ii. The Episcopate, The Bond of Unity¶
The episcopate, or order of bishops, exists as a safeguard from schism or division. Those who separate themselves from their lawful bishops become schismatics. To separate from the bishops, is to separate from the Church of which the bishops are the rulers. Loyalty to the rulers of the State is the bond of union in the nation; when this loyalty is withheld, dis- union or revolution is the result. To separate from the bishops is an act of disloyalty to Jesus Christ, whose representatives they are.
The idea of the episcopate as a bond of unity is strongly insisted upon by early writers. For example, St. Ignatius (A.D. 110), the great and glorious martyr, bishop of Antioch, and a disciple of the Apostle St. John, wrote,—“He who does anything apart from the bishop, and presbytery, and deacons, is not pure in his conscience.”[1] “For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ, they are with the bishop.”[2] St. Ignatius is but enlarging upon the teaching of the New Testament, where the continuing in “the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship,”[3] is named as a mark of Church unity.
In the writings of Tertullian (A.D. 200), we learn that certain bodies claiming to belong to the Church were thus challenged,—“Let them produce the account of the origins of their churches; let them unroll the line of their bishops, running down in such a way from the beginning that their first bishop shall have had for his authorizer and predecessor one of the apostles, or of the apostolic men who continued to the end in their fellowship.”[4]
St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage and martyr (A.D. 250), sets forth the unity of the episcopate as the pledge of the unity of the Church. Of his teaching we shall read in a later chapter of this book.
Thus we see that in very early times, the order of bishops was regarded as the bond of unity in the Church.