Author’s Introduction
The Pope is a king, and
pretends to be sovereign pontiff of the Christian Church.
We do not propose to
occupy ourselves with his royalty. To what advantage? It
will soon fall. Its ruin is decreed by Providence.
Foreign bayonets will no more save it than the sophisms
of its defenders. If, as is affirmed, these are
necessary to uphold the sovereign pontificate, it is but
another reason for desiring its fall—because this
pontificate is an usurpation. This we proceed
to demonstrate in the present work. To reach this end we
shall have recourse neither to questionable arguments
nor to declamation. Facts drawn from original sources
are summoned as witnesses. We take the Roman episcopate
at the origin of Christianity, follow it through
centuries, and are able to prove incontestably, that
during eight centuries the spiritual Papacy, as we
understand it at the present day, had no existence; that
the bishop of Rome was during three centuries only a
bishop, with the same rank as the others; that in
the fourth century he received a primacy of honor
without universal jurisdiction; that this honor has no
other foundation than the decrees of the Church; that
his restricted jurisdiction over certain
neighboring churches is supported only upon a custom
legalized by Councils.
As for the universal
sovereignty, absolute, of divine right—in other
words, the Papacy—facts and catholic testimony of the
first eight centuries condemn instead of sustaining it.
History reveals to us the
Papacy, after several fruitless attempts, taking its
birth from circumstances and establishing itself in the
ninth century, with its double political and
ecclesiastical character. Its real founder was Adrian I.
Nicholas I chiefly contributed to its development;
Gregory VII raised it to its loftiest pitch.
Adrian I was in fact the
first Pope. They who before this occupied the see of
Rome, were only bishops, successors, not of St. Peter,
as has been declared and repeated to satiety, but of
Linus, who was already bishop of Rome when St. Peter
arrived in that city, to seal there by his martyrdom the
faith he had preached. The defenders of the Papacy
commit, therefore, at the outset, one of the grossest
historical errors in carrying back the Papacy, that is,
the Papal sovereignty, to the origin of Christianity.
This error has led them to a thousand others, impelled,
as they have been, to seek proofs for the support of
this false theory in the history of the Church and in
the writings of the ancient fathers. They have thus
wrested facts and distorted testimonies. They have even
dared to attack Holy Scripture, and by delusive anti-Catholic
interpretation, made it bear false witness in
favor of their system. It is thus that the Church of
Rome was the first to give example of those individual
interpretations for which she so bitterly reproaches
Protestantism. She was the first to abandon the
Catholic rule of the interpretation of the sacred
books; she has put aside the collective
interpretation of which the fathers of the Church have
been the faithful echoes, and upon her own authority she
has presumed to discover in Scripture that which the
Church Catholic has not found there. She has come thus
to arrogate for her usurped sovereignty a divine
foundation. She has drawn from this principle all its
consequences; the Pope has become the vicar of Jesus
Christ, the necessary centre of the Church, the pivot of
Christianity, the infallible organ of heaven. These
Papal errors were so skillfully disseminated in the
western countries that they were there gradually adopted.
The protests which they drew forth were indeed continued,
but partaking of the spirit of the age, they were not
sufficiently pointed; such even as were raised against
the abuses of the Papacy, admitted as beyond question a
divine basis for that institution.
At the present day, these
errors have penetrated not only among the clergy and
religious men; the rationalists—anti-Christians
themselves—admit the idea that the Pope is the sovereign
chief of the Christian Church, and that his spiritual
prerogatives are derived from Jesus Christ. Many
Protestants themselves do not conceive of a Catholic
Church without a Pope, and see this church only in the
Roman Church.The author thus touches
two of the greatest advantages which modern
writers, unfortunately, concede to the Papists: 1st.
That of identifying historical Christianity with the
Mediæval Roman system; 2d. That of calling the Trentine
Church the Catholic Church.
We ourselves have been
misled by the common error, taught as we had been to
regard it as a revealed and incontestable verity.
In embarking upon the
extensive researches we were obliged to make for the
preparation of the History of the Church of France,
it did not enter our thoughts to examine certain
questions, which only in an indirect way entered into
our subject and upon which we had blindly accepted
certain opinions. Hence some expressions too favorable
to the Papacy, and some errors of detail in our book. We
seize the occasion now offered to give warning of them,
in order that our readers may be on their guard against
these errors, which, however, will find their correction
in the present work.
Rome has visited with her
censure the History of the Church of France
because it was not sufficiently favorable to her
pretensions. We ourselves censure it because too
many concessions are there made to Roman prejudices
which bad been imparted to us as truth, and which we had
not been at the pains thoroughly to examine. Should
Providence ever put it into our power to reprint the
History of the Church of France, we shall deem it
an obligation of conscience to make the correction. This
would have been done at the demand of Rome, had Rome
condescended to convince us of error. We shall do it,
however, at the requirement of our own conscience, now
more enlightened.
No man is infallible;
hence, inasmuch as a man dishonors himself by changing
his opinions without good reason or pretending such
change from motives of interest, in the same degree does
he honor himself when acknowledging and retracting
errors he discovers himself to have committed.
