the spirit of the charity of the Catholic life shall finally end the divisions which Protestant influence brought to us and make us all of one mind in Christ Jesus our Lord.

V

THE POWERS OF LOCAL CHURCHES

HE notion of a national church is one that

may easily be so stated as to be of complete conflict with the conception of the Catholic Church. One often reads utterances about national churches which seem to imply that the boundaries of nationality are the necessary limits of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and that the Catholic Church is a sum in arithmetic, arrived at by adding together the various national churches. But all such phrases as national churches, or parts or branches of the Church need to be used with the greatest caution and with an understanding of the very limited nature of their application.

The Catholic Church is one with an inner and essential unity, which but for human sin would produce an external unity; but sin has produced division, leaving the Church in an abnormal state. As we see the Church today we see groups of Christians associated together and in opposition to other groups of Christians. The tendency of each group has been to declare all other groups

illegitimate and no part of the Body of Christ; and if in any sense parts of the Body, very imperfect parts. We further see that certain of those groups have in the past tended, and still tend, to effect an organization on lines corresponding to those of various nations and to hold themselves wholly independent of other groups of Christians however near them in other respects, who are divided from them by the fact of their inclusion in separate political organizations. We have to inquire as to the meaning of this.

When our Lord ascended into heaven he left all the powers of the Kingdom He had come to found in the hands of His apostles to whom on Pentacost He sent the Holy Spirit to guide them and to lead them into all truth. They went forth in the world in obedience to His command preaching the word, gathering converts into the Church through the gate of baptism and effecting some elementary organization wherever they made disciples. When we get any clear light on what this organization was we find it to be Episcopal. The Church is everywhere governed by bishops early in the second century, and, as Tertullian said, if that be an error it is odd that all Christians should have blundered into the same error.

The mere fact is that the Church was from the beginning Episcopal and episcopally gov

erned. Every city, almost every village, had its bishop. The belief of the Church was that the bishops were the successors of the Apostles and that the promises made by our Lord to the Apostles were legitimately interpreted of the bishops; to them, as to the successors of the Apostles, the fate of the Church was committed, to them was confided the government of the Church, and theirs was the promise of our Lord that He would be with them until the end of the world. That is to say, all those things were theirs as the organs of the Body of Christ, through which the powers which had been committed to the Body functioned.

In order that the Church might be governed at all some sort of organization had to be effected at an early date. A bishop, who at first had been spiritual head of a group of converts in a special place, but who, having preached there might leave his converts under others' charge and himself go on preaching elsewhere, came to be locally restrained and fixed; came to be recognized as having rule and jurisdiction over a certain territory; that is to say the conception of a diocese arose. The Apostles had no dioceses; they went everywhere preaching the Word, but their successors preached and ruled in determined territory. As the Church grew this diocesan organization

proved to be insufficient; many questions arose which required for their settlement the conferring of bishops with one another. Councils were assembled to discuss and treat matters of general concern. The theory of these councils, when it became necessary to have a theory, was that all bishops so gathered were equal, and that the purpose of their gathering was to state the faith they had received or legislate on matters of discipline such as were constantly arising in the growing complexity of the life of the Church. That these bishops were equal no one doubted. That it was their right by common action to settle questions of faith and practice in the places under their jurisdiction was equally undoubted. But such Councils would need a presiding officer and there would be matters which had to be attended to after the council had adjourned; the acts of the council would have to be made known to the absent; in short, circumstances would compel the institution of some central and standing authority which would unify the dioceses of contiguous territory and be the organ of their united action. It was through such necessity that the Church became organized almost unconsciously into provinces and, finally, the provinces gathered together into Patriarchates. But in all cases the organ of action was the council of equal bishops and the