiles, after separation from Barnabas and with other helpers taken on, carried out in Macedonia, Achaia, and in the province of Asia, whose metropolis is Ephesus, Acts XIII–XX.

In the same age (in the year 53 of the common era) there are mentioned all the Churches of the Gentiles, and indeed already many, Rom. XVI. 4; indeed at this very apostolic time one Church of Christ is shown in the whole world, as we shall declare more distinctly presently.

That the Churches which were outside the borders of Palestine consisted for the most part of faithful from the Gentiles is evident from the Acts from chapter XIII onward, and much more from the Epistles of Paul. « If the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant shall be saved; » « Israel, following after the law of justice, has not attained to the law of justice, for they stumbled at the stone of stumbling; » « all the day I have stretched out my hands to a people not believing and contradicting; » « their offence is the riches of the world, and their diminution the riches of the Gentiles; » « by unbelief the branches were broken off » Rom. IX–XI. On the other side, « the Gentiles, who did not pursue justice, have attained justice; » « I was found by those who did not seek me; » « that the Gentiles may honour God for his mercy, as it is written: therefore I will confess to you among the Gentiles... rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people... praise the Lord, all you Gentiles... there shall arise one to rule the Gentiles, and in him the Gentiles shall hope » Rom. IX. 30; X. 20; XV. 9 ff. Indeed this is the mystery hidden from the ages in God, but now revealed to the Apostles and prophets in the Spirit, so that now, through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God may be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places; namely, the mystery that « the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of his promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel » Eph. III. 5–11.

From this it is now clear that no distinction was ever admitted in rights and in the participation of the goods of the Church between Jews and the other nations; but both are united into one Church. « But the justice of God is through faith in Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all who believe in him; for there is no distinction... Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also; since indeed God is one, who justifies circumcision by faith and the foreskin through faith » ⁹ Rom. III. 22, 30. « Remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, who are called the uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision made by hand in the flesh; because you were at that time without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel (τῆς πολιτείας τοῦ Ἰσραήλ), and strangers (ξένοι) to the testaments... but now in Christ Jesus you, who once were far off, have been made near in the blood of Christ; for he is our peace, who has made both one..., so as to create the two in himself into one new man ¹⁰, making peace, and reconcile both in one body to God through the cross, slaying the enmities in himself; and coming he preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near » Eph. II. 11 ff.; 1 Cor. XII. 13.

3°. All those who are united among themselves and with Christ through faith and baptism are called by their proper name brethren, from their intimate union and communion, Acts XI. 1; XII. 17; XV. 3, 23; XXVIII. 14, and often in other places (cf. P. Patrizi, de Evang., bk. I, ch. 4, n. 42); believers (οἱ πιστεύσαντες) and faithful (οἱ πιστοί) from the inner form and outward profession of one faith, which is the foundation of holiness and the bond of unity of the brethren, Acts II. 44; IV. 32; V. 14; 1 Tim. IV. 12, and elsewhere; saints (οἱ ἅγιοι) and called saints (κλητοὶ ἅγιοι) ¹¹ from the perfection of the outward and inward form, to which they are ordered through faith and communion, Acts IX. 32, 41; 2 Cor. I. 1; Phil. I. 1; Rom. I. 7; 1 Cor. I. 2; cf. Rom. VIII. 28; disciples (οἱ μαθηταί) from the reception of the whole doctrine and discipline in faith, communion and holiness, and at the same time from subjection to the magisterium of the faith, the governance of communion, and the priesthood of sanctification, Acts VI. 1, 2, 7; IX. 1, 10, 25, 26; Christians from the author and consummator of faith, communion and holiness, Acts XI. 26; XXVI. 28; 1 Pet. IV. 16.

It is easily apparent that these names are social, if one may so speak, and that by them are designated men not so much singly apart, as rather as they coalesce, by their proper inner and outer social form, into one society of their own name, which is and is called the Church of Christ. Let us now consider this society, the Church of Christ, whose first beginnings and first outlines we have looked at, according to the fuller explanation of the proper form in which it is presented, as constituted, in the apostolic writings.

II. First we see it as a religious society, not only distinct but plainly separated from the synagogue, insofar as the latter remains in its typical and pedagogical form, awaiting Christ and looking to his future first coming; retaining this form now, when the presence of Christ (ἡ παρουσία) is already complete, they fall away from the proper end of the Old Testament, « for Christ is the end of the law »; and they fall into apostasy from faith in the Messiah, the Saviour, foretold, from hope in him promised, from charity toward him desired by all nations ¹² (Hag. II. 8). And so the synagogue, which was the chosen people of the Old Testament, while it refuses the transition divinely ordained from the hope of future goods in Christ to the possession of present ones, ceases to be the people of God: « and he shall not be his people, who is to deny him » Dan. IX. 26; but the people and kingdom of God on earth is now contained solely in the Church of the New Testament from all nations: « for the promise to Abraham, or to his seed, that he should be the heir of the world, was not through the law, but through the justice of faith... Therefore it is of faith, that the promise may be firm according to grace, to every seed; not to him only who is of the law, but to him also who is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all » Rom. IV. 13 ff.; IX. 6–8.

1°. This opposition, as it were, between the old Testament and the new, namely that the former, being temporary, has now perished, by the succession of this kingdom which will never cease, the Apostles plainly impressed upon the first faithful, as a kind of principle, and especially on those from circumcision. « Christ is the mediator of a better testament, which was established upon better promises. For if that first had been blameless (εἰ γὰρ ἦν ἄμεμπτος), there would not indeed have been sought a place for a second. For finding fault with them, he says (Jer. XXXI): behold the days shall come, says the Lord, and I will perfect over the house of Israel and over the house of Judah a new testament, not according to the testament which I made to their fathers... Now in saying new, he has made the first old ¹³; and what is antiquated and grows old is near to perishing » Heb. VIII. 6 ff. « Whose voice (of the Son of God) then shook the earth (in the giving of the law and the Sinaitic institution); but now (for the institution of the New Testament) he promises, saying: yet once more, and I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven (in the incarnation, in the heavenly institutions and charisms) ¹⁴. But what he says, yet once, declares the transference of movable things as made things ¹⁵, so that those things which are immovable may remain.

Therefore, receiving the immovable kingdom ¹⁶, we have grace (ἔχωμεν, let us hold fast), through which we may serve God pleasingly, with fear and reverence » Heb. XII. 26 ff.

Hence the Apostles, also by a solemn definition and preaching, declared that those ancient institutions, by which the proper character of the synagogue was constituted, had lost in the Church of Christ their value and their obligation, Acts XV. Although the observance of the ancient rites was for a time permitted to Christians, especially those of Jewish origin, to assert their necessity and permanent obligation in the Church of Christ from the beginning of the New Testament was a perversion of the gospel itself, Gal. I. 6–9; II. 5; V. 1–13; VI. 12–15 (see thesis IV).

2°. After the coming of the promised Holy Spirit, the Apostles, although for those beginnings they still tolerated the observance of rites, at once called the faithful out of the synagogue into the Church, separated from it in faith, worship and discipline, and standing by itself. As we saw a little before, already in the first preaching Peter « testified with many words and exhorted them, saying: save yourselves from this perverse generation. Therefore those who received his word were baptized... And all who believed were together, and had all things in common... and daily persevering with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread in their houses » Acts II. 40 ff. « And they were all with one accord in the portico of Solomon; but of the others no one dared to join himself to them » ib. V. 12, 13. Saul, after his conversion, « when he had come to Jerusalem, tried to join the disciples, and all feared him, not believing that he was a disciple; but Barnabas, taking hold of him, brought him to the Apostles » ib. IX. 26 (cf. Gal. I. 22). Paul at Ephesus first indeed spoke as he was accustomed in the synagogue, persuading about the kingdom of God; then, when some were hardened, « departing from them, he separated the disciples » (in place as well), and from those so separated he established the Churches of Asia; for for two years he preached, « so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, Jews as well as Gentiles » Acts XIX. 8, 9; cf. XVIII. 4, 5.

3°. According to the type of the sacrifices on the day of atonement, whose blood was carried into the holy of holies and whose bodies were burnt outside the camp, Christ offered his bloody sacrifice of expiation not only for the people of Israel but for all men (cf. John XI. 50–52), outside the gate of earthly Jerusalem, which was the centre of the old economy. Hence the Apostle infers that even the Hebrews themselves must go out of the camp, that is, out of the synagogue, to Christ, that they may become partakers of the altar on which Christ himself is immolated, namely the altar of the new testament, of which those cannot be partakers who still cling to the old law and worship. « We have an altar, from which those who serve the tabernacle have no power to eat... And Jesus, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Let us go forth therefore to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have here no abiding city, but we seek the one to come (τὴν μέλλουσαν, that future Jerusalem in heaven) » Heb. XIII. 10 ff. Moreover, earthly Jerusalem, represented by the handmaid Hagar and her son¹⁷, now that she has ceased to be the city of God, is set in hostile opposition to the antitypical Jerusalem, which is our mother the Church, prefigured by Sarah and the son Isaac. « As then he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was according to the spirit, so also now. But what does Scripture say? Cast out the handmaid and her son; for the son of the handmaid shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the handmaid, but of the free » Gal. IV. 22–31.

III. The Churches, which we have seen already under the Apostles spread far and wide, did not each by itself constitute one whole separated from the others; but from all of them, as from organic parts, is presented constituted that one universal Church, which Christ called his Church, to be built by him upon the rock. There are many things which, though distinct among themselves, are intimately linked, and which both bring about and demonstrate the form of this unity.

