Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

intended simply to designate "those nations whose languages are derived from the Latin, and who profess the Catholic faith." In proof of this Napoleonic proposition we have the emperor's letter of July 3, 1862, to General Forey, commander-in-chief of the French army in Mexico. And in illustration of its significance, the Vienna Presse contains a curious article on the Mexican movement, from which we make the following

extracts:

The Mexican monarchy is intended not only to react against the Anglo-Saxon race and the democratic ideas of Northern America, but also against American Protestantism. Hence the immense enthusiasm with which the clerical party of both hemispheres has welcomed the advent of Maximilian I. By the erection of this throne Napoleon III. has rendered an immense service to the Church, and this service is so highly appreciated by the Court of Rome that important concessions have been made therefor to the French government. . .

...

[Among these] the Abbé Lucien Bonaparte, long a resident of Rome, and the cameriere of the pope, is to be elevated to the rank of cardinal. The Prince Lucien would then be eligible to the papacy, and upon the death of Pius IX. the conclave assembles under the protection of French bayonets. How can he help standing a very good chance for election? Pius IX. can thus await the end of his days in peace. If a Bonaparte mounts the pontifical throne, the papacy and its temporal possessions are safe.

Now Russia competes with France in power and policy, and so the Greek Church confronts the Latin with renewed vigor, and with an advantage which she has never before possessed. If the Greek Church has been believed to be effete and despoiled of influence, it is time to understand, on the contrary, that it is one of the great religious powers of the world, possessing a membership of nearly 100,000,000, surpassing in extent of territory the Protestant Churches combined, and rivaling even Rome itself, spreading over a large portion of Europe, and into Asia, and Africa, and North America, and the islands of the Eastern Seas, extending from the frozen regions to the tropics, from Kamschatka to Abyssinia, and from the Adriatic Gulf to Southern India.

If it has been supposed to be identical with the papacy it is time to correct the error, for with the intensity of its whole life it discards popery. And while Protestantism is threatened by the tide of Romanism setting westward, from the east there is a mighty counter tide breaking against the barriers of Rome.

This great Eastern Church, claiming orthodoxy, possessing points of sympathy with Protestantism, awaking as it is from its past lethargy, " can hardly fail," as has been well said by a careful observer, "to occupy a very large portion of the territory of Asia, and to become the predominant Church in all Northern and Western, and perhaps the larger portion of Central Asia."

As late even as 1863 the northern and the southern powers of Europe were contending in Greece for this specific prize, ecclesiastical control, the success of the Western or the Eastern Church, the Latin or the Greek. And in the war of the Crimea Russia and France were especial champions of the Church, never losing sight of ecclesiastical interest, as hostile in their religious as their political policy, fighting not so much for Turkey or the Crimea as for the command of the Holy Sepulcher and its related influences. This incident, or rather ground of the contest, though often misunderstood, is full of importance. But to this point we may refer hereafter.

The recent war in Poland turned upon this very issue. It was only the revival of the long contest between Catholic Poland and Orthodox Russia. In this instance the Roman hierarchy, by a shrewd but unusual policy, arrayed itself with the people against the Russian government. From the earliest defeat of Poland the priests have encouraged the hopes of a final restoration of a Catholic Poland, and urged secession from heretical Russia, and fanned the embers of revolt. Poland, as is well known, was converted to Christianity by a Roman mission, while Russia was the convert of the Greek Church. Poland, pushed on by aggressive Catholicism, strove to subdue Russia, and well nigh succeeded. And ever since her grand idea has been, "Restoration to her ancient limits; a great swaying Catholic Poland."

The antagonism of the Eastern Church unflinchingly resisted the ambitious encroachment of the West, and Russia was rescued from the grasp of the papacy. It was a crisis in the life of the Christian Church, and the providence is one of the most marked in history. Had Rome gained Russia Romanism would have overspread the world. If, then, the papal assumption of God's vicegerency is antichrist-an assumption against which we protest and contend-then we owe a debt to the Eastern Church

