that reason, as represented by philosophy, had failed to fulfil her mission, they did not intend to give even the slightest grounds for the conclusion that reason must necessarily err. Reason had erred. Why so? Because reason had speculated recklessly. Passion, whim, and prejudice had mixed themselves up with the investigations of reason, and so it will often be in this world, and thus reason had erred. But was error the result of the operation of reason, or of the co-operation of whim and prejudice? Of the latter undoubtedly, for reason ceases to operate where truth ceases to hold sway.

The force of the Christian argument amounted to this :Philosophers had advanced every variety of theory on religious subjects; wherefore, they were unsafe guides for those who aspired after immortality. If it was objected to Christianity, that notwithstanding the manifest contradictions of philosophers, some of them had advocated doctrines that agreed with the teachings of Christianity, the answer was ready, that the very man who had spoken truth on one point, had erred on fifty others. Philosophers had erred perseveringly, and so long had they been tried now, and so powerful had been the intellects engaged in the struggle, that it appeared idle to expect from them as religious guides, aught but inconsistency and self-sufficiency, and the advocacy of views and theories hostile to common sense and dangerous to immortal souls.

DIVISION II.

THE SECOND VICTORY.

§ 1. Progress of the Church.-The Church, triumphing over her adversaries, continued to widen her domain and extend her dominion. Her first successes had been in the East. The close of the first century saw her reigning over Asia Minor, Palestine, Crete, Greece, and Syria. Advancing to the West, she had seized upon Italy; and she had established her head-quarters, so to speak, in Rome long before the close of the first age of her existence.

Rome, the undying seat of ecclesiastical sovereignty; Rome, attacked, shattered, broken then as in this year 18601861; Rome, strong and weak, conquering and conquered, the object of the respect and scorn of the millions, receiving the faith in the first century, became the centre from which it was thenceforth diffused through the infidel nations of the universe. The Church, therefore, starting from Rome, continued her journey towards the far West, during the second and third centuries of the Christian Era, following up victory after victory.

When reading the history of the great schism of the 16th century, we must have been struck by two facts therein recited: 1st, The facility with which some Northern European nations gave up the Catholic faith; and, 2nd, The tenacity with which the nations of the South adhered to it. It did not, perhaps, then strike us that the Southerns were the older children of the Church, while the inhabitants of the North were comparatively neophytes. Yet such is the fact, as we learn from studying the history of the first propagation of the Christian faith in Europe.

Leaving Rome, the Church was not far from the "great sea" of the Scriptures: "Hoc mare magnum et spatio

sum manibus." Or, if she preferred it, the great road to the Alps was open to her, by which she might enter Gaul from the south-east. Slow ships from Ostia to the ports of France and Spain were numerous in those days, and conveyances to the land confines of Helvetia and Gaul were not wanting. In either mode of travelling, Gaul and Spain were the first countries encountered by the Church in journeying from Italy towards the west of Europe. It is not for us to say whether the facility of reaching these countries influenced the choice of the pri mitive propagators of the Gospel, but certain it is, that after Italy, they were the first evangelized in the West.

Even as early as the Apostolic period, we find mention of the intended journey of a great missioner from Rome to Spain, on the business of the gospel. The missioner referred to is St. Paul. In his Epistle to the Christians of Rome, written from the East, he thus announces his project: "When I shall begin to take my journey into Spain, I hope that as I pass I shall see you, and be brought on my way thither by you if first in part I shall have enjoyed you." And a little further on he reverts to it in the following terms: "When, therefore, I shall have accomplished this and consigned to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain." 2 We are not aware whether circumstances allowed the Apostle of the Gentiles to carry out his design of announcing the faith in person to the Spaniards; but certain it is that long before the close of the second century the Church, issuing from Rome, had travelled along by the Mediterranean, and established large and flourishing Christian colonies in the principal cities of Proconsular Spain, and Gaul.

Nor had the other side of the water been neglected. The province of Africa, lying along the southern shores of the "great sea," had been evangelized at an early period. Its "Coloniæ" and "Municipia" were full of Christians at the opening of the third century. Egypt and Numidia had received the faith, and a line of ancient cities, stretch

1 Romans xv. 24.

2 Ibid. verse 28.

ing along the coast of Northern Africa and to the confines of the Great Desert, were become as remarkable for their orthodoxy and for the learning and constancy of their bishops as they had formerly been for their skill in arms and the martial energy of their kings.

Thus the Church, having during the first years of her existence brought Judea, Asia Minor, Crete, Greece, and Italy under the standard of the Redeemer, pushed on in two conquering and almost parallel columns towards the West, subduing in the first instance the countries surrounding the great midland sea that separates Europe from Africa.

§ 2. Characteristics of the Church.-When we designate the entire Christian community by the name Church we individualize it. When under this term we speak of the victories, journeys, and reverses of the Christian people, we give them, scattered though they may be, a corporate existence, and we attribute to them a close union as parts of a whole, and as a whole composed of parts-a strict and inseparable unity. The Church travelled from place to place. The Church established herself in a certain town or city. The Church extended herself. Such expressions could not be used with propriety if the Church was a disjointed and dislocated mass of human beings, agreeing in a few fundamental articles of faith, but differing in worship and government. Therefore, in our mode of speaking of the conflicts and victories of the Church in the second and third centuries, we suppose her to be essentially one. Let us see if this supposition accords with the views of the fathers of that period.

The learned, the orthodox Bishop Cyprian may be taken as a fair representative of the belief and practice of his order on all subjects connected with controversy, and, as he wrote as the recognized champion of the Church, his authority as an expounder of her constitution and properties is the highest that can be produced. It will be, then, important and interesting to ascertain in what respect and how far he believed unity to be essential to the

911 66

912 66

one

body of the faithful. Happily, as regards this subject, his writings are a vein of the richest and most varied illustration. The Church is according to him-"A body whose limbs are distributed through various distinct provinces ;" "the Church is one through the whole world;" "the Catholic Church which is one and true; "'3" Christ prayed that we should be one, as the Father and Son;" "the Church is one ;"5" in Christ one body, to which our multitude is aggregated; "6 "the Church is one body;" "Christ attached more importance to the unanimity than to the multitude of his members; "8 "the unity of the Church deriving from the divine institution; "9"the Lord, referring to unity as springing from the divine bounty, said, 'I and the Father are one;""'10 “ one God and one Church; one is the house of God; Christ and one Church; "13"the body and soul of the flock of the Lord are one; "14"the Church is not among heretics, because it is one and cannot be divided;"15 "the Church cannot be cut asunder or divided; "16"unity cannot be in any wise separated or divided; "17"the unity of the Church cannot be rent; "the Church neither rent nor divided, but connected by the bond of priests mutually cohering to each other."19 In his book on the unity of the Church, St. Cyprian breaks out into the fol lowing description, which may be taken as a summary of what he has elsewhere written on the point :-" The Church, too, is one which by enlarged fecundity is spread out into a vast multitude. As the rays of the sun are many but its light is one, and the branches of the tree are many but the strength, founded in the tenacious trunk, is one, and when from the same source many streams flow, unity is preserved in the source, though multiplicity ap

1 D. Cypr. No. 41, Ed. Paris, 1844. 4 No. 213.

"18

2 No. 73.

5 Nos. 53, 62, 123, 152, 195, 202.

3 No. 124.

6 No. 108.

10 No. 153.

14 No. 58.

17 No. 151.