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   Title: The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries
   Creator(s): Lindsay, Thomas Martin (1843-1914)
   CCEL Subjects: All; History;
   LC Call no: BV648
   LC Subjects:

   Practical theology

   Ecclesiastical theology Including the Church, church and state, etc.

   Church Polity
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                          THE CHURCH AND THE MINISTRY
                             IN THE EARLY CENTURIES

   The Eighteenth Series of

   The Cunningham Lectures

   by

   Thomas Martin Lindsay, D.D.

   Principal of the Glasgow College of

   the United Free Church of Scotland

   Hodder and Stoughton
   London
   1903
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PREFACE

   The aim of these Lectures is to pourtray the organized life of the
   Christian Society as that was lived in the thousands of little
   communities formed by the proclamation of the Gospel of our Lord during
   the first three centuries.

   The method of description has been to select writings which seemed to
   reveal that life most clearly, and to group round the central sources
   of information illustrative evidence, contemporary or other. The
   principle of selection has been to take, as the central authorities,
   those writings which, when carefully examined, reveal the greatest
   number of details. Thus, the Epistles of St. Paul, especially the First
   Epistle to the Corinthians, have been chosen as furnishing the greatest
   number of facts going to form a picture of the life of the Christian
   Society during the first century, and the material derived from the
   other canonical writings such as the Acts of the Apostles, the
   Apocalypse and the Pastoral Epistles, have been arranged around them.
   Similarly the Didache, the Sources of the Apostolic Canons and the
   Epistles of Ignatius have been selected for the light they throw on the
   life and work of the Church during the second century. The Canons of
   Hippolytus, supplemented by the writings of Irenaeus and of Tertullian,
   have furnished the basis for the description of the organization during
   the first, and the Epistles of Cyprian of Carthage for that of the
   second half of the third century.

   The method used has the disadvantage of making necessary some
   repetitions, which the form of Lectures rendered the more inevitable;
   but it puts the reader in possession of the contemporary evidence in
   the simplest way.

   Quotations from the original authorities have been given in English for
   the most part, and, as a rule, the translations have been taken from
   well known versions--from the Ante-Nicene Library, from the late Bishop
   Lightfoot's translations of Clement of Rome and of Ignatius, and from
   Messrs. Hitchcock and Brown's version of the Didache. This has been
   done after consultation with friends whose advice seemed to be too
   valuable to be neglected.

   Dr. Moberly, in his eminently suggestive book, Ministerial Priesthood,
   has warned all students of early Church History to beware of mental
   presuppositions, unchallenged assumptions, hypotheses or postulates.
   The warning has been taken with all seriousness, even when the perusal
   of his book has suggested the thought that mental presuppositions, like
   sins, are more readily recognized in our neighbours than in ourselves.
   I feel bound to admit that three assumptions or postulates may be found
   underlying these lectures. Whether they are right or wrong the reader
   must judge.

   My first postulate is this. I devoutly believe that there is a Visible
   Catholic Church of Christ consisting of all those throughout the world
   who visibly worship the same God and Father, profess their faith in the
   same Saviour, and are taught by the same Holy Spirit; but I do not see
   any Scriptural or even primitive warrant for insisting that catholicity
   must find visible expression in a uniformity of organization, of ritual
   of worship, or even of formulated creed. This visible Church Catholic
   of Christ has had a life in the world historically continuous; but the
   ground of this historical continuity does not necessarily exist in any
   one method of selecting and setting apart office-bearers who rule in
   the Church; its basis is the real succession of the generations of
   faithful followers of their Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. It is with
   devout thankfulness that I can make this assumption with perfect
   honesty of heart and of head, because it relieves me from the
   necessity--sad, stern and even hateful it must seem to many pious souls
   who feel themselves under its power--of unchurching and of excluding
   from the "covenanted" mercies of God, all who do not accept that form
   of Church government which, to my mind, is truest to scriptural
   principles and most akin to the ecclesiastical organization of the
   early centuries.