1°. Unity of faith and profession in the universal Church. The apostolic doctrine and preaching is one, « everywhere in every Church » (πανταχοῦ ἐν πάσῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ, ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις πάσαις;) 1 Cor. IV. 17; VII. 17. The gospel is one, just as it is in the one particular Church of the Colossians, so also « in the whole world it is, and bears fruit and grows »; « they heard the gospel », the same, « which has been preached in every creature that is under heaven » Col. I. 6, 23. The faith of the Thessalonians is the same for all believers, « not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place » 1 Thess. I. 7, 8. The faith of the Romans, whom the Apostle of the Gentiles had not yet seen, « is announced in the whole world » Rom. I. 8; XVI. 19. ¹⁸

2°. Just as through this unity of faith, so through the unity of the sacraments all the faithful everywhere on earth are joined and formed into one body of Christ. « One body and one Spirit, as you are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism » Eph. IV. 4, 5. « All the members of the body, though many, are yet one body: so also is Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free, and we have all drunk of one Spirit... Many indeed are the members, but one body..... Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member » ¹⁹ 1 Cor. XII. 12 ff. « For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ (εἰς Χριστόν) have put on Christ: there is not Jew nor Greek..... for you are all one in Christ Jesus » ²⁰ Gal. III. 27, 28. « The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of the Lord? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread » ²¹ 1 Cor. X. 16.

3°. From these things there follows at once the perfect unity of communion in social life (τῆς πολιτείας, cf. Eph. II. 12), by which all the particular Churches and each of the faithful are presented and acknowledged, both in theory and in practice, as parts and members of one religious society.

a) The Church of Corinth consists of « those sanctified and called saints » in one society « with all who invoke the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in every place » 1 Cor. I. 2. Christians wherever they are found on earth are, and are called, « the brotherhood which is in the world » 1 Pet. V. 9. In the various particular Churches all are brethren and members of one society, namely the universal Church. The Romans, whose « obedience (ἡ ὑπακοή, obedience of faith) has been spread abroad in every place », « all the Churches of Christ » greet; to them Christians from other Churches are commended, that they may « receive them in the Lord, worthily of the saints »; to those who had helped Paul, « all the Churches of the Gentiles » give thanks, Rom. XVI. 2, 4, 16, 19. Similar things are seen in the greetings of the other apostolic epistles.

b) Just as the Apostles, in preaching to the conversion of Jews and Gentiles, « gave the right hands of fellowship » (Gal. II. 8–10), so also the Churches of the Gentiles have communion, specifically, with the Churches of the Jews in Palestine, insofar as they all constitute one Church. « The Gentiles have been made partakers (ἐκοινώνησαν) of their (the Christians' from circumcision) spiritual things », whence « they ought also to minister to them in carnal things (temporal goods) » Rom. XV. 26, 27; Acts XI. 29; XXIV. 17; Gal. II. 10; 1 Cor. XVI. 1–3; 2 Cor. VIII. 14; IX. 2, 13. ²² « God has called you (the Thessalonians) into his kingdom and glory...; for you became imitators of the Churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus » 1 Thess. II. 14. « The Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body (τὰ ἔθνη σύσσωμα, members of one body) and fellow partakers of his (God's) promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel », of which (gospel) Paul « was made minister » ²³ Eph. III. 6.

c) This communion is of all the faithful among themselves, with the Apostles, with Christ the head, and with God: « that you also may have fellowship (κοινωνίαν) with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ » 1 Jn I. 3. The Church (the calling-out) consists of « called saints », and they are called « into the fellowship of the Son of God », and therefore the Church is « the fellowship of the Son of God » ²⁴ 1 Cor. I. 2, 9.

d) The universal Church is indeed presented in the apostolic writings as one visible communion of saints. There are many members, and diverse according to diverse distributions of graces, ministries and operations; yet from all of them one body is constituted, which is quickened and sanctified by one Spirit, ruled and administered by one Lord Jesus Christ, sustained and confirmed by one God the Father (Rom. XII. 5; 1 Cor. XII. 4 ff.; Eph. IV. 4 ff.; Col. I. 18; II. 19). The faithful, called from Jews and Gentiles, both in one body are a holy temple in the Lord, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself the chief corner-stone (Eph. II. 15–22; Col. II. 7; Heb. III. 6; 1 Tim. III. 15; 2 Tim. II. 19, 20; 1 Pet. II. 5; IV. 17). The universal Church is described as Mount Sion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, whose citizens are the household of God, who have come to the Church of the firstborn, τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τῶν πρωτοτόκων (Heb. XII. 22; Eph. II. 10); as the camp of the saints and the beloved city upon the breadth of the earth (Apoc. XX. 8); as a priestly kingdom and a holy nation (1 Pet. II. 9, 10; Apoc. I. 6; V. 9, 10); as the Israel of God, a peculiar people, λαὸς περιούσιος (Gal. VI. 16; Tit. II. 14); free Jerusalem, which is our mother (Gal. IV. 26); the woman clothed with the sun, the fruitful mother of martyrs amid the persecutions of the dragon (Apoc. XII. 1, 5, 11, 17); the virgin betrothed to one husband, the bride of the Lamb prepared, clothed in fine linen, which are the justifications of the saints (2 Cor. XI. 2; Apoc. XIX. 7, 8).

IV. This threefold visible unity of profession of faith, of sacraments, and of society or communion, spread through all nations in the apostolic Church, presupposes as its principle and foundation the power of visible magisterium, priesthood and governance, which we saw in the preceding theses promised and instituted by Christ. In the threefold unity described, therefore, that power would be understood implicitly, as the forming and efficient cause, even if it were not explicitly presented to us in the constitution of the Church in the apostolic time. But in fact we find, in the Churches as established by the Apostles and presented in their own writings, the full vigour of that sacred power, so that the threefold unity (of which we have spoken) and the whole constitution of the Church are made visible chiefly in this power. Indeed its proper character, its diverse grades, and its quasi-organism are displayed more distinctly in the Churches already constituted, as we have them described by the Apostles, than in the institution itself which is narrated in the Gospels. Hence, for the fuller declaration of Christ's institution (th. XI, n. II), it was necessary for us to consider this very exercise of power in the Apostles now; and so, referring to that place, we can here finish the whole matter in brief.

We see in the apostolic Churches a true power derived from Christ and exercised in the name of Christ: first indeed to teach doctrines, and to promulgate and interpret the divine laws; then, altogether, to enact their own laws for Christian life, by which all the faithful are bound; to make judgements in the same sphere, and to inflict penalties. Since this jurisdiction is proper to this Society, which Christ called his Church and founded by the supreme power given to him in heaven and on earth; since therefore jurisdiction follows the nature of this Church and belongs to the governing of its own life; since, finally, it was instituted by Christ himself in his kingdom, it is manifest that it is independent, and we indeed see it exercised in the apostolic Churches independently of any other human power. Although even in the earthly city, for earthly peace, there is no power except from God, that power is nonetheless flesh: that is, natural in origin, end and means; but the power in the city of God, in the kingdom of Christ, is spirit: namely supernatural in origin, end and means.

1°. That this is, first of all, the power of magisterium, to teach and declare authentically whatever the Apostles had received from God himself, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, hardly needs to be demonstrated by special arguments after what was said above about the divine institution of the magisterium. Since Christ in his testament sent the Apostles just as he himself had been sent by the Father, « to preach the gospel to every creature », « to preach in his name repentance and remission of sins to all nations », « to teach all nations to observe all things, whatever he commanded them »; since moreover he promised and sent them the Spirit of truth, « to teach them all truth », and in this whole truth also « many things which they could not bear now »; since lastly he promised that he himself and the Paraclete Spirit would be with the Apostles in teaching the truth « for ever », « all days, even to the consummation of the age »: the carrying out of this divine institution, of which we now speak, is shown by the whole life of the Apostles, since this mission contains above all the very essence of the apostolate. Hence it is not merely the faculty of bearing witness, which arises from knowledge, but a particular mission and assumption to the apostolate that confers the office of bearing witness, namely testimony from a divinely conferred power, and therefore authentic. « It is necessary that of these men who have been with us all the time... one of these be made a witness with us of his resurrection » Acts I. 21, 22. Hence also the Apostles frequently affirm their divine commission. « For I dare not speak of anything which Christ has not wrought through me, for the obedience of the Gentiles (εἰς ὑπακοὴν τῶν ἐθνῶν), by word and deed » Rom. XV. 18. « When you had received from us the word of hearing of God (λόγον ἀκοῆς παρ' ἡμῶν τοῦ θεοῦ), you received it not as the word of men, but, as it truly is, the word of God » 1 Thess. II. 13. « You received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus » Gal. IV. 14. « Let a man so account us as the ministers of Christ and the dispensers (οἰκονόμους) of the mysteries of God » 1 Cor. IV. 1. « He has given us the ministry of reconciliation... for Christ therefore we perform the embassy, as God exhorting through us » 2 Cor. V. 20. « The mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains » Eph. VI. 20.

2°. Moreover the power is legislative. « The Apostles and the elder brethren ²⁵... It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no burden beyond these necessary things. » Among these necessary things, that is, things to be necessarily observed, were not only the divine laws, but also apostolic precepts, of which the Apostles themselves, by their own power, were the authors for the Christian Church, as the command to abstain from blood and from what is strangled, Acts XV. 23, 28. « As they passed through the cities (Paul and Silas), they delivered to them to keep the decrees (placita) which had been decided by the Apostles and the elders who were at Jerusalem » ²⁶, ib. XVI. 4. After the divine precepts concerning the holy reception of the Eucharist, the Apostle promises his own laws: « the rest I will arrange when I come » (διατάξομαι) 1 Cor. XI. 34. Elsewhere he openly presupposes his own power of command, and that it is known to the faithful and distinct from the divine legislation: « But this I say by way of indulgence, not of command »; « to the rest I say, not the Lord » 1 Cor. VII. 6, 12.

3°. Hence the power is also judicial and coercive. « I, absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged... in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together and my spirit (present in your assembly by my spirit and authority), with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ » (for affliction and punishment in the present natural life, for supernatural salvation in the other life), 1 Cor. V. 3; cf. 1 Tim. I. 20. « What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in charity and in the spirit of meekness? » 1 Cor. IV. 21. « I have foretold (in the former epistle, in the words just cited), and I foretell... that if I come again, I will not spare. Or do you seek proof of him who speaks in me, Christ?... So that when present I may not act more sharply according to the power which the Lord has given me for building up and not for destruction » 2 Cor. XIII. 2, 3–10. « For walking in the flesh we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God..... having in readiness to avenge all disobedience (ἐκδικῆσαι πᾶσαν παρακοήν)... For if I should glory somewhat more of our power, which the Lord has given us for building you up and not for destroying you, I shall not be ashamed » 2 Cor. X. 3–8.

