178 CIlURCn UNITY 



the clue and cheerful submission of the 

 governed, and loyalty to scriptural and 

 apostolic doctrine, without additions or 

 perversion. When the Christian Church 

 began to lose these, she began to lose the 

 secret alike of harmony and of strength. 

 Her hour of weakness came when rival 

 teachers and rival dogmas contended with 

 one another for supremacy; and when, 

 breaking with its historic past, Latin Chris- 

 tendom undertook to erect upon the ruins 

 of primitive Christian unity the insolent 

 structure of the papacy the moment of dis- 

 solution was at hand. We deplore to-day 

 the divisions of Christendom, and rightly ; 

 but no such cleavage between primitive 

 order and modern Christianity was ever 

 made as was made when Rome usurped a 

 place which her Lord had never given her, 

 and so taught every feeblest and most self- 

 willed sect in all the world how to read 

 into the Word of God its own meaning, 

 and into the order of his Church its own 

 self-seeking way. 



Our hope, nevertheless, I repeat, whether 

 for her or for ourselves, is in the candid 

 study of beginnings ; and I do not see, in 

 this connection, how any student of history 