   My second postulate concerns the ministry: There is and must be a valid
   ministry of some sort in the churches which are branches of this one
   Visible Catholic Church of Christ; but I do not think that the fact
   that the Church possesses an authority which is a direct gift from God
   necessarily means that the authority must exist in a class or caste of
   superior office-bearers endowed with a grace and therefore with a power
   "specific, exclusive and efficient," and that it cannot be delegated to
   the ministry by the Christian people. I do not see why the thought that
   the authority comes from "above," a dogmatic truth, need in any way
   Interfere with the conception that all official ecclesiastical power is
   representative and delegated to the officials by the membership and
   that it has its divine source in the presence of Christ promised arid
   bestowed upon His people and diffused through the membership of the
   Churches. Therefore when the question is put: "Must ministerial
   character be in all cases conferred from above, or may it sometimes,
   and with equal validity, be evolved from below?" it appears to me that
   a fallacy lurks in the antithesis. "From below" is used in the sense
   "from the membership of the Church," and the inference suggested by the
   contrast is that what comes "from below," i.e. from the membership of
   the Church, cannot come "from above," i.e. cannot be of divine origin,
   warrant and authority. Why not? May the Holy Spirit not use the
   membership of the Church as His instrument? Is there no real abiding
   presence of Christ among His people? Is not this promised Presence
   something which belongs to the sphere of God and may it not be the
   source of an authority which is "from above"? The fallacious antithesis
   has apparently given birth to a formula,--that no valid ministry can be
   evolved from the membership of the Christian congregation; and this
   formula has been treated as expressing a dogmatic truth which has been
   compared with the truth of the dogma of the Incarnation, and which has
   been used as a guiding principle in the interpretation of the
   references in the New Testament writings and in other early Christian
   literature to the origin and growth of the Christian ministry.
   Fortified by this supposed dogmatic truth one Anglican divine can
   contentedly rest the Scriptural warrant for the theory of "Apostolic
   Succession" and all the sad and stern practical consequences he deduces
   from it, on an hypothesis and on a detail in a parable, and another can
   find evidence for the same "gigantic figment" in a statement of Clement
   of Rome which describes the earliest missionaries of the Christian
   Church doing what missionaries of all kinds, from those of the Church
   of England to those of the Society of Friends, have done in all
   generations to secure the well-being and continuance of the communities
   of believers who have been converted to the faith of Jesus.

   My third postulate belongs to an entirely different sphere from the two
   already mentioned, but it has been so much in my mind that it ought to
   be mentioned. It is that analogies in organization illustrative of the
   life of the primitive Christian communities can be more easily and more
   safely found on the mission fields of our common Christianity than
   among the details of the organized life of the long established
   Churches of Christian Europe. In the early centuries and on the Mission
   field we are studying origins. It was my good fortune some years ago to
   spend twelve months in India, examining there the methods, work and
   results of the Missions of the various branches of the Church of
   Christ. One seemed at times to be transported back to the early
   centuries, to hear and to see what the earliest writers had recounted
   and described. Portions of the Didache, of the Sources of the Apostolic
   Canons, of the Canons of Hippolytus were living practices there. One
   lived among scenes described by Tertullian and by Clement of
   Alexandria. The Arabian Nights tell us of the fortunate possessor of a
   magic carpet who, when seated on his treasure, had only to wish it to
   be carried anywhere in space he desired. Historians might long to be
   owners of a similar mat to carry them anywhen backwards and forwards
   throughout the past centuries. A visit to the Mission field, especially
   to one among a people of ancient civilization who have inherited those
   original speculations which were the fertile soil out of which sprang
   the earliest Christian Gnosticism, is the magic carpet which transports
   one back to the times of primitive Christianity. The visitor sees the
   simple meaning of many a statement which seemed so hard to understand
   with nothing but the ancient literary record to guide him He learns to
   distrust some of the hard and fast canons of modern historical
   criticism, and to grow somewhat sceptical about the worth of many of
   those "subjective pictures" which some modern critics first construct
   and then use to estimate the date, authorship and intention of ancient
   documents. He learns that the modern western mind cannot so easily
   gauge the oriental ways of thought as it persistently imagines. Modern
   missionary work appears to me to be full of helpful illustrations of
   the life and organization of the early centuries:

   These Lectures are the fruit of long, careful, and, I trust, reverent
   study of the literary remains of the early Christian centuries. The
   last quarter of a century has brought many ancient documents to light
   which were formerly unknown, and these have not been passed over. The
   extent of my obligations to others may be seen in the notes; but the
   debt owed to such writers as Bishop Lightfoot, Professor Harnack and
   Dr. Hort far exceeds what can be acknowledged in such a way.

   I have to express my sense of the great assistance given to me by my
   old friend, the Rev. A. O. Johnston, D.D., who read the lectures in
   MS., and who has also gone over the proofs with great care. The book
   owes much to his labour and to his criticisms.

