lest they expose themselves to a retort of misinterpretation of theology. Traditions, to start with, are like unsmelted ore: they are smelted in the fire of contradiction. Bishop Gore, I say, is no stranger to the philosophy which teaches that out of the clash of opposites there emerges the unity of perfect being. There was always an anti-Papal party in the Church. It was apparent in Africa in the third century, still more apparent in France in the seventeenth. Africanism foreshadowed Gallicanism. In the East anti-Papal feeling and dislike of δυτικὴ φροντίς (Western pride) was always strong, and culminated finally in the Photian schism. Great and good men were jealous of Papal power, though reluctant openly to defy it. But an anti-Papal means at the same time a Papal position. There was never the same jealousy of Constantinople, nor of Alexandria: for somehow "the Roman See always had the primacy" in a way which other patriarchal sees had not. The unmistakable opposition which this primacy provoked is the best testimony to the fact that it was claimed and exercised. In this witness Tertullian's bitter speech is valuable. In his treatise De pudicitia, written in support of the I Montanist heresy about A.D. 200, he exclaims, "I hear also that an edict has been published, and that a peremptory one. The Chief Pontiff forsooth, the Bishop of bishops, lays down the law magisterially: 'I forgive offences even of adultery and fornication in such as do penance for them.'" Tertullian was a lawyer, and uses the word "edict" in strict legal sense, referring to the praetorian and imperial edicts which laid down the law. Pontifex Maximus again is an imperial title. What did the sour glance of the African Puritan detect, much to his indignation, in the Papal Chair? A man with Peter's keys, opening where Tertullian would have kept shut, binding and loosing with supreme authority. There is plenty of protestation, eagerly culled and retailed by Anglicans, but it "doth protest too much," and in its very vehemence argues the germinal existence at least of those high Papal claims which have received their final development in the Vatican Council. 1 "Audio etiam edictum esse propositum, et quidem peremptorium. Pontifex scilicet Maximus, episcopus episcoporum edicit: Ego et moechiae et fornicationis delicta poenitentia functis dimitto” (De pudic. 1). Papal prerogative, as Horace says of the Roman State, has grown by contradiction.1 It was never in greater jeopardy than when divided against itself by the schism in the Papacy. That division prompted the Conciliar movement and the decree of Constance exalting the General Council above the Pope. The decree was reprobated by Eugenius IV in the Council of Florence, and by Pius II forbidding under pain of excommunication the appeal from the Pope to the Council. The spiritual power of the Holy See within its own allegiance has been emphasized by the Reformation. The fiercely anti-Papal movement of Jansenism was quelled by Papal Bulls, notably the Unigenitus of Clement XI, without the aid of a Council. Gallicanism received its political deathblow in the French Revolution, and became for ever theologically dead in the Vatican Council of 1870. And now the Pope stands in the fulness of Apostolic authority, concentrated and unchallenged, Christ's supreme witness 1 “Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus, -ODES iv. 4. against what may be, or may not be, the final apostasy of nations from Christianity. Peter's prerogative has had many vicissitudes, but its life has been continuous from the first. Pius is the developed Peter. § 8. The Reformation a Schism "The English Church at the Reformation claimed to reform herself [or submitted to be coerced by the Crown, which was it?] She did not withdraw herself in so doing from the Catholic Faith or the Catholic Church: indeed, she professed her intention to remain as fully in submission to the Church as before" (p. 137). "There is no such thing as an absolute authority in any part of the Church" (p. 138). A Body which "takes transubstantiation out of the Mass," as the Reformed Church of England gloried in doing,' does withdraw from the "Catholic" or universallyheld faith, seeing that transubstantiation. is a dogma of faith alike at Rome and at Constantinople. A Body which proclaims itself ecclesiastically independent of the rest of Christendom, and notably of that authority upon which it did before depend, cannot be said to profess an intention See the quotation from Andrewes, p. 178. "to remain as fully in submission to the Church as before." The Reformation was essentially an assertion, might and main, that in ecclesiastical matters England was independent of the rest of the world. All Englishmen interested in the Reformation, whether to love it or to detest it-all who do not shut their eyes to it as to a fact awkward for their theories--have ever taken this view of the Reformation, a view insisted on by the Crown, and honestly professed by the first occupant of the Reformed Chair of Augustine. Thus swore Parker to Elizabeth, February 23, 1560: "I, Matthew Parker, Doctor of Divinity, now elect Archbishop of Canterbury, do utterly testify and declare on my conscience that Your Majesty is the only Supreme Governor of this Realm, and of all other Your Highness's dominions and countries, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal, and no foreign prince, person, prelate, hath any power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this Realm; and therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all foreign jurisdictions, powers, superiorities, and authorities. And further I acknowledge and confess to have and to hold the said Arch |