Canon Wordsworth's Scheme-a Utopia.

21

the bondage of the papacy, and stand forth like the Church of England, an independent branch of the catholic church. He even throws out, in the earnestness of his amiable conviction, the grave proposal: "Let the churches of England, Ireland, and America, and of the Colonies of Great Britain, invite the church of Italy to meet them on this common ground of Christian antiquity; let them assist the church of Italy in an honest endeavour to ascertain what were the rights of the Italian clergy and people in the fourth century, and what were then the laws and usages of the Italian church, and what was then the extent of the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome. Thus Italy might obtain a peaceful solution of the difficulties which now embarrass her. She might, by God's help, emancipate herself from the thraldom of Rome without breaking the bands of the gospel and casting away the cords of Christianity; rather she would be strengthening those sacred bonds and cords which are the surest pledges and safeguards of national peace and prosperity; and the Italian monarchy would rest securely on the solid basis of ancient catholic truth."

So unbounded is the confidence of Canon Wordsworth in this expedient, that every difficulty in the religious state of Italy vanishes, in his conception, before it. He can hardly look with patience upon the ordinary slow operations of evangelical teaching for the diffusion of truth. The establishment of the authority of metropolitans, versus the papal pontificate, will flash it all on the Italian mind! His mission through Italy seems to have been to proclaim this as his discovery. At other methods of operation he scarcely deigns to glance, or glances at them only to cast them into the shade in comparison with this his one favourite expedient, or to draw from them a testimony to its supereminence. Even in commending the well-organised labours of the Vaudois, sustained and extended by the co-operation of the Free Church of Scotland, he cannot abstain throwing back the reflection on that organisation, "Ought not that to be preferred which has the stamp of antiquity and catholicity ?" Doubtless, we respond to the Canon of Westminster, let but the clear stamp of a scriptural antiquity and catholicity be shewn for any form of church. organisation, and who would not bow reverently to the signature!

But waiving the Canon of Westminster's utopian assembly for the conversion of the hierarchy of Italy, the question returns, How practically can our British churches effectually aid in the work of Italian evangelisation? If, in

forecasting the hope of a reformed church in Italy, we can neither look for her priesthood nor for her hierarchy leading in the van, who is to break ground? We turn to the evangelical agencies already at work, and capable of augmentation a thousand fold, and point to them as the safest and surest heralds of the work that Italy needs. Whilst we admit the elements of truth fermenting in the body of the priesthood, and struggling to utter itself in spite of the repressive hand of the hierarchy, we have no hope that the lower clergy will prove a match for the hierarchy till the Italian people, leavened, through the work of evangelical missions, with a simpler faith, and with clearer and stronger scriptural convictions, shall be prepared to fight the battle of truth by their side. The immediate pressing question for the consideration of British Christians, who would use the day of Italy's political freedom for her spiritual regeneration, is, How is her darkness to be enlightened? And judging Canon Wordsworth's ecclesiastical specific a utopia, we profess to know of no way for the accomplishment of the object but the old recognised agency of a preached gospel. If the word of God be set before the Italian mind with truth and simplicity, we know what will be the result, whatever be the section of the church to which the preacher belongs. In so wide a field as the Italian peninsula, there need be no jealousy between the British churches or their agents. There is no evangelical agency but will find a place and fruit from its labour in the present state of Italy. It lies open alike to the Christian teacher and the Christian preacher, to the Bible, and tract, and Christian book distributor. The Scripture reader cannot itinerate too widely, and gather his listening groups from the villages of the plains or from the deep valleys and mountain fastnesses of the Apennines, or from the lanes and alleys of the crowded Italian city. The discussion of the great political questions with which Italy has been agitated, has sharpened the intelligence and opened the ear of the peasant, as well as of the citizen of the larger towns, to what would have been formerly accounted strange things, and might have endangered the safety of the hearer. Now the Scripture reader or colporteur who fulfils his misson with good sense and Christian feeling, may work unharmed, and sow widely as he travels the seeds of an after reaping-time.

Without undervaluing the services of other evangelistic labourers who have entered upon this field, we cannot withhold our especial word of welcome and encouragement from the ancient Waldensian church, as it leads in the van of the new Italian missionary movement. That church is organised

Waldensian Mission in Italy.

23

for the work, and native to it. Hid for ages in the clefts of the rocks of Piedmont, a reserved evangelical force for the day of Italy's freedom, it but enters on the fulfilment of its own peculiar mission, in taking a foremost place in the work of Italian evangelisation. It is but accomplishing in its highest sense the prophetic prayer of Milton's well known sonnet,

"Their martyr blood and ashes sow

O'er all the Italian field, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant."

