Published with the kind permission of TAN BOOKS AND PUBLISHERS Part I MISSION CHAPTER II. THAT THE PRETENDED REFORMERS HAD NO MEDIATE MISSION EITHER FROM THE PEOPLE OR THE BISHOPS. AND first, as to ordinary and mediate mission, they have none whatever. For what they can put forward is either that they are sent by the people and secular princes, or else that they are sent by the imposition of the hands of the bishops who made them priests, a dignity to which at last they must have recourse, although they despise it altogether and everywhere. Now, if they say that the secular magistrates and people have sent them, they will have two proofs to give which they never can give, the one that the seculars have done it, the other that they could do it, for we deny both the fact and the right (factum et jus faciendi). And that they could not do it the reason is absolute. For (1.) they will never find that the people and secular magistrates had the power to establish and institute bishops in the Church. * They will indeed perhaps find that the people have given testimony and assisted at ordinations; yea, perhaps, that the choice has been given to them, like that of the deacons, as S. Luke tells us (Acts vi), which the whole body of the faithful made; but they will never show that the people or secular princes have authority to give mission or to appoint pastors. How then do they allege a mission by people or princes, which has no foundation in the Scripture? (2.) On the contrary, we bring forward the express practice of the whole Church, which from all time has been to ordain the pastors by the imposition of the hands of the other pastors and bishops. Thus was Timothy ordained; and the seven deacons themselves, though proposed by the Christian people, were ordained by the imposition of the Apostles' hands. Thus have the Apostles appointed in their Constitutions; and the great Council of Nice (which methinks one will not despise) and that of Carthage----the second, and then immediately the third, and the fourth, at which S. Augustine assisted. If then they have been sent by the laity, they are not sent in Apostolic fashion, nor legitimately, and their mission is null. (3.) In fact, the laity have no mission, and how then shall they give it? How shall they communicate the authority which they have not? And therefore S. Paul, speaking of the priesthood and pastoral order, says: Neither doth any man take the honour to himself but he that is called by God, as Aaron was (Heb. x. 4). Now Aaron was consecrated and ordained by the hands of Moses, who was a priest himself, according to the holy word of David (Ps. xcviii. 7), Moses and Aaron among his priests and Samuel among those who call upon His name; and, as is indicated in Exodus (xxviii. 1) in this word, Take unto thee also Aaron thy brother, with his sons . . . that they may minister to Me in the priest's office; with which agree a great army of our Ancients. Whoever then would assert his mission must not assert it as being from the people nor from secular princes. For Aaron was not called in that way, and we cannot be called otherwise than he was. (4.) Finally, that which is less is blessed by the better, as S. Paul says (Heb. vii. 7). The people then cannot send the pastors; for the pastors are greater than the people, and mission is not given without blessing. 2 For after this magnificent mission the people remain sheep, and the shepherd remains shepherd. (5.) I do not insist here, as I will prove it hereafter, that the Church is monarchical, and that therefore the right of sending belongs to the chief pastor, not to the people. I omit the disorder which would arise if the people sent; for they could not send to one another, one people having no authority over the other;----and what free play would this give to all sorts of heresies aud fancies? It is necessary then that the sheep should receive the shepherd from elsewhere, and should not give Him to themselves. 3 The people therefore were not able to give legitimate mission or commission to these new ambassadors. But I say further that even if they could they did not. For this people was of the true Church or not: if it was of the true Church why did Luther take it therefrom? Would it really have called him in order to be taken out of its place and of the Church? And if it were not of the true Church, how could it have the right of mission and of vocation?----outside the true Church there cannot be such authority. If they say this people was not Catholic, what was it then? It was not Lutheran; for we all know that when Luther began to preach in Germany there were no Lutherans, and it was he who was their origin. Since then such a people did not belong to the true Church, how could it give mission for true preaching? They have then no vocation from that source, unless they have recourse to the invisible mission received from the principalities and powers of the world of this darkness, and the spiritual wickednesses against which good Catholics have always waged war. Many therefore of our age, seeing the road cut off on that side, have betaken themselves to the other, and say that the first masters and reformers,----Luther, Bucer, Œcolampadius,----were sent by the bishops who made them priests; then they sent their followers, and so they would go on to blend their rights with those of the Apostles. In good sooth it is to speak frankly (parler Français) and plainly indeed, thus to confess that mission can only have passed to their ministers from the Apostles by the succession of our bishops and the imposition of their hands. Of course the case is really so: one cannot give this mission so high a fall that from the Apostles it should leap into the hands of the preachers of now-a-days without having touched any of our ancients and foregoers: it would have required a very long speaking-tube (sarbacane) in the mouth of the first founders of the Church to call Luther and the rest without being overheard by any of those who were between: or else, as Calvin says on another occasion, not much to the point, these must have had very long ears. It must have been kept sound indeed, if these were to find it. We agree then that mission was possessed by our bishops, and particularly by their head, the Roman Bishop. But we formally deny that your ministers have had any communication of it, to preach what they have preached. Because (1.) they preach things contrary to the Church in which they have been ordained priests; therefore either they err or the Church which has sent them errs;----and consequently either their church is false or the one from which they have taken mission. If it be that from which they have taken mission, their mission is false, for from a false church there cannot spring a true mission. Whichever way it be, they had no mission to preach what they preached, because, if the Church in which they have been ordained were true, they are heretics for having left it, and for having preached against its belief, and if it were not true it could not give them mission. (2.) Besides, though they had had mission in the Roman Church, they had none to leave it, and withdraw her children from her obedience. Truly the commissioner must not exceed the limits of his commission, or his act is null. (3.) Luther, other, and say that the first masters and reformers,----Luther, Bucer, Œcolampadius, and Calvin were not bishops: how then could they communicate any mission to their successors on the part of the Roman Chnrch, which protests always and everywhere that it is only the bishops who can send, and that this belongs in no way to simple priests? In which even S. Jerome has placed the difference between the simple priest and the bishop, in the Epistle to Evagrius, and S. Augustine [De Hær. 53] and Epiphanius [Hæres 75]  reckon Aerius with heretics because he held the contrary. * The Saint in a detached note elsewhere draws particular attention to the necessity of mission shown in the fact that Jeroboam is rebuked not for dividing the kingdom but for dividing the Church, and making temples in the high places, and priests of the lowest of the people, who were not sons of Levi. (3 Kings xii. 31.)  2. Amen, Amen, I say to you; the servant is not greater than his Lord, neither is an Apostle greater than He that sent him (John xiii. 16). 3. Here may be added a detached note of the Saint's. "Acts xv. 24: Forasmuch as we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, to whom we gave no commands. If they had given charge, much less would they themselves teach without charge." HOME----------CATHOLIC CLASSICS www.catholictradition.org/Classics/controversy1-2.htm