fact there has existed, and still exist, several bodies of men, each asserting that it is the one Church, founded by Christ, and that all the others who call themselves churches are only sects and heresies. The catechisms of the churches of the most world-wide influence--the Catholic, the Old Orthodox, and the Lutheran--openly assert this. In the Catholic catechism it is said: "Quels sont ceux qui sont hors de l'eglise? Les infideles, les heretiques, les schismatiques." [Footnote: "Who are those who are outside the Church? Infidels, heretics, and schismatics."] The so-called Greek Orthodox are regarded as schismatics, the Lutherans as heretics; so that according to the Catholic catechism the only people in the Church are Catholics. In the so-called Orthodox catechism it is said: By the one Christian Church is understood the Orthodox, which remains fully in ac-cord with the Universal Church. As for the Roman Church and other sects (the Lutherans and the rest they do not even dignify by the name of church), they cannot be included in the one true Church, since they have themselves separated from it. According to this definition the Catholics and Lutherans are outside the Church, and there are only Orthodox in the Church. 23 The Lutheran catechism says: "Die wahre kirche wird darein erkannt, dass in ihr das Wort Gottes lauter und rein ohne Menschen-zusatze gelehrt and die Sacramente treu nach Christi Einsetzung gewahret werden." [Footnote: "The true Church will be known by the Word of God being studied clear and unmixed with man's additions and the sacraments being maintained faithful to Christ's teaching."] According to this definition all those who have added anything to the teaching of Christ and the apostles, as the Catholic and Greek churches have done, are outside the Church. And in the Church there are only Protestants. The Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost has been transmitted without a break in their priesthood. The Orthodox assert that the same Holy Ghost has been transmitted without a break in their priesthood. The Arians asserted that the Holy Ghost was transmitted in their priesthood (they asserted this with just as much right as the churches in authority now). The Protestants of every kind--Lutherans, Reformed Church, Presbyterians, Methodists, Swedenborgians, Mormons--assert that the Holy Ghost is only present in their communities. If the Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost, at the time of the division of the Church into Arian and Greek, left the Church that fell away and remained in the one true Church, with precisely the same right the Protestants of every denomination can assert that at the time of the separation of their Church from the Catholic the Holy Ghost left the Catholic and passed into the Church they professed. And this is just what they do. Every church traces its creed through an uninterrupted transmission from Christ and the Apostles. And truly every Christian creed that has been derived from Christ must have come down to the present generation through a certain transmission. But that does not prove that it alone of all that has been transmuted, excluding all the rest, can be the sole truth, admitting of no doubt. Every branch in a tree comes from the root in unbroken connection; but the fact that each branch comes from the one root, does not prove at all that each branch was the only one. It is precisely the same with the Church. Every church presents exactly the same proofs of the succession, and even the same miracles, in support of its authenticity, as every other. So that there is but one strict and exact definition of what is a church (not of something fantastic which we would wish it to be, but of what it is and has been in reality)--a church is a body of men who claim for themselves that they are in complete and sole possession of the truth. And these bodies, having in course of time, aided by the support of the temporal authorities, developed into powerful institutions, have been the principal obstacles to the diffusion of a true comprehension of the teaching of Christ. It could not be otherwise. The chief peculiarity which distinguished Christ's teaching from previous religions consisted in the fact that those who accepted it strove ever more and more to comprehend and realize its teaching. But the Church doctrine asserted its own complete and final comprehension and realization of it. Strange though it may seem to us who have been brought up in the erroneous view of the Church as a Christian institution, and in contempt for heresy, yet the fact is that only in what was called heresy was there any true movement, that is, true Christianity, and that it only ceased to be so when those heresies stopped short in their movement and also petrified into the fixed forms of a church. And, indeed what is a heresy? Read all the theological works one after another. In all of them heresy is the subject which first presents itself for