Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/338

 of the unity, holiness, infallibility of the church and expounded its teaching, and only now it says what it is. Only now it becomes clear from Art. 171 what that church is which sanctifies men through sacraments, and which, amidst false dogmas, establishes those that are true. It says that the church is divided into a hierarchy and the congregation. The hierarchy sanctifies and teaches, the flock is sanctified, ruled, and taught by the hierarchy. It must obey, consequently it is only the hierarchy that sanctifies and establishes dogmas, and so the hierarchy alone answers that definition of the church, from which results its activity of the sanctification and of the establishment of the dogmas, and so the hierarchy alone is holy and infallible, and only the hierarchy answers completely to that which has all the time been mentioned under the name of the church. In Art. 173, it says that the pastors must teach the flock, must perform the sacraments for it, and must govern it, and that the flock must obey.

“St. Gregory the Divine says: ‘As in the body some parts govern and, as it were, preside, while the other parts are under their rule and dominion, even so it is in the churches. God has decreed that some, for whom this is more useful, should by word and deed be directed to the performance of their duties, should remain herded and under rule, while others, standing above the rest in virtue and nearness to God, should be pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the church, and should have the same relation to others that the soul has to the body, and the mind to the soul, so that one and the other, the defective and the superabundant, being like the members of the body, united and joined into one composition, bound and coupled with the Spirit, may represent one body, perfect and truly worthy of Christ our head. For that reason the societies of the Christians, who of their own will departed from their obedience to the bishop and the presbyters,