We are therefore disposed
to great tolerance toward Roman Catholics who believe in
the divine origin of the Papal prerogatives; for we know
that this prejudgment is communicated to all of them
with the first elements of religious instruction, and
that every thing in the Roman Church tends to strengthen
it in their souls. But the more deeply this delusion is
rooted in the Roman Church, and generally in all the
West, the more are we bound to combat it with vigor.
To this pursuit have we
for several years perseveringly devoted ourselves, and,
thanks to God, our labors have not been useless. We hope
the new work we now send forth will also bear its fruits,
and will come to the help of those religious men, daily
increasing in number, who, in the presence of the abuses
and excesses of every kind committed by the. Papacy, can
no longer be blinded respecting it by old delusions.
Accustomed to see in it
the divine centre of the Church, they can no longer
recognize such a centre in this hotbed of innovations
and of sacrilegious usurpations; they ask, therefore,
where is the Church of Jesus Christ? We need only divest
the Papacy of the glory it has usurped, that the Church
Catholic may at once appear in her majestic
perpetuity, in her universality. The Papacy has
narrowed it to the point of presuming to comprehend the
whole Church in itself. Tear away these glittering
pretensions, and the Christian society will appear
marching with unbroken progress through ages, preserving
inviolate the deposit of revelation, protesting against
every error, whether emanating from Rome or elsewhere;
accepting as her rule only the catholic rule
founded upon the Word of God, of which the Councils and
the Fathers are the organs.
In this holy society
there are neither Greeks nor Barbarians, but
Christians only, who can say with St. Pacian,
Christian is my name; Catholic my
surname,
because they believe without exception
in all fullness (êáè’ ὅëïí) the doctrine taught by the
Master and preserved intact by the Church in all ages
and in all places. This great truth is concisely
expressed by the well-known words of Vincent of Lerins:
Quod ubique, quod
semper, quod ab omnibus.
The Pope would, in his
own interest, limit the Church to such as acknowledge
his sovereignty, that he might then absorb them
and say, I am the Church.
Let us break
down the barriers he has raised, and we shall at once
see the Church in all her beauty, expanding in freedom,
unshackled by territorial boundaries, owning as its
members all particular churches, bound together by the
same faith, communing with one another through pastors
alike apostolic, made one in Jesus Christ, the great
Pontiff, the sole Head of the Church, and in the Holy
Spirit its guide.
Who has broken this
admirable unity of the first Christian ages? The Pope.
He has usurped the place
of Jesus Christ, and has said to all churches, It is
in me and by me you shall be united; the ministry of
your pastors shall proceed from me; from me are you to
receive doctrine. I am supreme pastor. It is my right to
govern all. I am supreme judge. I may judge all and be
myself judged by no one whomsoever. I am the echo of
heaven, the infallible voice of God.
To similar words, almost the same as
those summed up by the author, the present pontiff, Plus
IX, lately presumed to add the awful expression, I am
the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
—Editor.
Shall the harmony of the
Church Catholic be destroyed because the Papacy
has availed itself of outward circumstances to extend
its usurped domination over a certain number of
individual churches? Assuredly not. So far from
excluding from this concord churches which have resisted
her usurpations, it is the Papacy itself that is to be
thus excluded. Not only has she broken with churches
truly Catholic, but she has violated the traditions of
her own Church. She has divided them into two distinct
parts, like the Roman episcopate itself. The Roman
traditions of the first eight centuries are not the same
as those of succeeding ages. The Papacy has, therefore,
lost its true perpetuity in the very points wherein it
has innovated. Thus a member of the Roman Church who
returns to the primitive doctrine of that Church, who
rejects the innovations of the Papacy, reënters at once
into the Catholic concord, belongs to the true Church of
Jesus Christ, to that Church which has maintained itself
in its double character of perpetuity, of universality.
Far from us be those deplorable accusations of schism
hurled at venerable churches, which have preserved the
revealed doctrine in its primitive purity, which have
preserved the apostolic ministry! The Papacy calls them
schismatical, because they have refused to acknowledge
its usurpations. It is full time such noisy
misapprehensions should cease.
We proceed, then, to
demonstrate that it is the Papacy itself which is guilty
of schism; that after having provoked division, it has
perpetuated and consolidated it by its innovations; in a
word, that it has caused its divisions to pass into a
state of schism.
This proved, we shall be
at liberty to conclude that those who are considered by
the Papacy as schismatics because of their opposition to
her autocracy, are in reality the true Catholics, and
that it has, in seeking to separate others from it,
become itself separated from the Church.
There are those in the
West who would present the Papacy as the legitimate
development of the Christian idea, as Christianity
arrived at its completion. The truth is, that it is the
negation of the evangelical idea, of the
Christian idea. Can, then, the negation of an idea be
considered as its development? There will be some
astonishment perhaps in seeing us enter upon such a
subject with this degree of candor. We answer, that at
the epoch in which we live, there is need to speak
frankly without mental reserve. We do not understand
circumlocution with respect to error. Indulgent,
charitable toward men who are deceived, we believe that
we obey a true instinct of charity in waging open war
with the errors that deceive men. To speak truth,
as wrote the Patriarch Photius to Pope Nicholas, is
the greatest act of charity.
L’Abbe Guettée