From <u>Roman Catholic Claims </u>by Charles Gore, Longmans, Green and Co.1905, p. 125 -140 (A later edition is online here):

Chapter VIII – The Nature of Schism

If it be granted that enough account has already been given of what constitutes the Church’s unity of Life, and of what is necessary for her unity in the Truth, yet there still remains to be dealt with, that third sort of unity which was referred to at starting as characterizing the Church. This is the unity of Love, or outward fellowship, ‘the bond of peace,’ which it is so fully our duty to preserve that willful schism would annul all the moral fruits which follow from being constitutionally within the ecclesiastical unity. That is to say – schism does not merely mean breaking away from the Episcopal form of government. The schisms of the early Church were Episcopal in form, but none the less they were understood to put their responsible members outside the Church’s saving unity.1

What then constitutes the guilt of schism? Not merely being separated, for the separated party may not be the guilty party, as, for example, in the case when Diotrephes ‘excommunicated’ the brethren who came from St. John,2 or Pope Victor the Asiatic Churches, or Pope Stephen St. Cyprian and the African Churches. None of these excommunicated parties were understood to be schismatics. Schism, considered apart from heresy, as a sin excluding from the benefits of church life, means willful self-withdrawal from the legitimate succession of the catholic Church on the part of an individual or party, or, in a secondary sense, the willful causing of a breach inside the Church.

Schism is a state of things which results generally from one of two tempers of mind. It may be the result of the pride which will not brook ecclesiastical subordination, which makes men stand upon their dignity, and resent some supposed slight or injury because they value their own self-esteem above the Church’s fellowship. It was this sort of self-assertion and the personal animosity which springs from it, which produced the schism of Felicissimus at Carthage against St. Cyprian, and it has played a large part in the history of modern divisions. It is easily understood that schism so bred, should generally involve heresy, for the self-will which isolates itself to avoid unpleasant subordination is not likely to miss the temper of self-opinionatedness in matters of faith, and we understand St. Jerome’s words- “no schism fails to devise a heresy for itself to justify its withdrawal.”

But schism may have what we must call a nobler root. It may spring from impatient, undisciplined zeal against evil in the Church. The zealous reformer smarts with indignation against the abuses and undiscipline which deface the Body of Christ. He and his followers are afraid to contaminate themselves by connivance with that which they cannot quickly alter. Their zeal is too much for their reverence for Christ’s plan, for their subordination, for their patience. They take the matter of God’s Church into their own hands. They deal with it, with more or less of recklessness, in their own way. The temper of reverent caution which fears to dispense with, or lay hands upon, outward forms, whether of divine appointment or reverend antiquity, because for the moment their practical value is obscured – this is forgotten or discarded by the men of intemperate, impatient zeal; and thus they form a Church of their own with a righteousness of their own, and a constitution of their own choosing. This is the second source of schism in the Church. If we consider the causes of the great Presbyterian schisms of the Reformation, how undisciplined, how unguarded do we find to have been the zeal of their main authors! Or to go further back, what else was the root of the disciplinary schisms in the early Church – of Montanism, of the schism of the Donatists, of the schism of Lucifer, of the schism at Antioch against St. Meletius? Can we not directly trace Tertullian’s development among the Montanists into a schismatical attitude towards the Church to that tone of intellectual and moral impatience which characterized his whole mind, and which he himself deplores when he writes On Patience, “as an invalid who, since he is without health, knows not how to be silent about its blessings,” “as one ever sick with the heats of impatience must of necessity sigh after and invoke and persistently plead for that health of patience which he possesses not.” This impatience which Tertullian deplores in himself was the animating spirit in the whole body of disciplinary schismatics.

But from whatever cause it may spring, schism – Episcopal or not – is unequivocally condemned by the fathers. “It were better to endure anything,” said St. Dionysius of Alexandria to Novatian, “than to break up the Church of Christ; martyrdom to avoid division were no less glorious than martyrdom to avoid idolatry; nay, in my judgment were more glorious.” “This sin of schism,” says St. Cyprian, “seems to be worse than failing to confess Christ in persecutions.” “There is nothing more serious than the sacrilege of schism,” says St. Augustin. “No such reformation,” says Irenaeus, “can be affected by them, as will compensate for the mischief arising from their schism.” “It is no less an evil than heresy,” says St. Chrysostom.

