majority of the orthodox Christians of Antioch were in the communion of S. Meletius, while a small minority followed Paulinus. Apparently for some years the Roman Church was undecided as to which side should receive her support; but in the year 375 Pope Damasus plainly declared himself in favour of Paulinus, and wrote letters to him, treating him as the one Catholic Bishop of Antioch, and ignoring altogether the claims of S. Meletius. About a year later, in the latter half of 376 or early in 377, Pope Damasus went further, and allowed Peter of Alexandria to speak openly in his presence on a public occasion of S. Meletius and of the glorious S. Eusebius of Samosata as if they were Arian heretics. One cannot help seeing a certain analogy between the state of things in Antioch at that time and the state of things in England now. The Church of Antioch under S. Meletius numbered in its fold the great majority of those who held the Catholic faith, as the Church of England does at the present day. The minority of separatists under Paulinus had the support of Damasus and the Roman Church, and thus occupied a position in some way parallel to the Romanist communion in this country, though there can be no question that Paulinus would have rejected with horror the Vatican decrees, if they had been proposed to him for his acceptance. All the great saints of the Eastern Church, and above all S. Basil, supported S. Meletius. They were on the spot, they knew the facts, and they treated S. Meletius with the greatest veneration as a saint, and as the occupant of the apostolic throne of Antioch.1 They communicated with him, although Rome ignored him; they rejected the communion of Paulinus, although Rome supported him.

Towards the end of the year 374, or thereabouts, before Damasus had entered into direct relations with Paulinus, a fresh complication added to the confusion. Vitalis, who had for many years worked as a priest under S. Meletius, became infected with the heresy of Apollinarius of Laodicea. He seceded from the communion of S. Meletius, and, drawing after him a considerable number of Catholics, he presided over them as their priest and pastor. Later on, in 376, Apollinarius consecrated Vitalis to be the Apollinarian Bishop of Antioch. Thus, from 374 onwards, besides the Arians under their bishop, Euzoïus, there were three contending parties at Antioch, namely, the Catholics under S. Meletius;

In the year 379 a great council of Eastern bishops was held at Antioch. One hundred and fifty-three prelates attended, amongst whom were S. Eusebius of Samosata, S. Pelagius of Laodicea, S. Eulogius of Edessa, and S. Gregory of Nyssa. As Tillemont (viii. 367) says, it was one of the most illustrious councils ever held in the Church. S. Meletius presided. The whole East accepted him as the rightful bishop, though he was rejected by the Church of Rome.

the Eustathians, who also were orthodox, under Paulinus; and the Apollinarians under Vitalis.

About a year before the secession of Vitalis, there had arrived in Antioch a young layman, twenty-seven years old, who was destined to play an important part in the history of the Church. His name was Jerome. He was a Latin, born in Dalmatia, but catechized and baptized at about the age of twenty in Rome. He was a member of the local Roman Church, and had formed his conceptions of the position of the Roman Church in Rome itself, where, as I have said, he received his instruction in Christianity. He came to Syria to practise the ascetic life, and he established himself among the monks of the desert of Chalcis. After he had stayed among these monks for some little time, he began to find his position uncomfortable, on account of the disputes at Antioch. As a member of the Roman Church, he would be naturally drawn to sympathize with Paulinus, who was accustomed to speak of the One Hypostasis in the Trinity, which was the formula then used at Rome. But the monks would for the most part be in communion with S. Meletius, who was the bishop generally recognized at Antioch and in the East. They no doubt used the formula of the Three Hypostases, which prevailed in the East, and which later on was accepted also in the West. S. Jerome therefore wrote a curious letter to the pope, asking for directions as to what he was to do. Any one who is acquainted with S. Jerome's writings knows that he is a writer who never minces his words. He is apt to exaggerate. He throws himself violently into one side of a disputed question, and perhaps a few years afterwards he throws himself with equal violence into the opposite side of the same question. God forbid that I should even seem to depreciate the many noble qualities and noble gifts which he possessed; but no one is faultless, and S. Jerome would have been the last person to claim faultlessness for himself. Certainly, if ever there was a case when a man might be excused for exaggerating the authority of the Roman see, such an excuse might be pleaded on behalf of S. Jerome. A Latin, living in the East, and suffering continual personal annoyance arising out of the religious divisions of the East, he might well turn to Rome, the church of his baptism, which was living in comparative quiet, and was basking in the sunshine of the world's

1 Ultramontane writers make no scruple about pointing out S. Jerome's faults, when it suits them to do so. The Jesuit, Father Bottalla, in his treatise on the Infallibility of the Pope (edit. 1870, p. 185), speaking of S. Jerome, says, "This holy Doctor's tendency to give too ready credence to unauthorized rumours is well known. Thus, as is pointed out by Zaccaria, he represents S. Chrysostom as an Origenist, and he adopts the falsehoods spread abroad by the adherents of Paulinus to the prejudice of S. Meletius of Antioch."