That this power of making laws, judging, and punishing or avenging is a true power of jurisdiction is declared by the Apostle both by the words just cited and still more expressly by his professing that the power of which he speaks does not extend to those who are simply « outside », that is, who were never bound to the Church by any bond, as is manifest from the context and from the comparison of passages. For those who, having received the seal of faith, baptism I mean, lie cut off from the Church by heresy, like Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Tim. I. 20), or by other crimes, these indeed are judged and punished by this very power ²⁷. « For what have I to do with judging those who are outside?..... For those who are outside, God will judge. Remove the evil man (τὸν πονηρόν, the evil man, of whom the Apostle there judges) from among yourselves » 1 Cor. V. 12, 13.

Thus in the time of the Apostles we have « the brotherhood which is in the world », one in faith and profession, one in sanctification and in the use of the sacraments, one in social religious life under the apostolic magisterium, priesthood, and governance of full jurisdiction; and this, from many Churches as members, is one Church of Jesus Christ in the whole world, according to the form in which we saw her in the preceding theses foretold by the prophets, promised by Christ, prepared, and at last instituted, by the power, all of which was given to him in heaven and on earth, to endure perpetually until the consummation of the age, until the second coming, until the fullness of the body of Christ in all its holy and elect members.

« In the Apostolic Church already there is seen a perpetual succession, through the series of individual Bishops in individual Churches, of the power instituted in the Apostles for shepherding the Church; of these Bishops is composed the one episcopate instituted by God in the Apostles and cohering with them by succession. This divine constitution of the Church is indeed presented 1°. in the Apostolic writings; and 2°. it is more distinctly made manifest in the monuments of the Fathers, who lived near the Apostolic age. »

From what was demonstrated in the preceding thesis, it appears that the Church, as it was under the Apostles, is a society unequal in itself, in which there are superiors endowed with true jurisdiction and subjects bound to that jurisdiction. Since this arrangement and subordination, instituted by Christ the Lord and founder of the Church, pertains to the internal constitution of the Church itself and to its governance, it cannot be that this power is extraordinary and personal to the Apostles alone; but it must necessarily be understood as ordinary and propagated, as long as the Church itself persists. And indeed this communication of power, and the relation of superiors and subjects, which is to endure perpetually, or the inequality of the society, shows itself clearly already in the apostolic Church.

I. We shall consider the power of true jurisdiction, as it is presented in the apostolic writings: both according to the manner in which it is described in the Bishops who are successors of the Apostles, and according to the manner of its propagation, and according to its singularity in the individual particular Churches, in which matter there is already contained also the hierarchical order of powers.

1°. Just as the Apostles, by virtue of their power, which we have considered a little before in their magisterium and jurisdiction, were the heads of the Church, so we see this same office of heads conveyed and communicated by them to others, to whom the rest of the faithful are bound « to obey and be subject ». This duty of obedience and subjection therefore corresponds to the power conferred on the heads and ordained to the salvation of souls. « Remember your heads ¹, who have spoken to you the word of God, and considering the outcome of their way of life, imitate their faith... Obey your heads and be subject to them. For they watch as those who will render an account for your souls... ² Salute all your heads and all the saints » Heb. XIII. 7, 17, 24.

These, who are called by the more general name heads (ἡγούμενοι) of the faithful ³, are in many other places of the Acts and of the apostolic epistles called by the special and proper name presbyters and Bishops. Their office and superior power over the Church is signified already by the very name, so that they are leaders of the faithful; whence in the same sense they are also said, by virtue of their office, to preside (προεστῶτες), 1 Tim. V. 17; cf. Rom. XII. 8. Leaders and presidents are presented so that « the Holy Spirit has placed Bishops to rule the Church of God; » so that their office is « to attend to the whole flock in which they are set » Acts XX. 28; « to shepherd the flock of God that is among them, overseeing (ἐπισκοποῦντες) it » 1 Pet. V. 2; « to have care (ἐπιμελεῖσθαι) of the Church of God », in a comparison with the head of a household who presides over his house, 1 Tim. III. 5; « to keep vigil for souls, for which they are to render an account » Heb. XIII. 17.

To governance, to pastoral providence, care and vigilance for the Church of God, there pertains in particular a) magisterium: « command and teach; attend to doctrine; preach the word, fulfil your ministry; labour with the gospel according to the power of God; those who labour in word and doctrine; admonish, testifying before the Lord; show yourself a workman not to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of God; keep the commandment (τὴν ἐντολήν) without stain until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; have the form of sound words, keep the good deposit through the Holy Spirit; what you have heard from me through many witnesses, commit these to faithful men, who will be fit to teach others; a Bishop must be without crime, as a steward of God, so that he may be able to exhort in sound doctrine and to convict those who gainsay » 1 Tim. IV. 6, 11, 13, 16; V, VI; VI. 14, 20; 2 Tim. I. 13, 14; II. 2, 14, 15; IV. 2–5; Tit. I. 9.

b) No less, under the same pastoral office, is included the power of judgement and correction, even over unwilling persons, which we heard above from the Apostle to be « vengeance on disobedience » (ἐκδίκησιν τῆς παρακοῆς). « Against a presbyter do not receive an accusation except under two or three witnesses; those who sin, reprove before all, so that the others also may have fear. » « For this cause I left you in Crete, that you might correct what is wanting » (ἵνα τὰ λείποντα ἐπιδιορθώσῃ). « For there are many disobedient... who must be rebuked... rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in faith. » « Reprove with all authority; let no one despise you » 1 Tim. V. 19, 20; Tit. I. 5, 13; II. 15.

Therefore the Bishops, in shepherding the flock of God and in governing the Church with the power of magisterium and of command (jurisdiction), are successors of the Apostles, by that reason which is contained in the very institution of the apostolate: « teach them to observe all things; and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the age » (above, thesis XIV) ⁴. These, after some extraordinary offices have been mentioned, Paul names, from the ordinary and perpetual institution of Christ, « pastors and teachers » ⁵, whom Christ gave « for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all meet in the fellowship of the faith » Eph. IV. 11. That the office is homogeneous in the successors as in the Apostles Paul also indicates, where, after the heads who were the Apostles, he adds the heads who are successors, Heb. XIII. 7, 17. And Peter, a fellow-elder, associates to himself elders (πρεσβυτέρους τοὺς ἐν ὑμῖν ὁ συμπρεσβύτερος) ⁶. But the supreme source of all power is Christ, the prince of shepherds: « The elders who are among you I beseech, as a fellow-elder... shepherd the flock of God that is among you, overseeing (ἐπισκοποῦντες)... and when the prince of shepherds shall appear, you shall receive the crown of glory that does not fade » 1 Pet. V. 1–4; whence Christ is also called « shepherd and bishop of souls », ib. II. 25.

2°. This perpetual succession is propagated not, as in the Old Testament, by carnal generation, but by spiritual generation, through the sacramental laying on of hands, by which is conferred the grace of sanctification and of the power corresponding to the office itself. « Stir up the grace of God that is in you through the imposition of my hands; for God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power (δυνάμεως) and of love and of sobriety (σωφρονισμοῦ); therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord » 2 Tim. I. 6. « Command these things and teach. Let no one despise your youth...; attend to reading, to exhortation and to doctrine. Do not neglect the grace that is in you, which was given to you through prophecy with the imposition of the hands of the presbytery... ⁷. Attend to yourself and to doctrine » 1 Tim. IV. 14. The Apostle in turn acknowledges the same power of ordination and of propagation in a successor ordained by himself. For first he treats of the manner of judgement against presbyters; then, in relation to the appointment of presbyters, he commends to Timothy: « lay hands hastily on no one » 1 Tim. V. 19, 22. Whence, although the meaning of the imposition of hands is manifold, in these passages it cannot be understood as anything other than of ordination, which in the Scriptures and thence in universal ecclesiastical usage is called the imposition of hands (ἡ χειροτονία) by excellence.

3°. The greatest difference lies in this, that the Apostles, each one, had power not only in individual Churches but in all the Churches, in the universal Church, « to bring about the obedience of faith among all nations » ⁸ (Rom. I. 5, 13 f.; Acts IX. 15; 1 Cor. VII. 17, etc.); but the successors are each constituted Bishops in individual Churches only. In the Apostles, therefore, the universal power of the apostolate indeed included the power of particular episcopate; but the power of the apostolate, insofar as it is universal, resided in the Apostles and was extraordinary, not propagated (which by the institution itself was far different in Peter, as the perpetual head of the perpetual Church, thesis XI); the power of the episcopate alone is understood to endure for ever, and therefore to be ordinary. Paul and Barnabas (in their first mission through Asia) « appointed for them (by the imposition of hands) presbyters in every Church » ⁹ Acts XIV. 23. « I left you (Titus) in Crete, that you might... establish in every city (κατὰ πόλιν) presbyters, as I also appointed you... For a Bishop must be without crime » etc., Tit. I. 5, 7. Hence both Peter and Paul expressly restrict the power of the individual Bishops to that particular flock which is committed to them. « Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, overseeing » 1 Pet. V. 2. « Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has placed you as Bishops to rule the Church of God » Acts XX. 28. ¹⁰

That the individual Bishops were ordained by the Apostles for the individual Churches is, moreover, quite certain from the Apocalypse. « The seven stars are the angels of the seven Churches » Apoc. I. 20. Then the angel of Ephesus, of Smyrna, of Pergamum, of Thyatira, of Sardis, of Philadelphia, of Laodicea is named. To them are attributed both the good and the bad works done in the Churches committed to their care, as men who watch as those who will render an account to God for souls. It belongs to each one, in the individual Churches, to hold and keep what they had received from the Apostles, III. 3; to examine, condemn and keep away contrary doctrines and false teachers, II. 2, 14, 15, 20; to watch, to confirm, to exact subjection, III. 2, 9.