On one or two of the ancient schisms it is necessary to say something more in detail. First, on Donatism: because (since the days of Dr. Newman’s ‘Apologia’ at any rate) it has been the fashion to compare the condition of the Church of England with that of the Donatists. Let us make an imaginary story of events in England which would bring the facts of the English Church in the sixteenth century into exact analogy to those of Africa in the fourth, and the imaginary case will show us both what sort of conduct would have really constituted an English protestant Episcopal schism, and also how far in fact the English Church is from being implicated in anything of the sort. Suppose that a body of zealous reformers in the reign of Mary, despairing of the Church of England, had on the election of an archbishop of Canterbury, raised frivolous objections against him, consecrated a rival prelate first to that see, and then in a number of other places; established a separate Church in England, and gathered large numbers of adherents; declared itself not only the only Church of England, but the only Church of the world, the catholic Church having ceased to exist through the contamination of evil; suppose, we say, such a course of action had been pursued, and that the schismatical Church had succeeded in gaining the majority in England for a while and subsisting side by side with the catholic succession, baptizing, as persons not yet Christian, those who came over to them from the catholic Church; then you would have had a parallel to the Donatist schism. Be it ever remembered that the Donatist body in Africa was not constituted by a reform of a national Church, but was as distinct a schism from the Church of their own district, as ever took place: and that the Donatist body held itself the only true Church of the world, - in both points differing toto caelo from the position of the Anglican communion.

We have avoided entering into the details of the Donatist history to save space, but of the details of the schism at Antioch something must be said, as it illustrates an important principle – that there can be schism in the Church, leaving both separated parties within the communion of the Church catholic.

The schism at Antioch, then, dates from the withdrawal of an orthodox party in the fourth century from the ministrations of an Arian prelate. This withdrawal met with the approval of St. Athanasius and his friends; but the public profession of orthodoxy by the bishop, Meletius, who had been elected under Arian auspices, gave the separated body an opportunity to return into communion with him. All seemed in train for a restoration of unity when the intemperate and hasty action of Lucifer – a firebrand among prelates, who afterwards organized a schism of his own – perpetuated the breach, by giving the orthodox party a separate bishop, Paulinus. There was a great deal of the schismatical spirit of impatient zeal in that action which left the Antiochene Church with rival prelates and rival bodies of adherents, but the most strenuously orthodox party in the Church at large could not bring themselves to disown Paulinus. He was accepted by Rome, by Alexandria, by the West, while the East generally held to St. Meletius. Remaining thus unrecognized by Rome as Bishop of Antioch, St. Meletius notwithstanding presided till his death at the second Council accepted as ecumenical in the Church, and has been acknowledged since his death as a saint both in East and West. We may then quote as appropriate to the case of St. Meletius a remark of the Roman Catholic historian Tillemont with reference to some later Eastern saints of the period of the Monophysite schism (who lived and died out of the communion of Rome because they remained in communion with Acacius, the patriarch of Constantinople, who was excommunicated by the Pope). “As Elias and Flavian had always remained in communion with Acacius by the fact of their continuing in communion with Constantinople, the Pope Hormisdas [at the restoration of unity] did his best to secure their exclusion from the diptychs of their Churches. But their people preferred to submit to the extremest measures rather than do this injury to the memory of those who had been their glory while they lived. So much so that the Roman Church was obliged to do some violence to her own maxims: she seems in fact to have at last abandoned them by honouring, as her protectors in heaven, those whom she would not admit to her communion on earth.”3 The Antiochene schism is, therefore, significant as illustrating some facts of importance: that there may be a schism with faults on both sides, even in a local Church, when neither side is finally regarded as out of the communion of the Church at large: that there are circumstances when even a somewhat schismatical act like that of Lucifer may be condoned: that breaches of fellowship in the Church do not necessarily always involve breaches of communion with the Church. Nothing in fact can be called schism in the full sense of the word except conscious self-withdrawal from that part of Christ’s visible and orthodox Church to which one belongs, and to neither of the Antiochene parties is this act attributable. In this local separation then we mark the distinction between breaches in the Church and separation from the Church.

