GOMMUNIOK
173
COMMUNION
St. Optatus of Mileve and St. Augustine at the time of
the Donatist controversy. (See Church.) One may
regret that the plan adopted by the Schoohnen af-
forded no comprehensive view of the whole dogma,
but rather scattered the various components of it
through a vast synthesis. This accounts for the fact
that a compact exposition of the communion of saints
is to be sought less in the works of our standard theo-
logians than in our catechetical, apologetic, pastoral,
and even ascetic literature. It may also partly ex-
plain, without excusing them, the gross misrepresenta-
tions noticed above.
In the Anglo-S.\xon Church. — That the Anglo- Saxons held the doctrine of the commimion of saints may be judged from the following account given by Lingard in his History and Antiquities of the Anglo- Saxon Church". They received the practice of vene- rating the saints, he says, together with the rudiments of the Christian religion; and they manifested their devotion to them both in public and private worship: in public, by celebrating the anniversaries of indi- vidual saints, and keeping annually the feast of All- Hallows as a solemnity of the first class; and in their private devotions, by observing the instructions to worship God and then to "pray, first to Saint Marj', and the holy apostles, and the holy martyrs, and all God's saints, that they would intercede for them to God". In this way they learned to look up to the saints in heaven with feelings of confidence and affec- tion, to consider them as friends and protectors, and to implore their aiil in the hour of distress, with the hope that God would grant to the patron what he might otherwise refuse to the supplicant.
Like all other Christians, the .\nglo-Saxons held in special veneration "the most holy mother of God, the perpetual virgin Saint Mary (Beatissima Dei geni- tri.x et perpetua virgo. — Bede, Horn, in Purif.). Her praises were sung bj' the Saxon poets; hymns in her honour were chanted in the public service; churches and altars were placed under her patronage ; miracu- lous cures were ascribed to her; and four annual feasts were observed commemorating the principal events of her mortal life: her nativity, the Annuncia- tion, her purification, and a.ssumption. Next to the Blessed Virgin in their devotion was Saint Peter, whom Christ had chosen for the leader of the Apostles and to whom he had given the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, "with the chief exercise of judicial power in the Church; to the end that all might know that whosoever should separate himself from the unity of Peter's faith or of Peter's fellowship, that man could never attain absolution from the bonds of sin, nor admission through the gates of the heavenly king- dom" (Bede). These words of the Venerable Bede refer, it is true, to Peter's successors as well as to Peter himself, but they also evidence the veneration of the Anglo-Saxons for the Prince of the Apostles, a veneration which they manifested in the number of churches dedicated to his memory-, in the pilgrimages made to his tomb, and by the presents sent to the church in which hLs remains rested and to the bishop who sat in his chair. Particular honours were paid also to Saints Gregory and Augustine, to whom they were chiefly indebted for their knowledge of Chris- tianity. They called Gregory their " foster-father in Christ" and them.selves "his foster-children in bap- tism"; and spoke of Augustine as " the first to bring to them the doctrine of faith, the sacrament of baj)- tism, and the knowledge of their heavenly country". While these saints were honouretl by the whole people, each separate nation revered the memory of its own apostle. Thus Saint Aidan in Northumbria, Saint Birinus in Wessex, and Saint Felix in East Anglia were venerated as the protectors of the countries which had been the scenes of their labours. All the saints so far mentioned were of foreign extraction; but the Anglo-Saxons soon extended their devotion
to men who had been bom and educated among them
and who by their virtues and zeal in propagating
Christianity had merited the honours of sanctity.
This accoimt of the devotion of the Anglo-Saxons to those whom they looked up to as their friends and protectors in heaven is necessarily brief, but it is amply sufficient to show that they believed and loved the doctrine of the communion of saints.
Protestant Views. — Sporadic errors against spe- cial points of the communion of saints are pointed out by the Synod of Gangra (Mansi, II, 1103), St. Cyril of Jerusalem (P. G., XXXIII, 1116), St. Epiphanius (ibid., XLII, 504), Asterius Amasensis (ibid., XL, 3.32), and St. Jerome (P. L., XXIII, 362). From the forty-second proposition condemned, and the twenty- ninth question asked, by Martin V at Constance (Den- zinger, nos. 518 and 573), we also know that Wyclif and Hus had gone far towards denying the dogma itself. But the commimion of saints became a direct issue only at the time of the Reformation. The Lu- theran Churches, although commonly adopting the Apostles' Creed, still in their original confessions, either pass over in silence the communion of saints or explain it as the Church's " uTiion with Jesus Christ in the one true- faith" (Luther's Small Catechism in Schaff, "The Creeds of Christendom", III, 80), or as "the congregation of saints and true believers" (Augs- burg Confession, ibid., Ill, 12), carefully excluding, if not the memorj", at least the invocation of the saints, because Scripture "propoundeth unto us one Christ, the Mediator, Propitiatory, High-Priest, and Interces- sor" (ibid.. Ill, 26). The Reformed Churches gener- ally maintain the Lutheran identification of the com- munion of saints with the body of believers but do not limit its meaning to that body. Calvin (Inst, chret., IV, 1, 3) insists that the phrase of the Creed is more than a definition of the Church ; it conveys the mean- ing of such a fellowship that whatever benefits God bestows upon the believers they should mutually com- municate to one another. That view is followed in the Heidelberg Catechism (Schaff, op. cit.. Ill, 325), and emphasized in the Galilean Confession, wherein communion is made to mean the efforts of believers to mutually strengthen themselves in the fear of God (ibid.. Ill, 375). Zwingli in his articles admits an ex- change of prayers between the faithful and hesitates to condemn prayers for the dead, rejecting only the saints' intercession as injurious to Christ (ibid., Ill, 200 and 206). Both the Scotch and Second Helvetic Confessions bring together the Militant and the Tri- umphant Church, but, whereas the former is silent on the signification of the fact, the latter says that they hold communion with each other: "nihilominus ha- bent ills inter sese communionem, vel conjunctionem " (ibid.. Ill, 272 and 459).
The double and often conflicting influence of Luther and Calvin, with a lingering memory of Catholic or- thodoxy, is felt in the Anglican Confessions. On this point the Thirty-nine .\rticles are decidedly Lutheran, rejecting as they do "the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration as weU of Images as of Relics, and also Invocation of Saints ' ', because they see in it " a fond thing, vainly in- vented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather re])ugnant to the Word of God" (Schaff, III, 501). On the other hand, the Westminster Con- fession, while ignoring the SutTering and the Trium- phant Church, goes beyond the Calvinistic view and falls little sliort of the Catholic doctrine with regard to the faithful on earth, who, it says, "being unitijd to one another in love, have communion in each other's gifts and graces" (ibid., Ill, 659). In the United States, the Methodist Articles of Religion, 1784 (ibid., III. 807), as well as the Reformed Episcopal Articles of Religion, 1875 (ibid.. Ill, 814), follow the teachings of the Thirty-nine Articles, whereas the teaching of the Westminster Confession is adopted in the Phila-
