5. The idea of Papal absolutism and Infallibility, like that of the sinlessness of Mary, can be traced to apocryphal origin. It is found first, in the second century, in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, which contain a singular system of speculative Ebionism, and represent James of Jerusalem, the brother of the Lord, as the Bishop of Bishops, the centre of Christendom, and the general Vicar of Christ; he is the last arbiter, from whom there is no appeal; to him even Peter must give an account of his labors, and to him the sermons of Peter were sent for safe keeping. [346]
In the Catholic Church the same idea, but transferred to the Bishop of Rome, is first clearly expressed in the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, that huge forgery of Papal letters, which appeared in the middle of the ninth century, and had for its object the completion of the independence of the Episcopal hierarchy from the State, and the absolute power of the Popes, as the legislators and judges of all Christendom. Here the most extravagant claims are put into the mouths of the early Popes, from Clement (91) to Damasus (384), in the barbarous French Latin of the Middle Ages, and with such numerous and glaring anachronisms as to force the conviction of fraud even upon Roman Catholic scholars. One of these sayings is: 'The Roman Church remains to the end free from stain of heresy.' Soon afterwards arose, in the same hierarchical interest, the legend of the donation of Constantine and his baptism by Pope Silvester, interpolations of the writings of the Fathers, especially Cyprian and Augustine, and a variety of fictions embodied in the Gesta Liberii, and the Liber Pontificalis, and sanctioned by Gratianus (about 1150) in his Decretum, or collection of canons, which (as the first part of the Corpus juris canonici) became the code of laws for the whole Western Church, and exerted an extraordinary influence. By this series of pious frauds the mediæval Papacy, which was the growth of ages, was represented to the faith of the Church as a primitive institution of Christ, clothed with absolute and perpetual authority.
The Popes since Nicholas I. (858-867), who exceeded all his predecessors in the boldness of his designs, freely used what the spirit of a hierarchical, superstitious, and uncritical age furnished them. They quoted the fictitious letters of their predecessors as genuine, the Sardican canon on appeals as a canon of Nicæa, and the interpolated sixth canon of Nicæa,' the Roman Church always had the primacy,' of which there is not a syllable in the original; and nobody doubted them. Papal absolutism was in full vigor from Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII. Scholastic divines, even Thomas Aquinas, deceived by these literary forgeries, began to defend Papal absolutism over the whole Church, and the Councils of Lyons (1274) and of Florence (1439) sanctioned it, although the Greeks soon afterwards rejected the false union based upon such assumption.
But absolute power, especially of a spiritual kind, is invariably intoxicating and demoralizing to any mortal man who possesses it. God Almighty alone can bear it, and even he allows freedom to his rational creatures. The reminiscence of the monstrous period when the Papacy was a football in the hands of bold and dissolute women (904-962), or when mere boys, like Benedict IX. (1033), polluted the Papal crown with the filth of unnatural vices, could not be quite forgotten. The scandal of the Papal schism (1378 to 1409), when two and even three rival Popes excommunicated and cursed each other, and laid all Western Christendom under the ban, excited the moral indignation of all good men in Christendom, and called forth, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, the three Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle, which loudly demanded a reformation of the Church, in the head as well as in the members, and asserted the superiority of a Council over the Pope.
The Council of Constance (1414-1418), the most numerous ever seen in the West, deposed two Popes--John XXIII. (the infamous Balthasar Cossa, who had been recognized by the majority of the Church), on the charge of a series of crimes (May 29, 1415), and Benedict XIII., as a heretic who sinned against the unity of the Church (July 26, 1417), [347] and elected a new Pope, Martin V. (Nov. 11, 1517), who had given his adhesion to the Council, though after his accession to power he found ways and means to defeat its real object, i.e., the reformation of the Church.
This Council was a complete triumph of the Episcopal system, and the Papal absolutists and Infallibilists are here forced to the logical dilemma of either admitting the validity of the Council, or invalidating the election of Martin V. and his successors. Either course is fatal to their system. Hence there has never been an authoritative decision on the oecumenicity of this Council, and the only subterfuge is to say that the whole case is an extraordinary exception; but this, after all, involves the admission that there is a higher power in the Church over the Papacy.
The Reformation shook the whole Papacy to its foundation, but could not overthrow it. A powerful reaction followed, headed by the Jesuits. Their General, Lainez, strongly advocated Papal Infallibility in the Council of Trent, and declared that the Church could not err only because the Pope could not err. But the Council left the question undecided, and the Roman Catechism ascribes infallibility simply to 'the Catholic Church,' without defining its seat. Bellarmin advocated and formularized the doctrine, stating it as an almost general opinion that the Pope could not publicly teach a heretical dogma, and as a probable and pious opinion that Providence will guard him even against private heresy. Yet the same Bellarmin was witness to the innumerable blunders of the edition of the Latin Vulgate prepared by Sixtus V., corrected by his own hand, and issued by him as the only true and authentic text of the sacred Scriptures, with the stereotyped forms of anathema upon all who should venture to change a single word; and Bellarmin himself gave the advice that all copies should be called in, and a new edition printed with a lying statement in the preface making the printers the scape-goats for the errors of the Pope! This whole business of the Vulgate is sufficient to explode Papal Infallibility; for it touches the very source of divine revelation. Other Italian divines, like Alphonsus Liguori, and Jesuitical text-books, unblushingly use long-exploded mediæval fictions and interpolations as a groundwork of Papal absolutism and Infallibility.