It is very possible to construct an imaginary parallel in Reformation history to the case at Antioch. Supposing the English bishops in Elizabeth’s reign had become heretical, and an orthodox party retaining communion with the West had withdrawn from their communion: supposing the Anglican bishops, say in James I.’s reign, had returned to orthodoxy, while almost simultaneously a rival succession of bishops was established over the separate body – in such rival successions you would have a parallel to the state of things at Antioch. It is hardly necessary to remark that this parallel is imaginary, because the state of things was not as we have supposed. But such a schism might have left both parties with a fair claim to represent the Church catholic in England.

We have established hitherto two principles: - that there is such a sin as schism which in and by itself is sufficient to unchurch a community; and, secondly, that short of this, there is such a thing as a breach of communion in the Church, which is due to the ‘old leaven’ working in her – the temper of schism militating against the temper of love. A little consideration and reading will show that the separation of East and West and the separation of England and Rome4 were not due to conduct which constitutes schism in the primary sense of the term – not, that is, to self-withdrawal from the Church catholic; but that they were due to that temper of schism which is always at work and, like sin in any shape, mars the manifestation of God in the Church at large.

In the party spirit in the Church of Corinth St. Paul sees the schismatical temper. In Victor’s conduct when he excommunicated the Asiatic Church for not keeping Easter after the common fashion, Ierenaeus would lead us to see the same temper which is ready to violate the unity of love for something which falls short of the necessities of the faith.5 Once again, when Pope Stephen endeavoured to excommunicate Churches which held the invalidity of heretical baptism (an opinion which no general church voice had yet condemned), he was anticipating the due action of church authority in the interests of his own see and in the temper of impatience to deal with what he thought disastrous. Pride in the cause of a man’s own see, intolerance, impatience, these are notes of the schismatical temper. This is what was plain to St. Cyprian and St. Firmilian, the most conspicuous amongst the bishops attacked. They accuse St. Stephen of intolerable arrogance in interfering with the liberty of other Episcopal sees. St. Firmilian says very boldly that the Pope ‘is the true schismatic,’ and has ‘cut off’ from communion none other than ‘himself’6 – meaning that the temper of schism, and, therefore, the guilt of schism lies not with those who are unjustly excluded, whether by ‘Diotrephes, who loveth to have the pre-eminence, and casteth the brethren out of the Church,’ or by any other bishop, but with him who does the unjust act in the interests of ambition or impatience. And we should notice St. Augustin’s verdict upon St. Cyprian in this matter, where he so strongly asserted the independent rights of his see. He praises him (to the Donatists) as the very type of the unschismatic temper. Why? Because, unlike the Donatists, even in a matter of such great importance as the validity of heretical baptism, he did not press the opinion which the African Church then legitimately held (for it was still an open question); he did not go beyond the limits of ecumenical authority; he did not excommunicate those who held the validity of heretical baptism, but bore with them in a matter where the universal Church’s voice was not distinct. “Cyprian and those with him walking in most persistent tolerance, remained in unity with those who taught differently from them.” “Though they held that heretics and schismatics did not possess baptism, yet they chose rather to have communion with them when they had been received into the Church without baptism . . . than to be separated from unity; according to the words of Cyprian – ‘Judging no one and depriving no one of the right of communion if he differ from us.’ . . . Behold, I see thus in unity Cyprian and others his colleagues, who on holding a council decided against the validity of baptism given outside the Church. But again, behold, I see in the same unity that certain men think differently in this matter, and do not dare to re-baptize. All of these catholic unity embraces in her motherly breast, bearing each other’s burdens in turn, and endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace until the Lord should reveal to one or other of them if in any point they think otherwise than as they should.”7 Unity, St. Augustine here says with great distinctness, is in a sense to be preferred to truth of opinion. That is to say, to violate the unity of fellowship on behalf of an opinion which may be tenable or true, but is not authoritative, is the schismatical temper, from which Cyprian was then most free when Stephen’s intolerance put most pressure upon him to make rejoinder by counter-intolerance. Yet, “being most largely endowed with the holy bowels of Christian charity, he thought we ought to remain in Christian unity with those who differed from ourselves” in a matter lacking in ecumenical authority.

