The Formation of Christendom, Volume II. Allies Thomas William

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СКАЧАТЬ by which, in the Kingdom, Temple, Body, Spouse, and Mother, He deposited the treasure of the truth and grace which He became man to communicate. It was not as individual men, living a life apart, but as common children of one race, joint members of one body, that the guilt of the first father fell upon them; it is only on them as children of a higher race and members of a far greater body, that the grace of the Deliverer is bestowed. The distinctions of race and the divisions of condition drop away as they are baptised into one body, and made to drink of one spirit. The new and supernatural life cannot be communicated save by this act of engrafting into a new body. As Eve from the side of Adam sleeping, so the Church from the side of Christ suffering; as Eve bears still to Adam the children of men, so the Church to Christ the children of Christ. These are not two mysteries, but one, unfathomable in both its parts, of justice and of mercy; but the whole history of the human race bears witness to the first, and the whole history of the Christian people to the second. It would be amply sufficient to prove what we have been saying, that the first communication of the supernatural life is conferred by being baptised into one body and made to drink into one spirit. But this is not all. There is a yet dearer and more precious gift, which maintains and increases the life so given. Our Lord stands in the midst of His Church visibly forming from day to day and from age to age that Body of His which reaches through the ages; He takes from Himself and gives to us. He incorporates Himself in His children. He grows up in us, and by visible streams from His heart maintains the life first given. Here, above all, is the one Christ, the Head and the Body. This is but an elemental truth of Christian faith, though it is the highest joy of the Christian heart. It was in an instruction to catechumens that S. Augustine said, “Would you understand the Body of Christ? Hear the Apostle saying to the faithful, ‘But you are the Body and the members of Christ.’ If, then, you are Christ's Body and His members, it is your own mystery which is placed on the Lord's table; it is your own mystery which you receive. It is to what you are that you reply amen, and by replying subscribe. For you are told, ‘the Body of Christ,’ and you reply, amen. Be a member of the Body of Christ, and let your amen be true. Why, then, in bread? Let us bring here nothing of our own, but listen to the Apostle himself again and again, for in speaking of that sacrament he says, ‘We that are many are one bread, one body.’ Understand and rejoice. Here is unity, verity, piety, charity. One bread. Who is that one bread? We being many are one bread. Remember that the bread is not made of one, but of many grains. When you were exorcised, it was as if you were ground; when baptised, as if you were kneaded together with water; when you received the fire of the Holy Ghost, it was your baking. Be what you see, and receive what you are. This the Apostle said of the bread. Of the chalice what we should understand is clear enough even unsaid. For as to make the visible species of bread many grains are kneaded with water into one, as if that were taking place which Holy Scripture records of the faithful, ‘they had one mind and one heart in God,’ so also in the case of the wine. Many grapes hang on the bunch, but their juice is poured together into one. So too Christ the Lord signified us; willed us to belong to Himself; consecrated on His own table the mystery of our peace and unity. He who receives the mystery of unity and holds not the bond of peace receives not a mystery for himself, but a witness against himself.”82

      Thus the coherence of the natural and mystical Body of Christ was at once exhibited and effected in the great central act of Christian worship, and the whole fruit of the Incarnation was seen springing from the Person of Christ, and bestowed on men as His members in the unity of one Body. Thus were they taken out of the isolation, distraction, and enmity – that state of mutual strife and disorder which heathendom expresses – and made into the one divine commonwealth; and thus the Body of Christ grows to its full stature and perfect form through all the ages of Christendom.

      And if there be one conviction which, together with the belief in the Incarnation itself of the Word, is common to all the Fathers, Doctors, Saints, and Martyrs of the Church – which together with that belief and as part of it is the ground of their confidence in trouble, of their perseverance in enduring, of their undoubting faith in times of persecution, of their assurance of final victory, it is the sense which encompassed their whole life, that they were members of one Body, which, in virtue of an organic unity in itself and with its Head, was to last for ever. The notion that this Body, as such, could fail, that it could cease to be the treasure-house of the divine truth and grace, would have struck them with as much horror as the notion that Christ had not become incarnate, and was not their Redeemer. The Body which the Holy Ghost animated on the day of Pentecost never ceased to be conscious of its existence – conscious that the power of its Head, the Eternal Truth, was in it, and would be in it for ever. Confidence in himself as an individual member of the Body, the Christian had not, for he knew that through his personal sinfulness grace might be withdrawn from him, and that he might fall away; confidence he did not place either in his own learning, knowledge, and sanctity, or in these gifts as belonging to any individual Christian; his confidence lay in the King who reigned in an everlasting Kingdom, in the Head who animated an incorruptible Body. To sever these two would have been to decapitate Christ.83 The thought that the Bride of Christ could herself become an adulteress, and teach her children the very falsehoods of that idol-worship which she was created to overthrow, would have appeared to him the denial of all Christian belief. And such a denial indeed it is to any mind which, receiving the Christian truth as a divine gift, looks for it also to have a logical cohesion with itself, to be consistent and complete, to be a body of truth, not a bundle of opinions. Let us take once more S. Augustine as expressing, not a private feeling, but the universal Christian sense, when he thus reprehended the Donatist pretension, that truth had deserted the Body of the Church to dwell in the province of Africa. “But, they say, that Church which was the Church of all nations exists no longer. She has perished. This they say who are not in her. O shameless word! The Church is not because thou art not in her. See, lest therefore thou be not, for though thou be not, she will be. This word, abominable, detestable, full of presumption and falsehood, supported by no truth, illuminated by no wisdom, seasoned with no sense, vain, rash, precipitate, and pernicious – this it was which the Spirit of God foresaw, and as against these very men, when He foretold unity in that saying, ‘To announce the name of the Lord in Zion, and his worship in Jerusalem, when the peoples and kingdoms join together in one that they may serve the Lord.’ ”84

      Now, to suppose that anything which is false has been, or is, or can be taught by the Church of God, is to overthrow the one idea which runs through the titles of the Kingdom, Temple, Body, and Spouse of Christ, it is to make the Mother of His children an adulteress, to deny that power of the Holy Ghost coming down on the day of Pentecost, and abiding for ever, with His special function of leading into all truth, that presence of the Comforter in virtue of which the Apostles said for themselves and for the Church through all time, “It has seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.” With all men who reason, such a supposition is equivalent to the statement that Christ has failed in what He came on earth to do, for “the Word was made flesh that He might become the Head of the Church.”85 Next, therefore, in atrocity to that blasphemy which assaults the blessed Trinity in Unity upon His throne is the miserable and heartless blasphemy which, by imputing corruption of the truth to the very Kingdom and Temple, the very Body and Spouse of the Truth Himself, the Incarnate God, would declare the frustration of that purpose which He became man to execute, the falsifying of that witness of which He spoke in the hall of Pilate, and would so annihilate that glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good-will, which was the angelic song on the morning of His birth, and is daily86 in the mouth of His Bride. The truth can as little cease out of the House and Temple of God as the Father and Son can cease sending the Spirit to dwell in it: the truth can as little cease to be proclaimed and taught in its own kingdom as the King can cease to reign in it. The conjugal faith of the Bride of Christ cannot fail, because He remains her Bridegroom. The power of the Head, the double power of truth and grace, cannot cease to rule and vivify His Body, because He is its Head for ever. The Mother cannot deceive her children, because she is of one flesh with the Son of Man, in the union of an unbroken wedlock.

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