M

favour, and was supporting faithfully the traditional teaching of the Church, and might seek for direction from the great pontiff who ruled in the capital of the empire and, in S. Jerome's view, had succeeded to S. Peter's own bishopric. Practically, at the time when S. Jerome wrote, the whole West was Catholic, and Rome was the centre of the West; while the East was suffering persecution from_an_Arian Emperor, and was split and divided and weakened. Twenty years before, when Pope Liberius had given way, and had surrendered the Nicene formula,1 and when, shortly afterwards, the Western bishops were deluded into signing an Arian creed at the Council of Ariminum, no one would have looked to the pope or to the West for trustworthy guidance. Then S. Athanasius stood alone against the world. But things were altered now, and S. Jerome wrote in his perplexity to Pope Damasus as follows: "Since the East tears into pieces the Lord's coat, . . . therefore by me is the chair of S. Peter to be consulted, and that faith which is praised by the apostle's mouth; thence now seeking food for my soul, whence of old I received the robe of Christ. . . . I speak with the successor of the fisherman, and the disciple of the Cross. I, who follow none as my chief but Christ, am associated in communion with thy blessedness, that is, with the see of Peter. On that rock the Church is built, I know. Whoso shall eat the Lamb outside that house is profane. If any one shall not be in the ark of Noah, he will perish when the flood prevails. . . . I know not Vitalis [the Apollinarian]; I reject Meletius; I am ignorant of Paulinus. Whoso gathereth not with thee scattereth; that is, he who is not of Christ is of Antichrist." As far as I know, in all the writings of the Fathers during the first four centuries, this passage stands alone. Of course, no Catholic would dream of departing from the general teaching of the Fathers in order to adhere to the exaggerated statements of one young man who was in sore perplexity. We can make excuses for him, we can try and

1 Hefele admits that Liberius "renounced the formula dμoovσios," and that he "renounced the letter of the Nicene faith" (History of the Church Councils, vol. ii. pp. 235, 246, Eng. trans.). See also Appendix G, on Sozomen's account of Liberius' fall (pp. 275-287).

Ep. xv. ad Damasum, § 2, P. L., xxii. 356. This letter was probably written about Easter in the year 375 (see pp. 311-313).

That he was a young man appears clearly from his own statements. Three or four months before he wrote the above-quoted letter to Damasus, he had written a letter (Ep. xiv.) to his friend Heliodorus. Nineteen years afterwards he describes this letter to Heliodorus as having been written "dum essem adolescens, immo pene puer" (cf. Ep. lii. ad Nepotian., § 1, P. L., xxii. 527). I have followed the Bollandists in assigning to the year 375 the letter to Heliodorus (cf. Acta SS., tom. viii. Septembr., pp. 444, 447). Vallarsi assigns it to the close of the preceding year (cf. P. L., tom. xxii. coll. li. et 29). It is, moreover, to be noted that in his preface to the Book of Daniel S. Jerome speaks of his early studies in