which we have been slow to appreciate or even acknowledge. The Eastern Church has rendered another important service. It refutes the papal assumption that "the Roman is the true and only apostolic Church." Hitherto, before the Eastern had become distinctively Greek and the Western Church Roman, the East and the West were united in one communion. The councils, although Eastern and occasioned by Eastern heresies, were general. Their decisions were received in the West as readily as in the East. The antiquity of the Eastern Church is more than venerable; it is really and unquestionably apostolic. Made the depositary of the Gospel which the apostles wrote, not in Latin, but in Greek, which was the language of Christendom; in the midst of the very Churches which they had founded, the Eastern Church transmitted the light from Asia to Europe. "The early Roman Church was but a colony of Christian or Grecised Jews." The very birthplace, growth, and history of Christianity furnish a perpetual witness that the Western is the offspring rather than the parent Church. Armies of martyrs and noble confessors from the Eastern Church had consecrated their lives to planting the Gospel in Egypt, and Syria, and Asia Minor, and along the Levantine Sea, and westward in Europe, and building up the Church of Christ east and west as true apostolic successors; yet nowhere had any portion of the Church cast or west arrogated to itself the claim of exclusive apostolic succession. Indeed the claim of Rome was only an afterthought. Jerusalem and not Rome was the parent Church. James and not Peter ministered to this mother of the Churches. If Rome ever enjoyed the presence of Peter, which is extremely doubtful, Jerusalem, Antioch, and other Churches enjoyed the presence of all the apostles. Even when John the Faster, Patriarch of Constantinople in the sixth century, assumed the title of universal bishop, the first Gregory, Bishop of Rome, utterly condemned the arrogance in another and disclaimed it for himself. When Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria, in his letter to Gregory, declared that he had refused to address the Patriarch of Constantinople by the title of universal bishop, adding, "as you ordered me," Gregory thus wrote in return: "I pray you to use the term ordered no more. I know who I am and who you are, my brother in position, my father in character. I ordered nothing,

I only advised; and even that advice you have not strictly followed. I requested you to give that title neither to the See of Constantinople nor to any one else, and you have applied it to myself. Away with all terms which excite vanity and wound charity."

For centuries the Bishops of Rome "were citizens as well as their brethren, and subject like them to the edicts and laws of the Emperors. All religious causes of extraordinary importance were examined and determined either by judges appointed by the emperors, or in councils assembled for that purpose; while those of inferior moment were decided in each district by its respective bishop. The ecclesiastical laws were enacted either by the emperor or by councils. None of the bishops acknowledged that they derived their authority from the permission and appointment of the Bishop of Rome, or that they were created bishops by the favor of the Apostolic See. On the contrary, all maintained that they were the embassadors and ministers of Christ, and that their authority was derived from above."*

The Bishop of Alexandria held the title of Ecumenical or Universal Judge; the Bishop of Constantinople, that of Ecumenical or Universal Bishop until the time of the execrable tyrant Phocas the Emperor, who opposed the pretensions of the Eastern Church, and granted the pre-eminence to the Church of Rome. Thus was the papal supremacy first introduced. And near the close of this century, when Constantine Pogonatus the Emperor abated the ordination money paid by the Bishop of Rome to the Emperor, he resumed the power of confirming the election of the Pope, which his predecessors had invested in the exarchs of Ravenna, so that the bishop elect was not to be ordained till his election was notified to the Court of Constantinople, and the imperial decree confirming it was received by the electors at Rome.†

From all this it is evident that the Roman claims and authority are contrary to the primitive order of the Church-the slow and difficult growth of centuries. Against these usurpations. the Eastern Church has maintained its ceaseless protest, and now, after the lapse of eighteen hundred years, with its hundred million voices, unites with the more recent but no less

* Mosheim, 5th century, part ii. Gibbon, chap. xlv.
Anastasius, de Vitis Pontificumn.

earnest protest of the evangelical West against the great swelling words of the papal antichrist. The whole history of the Eastern Church, bearing us back by undisputed succession to the times of the Apostles, is a standing refutation of the papal claim that "the Roman is the true and only Apostolic Church." The issue here is fundamental. On this common ground Protestants of the East and of the West unite. If the Roman hierarchy disparage the protest of the Reformation as a pretentious novelty, it is silenced by the primitive and persistent protest of the Eastern Church.

The Eastern or Greek Church has rendered important service by its earlier union with the Western or Roman Church for centuries; but a service still more important has been rendered by its later separation. This will appear as we advance. (And here we should remark that we use the terms Eastern or Greek, and Western or Roman interchangeably.) By the earlier union the Roman Church is compelled to admit the orthodoxy of the Eastern Church. The Scriptures for the West were furnished by the East, and in the language of the East. The seven Church councils in the East had a representation from the West, and were acknowledged by Rome as ecumenical and authoritative. The Apostles' Creed, which tradition accredited to the East, was accepted by the West. The Nicene Creed was immediately received by the West without controversy, and remained entirely unchanged for centuries. As the formula developed with succeeding councils at Constantinople and Ephesus and Chalcedon, asserting the co-essential Divinity of the Son with the Father; the equal Deity of the Holy Ghost; the single personality of Christ, thus excluding Nestorius; his twofold nature, thus condemning the Monophysite and Monothelite heresy; the Roman Church by its acquiescence and approval not only admitted the orthodoxy of the Eastern Church, but at the same time acknowledged the heresy it had condemned. Indeed the orthodoxy of the Eastern Church cannot well be questioned by the Western Church without convicting itself.

The separation occurred in the eleventh century. Its causes we shall consider hereafter. Its benefits properly belong here, and they are too important to pass unnoticed. It immediately and forever nullified the claim which the Roman Church, in

« ForrigeFortsæt »