essential institution of the Christian religion. Having lost sight of the ancient distinction between different kinds of sacrifices, when the Augustinian doctrine of sin became dominant in the Church, the conception of the sacrifice as a sin-offering to a great extent took the place of the primitive conception that it was a eucharistic or thank-offering.

The participation in the holy communion as a sacrificial feast was the consensus of the ante-Nicene Church. This has also been overlaid with theories as to the mode of the presence of the flesh and blood of Christ, which do not belong to the Catholic Faith. It is one of the most important movements of our times that there has been a return to the original Catholic conception, not only in the Anglican Church, but in the Roman Church, and in many Protestant theologians. Here again is a thread which may soon become a rope to bind the Church in Catholic Unity.

I have taken considerable time to unfold these more vital principles of catholic unity, because these are usually ignored in the discussions of the subject, in the interest of the more external marks of dogma and ecclesiastical organisa-me tion. In fact, the development of the historical episcopate was due to the needs of a proper celebration of the holy eucharist, as may be seen in the epistles of Ignatius, as well as to the needs of ecclesiastical government and discipline. In the ancient Catholic Church, as in the Church of all ages, vital principles determine the formal principles, although later the vital principles are too often cramped by the forms of their own creation.

Although the Church of Rome in its dogmatic teaching has overlaid the Catholic conception of the holy eucharist with the dogma of transubstantiation, and pressed the eucharist behind the sin-offering, yet that cannot be said of the ceremony of the mass, which is free in its language and ceremonies from both of these conceptions. No one can deny that the Roman Church, the Greek Church and all the Oriental Churches are catholic in this particular. But what of the Protestant bodies? Is the Church of England catholic in

this respect? Do its standards represent the catholic experience in the celebration of the holy eucharist? The "Articles of Religion" cannot be so explained; “The Book of Common Prayer" may be; but it is at least doubtful whether that was the intention of its original authors. It was, however, the intent of the Elizabethan Reformers to make it possible for Catholic and Protestant to use the "Common Prayer" alike. This may be shown from the history of the times. The best that can be said of other Protestant churches is that they are not anti-Catholic in this particular, and that there is a tendency among them to return to the primitive Catholic conception.

VII. GEOGRAPHICAL UNITY AND CATHOLICITY

We shall now resume the more formal tests and apply them also. Geographical unity has been lost by the Protestant churches-by the Church of England more than by any other; for the Church of England is so strictly a National Church that she is confined to the Anglo-Saxon race. She not only has no communion with the Roman Catholic Church, but she also has no communion at present with the sister National Churches. In this respect she is farther off from catholicity than the Lutheran Church, which is represented in many lands, and which even in the United States is a stronger body numerically than the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Church of England is still farther off from Catholicity than the Reformed or Presbyterian family of Churches, which is the most widespread and most numerous of all Protestant bodies, and which has always recognised the Anglican and Lutheran bodies as her sisters, and has always been ready to commune with them. The Reformed or Presbyterian Churches have always made more of Catholicity in its geographical form than the Church of England. One looks in vain in the "Articles of Religion" for any conception of a Catholic Church. But in the Westminster Confession it is very prominent.

I. The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ, the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. II. The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation as before under the Law) consists of all those throughout the world, that profess the true religion, together with their children; and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. (Chap. xxv.)

The Westminster divines conceived of an Ecumenical Council of Reformed Churches. Their chief purpose was to reform the Church of England in accordance with the teachings of Holy Scripture and the example of the best Reformed Churches of the continent, in order to closer union and fellowship with them. But the Church of England held aloof, content to be simply a national Church. The Church of England asserts her catholicity in apostolical succession through the threefold ministry. For this she has struggled as if she realised that her very existence depended upon it. But is she in this respect so very much superior to other sister Churches of the Reformation? It may be doubted. For many of them likewise claim apostolical succession for their ministry-they also have the three orders-bishops, elders and deacons; only their orders are orders of the congregation and not of the diocese; and they claim that, though this succession for many centuries ran through a line of presbyters and not diocesan bishops, these presbyters were the only Catholic bishops, the bishops of the first and second centuries being parochial and not diocesan. So far as a reconciliation with Rome is concerned, since the decision of Leo XIII. the Church of England has no advantage whatever over the Reformed Churches in this matter of apostolic succession. Any advantage she may have is limited to her own estimation of herself. Newman tells us how he was caught in the Anglican Via Media:

