Part I: Instances where the truths of faith were held more constantly by t... (On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine (1859)) (Newman, John Henry)

Here, of course, I must explain:- in saying this, then, undoubtedly I am not denying that the great body of the Bishops were in their internal belief orthodox; nor that there were numbers of clergy who stood by the laity, and acted as their centres and guides; nor that the laity actually received their faith, in the first instance, from the Bishops and clergy; nor that some portions of the laity were ignorant, and other portions at length corrupted by the Arian teachers, who got possession of the sees and ordained an heretical clergy;-but I mean still, that in that time of immense confusion the divine dogma of our Lord's divinity was proclaimed, enforced, maintained, and (humanly speaking) preserved, far more by the "Ecclesia docta" than by the "Ecclesia docens;" that the body of the episcopate was unfaithful to its commission, while the body of the laity was faithful to its baptism; that at one time the Pope, at other times the patriarchal, metropolitan, and other great sees, at other times general councils, aid what they should not have said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth; while, on the other hand, it was the Christian people who, under Providence, were the ecclesiastical strength of Athanasius, Hilary, Eusebius of Vercellae, and other great solitary confessors, who would have failed without them.

I see, then, in the Arian history a palmary example of a state of the Church, during which, in order to know the tradition of the Apostles, we must have recourse to the faithful; for I fairly own, that if I go to writers, since I must adjust the letter of Justin, Clement, and Hippolytus with the Nicene Doctors, I get confused; and what revives and reinstates me, as far as history goes, is the faith of the people. For I argue that, unless they had been catechised, as St. Hilary says, in the orthodox faith from the time of their baptism, they never could have had that horror, which they show, of the heterodox Arian doctrine. Their voice, then, is the voice of tradition; and the instance comes to us with still greater emphasis, when we consider

1. that it occurs in the very beginning of the history of the "Ecclesia docens," for there can scarcely be said to be any history of her teaching till the age of martyrs was over;

2. that the doctrine in controversy was so momentous, being the very foundation-of the Christian system;

3. that the state of controversy and disorder lasted over the long space of sixty years; and

4. that it involved serious persecutions, in life, limb, and property, to the faithful whose loyal perseverance decided it. It seems, then, as striking an instance as I could take in fulfilment of Father Perrone's statement, that the voice of tradition may in certain cases express itself, not by Councils, nor Fathers, nor Bishops, but the "communis fidelium sensus."

I shall set down some authorities for the two points successively, which I have to enforce, viz. that the Nicene dogma was maintained during the greater part of the 4th century, 1. not by the unswerving firmness of the Holy See, Councils, or Bishops, but 2. by the "consensus fidelium."

On the one hand, then, I say, that there was a temporary suspense of the functions of the "Ecclesia docens." The body of Bishops failed in their confession of the faith. They spoke variously, one against another; there was nothing, after Nicaea, of firm, unvarying, consistent testimony, for nearly sixty years. There were untrustworthy Councils, unfaithful Bishops; there was weakness, fear of consequences, misguidance, delusion, hallucination, endless, hopeless, extending itself into nearly every corner of the Catholic Church. The comparatively few who remained faithful were discredited and driven into exile; the rest were either deceivers or were deceived.

The great council of Nicaea, of 318 Bishops, chiefly from the eastern provinces of Christendom, under the presidency of Hosius of Cordova, as the Pope's Legate. It was convoked against Arianism, which it once for all anathematized; and it inserted the formula of the "Consubstantial" into the Creed, with the view of .establishing the fundamental dogma which Arianism impugned. It is the first Oecumenical Council, and recognised at the time its own authority as the voice of the infallible Church. It is so received by the orbis terrarum at this day. A.D. 326. St. Athanasius, the great champion of the Homoousion, was elected Bishop of Alexandria.> [The history of the Arian controversy, from its date, A.D. 325, to the date of the second Oecumenical Council, A.D. 381, is the history of the struggle through Christendom for the universal acceptance or the repudiation of the formula of the "Consubstantial."]

A.D. 334, 335. The synods of Caesarea and Tyre [sixty Bishops] against Athanasius, who was therein accused and formally condemned of rebellion, sedition, and ecclesiastical tyranny; of murder, sacrilege, and magic; deposed from his see, forbidden to set foot in Alexandria for life, and banished to Gaul. [Constantine confirmed the sentence.] <Also, they received Arius into communion.>

A.D. 341. Council of Rome of fifty Bishops, attended by the exiles from Thrace, Syria, &c., by Athanasius, &c., in which Athanasius was pronounced innocent. 4. A.D. 341. Great Council of the Dedication at Antioch, attended by ninety or a hundred Bishops. The council ratified the proceedings of the councils of Caesarea and Tyre, and placed an Arian in the see of Athanasius. Then it proceeded to pass a dogmatic decree in reversal of the formula of the "Consubstantial." Four or five creeds, instead of the Nicene, were successively adopted by the assembled fathers. [The first was a creed which they ascribed to Lucian, a martyr and saint of the preceding century, in whom the Arians always gloried as their master. The second was fuller and stronger in its language, and made more pretension to orthodoxy. The third was more feeble again. These three creeds were circulated in the neighbourhood; but, as they wished to send one to Rome, they directed a fourth to be drawn up. This, too, apparently failed. [So little was nown at the time of the real history of this synod and its creeds, that St. Hilary calls it "sanctorum synodus."]