It has been to the absence of a similar temper in East and West that the Great Schism was due. We make a grievous mistake if we suppose that it was the result of any single fact – like the claim of Rome or the Filioque clause: it was in fact nothing less than the issue of a long drawn-out tendency to divergence in the Eastern and Western Churches, manifesting itself at Constantinople, at Chalcedon, in the preliminary division on the Monophysite controversy, till finally, after long ages, it took effect in the final separation. That there was much of the schismatical temper in the Roman Church, who can deny? The temper which will not tolerate differences which interfere with that uniformity of outward government which it loves: which is impatient of resistance to its designs: which sacrifices the claims of historical truth, and mercy, and love, to the supremacy of a single see – this temper of intolerance and self-aggrandizement who can read history and deny to have been a governing element in the policy of the Roman Church even when controlled by so great a pontiff as Leo the First? Yet it is the temper of schism; it is responsible, in part, for the divisions it may create by retaliation and antagonism. It is human sin marring the divine witness to the unity of the Church’s life. It fostered the spirit of antagonism in the Eastern Church – the blank conservatism which made ‘mountains of molehills’; and held a novelty of custom in the rival Church as bad as an innovation upon authoritative doctrine; it fostered the counter-ambition which centered around the see of Constantinople; these again are marks of the temper of schism from which no part of the Church has in fact been free. The Great Schism took place. It destroyed neither part of the Church, but it reduced the fullness of corporate grace and life in both. Who shall divide the sin? No one but the great Judge. But we may be sure the schism will be perpetual, unless God’s wonder-working power shall obliterate the temper of ambition and self-assertion in East and West, and granting to both the spirit of toleration in unessential differences, shall lead them again to be at one on the basis of agreement only in the common faith which has been the Church’s heritage from the first.

Again, the temper of schism produced the separation of the Anglican Church from the rest of the West. In the Roman Church the temper of schism lay in the making a claim upon us so far greater than the universal consent of the Church could warrant. But who can deny that the schismatic spirit was at work in the Reformation in England? How heedlessly it squandered priceless blessings in view of temporary or not irremediable evils! How unwilling it was to admit any fault in itself! We must admit as much as can be claimed of provocation to the spirit of reform in the condition of the Church, we must admit how impossible it seems for a reformation ever to be conducted in a moderate spirit – this is only to admit that human sin is not without palliation, without excuse; it does not amount to acquittal or approval.

And so with something of the schismatical temper, which is indeed nothing but the carnal temper of the old Adam, working in all parts of the Church, the holy bride of Christ on earth has reached her present divided and weakened condition. There is no catholic principle which can justify us in supposing that either the Roman, the Eastern, or the Anglican Church has been guilty of the sin of schism, in that sense in which schism is the act of self-withdrawal from the Church catholic. The English Church at the Reformation claimed to reform herself, and there is no catholic principle which forbade her to do it. She did not withdraw herself in so doing from the catholic Faith or the catholic Church; indeed she professed her intention to remain as fully in submission to the Church as before.

On this point indeed something remains to be said. For the present it is only intended to offer a brief and summary reply to the Roman claim that we are ipso facto schismatic in being separated from Rome. To this claim we Anglicans may reply:

1. There is no such thing as an absolute authority in any part of the Church. The authority of a pope is not even on his own showing greater than that of an apostle, yet at the last resort St. Paul conceives of an appeal behind even his own apostolic authority. “Though we, or an angel from heaven preach unto you any other gospel than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema.” Were then the authority of the papacy in Catholic tradition never so much greater than in fact it is, its authority could never be absolute, without appeal beyond it, unless it was indeed strictly infallible. But we are certain of nothing more than that truth shall never fail in the church as a whole.

