feet: for I have given you an example, that as I have done unto you, so you also may do."99
Now nothing can show more strongly than this discourse the pre-eminence and authority which our Lord was going to establish in one of His Apostles over the rest. For here we have His intention disclosed that in His kingdom, which is the Church's, some one there should be "the Great," "the First," and "the Ruler," who should discharge, in due proportion and analogy, the office which He Himself, before He returned to the Father, had held. But before we consider further who this one was, let us look at the subject from a somewhat different point of view.
And 100here we must lay down three points, the first of which is, that our Lord, during His life on earth, had acted in two capacities, the one, as the Author and Founder, the other, as the Head and Supreme Ruler of His Church. His functions in the former capacity are too plain to need enlarging upon. He disclosed the objects of our faith: He instituted rites and sacraments: He provided by the establishment of a ministry for the perpetual growth and duration of the Church. It was in this sense that He spoke of Himself to His apostles, as "the Master," who could share His prerogatives with no one: "But be not you called Rabbi, for one is your Master, and all you are brethren."101 Thus is He, "the Teacher," "the Master," throughout the Gospel.
But He likewise acted as the Head of His Church, with the dignity and authority of the chief visible Ruler. He was the living bond of His disciples: the person around whom they grouped: whose presence wrought harmony: whose voice terminated contention among them: who was ever at hand to solve emergent difficulties. Thus it is that prophecy distinguished Him as "the Lord," "the King," "the Shepherd;" "on whose shoulders is the government," "who should rule His people, Israel." And His Church answers to Him in this capacity, as the family, the house, the city, the fold, and the kingdom.
Thus His relation to the Church was twofold, as Founder, and as Supreme Pastor.
Secondly, the Church shares her Lord's prerogative of unchangeableness, and as He is "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," so She, His mystical Body, in her proportion, remains like herself from the beginning to the end. The Church and Christianity are bound to each other in a mutual relation; the Church is Christianity embodied; Christianity is the Church in conception: the consistency and identity which belong to Christianity belong likewise to her; neither can change their nature, nor put on another form.
But, thirdly, the Church would be unlike herself, if, having been from her very cradle visibly administered by the rule of One, she fell subsequently, either under no rule at all, according to the doctrine of the Independents, or under the rule of the multitude, according to the Calvinists, or under the rule of an aristocracy, as Episcopalians imagine. A change of government superinduces a change of that substantial form which constitutes a society. But this holds in her case especially, above all other societies, as she came forth from the creative hand of her Lord, her whole organization instinct with inward life, her government directly instituted by God Himself, in which lies her point of distinction from all temporal polities.
For imagine, that upon our Lord's departure, no one had been deputed to take the visible headship and rule over the Church. How, without ever fresh revelations, and an abiding miraculous power, could that complex unity of faith, of worship, and of polity, have been maintained, which the102 Lord has set forth as the very sign and token of His Church? A multitude scattered throughout the most distant regions, and naturally differing in race, in habits, in temperament, how could it possibly be joined in one, and remain one, without a powerful bond of unity? Hence, in the fourth century, S. Jerome103 observed, "The safety of the Church depends on the dignity of the supreme Priest, in whom, if all do not recognise a peculiar and supereminent power, there will arise as many schisms in the Church as there are priests." And the repentant confessors out of Novatian's schism, in the middle of the third century, "We know that Cornelius (the Pope) has been elected Bishop of the most holy Catholic Church, by Almighty God, and Christ our Lord. – We are not ignorant that there is one God, one Christ the Lord, whom we confessed, one Holy Spirit, and that there ought to be one bishop in the Catholic Church."104 And these words, both of S. Jerome, and of the confessors, if they primarily apply to the diocesan bishop among his priests and people, so do they with far greater force apply to the chief bishop among his brethren in the whole Church. Now, as our Lord willed that His Church should do without fresh revelations, and new miracles, such as at first accredited it, and that it should preserve unity; and as, when it was a little flock, which could be assembled in a single room, it had yet one visible Ruler, how can we doubt that He willed this form of government to remain, and that there should be one perpetually to rule it in His name, and preserve it in unity, since it was to become co-extensive with the earth?
Again, we may ask, was the condition of fold, house, family, city, and kingdom, so repeatedly set forth in Holy Scripture, to belong to the Church only while Christ was yet on earth, or to be the visible evidence of its truth for ever? Do these terms exhibit a temporary, or a perpetual state? Each one of these symbols by itself, and all together, involve one visible Ruler: therefore, so long as the Church can be called with truth, the one house, the one family, the one city, the one fold, the one kingdom, so long must it have one visible and supreme Ruler.
But once grant that such a one there was after our Lord's departure, and no one can doubt that one to have been Peter. It is easier to deny the supreme Ruler altogether, than to make him any one but Peter. The whole course of the Gospels shows none other marked out by so many distinctions. Thus, even those who wish to refuse a real power to his Primacy, are compelled by the force of evidence to allow him a Primacy of order and honour.
But nothing did our Lord more pointedly reject than the vain pomp of titles and honours. In nothing is His own example more marked than in that He exercised real power and supreme authority without pomp or show. Nothing did He enjoin more emphatically on the disciple who should be the "Great one," and "the Ruler," among his brethren, than that he must follow his Master in being the servant of all. A Primacy, then, consisting in titles and mere precedency, is of all things most opposed to the spirit and the precepts of our Lord. And so the Primacy which He designated must be one of real power and pre-eminent authority.
And this brings us back to the passage of S. Luke which we were considering, where four things prove that Christ had such a headship in view. First, the occasion, for the Apostles were contending for a place of real authority. The sons of Zebedy expressed it by sitting on His right hand and on His left, that is, holding the second and the third place of dignity in the kingdom.
Secondly, the double comparison which our Lord used, the one negative, the other affirmative: in the former, contrasting the Church's ruler with the kings of the Gentiles, He excluded pomp and splendour, lordship and ambition; in the latter, referring him to His own example, who had the most real and true power and superiority, He taught him to unite these with a meekness and an attention to the wants of his brethren, of which His own life had been the model.
Thirdly, the words "the First," "the Greater," and "the Ruler," indicate the pre-eminence of the future head, for as they appear in the context, and according to their Scriptural force, they indicate not a vain and honorary, but a real authority, one of them being even the very title given to our Lord.
And, fourthly, this is proved by the object in view, which is, maintaining the identity of the Church, and the form which it had from the beginning, and preserving its manifold unity. As to its identity, and original form, it is needless to observe that Christ exercised in it not an honorary but a real supremacy, so that under Him its government was really in the hands of one, the Ruler. As to the preservation of its unity – and especially a unity so complex – the very analogy of human society will sufficiently teach us that it is impossible to be preserved without
John xiii. 13.
Passaglia, p. 82.
Matt. xxiii. 8.
John chps. x., xiii., xvii.
Dialog. cont. Lucif. n. 9.
St. Cyprian, Ep. 46.