This creed suppresses, as did the third, the word "substance." The eastern Bishops sent this to the Bishops of [the West], who rejected it The great council of Sardica, attended by [380] Bishops. Before it commenced, the division between its members broke out on the question whether or not Athanasius should have a seat in it. In consequence, seventy-six retired to Philippopolis, on the Thracian side of Mount Haemus, and there excommunicated the Pope and the Sardican fathers. These seceders published a sixth confession of faith. The synod of Sardica, including Bishops from Italy, Gaul, Africa, Egypt, Cyprus, and Palestine, confirmed the act of the Roman council, and restored Athanasius and the other exiles to their sees. The synod of Philippopolis, on the contrary, sent letters to the civil magistrates of those cities, forbidding them to admit the exiles into them. The imperial power took part with the Sardican fathers, and Athanasius went back to Alexandria.

[Before many years had run out, the great eastern party was up again.] <The Bishops of the East met at Sirmium. The semi-Arian Bishops began to detach themselves from the Arians, and to form a separate party.> Under pretence of putting down a kind of Sabellianism, they drew up a new creed, into which they introduced [certain inadvisable expressions] of some of the ante-Nicene writers, on the subject of our Lord's divinity, and dropped the word -substance." [St. Hilary thought this creed also Catholic; and other Catholic writers style its fathers "holy Bishops."]

There is considerable confusion of dates here. Anyhow, there was a second Sirmian creed, in which the eastern party first came to a division among themselves. St. Hilary at length gives up these creeds as indefensible, and calls this one a "blasphemy." It is the first creed which criticises the words "substance," &c., as unscriptural. Some years afterwards this "blasphemia" seems to have been interpolated, and sent into the East in the name of Hosius. At a later date, there was a third Sirmian creed; and a second edition of it, with alterations, was published at Nice in Thrace.

The Council of Aries <The Pope sent to it several Bishops as legates. The Fathers of the Council, including the Pope's legate, Vincent, subscribed the condemnation of Athanasius. Paulinus, Bishop of Treves, was nearly the only one who stood up for the Nicene faith and for Athanasius.>

A.D. 355. The council of Milan, of more than 300 Bishops of the West. Nearly all of them, subscribed the condemnation of Athanasius; whether they generally subscribed the heretical creed, which was brought forward, does not appear. The Pope's four legates remained firm, and St. Dionysius of Milan, who died an exile in Asia Minor. An Arian was put into his see. Saturninus, the Bishop of Arles, proceeded to hold a council at Beziers; and its fathers banished St. Hilary to Phrygia. <A.D. 357-9. The Arians and Semi-Arians successively drew up fresh creeds at Sirmium.>

A.D. 357 Constantius used such violence towards the old man Hosius, and confined him so straitly, that at last, broken by suffering, he was brought, though hardly, to hold communion with Valens and Ursacius (the Arian leaders), though he would not subscribe against Athanasius." (Athan. Arian. Hist. 45. 12). The tragedy was not ended in the fall of Hosius, but in the evil which befell Liberius, the Roman Pontiff, it became far more dreadful and mournful, considering that he was Bishop of so great a city, and of the whole Catholic Church, and that he had so bravely resisted Constantius two years previously. There is nothing, whether in the historians and holy fathers, or in his own letters, to prevent our coming to the conclusion, that Liberius communicated with the Arians, and confirmed the sentence passed against Athanasius; but he is not at all on that account to be called a heretic." Baron. Ann. 357, 38-45.

Athanasius says: "Liberius, after he had been in banishment <for> two years, gave way, and from fear of threatened death was induced to subscribe." Arian. Hist. S41. St. Jerome says: "Liberius, taedio victus exilii, in haereticam pravitatem subscribens, Roman quasi victor intraverat."* Chron. <ed. Val. p. 797> ["Liberius, worn out by the tedium of exile and subscribing to the heretical error, had entered Rome almost as a conqueror."]

A.D. 359. The great councils of Seleucia and Ariminum, being one bi-partite council, representing the East and West respectively. At Seleucia there were 150 Bishops, of which only the twelve or thirteen from Egypt were champions of the Nicene "Consubstantial." At Ariminum there were as many as 400 Bishops, who, worn out by the artifice of long delay on the part of the Arians, abandoned the "Consubstantial," and subscribed the ambiguous formula which the heretics had substituted for it.