4°. From the very Scriptures of the New Testament it is clear that, besides that one Bishop or presbyter of each individual Church, there were several sacred ministers in the same Churches: not only deacons, evidently of a different order and subordinate to the Bishops (Acts VI. 5, 6, 9; VIII. 5, 12, 38; Phil. I. 1; 1 Tim. III. 8, 12); but also other presbyters, called by this name, indeed in common with him who was set to govern the whole (particular) Church and to shepherd the whole flock of God, to whom accordingly these named presbyters were also subject for governing and shepherding (cf. 1 Tim. V. 19). Indeed, it is established that there were several such presbyters in the Churches which were governed personally and immediately by the Apostles themselves (Acts XI. 30; XV. 2, 4 ff.; XVI. 4; XXI. 18; James V. 14). We have therefore already in the Scriptures themselves, by a sufficient indication, two orders of ministers designated, deacons and presbyters, these also to be governed and shepherded with the whole flock by the supreme order of Bishops, who alone are, in the power of magisterium and of governance, the successors of the Apostles.

II. What we have seen in the sacred letters, now more expressly declared, now more obscurely indicated, concerning the apostolic succession and the sacred hierarchy, is presented manifestly and distinctly in the other monuments contemporary with or near to the apostolic age; and so they form a commentary for illustrating and understanding those things which in the Scriptures might perhaps be more obscure in themselves:

1°. Clement of Rome, in the apostolic time, and at least while St. John was still surviving, declared to the Corinthians the order of the divine ministries, how and by whom they are to be performed. His discourse concerns indeed not the institutions of the Old Testament but those of the New Testament to be observed; and since the hierarchy of the New Testament, as antitype, corresponds to the old hierarchy as to a type, therefore the holy Pontiff explains the one by the other, and with the same names by which the order of the ancient priesthood is described, he at the same time designates the orders of the Christian hierarchy. « We Christians ought to do all things in order, which the Lord commanded to be done at appointed times. Indeed he commanded the offerings and sacred services (τάς τε προσφορὰς καὶ λειτουργίας) to be performed not carelessly and out of order, but at appointed times and hours; where and by whom he wishes them to be celebrated, he himself defined by his supreme will... Those therefore who make their offerings at the assigned times are acceptable and blessed; for following the ordinances of the Lord they do not go astray. To the high priest, indeed, his own services have been assigned, and to the priests their proper place has been appointed, and to the Levites their own ministries are incumbent; the lay man is bound by lay precepts. Let each one of you, brethren, in his own order offer thanksgiving to God, remaining in good conscience, not transgressing the appointed rule of his ministry, in holiness... ¹¹ Christ was sent by God, and the Apostles by Christ; both were done in order by the will of God... Therefore, preaching through regions and cities, they appointed the firstfruits of them, having tested them by the Spirit, as Bishops and deacons of those who were going to believe. » Having compared this with the designation of the priesthood in the Aaronic family, in order that contention about it among the Israelites might be excluded, Clement passes to the ratified and perpetual succession in the priesthood of the New Testament: « Our Apostles also, through Jesus Christ our Lord, knew that contention about the name of the episcopate would arise; for this reason, therefore, endowed with perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those already mentioned, and then gave an ordinance, that when those men had fallen asleep, other approved men should take up their ministry » ¹² Clement, Epistle I to the Corinthians, nn. 40–44.

With Clement's testimony should be compared the narrative of Eusebius, who, after mentioning the Apostolic Bishop Quadratus, continues thus: « Besides these there were also many others who excelled, holding the first rank of succession from the Apostles. These, being disciples worthy of such great men, carried forward¹³ the foundations of the Churches, which had been laid before by the Apostles in every place, promoting preaching more and more, and widely scattering the saving seeds of the kingdom of heaven throughout the whole world... These, having only laid the foundations of faith in foreign regions, appointed other pastors and committed to them the cultivation of those who were newly brought in (οὗτοι δὲ θεμελίους τῆς πίστεως ἐπὶ ξένοις τισὶ τόποις αὐτὸ μόνον καταβαλλόμενοι, ποιμένας τε καθιστάντες ἑτέρους, τούτοις τε αὐτοῖς ἐγχειριζόντες τὴν τῶν ἀρτίως εἰσαχθέντων γεωργίαν); but they themselves went on to other regions and nations, with the grace and cooperation of God » Eusebius, H. E., bk. III, ch. 37.

Irenaeus almost in the same words accords with Clement: « The Apostles wanted those to be very perfect and irreproachable in all things, whom they also left as successors, handing on to them their own place of teaching » Irenaeus III, ch. 3, n. 1.

Although in this latter passage he expressly names only Bishops and deacons, yet under the Bishops who are each through each region and city (κατὰ χώρας καὶ πόλεις), there are also comprehended other priests of the second order, as he had distinguished above from the Old Testament the high priest and under him other priests; this appears, if rightly understood, from chapter 57, where he expressly mentions presbyters in the Church of the Corinthians. « Be subject to the presbyters... for it is better for you to be found in the fold of Christ small and approved, than, raised too high, to be cast out from the hope of it. »

2°. How earnestly these hierarchical grades and the subordination instituted by God are commended by Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostle John, no one is ignorant.

a) As to ecclesiastical governance, comparing generally the state of the individual Churches after the ascension of Christ into heaven with the apostolic college while Christ was still on earth, he presents it thus: « Since you are subject to the Bishop as to Jesus Christ, you seem to me to live not according to man but according to Jesus Christ... It is necessary, therefore, as you do, that you do nothing without the Bishop; but also be subject to the presbytery as to the Apostles of Jesus Christ... And those who are deacons of the mysteries of Jesus Christ ¹⁴ ought in every way to please all. For the deacons are not servants of food and drink, but ministers of the Church of God... Let all likewise reverence the deacons as the commandment of God (ὡς θεοῦ ἐντολήν, to be read from the epistle to the Smyrnaeans, n. 8), and the Bishop as Jesus Christ the Son of the Father, and the presbyters as the council of God (ὡς συνέδριον θεοῦ, as in Clement, the comparison here seems to be drawn by Ignatius with the Old Testament), and as the college of the Apostles. Without these the Church is not named » Ignatius, epistle to the Trallians, nn. 2, 3; to the Magnesians, nn. 6, 13; to the Smyrnaeans, n. 8; cf. to the Ephesians, n. 2; to the Magnesians, n. 2; to the Philadelphians, inscription and n. 10; to the Smyrnaeans, n. 12; to Polycarp, n. 6.

b) The presbyters themselves, and with the presbyters all the faithful, are united and subject to the Bishop, who has been sent by Christ to govern the Church. This union and subjection holds as much in the governance of discipline as no less in the magisterium of doctrine, if namely the « episcopate » (Ignatius to Polycarp, n. 8), or the body of Bishops, is considered universally « through the ends of the earth »; for thus they are always regarded in the judgement of Christ. Therefore this union with the Bishops was instituted and is necessary, to flee heresy. « It is fitting that you glorify Jesus Christ in every way, who has glorified you, so that you may be perfected (κατηρτισμένοι) in one obedience, in the same sense and in the same judgement, and that you all say the same thing about the same, that you, subject to the Bishop and the presbytery, may be sanctified in all things... Be of one mind in the judgement of God. For Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, is the judgement of the Father (the Word), just as also the Bishops, established through the ends of the earth, are in the judgement of Jesus Christ; wherefore it becomes you to be united in the judgement of the Bishop, which indeed you do. For your memorable presbytery, worthy of God, is so fitted to the Bishop as strings to a cithara... For whomever the householder sends to govern his house (πρὸς ἰδίαν οἰκονομίαν), we ought to receive him as the one who sends him. It is manifest, therefore, that one must look to the Bishop as to the Lord himself. And indeed Onesimus, the Bishop, praises beyond measure your order in God, because you all live according to the truth and because no heresy has a place among you » Ignatius, Ephesians, nn. 2–6. « I beseech you to abstain from the alien herb, which is heresy... This, however, will happen if you are not puffed up, and are not separated from God Jesus Christ, and from the Bishop, and from the precepts of the Apostles ¹⁵. He who is within the altar is clean; but he who is outside is not clean; that is, he who does anything without the Bishop and the presbytery and the deacon (for διακόνου probably one should read διακόνων, as the interpolator has it) is not clean in conscience » Ignatius, Trallians, n. 7; Philadelphians, nn. 2, 3, 7.

c) Equally necessary is the unity commended by subordination to the Bishop in the functions of priesthood and of liturgy. « Let that Eucharist be held as valid (βεβαία) which is celebrated under the Bishop, or by one to whom the Bishop has committed it. Where the Bishop appears, there let the multitude be; just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic Church (ἡ καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία). It is not lawful without the Bishop either to baptize or to make an agape; but whatever he has approved, this is also pleasing to God, so that everything which is done may be secure and valid (ἀσφαλὲς καὶ βέβαιον)... He who does anything secretly from the Bishop serves the devil » Ignatius, Smyrnaeans, nn. 8, 9; Ephesians, n. 20; Philadelphians, n. 4. ¹⁶

The same hierarchy appears in the epistle of Polycarp. For in the very inscription are named Polycarp, Bishop, « and the presbyters who are with him », just as in the text of the epistle deacons and presbyters are commended; and the faithful are bidden « to be subject to presbyters and deacons », nn. 5, 6.

In the Shepherd of Hermas, the Church, presenting herself under the symbol of a matron, shows together with the Apostles « the Bishops and teachers and ministers, who both held the episcopate and taught and ministered, who have fallen asleep and who are still living » bk. I, vis. 3, n. 5; cf. vis. 2, n. 4; bk. III, similitude 9, n. 27. ¹⁷

3°. After the Apostolic Fathers, their disciples of the second and third succession not only describe this form of the Church as established throughout the whole world, but also assume it everywhere as self-evident and expressly declare that the Church thus constituted in the second and third centuries to the ends of the earth is that very Church which Christ founded in this form, and which continually, as by a river, has descended from the Apostles through the series of successions. Hence they demonstrate the individual Churches founded by the Apostles by no other argument than by exhibiting the series of individual Bishops continually succeeding one another up to the first one instituted by the Apostles themselves; and they show the Churches founded later to be members of the same one Church, because in these too the succession of individual Bishops is derived from that very episcopate constituted by the Apostles according to the hierarchy prescribed by Christ.

