In the
original Catholic, i.e. “Catholics.” Heresies
might become widespread—the Arian heresy, indeed, counted
numerous adherents in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries—but
they took their rise in some member or other of the ecclesiastical
body, in some one of the many local churches which together made up the
one œcumenical church. On the other hand, the primitive
teaching, received from the apostolic age, had been delivered without
difference in every place to which it had penetrated. It
was acknowledged and established before sects and heresies; its
original was divine, theirs only human; it rested on the rock of
Christ’s authority, speaking through His apostles, whilst they
were built on the sands of preeminence in sophistry and captious
interpretation; it was for all times and places, therefore, but they
were only for a season. In this belief those who clave to the
teaching of the apostles claimed for themselves the name of
“Catholics,” and for the œcumenical church of which
they were members that of “Catholic and Apostolic.”
To avoid any misunderstanding, I have used the term
“orthodox,” which will stand very well for
“Catholic,” inasmuch as “the right faith” is
for all, without difference, to hold—in a word, universal, or, as
it is in Greek, καθ᾽ ὅλου
(whence καθολικός, Catholicus, Catholic).