see how he ever came to use such words, but we unhesitatingly set them aside as exaggerated and unworthy. If they are taken literally and accepted, we must say that all the glorious Eastern saints of that age were living in deadly sin. They were supporting those who were "profane;" they were communicating with those who were "not in the ark," and who were off "the rock." Take S. Basil as an example. He was the great leader of the Catholic army of the East; fighting a tremendous battle with heresy; undoubtedly the most heroic man of his time. Not a comparative novice like S. Jerome, who had only been baptized nine years before; but a man in the maturity of his power, forty-six years old, the metropolitan of the great see of Caesarea in Cappadocia. He also had before him the same question to decide. Should he communicate with Meletius, whom Rome rejected, or with Paulinus, whom Rome supported? He decided the question by communicating with Meletius and by rejecting Paulinus. It is doubtful whether the ideas expressed in S. Jerome's fine phrases had ever presented themselves to his mind. If they had, he had seen through their hollowness. Moreover, he had had some experience of what Pope Damasus was like, and whether he really was a rock from which the Church in the East might derive solid support. Over and over again he had written to Damasus to ask him, living, as he was, in comparative peace and quiet, to help the Eastern churches which were suffering persecution; but very little was done, although much might have been done. It was proposed in the year 376 that fresh letters should be written to the West, to be sent by a zealous priest named Dorotheus. S. Basil, writing to S. Eusebius of Samosata, says, "For myself, then, I do not see what one should send by him, or how agree with those who send. . . . It occurs to me to use Diomed's language [to Agamemnon in the Iliad about Achilles]: 'Would that thou hadst never sued for aid,'1 since, saith he, the man 'is arrogant.' For indeed disdainful tempers, treated with attention, are wont to become Hebrew, which commenced in 375, and he describes himself as being at that time an 66 adolescentulus (cf. P. L., xxviii. 1291). He was, in fact, about 29 years old, and was still a layman. His serious theological studies can hardly be said to have begun. Even his literary career was only just beginning. He had written a few letters to friends, and also his "highly idealized" Life of S. Paul the Hermit, and perhaps that earlier commentary on Obadiah, of which he was afterwards so ashamed, as having been the offspring of his "puerilis ingenii" (cf. Comment. in Abdiam Prolog., P. L., xxv. 1098), but which was certainly not written earlier than 375 (cf. Acta SS., tom. viii. Septembr., pp. 450, 451). Romanist controversialists can hardly be serious when they quote in grave theological argument the unbalanced expressions of a youthful layman smarting under extreme provocation.

1 Iliad, ix. 694, 695. We may suppose that the whole passage was running

more contemptuous than usual." S. Basil is, of course, speaking of Damasus. He goes on, "And if the Lord should be gracious unto us, what other support do we need? But if the wrath of God remain upon us, what help can we get from Western superciliousness? They who neither know nor endure to learn the truth, but, preoccupied with false suspicions, are doing now just what they did before in the case. of Marcellus, when they quarrelled with those who reported to them the truth, and by their own action supported heresy. For I myself, without concert with any, was minded to write to their leader [Damasus]: nothing indeed about ecclesiastical matters, except so much as to hint that they neither know the truth of what is going on among us, nor accept the way by which they might learn it; but generally about the duty of not attacking those who are humbled by trials, and of not taking disdainfulness for dignity, a sin which of itself is sufficient to set a man at enmity with God." It is worth while to quote, by the way, Bossuet's comment on this passage. He says, "It is clear that the confirming of heresy was roundly and flatly, without any excuse, without any attempt to modify, imputed by Basil to two decrees of Roman pontiffs de fide." What I gather from the whole passage is that S. Basil had no conception of the Bishop of Rome being the divinely appointed monarch of the Church. He thought of him as a very powerful bishop, as, of course, he was, but still as one who was essentially his equal, to whom he owed no allegiance, with whose help he could dispense, and whose in S. Basil's mind; I therefore subjoin the late Lord Derby's translation (Homer's Iliad, ix. 805-811)—

"Would that thou ne'er hadst stooped with costly gifts

To sue for aid from Peleus' matchless son;

For he before was over-proud, and now

Thine offers will have tenfold swollen his pride.

But leave we him according to his will,

To go or stay: he then will join the fight,

When his own spirit shall prompt, or Heaven inspire."

1 Ep. ccxxxix., Opp., ed. Ben., 1730, iii. 368.

Gallia Orthodoxa, cap. lxv., Euvres, edit. Versailles, 1817, tom. xxxi. p. 138. 3 One may illustrate S. Basil's conception of the Roman Bishop's position by the salutation prefixed to the letter which S. Meletius, S. Basil, and thirty other Eastern bishops sent to Pope Damasus and other Western bishops by the hands of the Milanese deacon, S. Sabinus, in the year 372. The salutation runs as follows: "To the most God-beloved and holy brethren and fellowministers, the like-minded bishops of Italy and Gaul, Meletius, Eusebius, Basil, etc., send greeting in the Lord" (S. Basil. Ep. xcii., Opp., ed. Ben., iii. 183). Tillemont (ix. 668, 669) shows that the term "Italy" in this salutation includes Rome and the suburbicarian churches. S. Basil, in his 243rd Epistle (Opp., iii. 372) addresses Damasus and the Western bishops in similar terms. Mansi (iii. 468), speaking of the sending of the first of these letters, says that the Eastern bishops" synodicam Sabino tradunt Damaso deferendam." Imagine the AngloRoman bishops of the present day writing in this fashion to Pope Leo XIII. and to the bishops of Italy and France.