Hegesippus narrates that, having gone « as far as Rome, he had visited very many Bishops », among whom, besides Anicetus, the Roman Pontiff, and his successors Soter and Eleutherius, he names « the first Bishop of the Church of Corinth »; and he testifies that « in each succession and in each city » he found one and the same doctrine (cited in Eusebius, H. E., bk. IV, ch. 22).

Eusebius, in his history, had as his chief purpose to demonstrate, from the ancient monuments of the apostolic Churches, their origin, derived by the succession of Bishops from the Apostles.

« Linus is the first to obtain the episcopate of the Roman Church after the martyrdom of Paul and Peter; » in the second year of Titus: « Linus, Bishop of the Roman Church, having held the administration (τὴν λειτουργίαν) for twelve years, hands it on to Anencletus. » In this way he enumerates in succession, according to years and reigns, the individual Pontiffs in a perpetual succession down to the fourth century. Eusebius, H. E., bk. III, 2, 13, 15, 34; IV, 1, 4, 5, 10, 11, 19, 22; V, 22; VI, 21, 23, 29, 39; VII, 2, 5, 27, 30, 32.

« The throne of the Jerusalem episcopate was handed down by the Apostles to James, the brother of the Lord. » After the martyrdom of James, it was considered « who should be judged worthy of his succession » (τῆς Ἰακώβου διαδοχῆς ἄξιος). « But all with one judgement judged Symeon, son of Clopas, the cousin of the Lord, as they say, of whom also the Gospel Scripture makes mention, worthy of that episcopal see. » Eusebius, II, 1, 23; III, 11; IV, 22. Then fifteen Bishops from the circumcision are enumerated, succeeding each other in continuous series, down to the destruction inflicted by the Emperor Hadrian; and afterwards the Bishops from the Gentiles, the first of whom was Mark, down to the times of Eusebius. Ibid. III, 35; IV, 5, 6; V, 12; VI, 10; VII, 5, 14. In the time of Eusebius itself, the episcopal chair of James, « who had first received the episcopate from the Saviour himself and from the Apostles, » was preserved at Jerusalem by constant tradition. Ibid. VII, 19.

« In the Antiochene succession of Peter, Ignatius was the second (Evodius, who had been appointed first, having died) to obtain the episcopate » ¹⁸ Eusebius, III, 22, 36. Moreover a continuous series of twenty successors of Ignatius is woven up to the fourth century. Ibid. IV, 20, 24; V, 22; VI, 11, 21, 23, 29; VII, 14, 30, 32.

« The administration of the Alexandrian Church, in the eighth year of the reign of Nero, was first taken up by Anianus, after Mark the Apostle and Evangelist » Eusebius, II, 24. The successors in the episcopate are listed by name, another fifteen down to Peter, who, at the beginning of the fourth century, suffered martyrdom in the persecution of Maximinus. Ibid. III, 14, 21; IV, 1, 4, 5, 10, 19; V, 9, 22, 26, 35; VII, 28, 32; IX, 6.

4°. Irenaeus, a hearer of Polycarp, declares the hierarchical constitution of the Church far more distinctly, and its divine origin through the Apostles; since he found it necessary not merely to mention in passing but deliberately to demonstrate that the foundation for keeping the unity, integrity and security of the Christian profession lies in this very divine constitution of the Church.

After saying that before the coming of Christ and his kingdom the Scriptures could not be fully understood, he goes on to demonstrate how in this kingdom of Christ the whole truth is preserved by divine institution through the successors of the Apostles. « Therefore it is necessary to obey those who are in the Church, the presbyters, who have succession from the Apostles, as we have shown; who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the sure charism of truth according to the good pleasure of the Father; but to hold the others who stand aloof from the principal succession, and wherever they gather, as suspect, or as heretics... or as schismatics... or again as hypocrites doing this for gain and vain glory. Now all these have fallen from the truth... Where therefore the charisms of the Lord have been placed, there it is necessary to learn the truth, with whom is that succession of the Church which is from the Apostles, and that which is sound and irreproachable¹⁹ in conduct (discipline), and unadulterated and incorruptible in speech (doctrine) is established. For these also keep our faith in the one God who made all things, and increase our love for the Son of God, who has made so great dispensations for our sake, and set forth the Scriptures to us without danger. » Irenaeus, bk. IV, ch. 26, nn. 2–5. Cf. bk. I, ch. 10, n. 2; bk. III, ch. 2, n. 2; ch. 4; ch. 24, n. 1; bk. V, preface and ch. 20.

All the Churches, in each of which is this apostolic succession of Bishops, constitute one Church throughout the whole world; and Irenaeus declares that the principle and bond of this unity is the succession of Peter in the Roman Church. But since the unity of the Church itself is constituted inwardly by the integrity of the whole faith and by the communion of charity, therefore the visible principle of unity is necessarily also the visible principle for preserving perpetually incorruptible the doctrine and conduct, faith and love. « Therefore the tradition of the Apostles made manifest in the whole world is present in every Church for all who wish to see the truth: and we have to enumerate those whom the Apostles instituted as Bishops in the Churches and their successors down to us... whom they also left as successors, handing on their own place of teaching... But 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 together beyond what is fitting, by indicating the tradition which is from the Apostles, and the faith announced to men, which comes down to us through the successions of the Bishops, of the very greatest and most ancient Church (ἀρχαιοτάτης, not in age, which would not be true, but τῇ ἀρχῇ, that is, in principality), known to all, founded and established at Rome by the most glorious Apostles Peter and Paul. For to this Church, because of its more powerful principality, every Church must come, that is, the faithful from everywhere; in it there has always been preserved, by those who are everywhere, the tradition which is from the Apostles. Founding and instructing ²⁰ the Church, therefore, the blessed Apostles handed over to Linus the episcopate of administering the Church (τὴν τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς λειτουργίαν)..... Anacletus (Ἀνέγκλητος) succeeds him; after him, in the third place from the Apostles, Clement obtains the episcopate, who both saw the Apostles themselves... To this Clement succeeds Evaristus (Εὐάρεστος)... ²¹ Now in the twelfth place from the Apostles Eleutherius (Ἐλεύθερος) holds the episcopate. In this order and succession the tradition which is from the Apostles has come down to us. » Irenaeus, bk. III, ch. 3, nn. 1–3. ²²

In all the Churches, therefore, which are all one Church through the one perpetual successor of Peter in the more powerful principality, for preserving the true knowledge placed in the Apostolic doctrine, there stands, as described in what precedes, the ancient state of the Church throughout the whole world ²³ and the character of the body of Christ according to the succession of Bishops, to whom they handed over the Church that is in each place: « which has come down to us, a most complete treatment with the guarding of the Scriptures, neither receiving addition nor subtraction, and a reading without falsification, and a legitimate and diligent exposition according to the Scriptures, without danger and without blasphemy, and the chief gift of love... which surpasses all other charisms » Irenaeus, bk. IV, ch. 33, n. 8. Indeed the true knowledge, which is explained as the most complete treatment, or whole doctrine, and as the whole both of the letter and of the interpretation of the Scripture, and the chief office of charity, has come down to us, as through an organ, through the ancient state of the Church, or through the Church constituted by Christ. This Church, through the succession of Bishops, as one most conspicuous among the other characters of the body of Christ, remains perpetually joined to Christ and is acknowledged as the body of Christ. (Cf. Eph. IV. 15, 16, where « the joints of supply in the body of Christ » are indicated.)

5°. Just as Clement, Ignatius and Irenaeus describe this ancient state of the Church throughout the whole world through the successions of Bishops, so Tertullian, the first among the Latin ecclesiastical writers, describes it as the character of the body of Christ.

In the first place the hierarchy consists of three distinct orders, so that several presbyters and deacons depend on one Bishop. « The right of giving (baptism) belongs indeed to the supreme priest, who is the Bishop; then presbyters and deacons, yet not without the authority of the Bishop, for the honour of the Church ²⁴, the preservation of which secures peace » Tertullian, On Baptism, ch. 17.

Chiefly, however, the perpetual succession of the episcopate from the Apostles must be considered. « Let therefore (the heretics) set forth the origins of their Churches; let them unroll the order of their Bishops, so running down by successions from the beginning, that that first Bishop had as his author and predecessor some one of the Apostles or of Apostolic men who, however, persevered with the Apostles. For in this way the Apostolic Churches bring forward their registers. As the Church of the Smyrnaeans²⁵ reports Polycarp placed there by John; as that of the Romans publishes Clement ordained by Peter; so, surely, the others also exhibit those whom, as established in the episcopate by the Apostles, they have as transmitters of Apostolic seed. Let the heretics devise something of the kind... But even if they devise it, they will advance nothing. For their doctrine itself, compared with the Apostolic, by its diversity and contrariety will declare that it belongs neither to any author of the Apostles nor to any Apostolic man... Accordingly, by this form, those Churches will be approved by them, which, though they bring forward none of the Apostles or Apostolic men as their author, being much later, which are at last founded every day; yet, agreeing in the same faith, are deemed no less Apostolic, by reason of the kinship of doctrine. » Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics, ch. 32. Let there also be compared in the same place chapter 36, where the Churches are named, « in which the very chairs of the Apostles still preside in their places. »

What Tertullian means is this. The succession of Bishops reaching back to the Apostles is necessary, taken universally in the Church, for preserving the Apostolic doctrine and as the character of the body of Christ; but it is not necessary, nor can it be the case, that each Church considered by itself, and therefore the Episcopal sees in them, reach back to the Apostles. Yet in each one it is necessary that they have the line of the Apostolic seed, both in the connection of their Bishops with the series of Apostolic succession and in the kinship of doctrine; that is, that they have Apostolic succession at least mediated, both of persons and of doctrine, or (as Tertullian speaks) of the sacrament. Whence heresies, even if by episcopal succession they should insert themselves into the Apostolic age, « are not received into peace and communion by any Churches that are in any way Apostolic, namely because of the diversity of the sacrament, which is in no way Apostolic » Tertullian, ibid., ch. 32. On the contrary, concerning individual Churches also founded later, what the same Tertullian says is true within the one body of the Catholic Church: « It is agreed that every doctrine which agrees with those Apostolic Churches, the mothers and originators of the faith, is to be counted as truth, undoubtedly holding what the Churches received from the Apostles, the Apostles from Christ, and Christ from God... We communicate with the Apostolic Churches, because our doctrine is in no way different: this is the testimony of truth » Ibid., ch. 21.

