THE DIVINE TEACHER.

A LETTER TO A FRIEND.

With a Preface

IN REPLY TO NO, III. OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH DEFENCE

PREFACE.

THE immediate cause of the publication of the following Letter is to furnish an answer to No. 3 of the English Church Defence Tracts, entitled Papal Infallibility.

The object of those Tracts is stated by their authors,* who sign themselves 'H. P. L.' and 'W. B.,' to be 'to place within the reach of readers who may not have time for deeper investigation some answers to current Roman Catholic arguments against the position and teaching of the English Church.'

To answer and explode the objections of the tractwriters is but my easy; desire is to build up as well as to destroy, and therefore I enter, not upon a polemical discussion, but upon a thetical exposition of the Catholic doctrine. This is the real and, of itself, a sufficient answer to the Tract; but it may be well that I also briefly notice its statements in detail.

It contains, among others, the following proposi

*It is now at any rate no secret, for it has since been elsewhere publicly stated, that the initials are those of Canons Liddon and Bright, of the University of Oxford.

full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the universal Church, not only in matters of faith and morals, but in matters of discipline and Church government, this power being plenary, and also ordinary and immediate over all and every one of the Churches, and over all and every one of the pastors and the faithful;' that 'this dogma virtually reduces the Bishops to the condition of the Pope's commissioned agents;' that 'the whole Roman Catholic world becomes his diocese, and every single Bishop in his communion is really his deputy and vicar;' that 'he is spiritually and ecclesiastically to be sole and absolute monarch;' and that 'the government of the Church becomes in his hands an autocracy.'

The tract-writers qualify this statement by a note, wherein they say, as to the dogma virtually reducing the Bishops to the condition of the Pope's commissioned agents, 'Not indeed professedly; a preceding paragraph verbally saves the ordinary jurisdiction of Bishops as successors of the Apostles.'

They go on to say that it 'cites a passage from St. Gregory the Great with a curious perversion of its scope.'

As to this I observe, 1. That the Catholic faith teaches that, in virtue of the primacy which our Divine Lord conferred on Peter and his successors the Roman Pontiffs, they, the Roman Pontiffs, have episcopal authority over the whole flock of God, including the Bishops as well as their subjects, the inferior clergy and the faithful-episcopal authority consisting in an immediate and ordinary power of feeding, ruling, and governing the flock.

2. That the Roman Pontiff is therefore Episcopus episcoporum, and has for his diocese-the world.

3. That otherwise there would be lacking to the universal Church what is required in every particular Church to constitute and preserve its unity. Without an Universal Bishop there could not be an Universal Church.

4. That the universal episcopate of the Roman Pontiff does not exclude, but supposes particular episcopates. He does not govern the Church by Bishops, as by his administrators and vicars. He constitutes them true princes of the Church, with ordinary power over their flocks or dioceses, although subject to him as to its exercise.

5. In this sense, as if he were the only real Bishop, and all the others but his deputies, St. Gregory the Great refused for himself the title of Ecumenical or Universal Bishop-not that it did not really and of right belong to him, or that he did not exercise the powers which it, in the sense I have stated, implied. There was also another reason of prudence, from its assumption and abuse by the Patriarch of Constantinople, which induced him, in his humility, to adopt in its stead the title, which his successors still bear, of Servus servorum Dei-Servant of the servants of God. 'He that is the leader among you, let him become as he that serveth.' The words of the saint in his humility are but the converse of the thesis of the doctor. Servant of the servants of God is the counterpart and the equivalent of Prince of the princes of the Lord.

6. Hence, as the Apostles were equal to Peter in his