Chapter III

According as the Church of Jerusalem sank, the Church of Rome rose, or, rather, a phenomenon was evidently manifested in the years which followed the victory of Titus. It was that the Church of Rome became more and more the inheritor and the substitute of the Church of Jerusalem. The spirit of the two churches was the same: what was a danger at Jerusalem became an advantage at Rome. The taste for tradition and the hierarchy, and the respect for authority, were in some sort transplanted from the parvises of the temple to the Occident. James, the brother of the Lord, had been a sort of pope at Jerusalem. Rome is about to take up the part of James. We shall have the pope at Rome. Without Titus, we should have had the pope in Jerusalem, but with this great difference, that the pope at Jerusalem would have extinguished Christianity in about one or two hundred years, while the Pope of Rome has made it the religion of the universe.

Here appears a very important person, who seems to have been the head of the Roman Church in the early years of the first century, concerning whom I am happy to find myself in accord with one of your most scholarly and enlightened critics, Mr. Lightfoot. I speak of Clement Romanus. In the penumbra in which he remains, enveloped and almost lost in the luminous dust of a beautiful far-off history, Clement is one of the grand figures of early Christianity: one would say that it was the head of an old effaced fresco of Giotto's, recognizable still from his golden aureola, and some dim features of striking purity and sweetness. One thing is beyond doubt: it is the high rank which he held in the utterly spiritual hierarchy of the church of his time, and the unequalled credit with which he sustained it. His approval made the law. All parties clung to him, and wished to shield themselves under his authority. It is probable that he was one of the most energetic agents of the grand work that was about to be accomplished: I mean the posthumous reconciliation of Peter and Paul, without which union the work of Christ could only have perished. His high personality, aggrandized by tradition, was, after that of Peter, the most holy figure of the primitive Christian Rome.

Already the idea of a certain primacy in the Church of Rome began to show itself. The right of advising the other churches and of settling their differences was accorded to this church. It is believed that like privileges had been allowed to Peter among the disciples. Now a still closer bond was established between Peter and Rome. In the time of Clement, great dissensions divided the Church at Corinth. The Roman Church, being applied to in these troubles, replied by an epistle, which has been preserved to us. The epistle is anonymous; but a very ancient tradition teaches that Clement was the author of it. The Church at Corinth had changed but little since St. Paul. It had the same proud, disputant, feeble spirit. It is evident that the principal opposition to the hierarchy was found in this Greek spirit, always mobile, because it was always full of life, undisciplined (and for my part I like it), not knowing how to form a flock from a crowd. The women and the children were in full revolt. Some superior doctors imagined that they possessed a profound sense in every thing, and mystic secrets analogous to the gift of tongues and the discernment of spirits. Those who were honored with these supernatural gifts scorned the ancients, and aspired to replace them. Corinth had a respectable presbytery, which, however, did not receive the highest mysticism. The advanced pretenders cast it in the shade, and put themselves in its place. Some of the _presbyteri_ were even dismissed. The struggle between the established hierarchy and personal revelations began, and this struggle fills the history of the Church; the privileged soul complaining, that, in spite of the favors with which it is honored, a gross clergy, wanting in spiritual life, dominates it officially. We see that this was the heresy of individual mysticism, maintaining the rights of the spirit against authority, pretending to rise above common mortals and the ordinary clergy by right of its direct intercourse with divinity.

The Roman Church was always the church of order, of subordination, and of rule. Its fundamental principle was that humility and submission were of more value than the most sublime gifts. Its epistle is the first manifestation in the Christian Church of the principle of authority.

A few years since, there was much surprise when a French archbishop, then a senator, said in the Tribune, "My clergy is my regiment." Clement had said this before him. Order and obedience were the supreme laws of the family and the church. "Let us consider the soldiers who serve under our sovereigns. With what order, what punctuality, what submission, they obey their commands: all are not prefects, nor tribunes, nor centurions; but each one in his rank executes the orders of the emperor and of his chiefs. The great cannot exist without the small, nor the small without the great. In every thing there is a mingling of diverse elements, and by this mingling all advances. Let us take, for example, our bodies. The head is nothing without the feet; the feet are nothing without the head. The smallest of our organs are necessary, and serve the whole body: all conspire, and obey the same principle of subordination for the preservation of the whole."

The history of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is the history of a triple abdication; the community of the faithful first placing all its powers in the hands of the ancients, or _presbyteri_; the presbyteral body at length delegating its authority to one person who was the _episcopos_; then the _episcopi_ of the Latin Church recognized as their head one of themselves, who became the pope. This last progress, if we may call it so, was not accomplished until our time. The creation of the episcopate, on the contrary, was the work of the second century. The absorption of the church by the _presbyteri_ was accomplished before the year 100. In the Epistle of Clement Romanus it is not yet with the episcopate, but with the presbytery, that he deals. We find there no trace of a _presbyteros_ superior to the others, and entitled to dethrone them; but the author proclaims positively that the presbytery and the clergy are above the people. The apostles, in establishing churches, chose through the inspiration of the Spirit the "bishops and the deacons of the future believers." The power emanating from the apostles has been transmitted by regular succession. No church has then the right to dethrone its seniors. The privilege of the rich is nothing in the church. Accordingly, those who are favored with mystic gifts, instead of believing themselves above the hierarchy, should be the more submissive. This involves the great problem, "Who exists in the church? Is it the people? Is it the clergy? Is it inspiration?" This problem was already given in the time of St. Paul, who resolved it in the true manner by mutual charity. One epistle trenches upon the question in the sense of pure Catholicism. The apostolic title is every thing: the right of the people is reduced to nothing. We may then safely assert that Catholicism had its origin at Rome, since the Church of Rome laid down its first rules. Prescience pertains to spiritual gifts, to science and distinction: it belongs to the hierarchy, to the powers transmitted through the medium of the canonical ordination, which attaches itself to the apostles by an unbroken chain. The free church as Christ conceived it, and as St. Paul also regarded it, was a Utopia which held nothing for the future. Evangelical liberty had destroyed it; and it was not realized, that, with the hierarchy uniformity and death would come in time.