6°. Clement of Alexandria teaches the doctrine of the Church, though only in passing, yet quite clearly, at the end of book VII of the Stromata. As there is one God and one Lord Christ, so the thing most to be venerated on earth is the Church, namely « participating in the nature of the one God ». She is one first numerically, since there is no true Church other than the Catholic one. This is proved because that is the true Church which was instituted by Christ at his coming in the times of Tiberius, and received its doctrine and faith from him and from his Apostles. « Therefore that is the true Church which is truly ancient » ²⁶, that is, derived from Christ and the Apostles into all future time. And then the Church is one also intrinsically, by the unity of faith and of the institutions of Christ ²⁷. All heresies, which first arose « about the times of Hadrian », have defected from the one, ancient, true Church, which alone is catholic, and they owe their origin to the defection itself; they are therefore not in the Church, nor are they the true Church, because they are not derived from Christ and from the Apostles, but rebel against the Church of Christ and of the Apostles by defecting from the inner unity of faith. Stromata VII, ed. Sylb., p. 325.

In this visible Church on earth government exists according to diverse grades. As there are diverse grades in holiness and in true γνῶσις, and again diverse grades in the hierarchy of the angels, so « here too in the Church there are grades of Bishops, presbyters, and deacons; these, I think, are imitations of angelic glory » ²⁸ Ib., bk. VI, p. 283. In the sacred books Clement finds diverse offices assigned to these same three orders, « some to presbyters, others to Bishops, others to deacons » Paedagogus, bk. III, p. 114.

Origen, a disciple of Clement, preaches this hierarchy in the Church as « the ecclesiastical order which is held in the seats of the episcopate or the presbyterate, and the order of deacons standing by the divine ministry » Origen, on the Canticle, bk. II, T. III, p. 48 (ed. De la Rue). « Bishop and presbyter and deacon are the symbols of things signified by these names » ²⁹ on Matthew, tom. 14, n. 22, p. 646; tom. 11, n. 15, p. 501; tom. 16, n. 22, p. 753.

7°. We find the same description of the constitution, so luminously expressed, again in St. Cyprian: not for Africa alone, or for certain parts of the Church only, but, as in the preceding Fathers, for the whole Church in the world; and not by human law alone, but by a law and institution altogether divine.

The Church throughout the world is, by divine institution, one body; and this unity of the body is constituted by the unity of the episcopate, which the individual legitimate Bishops in the individual Churches participate in (as far as it is considered as office and power) and compose (as far as it is considered as one body). Whoever is split off from this unity, since he is outside, beyond the Church of Christ, is neither a Christian nor can he obtain salvation.

« As for the person of Novatian... know that we ought first of all not to be curious about what he teaches, since he teaches outside. Whoever he is and whatever he is, he is not a Christian, who is not in the Church of Christ... Since there is from Christ one Church throughout the whole world, divided into many members, and likewise one episcopate diffused in the harmonious multitude of many Bishops, he, after God's handing down, after the unity of the Catholic Church that is bound together and joined everywhere, tries to make a human Church... Whoever therefore separates himself from the bond of the Church and from the college of priests cannot have the power or the honour of a Bishop, who has not wished to hold the unity of the episcopate, nor its peace » Cyprian, ep. 52, p. 73, ed. Paris 1726. « One body and one spirit (Eph. IV. 4, 5)... 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 to be one and undivided... Whoever, separated from the Church, is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church. He who leaves the Church of Christ shall not attain the rewards of Christ; he is a stranger, he is profane, he is an enemy. He can no longer have God as Father who does not have the Church as mother... Who is so wicked and faithless, who so mad with the fury of discord, as either to believe that the unity of God, the garment of the Lord, the Church of Christ, can be split, or to dare to split it? He himself warns and teaches in his Gospel, saying: and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. And does anyone think that in one place there can be either many shepherds or many flocks? » Id., De unitate Ecclesiae, pp. 195, 196.

« Although a stubborn and proud multitude of those unwilling to obey departs, the Church nonetheless does not recede from Christ, and they are the Church: the people gathered to the priest, and the flock clinging to its shepherd. Whence you ought to know that the Bishop is in the Church and the Church in the Bishop, and if anyone is not with the Bishop, that he is not in the Church³⁰, and that those vainly flatter themselves who, not having peace with God's priests, creep in, and believe they are communicating secretly with some, when the Church, which is catholic and one, is not torn or divided, but is indeed connected and joined by the glue of priests cohering with one another » Id., ep. 69, p. 123. « The body of priests is a copious body, joined by the glue of mutual concord and the bond of unity, so that if anyone from our college should attempt to make a heresy and to tear apart and waste the flock of Christ, the others should come to help, and, like useful and merciful shepherds, gather the Lord's sheep into the flock³¹... For although we are many shepherds, we shepherd one flock³², and we ought to gather and cherish all the sheep which Christ sought with his blood and passion. » Id., ep. 67, p. 116. Compare ep. 40, p. 53; ep. 2, p. 56; ep. 44, p. 58; ep. 46, p. 61, 62.

This unity both of the episcopate and of the whole Church, insofar as it is the visible unity of the body, must have a visible glue and bond. Cyprian, like the other Fathers, acknowledged and professed that this bond was placed by divine institution in the Apostolic See, that is, in Peter and in each of his successors in his own time. For just as he says of any particular Church that the Church is the people gathered to the priest, and that the Church is in the Bishop as in the cause of unity, both efficient and in some way formal; so the whole Catholic Church is one by the glue of priests cohering with one another. And this glue, from which the unity both of the priests and of the Church has arisen and is perpetually maintained, is, by Christ's institution, Peter: he himself in person at the beginning, he himself in his successor perpetually; by it the one Church of Christ persists. On this matter we have spoken, as much as is sufficient, in thesis XIV.

Now, I ask you, let us turn our mind for a little while to the present state of the Catholic Church. Throughout the whole world individual Bishops preside over the individual Churches with true power of order and of jurisdiction; under these pastors there are distinct orders of presbyters and of ministers; then come the lay faithful, who do not belong to the order of the sacred ministry but receive its action for salutary teaching, direction, and sanctification. All the Bishops, with their clergy and with their faithful, throughout the whole world constitute the visible unity and one Catholic Church, through subordination to the power of universal jurisdiction of one visible head of the whole Church, who is the successor of Peter, the Roman Pontiff. We believe this constitution of the Church was revealed and ordained by Christ, the incarnate Word himself, through his Apostles; and therefore its existence is of unchangeable divine law, and its truth is an article of revealed faith, on which the integral preservation and the sincere explanation of the other truths of faith rest. But we find this very doctrine and constitution of the Church both expressed in the words of Christ the Lord and of the Apostles, and (as has been demonstrated in this thesis) we see by this constitution the Church, by the very fact, founded and ordained by the Apostles. Therefore the internal constitution of the Church, and its whole form of government, as it stands (which no one of sound mind denies has been so at least from many centuries), is proved not only by the argument of prescription but by direct demonstration to be the same as that which was first ordained and begun by Christ and propagated by the Apostles. The Catholic Church, therefore, is in this constitution, by which she flourishes and lives, herself, and she alone, which Christ the Lord instituted by divine and unchangeable right, and which, according to his infallible promises, he preserves until the consummation of the age.

« Although it is certain that the three grades of Bishops, presbyters, and ministers were distinguished by divine ordination, and therefore already in the Apostolic time, it must nevertheless be conceded without doubt that in that most ancient age the name of presbyters was sometimes also applied to Bishops; yet we think it more probable that the name of Bishop was always proper to the priests of the first order alone, who were each ordained to govern individual Churches, and never common to the priests of the second order, or presbyters. »

I. It is established from what has been demonstrated that, besides deacons, there are two wholly distinct grades of the hierarchy: the higher, of Bishops, who are each set over an individual Church, and the lower, of presbyters, who can be several in one Church and are subject to the Bishops; and this hierarchy (as the Council of Trent speaks, sess. 23, can. 6) is « instituted by divine ordination. » For we see it from the Apostolic times onward in full vigour in all Churches, however far apart from one another: Bishops, regarded in their order as they constitute the episcopate of the Church, are always and everywhere believed to be instituted by Christ in the Apostles themselves, as successors in their predecessors; always and everywhere presbyters exercise the priesthood under their power; and finally, deacons appear distinct from both, as a third grade. Apart from the other functions proper to the episcopal order, only Bishops have the power, by the imposition of hands, to propagate the priesthood; presbyters have no such power. This property of power can be only from divine institution, by which Bishops are distinguished in the fullness of the priesthood from the inferior priests, that is, from the presbyters. Against this divinely constituted distinction of the two orders, when Aërius first devised in the fourth century « a dogma (as Epiphanius speaks) furious beyond human grasp, » he was condemned by all as a heretic. « It is manifest to all who use reason (Epiphanius adds there) that it is wholly full of madness to say that Bishop and presbyter are equal. For one order (of Bishops) belongs to begetting fathers, for it begets the fathers of the Church. The other order (of presbyters), since it cannot be fathers, begets sons of the Church through the laver of regeneration, but not fathers or masters. But how can it happen that he constitutes a presbyter who has no right of laying on hands for ordination? Or how can he be said to be equal to a Bishop? » Epiphanius, Haer. 75, nn. 3, 4. The same distinction is handed down, among other Fathers (cf. Petavius, Hierarchia Ecclesiastica, bk. IV, ch. 2), by St. Jerome, in those very places where, comparing the order of presbyters on one side with the higher order of Bishops and on the other with the lower order of deacons, he shows that presbyters are nearer to Bishops, as priests to priests, than deacons, who lack the priesthood, are to presbyters. Nevertheless he professes that the distinction between the priests of the first and second order is wholly preserved by the divinely conferred power of ordination. « For what (he says) does a Bishop do, apart from ordination, that a presbyter does not? » Jerome, ep. ad Evangelum (cf. Petavius, Dissertationes Ecclesiasticae, bk. I, ch. 3).