A thousand times smitten by the sword of the papacy, denounced by her pontiffs, and hunted by the Crusaders that were mustered for their extermination, the Waldensians have a long account to settle with Rome, and with her they are now reckoning. They have begun to take their noble revenge, by proclaiming through the length and breadth of Italy the truths which Rome crushed out in the blood of their fathers. With their sound evangelical creed, scripturally organised church system, school and college institutions for the education of Italian youth, and specially for the training of its higher and more devoted minds for the ministry, nothing is wanting for the fulfilment of their mission, but that the churches of this country come more largely to their aid. They are but a small church. The entire population of their native valleys is but twenty-three thousand; their parishes and pastors number not more than sixteen. Yet since the opening of Italy they have sent forth fifty agents, twenty of whom are ordained missionaries. In Lombardy, Piedmont, and Liguria, in the central and southern provinces, in Sicily and the smaller islands of the Mediterranean, they have planted new churches, and constituted fresh centres of missionary action. The position secured for the Waldensian college in Florence, through the foresight and energy of their longtried friend Dr Stewart of Leghorn, removes the great disqualification under which, as a church, they laboured for Italian work. They are no longer in a corner of the kingdom, shut up in their valleys, in danger of being narrowed in their sympathies-the church merely of a locality shaping itself by the traditions of its past, and living on their memory. Their rising educated minds are now in contact with the great movements of their countrymen, and in the midst of those currents, on the right understanding and guidance of which so much of the future of Italy's religious life depends. Their college is already in active operation, with its staff of professors, and thirteen advanced students preparing for the ministry. Attached to it is an extensive printing press, throwing off, under the superintendence of the able minister

of the Free Church of Scotland at Florence, a Christian literature, designed to meet the wants and guide into a right track the spirit of inquiry now abroad throughout Italy. Four thousand a year is being expended in these operations, and the limits to their extension are alone the limits imposed by financial prudence.

The work of ages is ofttimes crowded into years, and is done quickly, because the right reason is apprehended for the doing of it. The present is Italy's day. She had a brief earlier day when the Reformation broke with its light upon Europe. Calvin found at that era a pulpit in the court of Ferara, and a shield beneath the wing of the good Princess Renée. Modena, under the government of the House of Este, had at the same period her numerous disciples of the Reformation; whilst Bolognia boasted of her prince who was ready to raise six thousand soldiers in defence of its friends. Even Venice with reluctance consented to the publication of the papal bull against Luther, and took care, after consenting, that it should not be read in St Mark's till the people had left the church. That day of bright hopes was quenched in blood; it proved but a rent in the cloud, which closing left in thicker darkness the plains of Italy. Three centuries have since passed, and the Alps have been the barrier beyond which the foot of the evangelical missionary has not trod. That barrier the sword of Napoleon III. at Magenta, and Solferino, has cleft asunder, and Italy, once more open to the churches of the Reformation, calls upon them to renew their long suspended work. Shall the opening be allowed a second time to close, and the work of the Italian Reformation be again left unfinished? We may not now fear that it shall be closed in blood, but it were not less fatal to truth if, in her freedom of choice, Italy should rest in some one of the many forms of a rationalised Christianity, to awake, on the discovery of its meagreness and barrenness, to renewed superstition and subjection to priestly bondage.

ART. II.-Development of the Ancient Catholic Hierarchy. (Continued from last Number.)

BY THE REV. PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., MERCERSBURGH, U.S.

THE

HESE patriarchs, in the official sense of the word, as already fixed at the time of the fourth ecumenical council, were the bishops of the four great capitals of the empire,

Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople, to whom was added, by way of honorary distinction, the bishop of Jerusalem, as president of the oldest Christian congregation, though the proper continuity of that office had been broken by the destruction of the holy city. They had oversight of one or more dioceses, at least of two or more provinces or eparchies.* They ordained the metropolitans, rendered the final decision in church controversies, conducted the ecumenical councils, published the decrees of the councils and the church laws of the emperors, and united in themselves the supreme legislative and executive power of the hierarchy. They bore the same relation to the metropolitans of single provinces as the ecumenical councils to the provincial. They did not, however, form a college; each acted for himself; yet in important matters they consulted with one another, and had the right also to keep resident legates (apocrisiarii) at the imperial court at Constantinople.

In prerogative they were equal, but in the extent of their dioceses and in influence they differed, and had a system of rank among themselves. Before the founding of Constantinople, and down to the Nicene council, Rome maintained the first rank, Alexandria the second, and Antioch the third, in both ecclesiastical and political importance. After the end of the fourth century, this order was modified by the insertion of Constantinople, as the second capital, between Rome and Alexandria, and the addition of Jerusalem as the fifth and smallest patriarchate.

The patriarch of Jerusalem presided only over the three meagre provinces of Palestine ;t the patriarch of Antioch over the greater part of the political diocese of the Orient, which comprised fifteen provinces, Syria, Phenicia, Cilicia, Arabia, and Mesopotamia, &c. ; the patriarch of Alexandria, over the whole diocese of Egypt with its nine rich provinces, Ægyptus prima and secunda, the lower and upper Theboid, lower and upper Libya, &c.; § the patriarch of Constantinople over the dioceses Pontus, Asia Minor, and Thrace, with eight-and-twenty provinces, and at the same time over the bishoprics among the barbarians; the patriarch of Rome

According to the political division of the empire after Constantine. Comp. the preceding section."

+ Comp. Wiltsch, i. p. 206, sqq. The statement of Ziegler, which Wiltsch quotes and seems to approve, that the fifth ecumenical council of 553 added to the patriarchal circuit of Jerusalem the metropolitans of Berytus in Phenicia and Ruba in Syria, appears to be an error. Ruba nowhere appears in the acts of the councils, and Berytus belonged to Phenicia prima, consequently to the patriarchate of Antioch. La Quien knows nothing of such an enlargement of the patriarchate of Hierosolyma. Ibid. p. 143, sqq.

↑ Wiltsch, i. 189, sqq. Ibid. i. 177, sqq.