Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

290 THE SECOND AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.would say: As Christ has made the Church, it mustagree from one end to the other in doctrine andcommunion with the doctrine and communion ofthe Church in which Peter, to whom He has committedHis sheep, speaks and rules. And so powerfulis the derivation of this authority that he whosits in the place of Mark, whom Peter sent, punishesdegradation a bishop who disregards his sentencein the case of a great writer, the brightestgenius of the Church in that day. And when welook at the spiritual state of the world at thecommencement of the third century, we find thatChristianity, having formed and made its place inhuman society, is penetrating through it more andmore in every direction. It is then that we discernthe first beginnings of that great spiritualcreation, in which Reason has been applied toFaith under the guidance of Authority, which theChristian Church, alone being in possession ofthese three constituents, could alone produce, andhas carried on from that day to this. Alexandriawas at this time the seat of a Jewish religiousphilosophy; it had just become the seat likewiseof a heathen religious philosophy; there waswithin its church a great catechetical school, inwhich the Faith as taught by the apostolical andecclesiastical tradition according to the scripturesRoman empire was Principatus, the very word used by S. Augustine toexpress the original authority of the Roman See : " Romans Ecclesia,in qua semper apostolicte cathedne vigvit prineipatvt." Ep. 43.