Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/774

760 This view, though strongly supported by the Eastern churches as well as by an historical and living school of Anglicans, is undoubtedly open to the difficulty, acknow ledged by Mr Gladstone and others, of making the church as a collective body remain silent for some thirteen centuries and still unable to speak. There remains the fourth, the Roman Catholic view, which subjects the entire episcopate to the bishop of Rome, and makes full communion with him of the essence of churchmanship. This view has been supported ever since the Middle Ages with immense zeal and learning by many able Catholic writers. Although a strong case against it has been made out from the fathers, especially the Eastern ones, and although the state of matters just before the Reformation was everywhere one of gross abuses and much superstition, yet the good points of the Papacy have been fully recognized by Pro testants and Anglican writers, such as Guizot, Michelet, .Comte, Ranke, Sir James Stephen, Dr Arnold, Archbishop Trench, and Bishop Harold Browne. Nevertheless, the increasing development of the Papal claims has been strongly resisted within the pale of that church by the Jansenists, by the Gallican divines such as Bossuet, and by the entire body of the Port Royalists, including such brilliant names as those of St Cyran, De Sacy, Arnauld, and above all Pascal. All these display a Calvinistic element in their teaching, and more or less (as for instance Fleury in his famous Church History) modify the distinctively Roman characteristics most opposed by Protestants, and they place a general council far above the Pope. In our own day the counter-theory among Roman Catholics, of which De Maistre was a Isading spokesman, has been seemingly ratified by the Vatican Council and the Pope declared infallible. This extreme step has provoked a schism among Roman Catholics, and alienated some of their most eminent men. Of the different views entertained concerning the relation between church and state, it must be enough to say here that occasional collision seems almost unavoidable. For where two independent societies lay claim to a common ground, those claims, unless precisely defined, will some times militate. No state has yet been known to carry out the theory of Locke, and confine its attention purely to the preservation of life and property. But every state which considers public morality to be within its sphere, and legislates on such matters as marriage and education, must of necessity occupy to some extsnt the same ground as the various Christian communities which claim to be the local church.  CHURCH HISTORY. In this article we shall consider (1) The Definition, (2) The Sources, (3) The Method, and (4) The Literature of the subject. Considered as a department of universal knowledge, church history forms a special section of the religious history of mankind. It is an account of the growth and the transactions of the religious community which is marked out from others by its attachment to Christianity. This definition already excludes from consideration a region of inquiry important in itself, which is sometimes regarded as forming an integral part of the subject. Starting from that idea of the church which is represented etymologically by the undoubtedly false derivations of the word from the German kuren, to choose, or the Greek Kvpiov CHKOS, the (figurative) house of the Lord, various writers have assumed the church to be that special section of mankind who in any age have enjoyed the true revela tion of God as given by himself, and they have in conse quence regarded church history as bound to deal first with the Old Testament church and then with the church of the New Dispensation. This, however, involves an amount of dogmatic prepossession to which history, simply as such, cannot commit itself. Surveying the field of mere ob jective fact, history can single out, under the general appellation of the church, a great society whose origin can be distinctly traced up to the personal activity of Christ, who, for this society, forms a definite and wholly new historical commencement. Whatever etymology we assign to the word church under its various modifications of kirche, kirk, kerk, cyrkeiv, zerkow, &c., whether we follow the derivation suggested by Walafrid Straboin the 9th cen tury, and extensively held since, from ro KvpiaKov, the Lord s house, as a term introduced by the Greek missionaries into the language of the heathen tribes whom they con verted, or whether we adopt the not less probable conjee ture of Lipsius, and ascribe its origin to &quot; circ&quot; or &quot; cere&quot; (connected with the Latin circus), the local name for the temple of Northern paganism, adopted by ancient and mediaeval Christianity, in conformity with its principle of accommodating itself as far as possible to the usages of its proselytes there can be no doubt that the community and the movement, which, under some form of the name church among the Germanic races, and of the name ecclcsia, such as eglise, chiesa, &c., among the Latin nations, suc ceeded in subjugating the Roman empire, along with extensive regions beyond it on all sides, to a religion whose personal centre is Christ, form a fresh phenomenon in the history of mankind, as distinct and individual in its character as Hellenism, Hinduism, or Mohammedanism. In the view of history proper, therefore, tlie history of Judaism cannot be taken as forming a part of the history of the church. For the same reason history cannot take action upon a class of distinctions recognized by many who assume the functions of the church historian. Such writers, adopting some strict and special definition of the church, confine the work of church history to that section of professing Christians whose condition satisfies the terms of their de finition, any other so-called division of Christendom coming in for a share of attention only in the narrative of the opposition encountered by the church. History, in the proper sense, cannot undertake to decide questions of this description. To say which among many competing churches is the true church involves a dogmatic deliver ance, which is beyond its province. It must do its work in a more rough and general fashion. Under the name church it comprehends all organizations avowedly basing themselves upon Christianity and recognizing Christ as in some sense their head and leader. It undertakes to delineate the story of these in the aggregate ; and with regard to the distinctions between them, and their pre tensions to condemn and exclude each other, it confines itself to narrative, without attempting adjudication. Another limitation has to be introduced into the defini tion of church history, when regard is had to the exact point of time at which it ought to begin. The church did not come into full-formed existence in a moment. Regarded as a community with more or less of an organization upon a Christian basis, and conscious of itself and of its aim in the history of the world, it was the result of the activity of Christ and his more immediate apostles and followers The history of what they did in giving existence to the church, as such, is a different thing from the history of the church when once existing in that character. The case resembles the difference between embryology and biography in the history of the individual. The precise point of time at which the formative activity of the church founders issues in the actual church is probably to be determined by the emergence of the consciousness of a common Christian life and aim among the separate communities originally established by apostolic labour. By some writers this is placed as low as the destruction of Jeru salem, by others as high as the first rallying of Christ s 