definition; since every theological work deals with the true doctrine of Christ as distinguished from the erroneous doctrines which surround it, that is, heresies. Yet you will not find anywhere anything like a definition of heresy. The treatment of this subject by the learned historian of Christianity, E. de Pressense, in his "Histoire du Dogme" (Paris, 1869), under the heading "Ubi Christus, ibi Ecclesia," may serve as an illustration of the complete absence of anything like a definition of what is understood by the word heresy. Here is what he says in his introduction (p. 3): "Je sais que l'on nous conteste le droit de qualifier ainsi [that is, to call heresies] les tendances qui furent si vivement combattues par les premiers Peres. La designation meme d'heresie semble une atteinte portee a la liberte de conscience et de pensee. Nous ne pouvons partager ce scrupule, car il n'irait a rien moins qu'a enlever au Christianisme tout caractere distinctif." [see Footnote] [Footnote: "I know that our right to qualify thus the tendencies which were so actively opposed by the early Fathers is contested. The very use of the word heresy seems an attack upon liberty of conscience and thought. We cannot share this scruple; for it would amount to nothing less than depriving Christianity of all distinctive character."] And though he tells us that after Constantine's time the Church did actually abuse its power by designating those who dissented from it as heretics and persecuting them, yet he says, when speaking of early times: "L'eglise est une libre association; il y a tout profit a se separer d'elle. La polemique contre l'erreur n'a d'autres ressources que la pen- 24 see et le sentiment. Un type doctrinal uniforme n'a pas encore ete elabore; les divergences secondaires se produisent en Orient et en Occident avec une entiere liberte; la theologie n'est point liee a d'invariables formules. Si au sein de cette diversite apparait un fonds commun de croyances, n'est-on pas en droit d'y voir non pas un systeme formule et compose par les representants d'une autorite d'ecole, mais la foi elle-meme dons son instinct le plus sur et sa manifestation la plus spontanee? Si cette meme unanimite qui se revele dans les croyances essentielles, se retrouve pour repousser telles ou telles tendances ne serons nous pas en droit de conclure que ces tendances etaient en desacord flagrant avec les principes fondamentaux du christianisme? Cette presomption ne se trans-formerait-elle pas en certitude si nous reconnaissons dans la doctrine universellement repoussee par l'Eglise les traits caracteristiques de l'une des religions du passe? Pour dire que le gnosticisme ou l'ebionitisme sont les formes legitimes de la pensee chretienne il faut dire hardiment qu'il n'y a pas de pensee chretienne, ni de caractere specifique qui la fasse reconnaitre. Sous pretexte de l'elargir, on la dissout. Personne au temps de Platon n'eut ose couvrir de son nom une doctrine qui n'eut pas fait place a la theorie des idees; et l'on eut excite les justes moqueries de la Grece, en voulant faire d'Epicure ou de Zenon un disciple de l'Academie. Reconnaissons donc que s'il existe une religion ou une doctrine qui s'appelle christianisme, elle peut avoir ses heresies." [see Footnote] [Footnote: "The Church is a free association; there is much to be gained by separation from it. Conflict with error has no weapons other than thought and feeling. One uniform type of doctrine has not yet been elaborated; divergencies in secondary matters arise freely in East and West; theology is not wedded to invariable formulas. If in the midst of this diversity a mass of beliefs common to all is apparent, is one not justified in seeing in it, not a formulated system, framed by the representatives of pedantic authority, but faith itself in its surest instinct and its most spontaneous manifestation? If the same unanimity which is revealed in essential points of belief is found also in rejecting certain tendencies, are we not justified in concluding that these tendencies were in flagrant opposition to the fundamental principles of Christianity? And will not this presumption be transformed into certainty if we recognize in the doctrine universally rejected by the Church the characteristic features of one of the religions of the past? To say that gnosticism or ebionitism are legitimate forms of Christian thought, one must boldly deny the existence of Christian thought at all, or any specific character by which it could be recognized. While ostensibly widening its realm, one undermines it. No one in the time of Plato would have ventured to give his name to a doctrine in which the theory of ideas had no place, and one would deservedly have excited the ridicule of Greece by trying to pass off Epicurus or Zeno as a disciple of the Academy. Let us recognize, then, that if a religion or a doctrine exists which is called Christianity, it may have its heresies."] The author's whole argument amounts to this: that