A.D. 361. The death of Constantius; the Catholic Bishops breathe again, and begin at once to remedy the miseries of the Church, though troubles were soon to break out anew. A.D. 362. State of the Church of Antioch at this time. There were four Bishops or communions of Antioch; first, the old succession and communion, which had possession before the Arian troubles; secondly, the Arian succession, which had lately conformed to orthodoxy in the person of Meletius; thirdly, the new Latin succession, lately created by Lucifer, whom some have thought the Pope's legate there; and, fourthly, the new Arian succession, which was [begun] upon the recantation of Meletius. At length, as Arianism was brought under, the evil reduced itself to two <Episcopal> successions, that of Meletius and the Latin, which went on for many years, the West and Egypt holding communion with the latter, and the East with the former.

A.D. 370-379. St. Basil was Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia through these years. The judgments formed about this great doctor in his lifetime show us vividly the extreme confusion which prevailed. He was accused by one party of being a follower of Apollinaris, and lost in consequence some of the sees over which he was metropolitan. He was accused by the monks in his friend Gregory's diocese of favouring the semi-Arians. He was accused by the Neocaesareans of inclining towards Arianism. And he was treated with suspicion and coldness by Pope Damasus].

About A.D. 360, St. Hilary says: "I am not speaking of things foreign to my knowledge; I am not writing about what I am ignorant of; I have heard and I have seen the shortcomings of persons who are [present to]* me, not of laymen <merely>, but of Bishops. For, excepting the Bishop Eleusius and a few with him, for the most part the ten Asian provinces, within whose boundaries I am situate, are truly ignorant of God." <De Syn. 63.> It is observable, that even Eleusius, who is here spoken of as somewhat better than the rest, was a semi-Arian, according to Socrates, and even a persecutor of Catholics at Constantinople; and, according to Sozomen, one of those who [urged] Pope Liberius to give up the Nicene formula of the "Consubstantial."

18. A.D. 360. St. Gregory Nazianzen says, about this date: "Surely the pastors have done foolishly; for, excepting a very few, who, either on account of their insignificance were passed over, or who by reason of their virtue resisted, and who were to be left as a seed and root for the springing up again and revival of Israel by the influences of the Spirit, all temporised, only differing from each other in this, that some succumbed earlier, and others later; some were foremost champions and leaders in the impiety, and others joined the second rank of the battle, being overcome by fear, or by interest, or by flattery, or, what was the most excusable, by their own ignorance." Orat. xxi. 24. 19. A.D. 363. About this time, St. Jerome says: "Nearly all the churches in the whole world, under the pretence of peace and the emperor, are polluted with the communion of the Arians." Chron. Of the same date, that is, upon the council of Ariminum, are his famous words, "Ingernuit totus orbis et se esse Arianum miratus est. ["The whole world groaned, and marveled to see itself Arian."] In Lucif. *<19.> [That is,] the Catholics of Christendom were surprised indeed to find that [their rulers]** had made Arians of them.

And St. Hilary: "Up to this date, the only cause why Christ's people is not murdered by the priests of Anti-christ, with this deceit of impiety, is, that they take the words which the heretics use, to denote the faith which they themselves hold. Sanctiores aures plebis quam corda sunt sacerdotum." ["There is more holiness in the ears of the people than in the hearts of the priests."] (In Aux. 6.)

St. Hilary speaks of the series of ecclesiastical councils of that time in the following well-known passage: "It is most dangerous to us, and it is lamentable, that there are at Present as many creeds as there are sentiments, and as many doctrines among us as dispositions, while we write creeds and explain them according to our fancy. Since the Nicene council, we have done nothing but write the creed. While we fight about words, inquire about novelties, take advantage of ambiguities, criticise authors, fight on party questions, have difficulties in agreeing, and prepare to anathernatise each other, there is scarce a man who belongs to Christ. Take, for instance, last year's creed, what alteration is there not in it already? First, we have the creed, which bids us not to use the Nicene 'consubstantial;' then comes another, which decrees and preaches it; next, the third, excuses the word 'substance,' as adopted by the fathers in their simplicity; lastly, the fourth, <which> instead of excusing, condemns. We [impose] creeds by the year or by the month, we change our [minds about our own imposition of them, then] we prohibit our changes, [then] we anathematise our prohibitions. Thus, we either condemn others in our own persons, or ourselves in the instance of others, and while we bite and devour one another, are like to be consumed one of another." <Ad Const. ii. 4, 5.>

A.D. 382. St. Gregory writes: "If I must speak the truth, I feel disposed to shun every conference of Bishops; for never saw I synod brought to a happy issue, and remedying, and not rather aggravating, existing evils. For rivalry and ambition are stronger than reason,-do not think me extravagant for saying so,-and a mediator is more likely to incur some imputation himself than to clear up the imputations which others lie under." Ep. 129. [It must ever be kept in mind that a passage like this only relates, and is here quoted as only relating, to that miserable time of which it is spoken. Nothing more can be argued from it than that the "Ecclesia docens" is not at every time the active instrument of the Church's infallibility.]