It is not necessary to follow the progress of the controversy between the Episcopal and the Papal systems during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is sufficient to say that the greatest Catholic divines of France and Germany, including Bossuet and Möhler, together with many from other countries, down to the 88 protesting Bishops in the Vatican Council, were anti-Infallibilists; and that popular Catechisms of the Roman Church, extensively used till 1870, expressly denied the doctrine, which is now set up as an article of faith necessary to eternal salvation. [348]
Papal Infallibility and the Bible.
The Old Testament gives no tangible aid to the Infallibilists. The Jewish Church existed as a divine institution, and served all its purposes, from Abraham to John the Baptist, without an infallible tribunal in Jerusalem, save the written law and testimony, made effective from time to time by the living voice of inspired prophecy. Pious Israelites found in the Scriptures the way of life, notwithstanding the contradictory interpretations of rabbinical schools and carnal perversions of Messianic prophecies, fostered by a corrupt hierarchy. The Urim and Thummim [349] of the High-Priest has no doubt symbolical reference to some kind of spiritual illumination or oracular consultation, but it is of too uncertain interpretation to furnish an argument.
The passages of the New Testament which are used by Roman divines in support of the doctrine of Infallibility may be divided into two classes: those which seem to favor the Episcopal or Gallican, and those which are made to prove the Papal or Ultramontane theory. It is characteristic that the Papal Infallibilists carefully avoid the former.
1. To the first class belong John xiv. 16 sq.; xvi. 13-16, where Christ promises the Holy Ghost to his disciples that he may 'abide with them forever,' teach them 'all things,' bring to their remembrance all he had said to them, [350] and guide them 'into the whole truth;' [351] John xx. 21: 'As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you. . . . Receive ye the Holy Ghost;' [352] Matt. xviii. 18: 'Whatever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,' etc.; Matt. xxviii. 19, 20: 'Go and disciple all nations . . . and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'
These passages, which are addressed to all Apostles alike, to doubting Thomas as well as to Peter, prove indeed the unbroken presence of Christ and the Holy Ghost in the Church to the end of time, which is one of the most precious and glorious truths admitted by every true Christian. But, in the first place, the Church, which is here represented by the Apostles, embraces all true believers, laymen as well as Bishops. Secondly, the promise of Christ's presence implies no infallibility, for the same promise is given even to the smallest number of true believers (Matt. xviii. 20). Thirdly, if the passages prove infallibility at all, they would prove individual infallibility by continued inspiration rather than corporate infallibility by official succession; for every Apostle was inspired, and so far infallible; and this no Roman Catholic Bishop, though claiming to be a successor of the Apostles, pretends to be.
2. The passages quoted by the advocates of the Papal theory are three, viz., Luke xxii. 31; Matt. xvi. 18; John xxi. 15. [353]
We admit, at the outset, that these passages in their obvious meaning which is confirmed by the history of the Apostolic Church, assign to Peter a certain primacy among the Apostles: he was the leader and spokesman of them, and the chief agent of Christ in laying the foundations of his Church among the Jews and the Gentiles. This is significantly prophesied in the new name of Peter given to him. The history of Pentecost (Acts ii.) and the conversion of Cornelius (Acts x.) are the fulfillment of this prophecy, and furnish the key to the interpretation of the passages in the Gospels.
This is the truth which underlies the colossal lie of the Papacy. For there is no Romish error which does not derive its life and force from some truth. [354] But beyond this we have no right to go. The position which Peter occupied no one can occupy after him. The foundation of the Church, once laid, is laid for all time to come, and the gates of Hades can not prevail against it. The New Testament is its own best interpreter. It shows no single example of an exercise of jurisdiction of Peter over the other Apostles, but the very reverse. He himself, in his Epistles, disowns and prophetically warns his fellow-presbyters against the hierarchical spirit; exhorting them, instead of being lords over God's heritage, to be ensamples to his flock (1 Pet. v. 1-4). Paul and John were perfectly independent of him, as the Acts and Epistles prove. Paul even openly administered to him a rebuke at Antioch. [355] At the Council of Jerusalem James seems to have presided, at all events he proposed the compromise which was adopted by the Apostles, Elders, and Brethren; Peter was indeed one of the leading speakers, but he significantly advocated the truly evangelical principle of salvation by faith alone, and protested against human bondage (Acts xv.; comp. Gal. ii.).
The great error of the Papacy is that it perverts a primacy of honor into a supremacy of jurisdiction, a personal privilege into an official prerogative, and a priority of time into a permanent superiority of rank. And to make the above passages at all available for such purpose, it must take for granted, as intervening links of the argument, that which can not be proved from the New Testament nor from history, viz., that Peter was Bishop of Rome; that he was there as Paul's superior; that he appointed a successor, and transferred to him his prerogatives.