226 



THE VERY REV. H. WACE^ D.D., ON AUTHORITY. 



enforcement among ourselves ; and on some important doctrines, 

 such as the Atonement and the llesurrection of the body, views 

 were put forward, even by Fathers of high authority, which no 

 English theologian of any school in the present day would 

 support. Even with respect to a peculiarly solemn document, 

 the Creed of Chalcedon, tlie A¥estern Church has not scrupled, 

 without the authority of any similar council, to introduce 

 momentous words, by which the East has ever since been divided 

 from the West. If it be consistent with due reverence for the 

 Catholic authority of the early Church to modify its definition of 

 the doctrine of the Trinity, what statement or ordinance of that 

 Church can there be, with respect to which a similar modifica- 

 tion is not permissible ? 



But pass beyond this period of substantial unity and 

 Catholicity, and where is the Church, the one visible Church, 

 to whose authority and voice w^e can appeal ? In the words of 

 the Margaret Professor, "from the date a.d. 451 onwards the 

 Christian world came to be so broken up into its several parts 

 that the movement of the whole has practically lost its 

 containing unity. Although the formal separation of East and 

 West was delayed, th^ development of each was continued on 

 more and more divercrent lines." Before lont^, the East was 

 actually divided from the West, and except from the point of 

 view of the Eoman Catholics, neither can be said to be " The 

 Church." They are divided parts of " the whole congregation 

 of Christian people dispersed throughout tiie whole world," and 

 neither of them can claim that exclusive guidance of the Spirit 

 of God, which is the necessary basis for any such unquestionable 

 authority as is tacitly assumed. After some six more centuries 

 the whole congregation of Christian people suffered another 

 deep division ; and since the Eeformation, half of Christian 

 Europe, and not the least spiritual or least enlightened half, has 

 renounced communion with the other. Amidst these divided 

 communities of Christian men, where, except upon the theory 

 of the liomanist, is that Church, that special Catholic Church, 

 to be found, which is to be recognized as having a right to a 

 predominant authority over all our belief and our practice ? 

 Does it not seem as if, in the Providence of God, after the Church 

 had once begun to admit error in doctrine and practice, He had 

 allowed the fair unity of the primitive C-hurch to be shattered 

 into fragments, expressly in order to prevent men falling into 

 the Pom an error, and settling on some one visible community 

 of fallible men as tlieir supreme authority, and so supplanting 

 an ideal by an idol ? If, moreover, an appeal is to be made to 