From the universal tradition, faith, and practice of the Church it is therefore certain that the participated priesthood of the New Testament was so arranged by Christ, the supreme priest according to the order of Melchisedech, that its fullness, which was instituted in the Apostles and their successors the Bishops, is not indivisible; rather, a part of the power can be conferred separately from the fullness (namely the power of consecrating the real body of Christ, of remitting sins, and of conferring most of the other sacraments in the mystical body of Christ), and this part constitutes the lower and distinct order of the presbyterate. Although, therefore (as the Council of Trent defined, sess. 23, can. 6), « in the Catholic Church there is a hierarchy instituted by divine ordination, which consists of Bishops, presbyters, and ministers, » and without these (Bishops, presbyters, deacons) « the Church is not named », as we have seen Ignatius write at the beginning of the second century (ep. to the Trallians, n. 3); nevertheless one must prudently take note of what St. Epiphanius warned: namely, that in the first times (the proclamation being new, νέου ὄντος τοῦ κηρύγματος) a complete arrangement could not at once be made by the Apostles, nor a full hierarchy set up everywhere; but in some places presbyters were ordained without a Bishop, and in others a Bishop without presbyters, « who cannot be without a deacon » (Epiphanius, loc. cit., n. 5). If therefore there are passages in the Apostolic writings in which the distinction between Bishops and presbyters does not sufficiently appear, it must remain beyond doubt that this obscurity arises not from a lack of right, as if the Apostles had not recognized the distinction, of which it is manifestly established from elsewhere, but from an imperfection of fact, that is, from a hierarchy not yet everywhere complete.

II. The more obscure passages of this kind are the following. a) The same men who are called Bishops are called presbyters. Paul, sending from Miletus to Ephesus, called « the presbyters of the Church » (τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους τῆς ἐκκλησίας), whom he then admonishes: « take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has placed you Bishops to rule the Church of God, which he acquired with his own blood » Acts XX. 17, 28. Likewise he writes to Titus: « I left you in Crete... that you might establish presbyters in each city (κατὰ πόλιν πρεσβυτέρους); if anyone is without crime... For a Bishop must be without crime, as God's steward » (ὡς θεοῦ οἰκονόμον) Tit. I. 5–7. Peter, himself a fellow-presbyter, exhorts the presbyters, whose office he then calls episcopal: « the elders who are among you (πρεσβυτέρους τοὺς ἐν ὑμῖν) I beseech, as a fellow-elder (συμπρεσβύτερος)... shepherd the flock of God that is among you, overseeing (ἐπισκοποῦντες) not under compulsion » 1 Pet. V. 1, 2. Further, b) where it seems to be the purpose to enumerate the grades of the hierarchy¹, only Bishops and deacons are named, with no mention of presbyters: Phil. I. 1; 1 Tim. III. 1–10. c) The difficulty is increased because, from the cited places of Acts and Philippians, in one and the same city and particular Church there seem to have been not one but several such Bishops.

In the interpretation of these passages some points are certain to all Catholics. 1°. It is certain from the contexts, in the cited places of Acts XX, 1 Tim. III, Tit. I, and 1 Pet. V, that they are to be understood, if not solely and to the exclusion of the priests of the second order, at least directly and principally of the priests of the first order. For they are bidden to attend to the whole flock in which they are placed by the Holy Spirit, and their episcopal office is said to be to rule the Church of God, which he acquired with his own blood. Peter himself, the Apostle and prince of the Apostles, calls himself fellow-presbyter of these presbyters, who are bidden each to shepherd the flock of God and to oversee (ἐπισκοπεῖν) it as the office of a Bishop requires. Moreover, and this excludes all controversy among Catholics, the Tridentine synod expressly interprets the passage of Acts XX about Bishops as opposed to presbyters (sess. 23, ch. 4). Whence the Bishops named in 1 Tim. III and Tit. I are to be understood in the same way, since in the former passage the Bishop is said to have care of the Church of God, just as the householder presides over his house. Indeed, in those very words Paul there designates the singularity of the Bishop: « a Bishop (with the article τὸν ἐπίσκοπον) must be irreproachable », while immediately after he names deacons in the plural (διακόνους ὡσαύτως σεμνούς). In the second place Titus is bidden to establish κατὰ πόλιν, one in each city, the presbyters who are afterwards called Bishops ²; and finally, in nearly the same words in this Epistle to Titus as in the one to Timothy, the virtues of the Bishop are described. 2°. From this it is further certain that the priests of the first order, who are and are called Bishops, also had the name of presbyters; so that this name presbyter, like the other name priest, by which Bishops are designated more frequently in the Fathers of the fourth century and later, though presbyters also at other times, by itself is by no means sufficient to distinguish the first and second order: « presbyter and Bishop: the one is a name of age, the other of dignity... in a Bishop a presbyter is included » Jerome, ep. 146, n. 2, to Evangelus. And not only in the Scriptures, but also after the Apostolic times, among the more ancient Fathers, Bishops are sometimes called by this name presbyters, as is manifest from many places in Irenaeus. « To the presbyters who are in the Church one must be obedient, those who have succession from the Apostles, who with the succession of the episcopate have received the sure charism of truth » Irenaeus, bk. IV, ch. 26, n. 2; cf. nn. 4, 5. Writing to Victor, the Roman Pontiff, about the difference in celebrating Easter, Irenaeus says: « But also those presbyters, he says, who before Soter presided over the Church which you now govern, I mean Anicetus, and Pius, and Hyginus, and Telesphorus, and Xystus, did not themselves observe it (the manner of the Asians of celebrating Easter and the fast)... Anicetus said that the custom of the presbyters who had been before him was to be retained by himself » (cited in Eusebius, H. E., bk. V, ch. 24). Cf. Irenaeus, bk. III, ch. 2, n. 2; and the letter to Florinus (cited in Eusebius, H. E., bk. V, ch. 20).

III. These matters are beyond controversy. But it is doubtful, and has been brought into dispute both among the ancient writers and holy Fathers and among more recent interpreters, whether in the cited places of the New Testament, and in one or another of the most ancient Fathers (perhaps Clement of Rome, Ep. I to the Corinthians, n. 42, cf. nn. 44, 47, 57), presbyters, namely priests of the second order, also have the appellation Bishop. If this were so, the name Bishop itself would not suffice to demonstrate, against the heretical Presbyterians and the other Protestants, the distinction of the first and second grade of the priestly hierarchy; the matter would have to be settled from the contexts alone, in which they are accustomed to seek an escape through winding burrows. If, on the contrary, it could be shown that only the leaders (προεστῶτας), who each governed individual Churches and had presbyters subject to them, as the hierarchy is already described in the letters of St. Ignatius, were ever called Bishops, and that these inferiors were never called so, all paths of escape would be closed. Therefore this dispute is not to be thought to be about the name alone, or to be of little use.

It must be wholly conceded that Chrysostom and those who depend on him, Theodoret, Oecumenius, Theophylact (if it were permitted to count him among the Fathers), as well as Jerome and the commentator whom they usually call Ambrosiaster, thought that in the first times the name Bishop was common even to simple presbyters. Their reason was that they rightly held as firm and fixed that in individual Churches there never were more than one leader of the first order, to whom alone the episcopal name was afterwards claimed; but on the other hand they did not see how it could be denied that in the particular Church of Philippi (Phil. I. 1) several are named Bishops. Where the Apostle writes to all the saints who are at Philippi, with the Bishops and deacons (σὺν ἐπισκόποις καὶ διακόνοις) ³, Chrysostom comments thus: « What is this? Were there many Bishops of one city? By no means; but he called the presbyters so. For then the names were still common... In antiquity, therefore, as I was saying, even presbyters were called Bishops... But as time went on, the name Bishop and presbyter was distributed to each as a proper name » In Phil., hom. 1, n. 1. Jerome speaks in the same sense: he thinks that also in Acts XX, and in other places, 1 Pet. V. 1, 2, and Heb. XIII. 17 (where they are called leaders, ἡγούμενοι), the discourse is about presbyters, « by whose common counsel the Churches were governed. » He says, of course: « Philippi is one city of Macedonia, and certainly in one city there could not be several, as they are called, Bishops; but because at that time they called the same men Bishops who were also called presbyters, therefore he spoke indifferently of Bishops (Paul writing to the Bishops and deacons) as if of presbyters. » Then, citing the passage of Acts XX: « and here observe more carefully, he says, how, calling the presbyters of the one city of Ephesus, he afterwards called the same men Bishops » Jerome, on Titus I. 5.

Without doubt those Fathers acknowledged and plainly demonstrated the distinct orders, first and second; but the Presbyterians seize on this opinion about the community of the name in order to confuse the things themselves.

Petavius thought indeed that it should be conceded that several in one city were called by the name both of presbyters and of Bishops, and nevertheless that it can and must be denied that the name Bishop was ever common to simple presbyters. To reconcile these things he himself first contended, and other Catholics afterwards willingly assented; and, having collated what is said in the books of the New Testament, he seemed to himself to have sufficiently proved that in the Apostolic age several in one city were wont to be marked with the episcopal character, « because (as he says) it was necessary that a ready supply of Bishops should be at hand, who would be sent to the cities and provinces won for the Christian name, so that they might be able to perform what was administered only by Bishops » (Dissertationes Ecclesiasticae, bk. I, ch. 2). He thinks these were true Bishops, although several at the same time governed each Church; and with this opinion admitted, all that is read in the New Testament about presbyters, the same men being Bishops, would be plain and clear.