2. The authority of the papacy was as a fact the result of her ecclesiastical and spiritual merits, and of the requirements of circumstance. Catholic history throws us back at the last resort on Cyprian’s principle of the independence of each episcopate, or at least on Augustine’s, of the subordination of each only to the whole as represented in a general council. All gradations among bishops are of the bene esse of the Church, not of her esse. “There is no evidence of any divinely appointed order among the bishops.”8 And of course, further than this, whatever claim Rome might have made as the Head of a united Christendom is enormously weakened in force by the existence of millions of the Oriental Church separated from her communion, largely, perhaps we should say mainly, on account of the exaggeration of her claim to empire over other churches.

3. If it be urged that at least the ancient Church knew no permanent breaches of communion within her body and did not contemplate such as possible, we recognize the force of the objection. The fathers knew at least no breaches of communion as complete and permanent as we experience; they did not – St. Augustine for example did not – even contemplate the possibility of the Church permanently losing the fellowship of intercourse and love.9 We can only reply by pointing out that St. Augustine was not a prophet of the future. He seems equally unable to contemplate the Church of Christ perishing in any part of the world where she had once been founded, so as to require restoration or refounding from some other part. The Mohammedan conquests and the permanent separations in the Church have in both respects falsified his anticipations. To no man is it given exactly to anticipate either the sorrows or the consolations of a future age. St. Athanasius – to give another instance of this – would have been shocked beyond measure if any one had told him that war would still be a feature in the national life of Christendom.10

But though all this argument be true, it is not the less the case that the emphasis which the fathers lay on the outward fellowship of the universal Church ought to make us lay to the heart ‘the great dangers we are in through our unhappy divisions.’ At least there is the duty of acutely deploring the evil and praying for its remedy. It should never be forgotten that the saints in Jerusalem upon whose forehead was stamped the mark of the divine approval, were not those who had successfully counteracted, but those who felt and groaned over the evils under which God’s people suffered.11 And we have the further duty of guarding in our own Church against the schismatical temper. We must cultivate the faculty of distinguishing between authoritative doctrine and pious opinion, so that we may not stretch the meaning of heresy and put unnecessary obstacles in the way of internal reunion. And in the wider sphere it is of the greatest importance that we should grasp the breadth of our heritage, that we should realize the spirit of the creed in which we profess our belief, not in the Anglican, but in “One Holy Catholic Church’; and if it would not be lawful for us, as indeed it would not, for the sake of external peace, to trample under foot conscience and history, and submit to whatever claim Rome may make upon us, it is not less our duty to endeavour to purge our own Church from the evils and unfaithfulnesses which have too often made the character and nature of our true mother hard to recognize.

1 St. Cyprian ‘On Unity’ was written against Episcopal schismatics.
2 2 St. John 9, 10.
3 Mem. Eccl. xvi. 708. I think it is not without importance to notice that the language of the Roman liturgy still involves the idea that the Church is divided and requires corporate reunion: she prays our Lord ‘to bring her into peace and unity (pacificare et coadunare) according to His will.’
4 I shall return to this subject again, but it may be needful, even now, to recall to the reader’s mind the fact that the English Church has never excommunicated the Roman Church, but the Roman Church her.
5 Euseb. H. E. v. 24.
6 Cypr. E?p. lxxii. – lxxiv.
7 See Augustin de Bapt. ii. 3-6, v. 25. He is following Jerome, who praises Cyprian on the same ground – that he did not anathematize those who differed from him (adv. Lucif. 25).
8 Roman Question p. 9.
9 See de unitate Eccl. There is however a remarkable chapter on the division of Judah and Israel (§ 33). Moreover there is nothing in the treatise about Rome as the centre of unity. On the indestructibility of the Chruch in any place where it has been planted see § 45.
10 See de Incarn. 51, 52: he makes it one proof of Christ’s Divinity that Greeks and barbarians, even the most savage races, when they become Christian, cease to make war.
11 Ezek. ix. 4.