The Anglican disputant took his stand upon antiquity of apostolicity, the Roman upon catholicity. The Anglican said to the Roman: "There

is but one faith, the ancient, and you have not kept it." The Roman retorted: "There is but one Church, the Catholic, and you are out of it." The Anglican urged: "Your special beliefs, practices, modes of action are nowhere in antiquity." The Roman objected: "You do not communicate with any one Church besides your own and its offshoots, and you have discarded principles, doctrines, sacraments, and usages, which are and ever have been received in the East and the West." . . . The true Church as defined in the creeds was both catholic and apostolic; now, as I viewed the controversy in which I was engaged, England and Rome had divided these notes or prerogatives between them; the cause lay thus, Apostolicity versus Catholicity. (Apologia, chap. iii. new edition, 1892, p. 106.)

He tells us how it was the words of St. Augustine-Securus judicat orbis terrarum-quoted by Wiseman in an article in the Dublin Review, August, 1839, that opened his eyes to see that

the deliberate judgment in which the whole Church at length rests and acquiesces, is an infallible prescription and final sentence against such portions of it as protest and secede (p. 117).

Wiseman in that article said:

St. Augustine has a golden sentence on that subject, which should be an axiom in theology.1 "Therefore the entire world judges with security that they are not good who separate themselves from the entire world, in whatever part of the world" (p. 154).

This sentence made Newman a Roman Catholic. He saw clearly, what multitudes have seen since, that you cannot build catholicity on apostolicity alone; and that, where these are brought into conflict, catholicity in the narrower sense of universality is sure to win.

It has been too often overlooked by Anglicans that "catholic" comprehends much more than apostolicity. It also includes holiness or purity. It was the exaggeration of that attribute that induced the ancient Donatists to separate from the Church, and that influenced also the English Separatists, too often confounded with Puritans and Presbyterians. It

'He quotes it in Latin from Contra Epistolam Parmeniani, III, 4, and translates it.

was the emphasis upon pure doctrine, pure discipline and pure life, as more important than unity, that really influenced to a great extent the whole Protestant movement, and specially those bodies which have separated from the Protestant national Churches.

As we have seen, the attributes holy, apostolic and catholic are so involved that they ought not to be separated-the three blend in true catholic unity, the three are all involved in the saying of Vincent of Lirens: "quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est.' This is often misunderstood by taking it out of its context. Vincent himself defines ubique as universality, semper as antiquity and ab omnibus as consensus-and the consensus not as the con sensus of all Christians, but as sacerdotal and magisterial consensus in the Church.1

The three are indeed combined in this sentence:

He must collate and consult and interrogate the opinions of the ancients, of those, namely, who, though living in divers times and places, yet continuing in the communion and faith of the one catholic Church, stand forth acknowledged and approved authorities. Ibid, 3.

Each one of these terms qualifies the other, and no one can be regarded as sufficient apart by itself. Doubtless the Church should be holy as united to Christ in all its parts, that is the most essential thing; it should also be apostolic, that is next in importance; but it must also be catholic in the narrower sense of universality; in order to be catholic in the larger sense of Catholic Unity, blending the three attributes.

Gerins

VIII. THE CATHOLIC REACTION

It depends altogether on what tests you apply, whether an individual or a Church can be considered catholic or not. If we would be catholic, we cannot become catholic by merely calling ourselves by that name. Unless the name corresponds

1 Commonitorium, 2.