HKB
principle was that humility and submission were of more value than the most sublime gifts. Its epistle is the first manifestation in the Christian Church of the principle of authority.
A few years since, there was much surprise when a French archbishop, then a senator, said in the Tribune, "My clergy is my regiment." Clement had said this before him. Order and obedience were the supreme laws of the family and the church. "Let us consider the soldiers who serve under our sovereigns. With what order, what punctuality, what submission, they obey their commands: all are not prefects, nor tribunes, nor centurions; but each one in his rank executes the orders of the emperor and of his chiefs. The great cannot exist without the small, nor the small without the great. In every thing there is a mingling of diverse elements, and by this mingling all advances. Let us take, for example, our bodies. The head is nothing without the feet; the feet are nothing without the head. The smallest of our organs are necessary, and serve the whole body: all conspire, and obey the same principle of subordination for the preservation of the whole."
The history of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is the history of a triple abdication; the community of the faithful first placing all its powers in the hands of the ancients, or presbyteri; the presbyteral body at length delegating its authority to one person who was the episcopos; then the episcopi of the Latin Church recognized as their head one of themselves, who became the pope. This last progress, if we may call it so, was not accomplished until our time. The creation of the episcopate, on the contrary, was the work of the second century. The absorption of the church by the presbyteri was accomplished before the year 100. In the Epistle of Clement Romanus it is not yet with the episcopate, but with the presbytery, that he deals. We find there no trace of a presbyteros superior to the others, and entitled to dethrone them; but the author proclaims positively that the presbytery and the clergy are above the people. The apostles, in establishing churches, chose through the inspiration of the Spirit the "bishops and the deacons of the future believers." The power emanating from the apostles has been transmitted by regular succession. No church has then the right to dethrone its seniors. The privilege of the rich is nothing in the church. Accordingly, those who are favored with mystic gifts, instead of believing themselves above the hierarchy, should be the more submissive. This involves the great problem, "Who exists in the church? Is it the people? Is it the clergy? Is it inspiration?" This problem was already given in the time of St. Paul, who resolved it in the true manner by mutual charity. One epistle trenches upon the question in the sense of pure Catholicism. The apostolic title is every thing: the right of the people is reduced to nothing. We may then safely assert that Catholicism had its origin at Rome, since the Church of Rome laid down its first rules. Prescience pertains to spiritual gifts, to science and distinction: it belongs to the hierarchy, to the powers transmitted through the medium of the canonical ordination, which attaches itself to the apostles by an unbroken chain. The free church as Christ conceived it, and as St. Paul also regarded it, was a Utopia which held nothing for the future. Evangelical liberty had destroyed it; and it was not realized, that, with the hierarchy uniformity and death would come in time.
IV.