I confess that this hypothesis has always seemed to me, and still seems, less probable. For it cannot easily be conceded that in primitive times the Churches were governed in any other way than that in which the seven Churches of Asia are described under the Apostle John. All the less can this be conceded because at the beginning of the second century, in the time of Polycarp and Ignatius and Hegesippus, it appears not only that individual Bishops were set over individual Churches everywhere, but we see this institution presented as more ancient, and as having come from the Apostles. Nor, on the Petavian hypothesis, can the appeal of the ancients to the continuous succession in the episcopal chair of the individual Churches, from the Apostles who instituted them onward, be sufficiently understood. Then, moreover, the difficulty is increased because among the ancient Fathers and ecclesiastical writers no trace of that interpretation can be found; but all the ancients held as settled and fixed that several true Bishops (that is, priests of the first order) neither were nor could be in one city ⁴. Hence those among the ancients who thought that several Bishops of one city⁵ were named in the books of the New Testament, by that very fact thought that the name Bishop was also common to presbyters, as we have seen in Chrysostom and Jerome and the others a little before. But those who maintain that the name Bishop, as most certainly among the apostolic men Clement, Polycarp, and Ignatius, so also among the Apostles themselves, was proper to the priests of the first order alone, set over individual Churches, by that very fact deny that the New Testament ever records several Bishops of one city ⁶.

This last opinion is supported by the gravest arguments: from the very nature and purpose of the episcopal office; from the catalogues of the Apostolic Churches; from the whole history of the episcopate, from at least the end of the first century and so from the Apostolic age itself; and from the analogy with the unity of the universal Church through one universal Bishop. This monarchy, as in the universal Church so also in particular Churches, is expressly claimed by the ancient Fathers, when they declare not only the fact but the right itself: « there cannot be several Bishops of one particular Church, » just as by Christ's institution there is one Bishop of the universal Church; « there must be unity of the Bishop », just as there is one sacrifice and one Eucharist.

The difficulty against this opinion can be brought forward from no other source except the double passage, Acts XX and Phil. I, where several Bishops of one city seem to be mentioned. For in the other texts it is clear that the name presbyters is indeed common even to priests of the first order, but in no way is the name Bishop attributed to priests even of the second order. If those two passages do not admit a convenient reconciliation, one must go over to the opinion of Petavius; for the first opinion, cited first from Jerome and Chrysostom, no Catholic will easily be brought to defend, at least for Acts XX, especially after the Council of Trent. Pope Celestine I also (ep. 18, n. 4, to the Fathers of the Council of Ephesus) testifies that Paul, in those words, « speaks properly (ἰδίως) with reference to Bishops. » But not only that first opinion, but also the Petavian one, seems entirely excluded by the sacred text itself of Apocalypse II–III, where John writes of the single Angels of the single cities of Asia, and names first among them « the Angel of the Church of Ephesus. » For it is not lawful to imagine, without foundation, that so great a change was introduced between the time of Paul and the writing of the Apocalypse. If, therefore, a prudent reconciliation can be made, all the more if such a reconciliation has already been proposed by some of the ancient Fathers, the arguments by which we have seen the third opinion fortified persuade that it is to be embraced. Now the reconciliation is obvious if it is borne in mind that Ephesus and Philippi were the cities in which the Churches were first founded for Asia and Macedonia, and that from there the gospel was propagated into other cities and regions, over each of which single Bishops were set.

As to the address of Acts XX, St. Irenaeus, born in Asia, a hearer of Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostles, attests that the Bishops had gathered not only from Ephesus but also from the neighboring cities: « at Miletus, the Bishops and presbyters who were there having been called together, from Ephesus and from the other neighboring cities » ⁷ Irenaeus, bk. III, ch. 14, n. 2. The foundation of this explanation lies in the speech itself, delivered by the Apostle to the assembled Bishops; for he says that they are themselves those among whom he passed preaching, and that he was for three years admonishing each one of them. These things, indeed, can hardly be understood of the presbyters of one single city alone as regards three years, and as regards passing even less: « you all, among whom I passed (ἐν οἷς διῆλθον) preaching the kingdom of God... since for three years night and day I have not ceased with tears admonishing each one of you » Acts XX. 25, 31.

That an entirely similar reconciliation is also possible in the other place, Phil. I. 1, if not certain, is at least probable, no one will deny. Paul destined the letter written to the Colossians not for this Church alone but also for the other Church of the Laodiceans, and in turn destined that of the Laodiceans, or (as the Greek has it) « from Laodicea », to be sent to the Colossians ⁸. Whence it becomes probable that the epistle to the Ephesians also was encyclical, not only for the Church of Ephesus but also for Laodicea and the other Churches of Asia. Then the second to the Corinthians, in express words, and therefore probably also the first, although this is not said in the inscription, was sent « to the Church of God that is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia » (τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ Ἀχαΐᾳ) 2 Cor. I. 1. From this analogy it is indeed rendered probable that the epistle under discussion was encyclical to the Churches of Macedonia, or (if names introduced later could be used) to the παροικία or ecclesiastical province of Philippi (τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν Φιλίπποις).⁹

One must say that this explanation of the place commended itself to St. Epiphanius. For when Aërius, to build up his heresy of the equality of Bishops and presbyters, relied also on this epistle, inscribed « to the Bishops and deacons », Epiphanius repeats the answer drawn from the still imperfect state of the hierarchy in those first times. « Where necessity demanded, and men were found worthy of the episcopate, Bishops were constituted; but when there was no supply, there were not found those who might be created presbyters, whence they were content with a Bishop alone in each place (ἐπὶ τῷ κατὰ τόπον μόνῳ ἐπισκόπῳ); but it is not fitting for a Bishop to be without a deacon » Epiphanius, Haer. 75, n. 5. Epiphanius therefore asserts two things explicitly, in which a third is evidently contained implicitly. a) In individual Churches (κατὰ τόπον) there were never more than single Bishops. b) In the primitive times sometimes Bishops only were constituted, with deacons, but no presbyters at all; and this less complete constitution of the Churches is to be understood in the case of Paul, when, silent about presbyters, he writes « to the Bishops and deacons » (Phil. I. 1). c) Therefore that epistle, inscribed in the plural number « to the Bishops », was addressed not to one particular Church only, but to several particular Churches.

In agreement with this explanation of the words of the Apostle (Acts XX; Phil. I), among Catholic theologians we have Mamachi (Origines et Antiquitates Christianae, T. IV, ch. 4, § 2, pp. 334 ff., 345 ff.); Bolgeni (L'Episcopato, ch. 6, art. 2, n. 223; cf. Zallinger, Ius Ecclesiasticum publicum, § 350, note 1); and Francesco Antonio Zaccaria (Dottrine del secolo illuminato XVIII paragonate etc., Append. I, art. 1).

From what has been said so far, the difficulty which the Presbyterians are wont to draw from St. Clement's first Epistle to the Corinthians, nn. 42 and 44, is also now resolved. They say, of course, that Clement there names only Bishops and deacons constituted by the Apostles; therefore by Apostolic institution there are no presbyters distinct from Bishops, and so there is only one grade of those who are called Bishops, and who by another name are called presbyters. Also many Catholics, with Cotelerius (in his notes on Clement's text), think that, not indeed this Aërian heresy, but nevertheless this much must be conceded: that presbyters, namely priests of the second order, in those first times, and in particular in Clement, also had the appellation Bishops.

But as to the matter itself: we have already seen in the preceding thesis that Clement, at n. 40, distinguishes three orders, « the high priest, priests, and Levites ». Nor is there in him the difficulty that occurs in Paul (Phil. I. 1; Acts XX. 28), that he seems to name several Bishops of one particular Church; for Clement (n. 42) speaks universally of the Churches founded by the Apostles: « preaching through regions and cities, they appointed their firstfruits... Bishops and deacons of those who were going to believe »; just as Paul ordered presbyters, that is Bishops, to be established « in each city » (Tit. I. 5). But that Clement, at n. 44, is said to name several presbyters of the Corinthians who are also called Bishops, is not true. For in this place, no less than at n. 42, he speaks universally of Bishops, and not of the Bishops of the Corinthians only ¹⁰. So the explanation of Bolgeni, who in the same work thinks that Clement's epistle, like Paul's second to the Corinthians, was an encyclical addressed to the Churches of Achaia, is in no way necessary.

The only difficulty left, then, is the same in Paul (Phil. I. 1; 1 Tim. III. 2, 8) as in Clement: how is it that both the Apostle and his disciple, in these places, mentioned only two grades, Bishops and deacons, with presbyters omitted? The explanation of Epiphanius, brought in above, could be fitted no less to the words of Clement than of Paul; yet it does not seem necessary and, to tell the truth, it is not probable, at least for the Corinthian Church. We therefore concede that Paul, in writing to the Bishops of Macedonia and, to Timothy, in declaring the virtues necessary for a Bishop, meant also to include the presbyters, who by reason of priesthood are closer to Bishops, as Chrysostom explains (hom. XI, n. 1, on 1 Tim.): « after (Paul) has spoken of Bishops, leaving the order of presbyters he passes to deacons, because these do not differ much from Bishops... For they excel only in the power of ordaining; and this alone (looking, namely, at the consecratory power of the priesthood, and setting aside magisterium and sacred governance) they seem to have over presbyters. » The reason is the same in St. Clement, who had in addition a particular cause for naming only Bishops and deacons: so that the text he introduces, slightly altered (from Is. LX. 17), might fit aptly for confirmation: « I will appoint their Bishops in justice, and their deacons in faith. » Now indeed anyone can see that it is far different for simple presbyters ever to have had the name of Bishops, which we deny, and that what is said of Bishops is sometimes extended also to presbyters without their being named distinctly, which we concede was done by Paul and by Clement ¹¹.

We shall therefore persevere in this opinion: that the name presbyter was indeed at times applied, both in the books of the New Testament and among some most ancient Fathers, to priests of the second as well as of the first order; but Bishops were never called other than the single pastors of the first order of individual Churches. And from at least the second and third century, as was customary in all later ages, these were distinguished from presbyters by this name, as is admitted by all.