   THOMAS M. LINDSAY.
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EXTRACT DECLARATION OF TRUST.

  March 1, 1862.

   I, William Binny Webster, late Surgeon in the H.E.I.C.S., presently
   residing in Edinburgh,--Considering that I feel deeply interested in
   the success of the Free Church College, Edinburgh, and am desirous of
   advancing the Theological Literature of Scotland, and for this end to
   establish a Lectureship similar to those of a like kind connected with
   the Church of England and the Congregational body in England, and that
   I have made over to the General Trustees of the Free Church of Scotland
   the sum of £2,000 sterling, in trust, for the purpose of founding a
   Lectureship in memory of the late Reverend William Cunningham, D.D.,
   Principal of the Free Church College, Edinburgh, and Professor of
   Divinity and Church History therein, and under the following
   conditions, namely,--First, The Lectureship shall bear the name, and be
   called, The Cunningham Lectureship.' Second, The Lecturer shall be a
   Minister or Professor of the Free Church of Scotland, and shall hold
   the appointment for not less than two years, nor more than three years,
   and be entitled for the period of his holding the appointment to the
   income of the endowment as declared by the General Trustees, it being
   understood that the Council after referred to may occasionally appoint
   a Minister or Professor from other denominations, provided this be
   approved of by not fewer than Eight Members of the Council, and it
   being further understood that the Council are to regulate the terms of
   payment of the Lecturer. Third, The Lecturer shall be at liberty to
   choose his own subject within the range of Apologetical, Doctrinal,
   Controversial, Exegetical, Pastoral, or Historical Theology, including
   what bears on Missions, Home and Foreign, subject to the consent of the
   Council. Fourth, The Lecturer shall be bound to deliver publicly at
   Edinburgh a Course of Lectures on the subjects thus chosen at some time
   immediately preceding the expiry of his appointment, and during the
   Session of the New College, Edinburgh; the Lectures to be not fewer
   than six in number, and to be delivered in presence of the Professors
   and Students under such arrangements as the Council may appoint; the
   Lecturer shall be bound also to print and publish, at his own risk, not
   fewer than 750 copies of the Lectures within a year after their
   delivery, and to deposit three copies of the same in the Library of the
   New College; the form of the publication shall be regulated by the
   Council. Fifth, A Council shall be constituted, consisting of (first)
   Two Members of their own body, to be chosen annually in the month of
   March, by the Senatus of the New College, other than the Principal;
   (second) Five Members to be chosen annually by the General Assembly, in
   addition to the Moderator of the said Free Church of Scotland; together
   with (third) the Principal of the said New College for the time being,
   the Moderator of the said General Assembly for the time being, the
   Procurator or Law Adviser of the Church, and myself the said William
   Hinny Webster, or such person as I may nominate to be my successor: the
   Principal of the said College to be Convener of the Council, and any
   Five Members duly convened to be entitled to act notwithstanding the
   non-election of others. Sixth, The duties of the Council shall be the
   following:--(first), To appoint the Lecturer and determine the period
   of his holding the appointment, the appointment to be made before the
   close of the Session of College immediately preceding the termination
   of the previous Lecturer's engagement; (second), To arrange details as
   to the delivery of the Lectures, and to take charge of any additional
   income and expenditure of an incidental kind that may be connected
   therewith, it being understood that the obligation upon the Lecturer is
   simply to deliver the Course of Lectures free of expense to himself.
   Seventh, The Council shall be at liberty, on the expiry of five years,
   to make any alteration that experience may suggest as desirable in the
   details of this plan, provided such alterations shall be approved of by
   not fewer than Eight Members of the Council.
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CHAPTER I

  THE NEW TESTAMENT CONCEPTION OF THE CHURCH

   And I say also unto thee, that thou art Petros, and on this petra I
   will build My Church (Ecclesia); and the gates of Hades shall not
   prevail against it." [1] Our Lord was far from Galilee and farther from
   Jerusalem when He uttered these words. He was sojourning in an almost
   wholly pagan land. The rocks overhanging the path were covered with the
   mementos of a licentious cult; and in the neighbouring city of Caesarea
   Philippi Herod Philip had built and consecrated a temple to the Emperor
   Augustus, who was there worshipped as a god. [2] It was among scenes
   which showed the lustful passions of man's corrupt heart and the
   statecraft of Imperial Rome seating themselves on the throne of God,
   that Jesus made to His followers the promise which He has so
   marvellously fulfilled.

   The word translated Church is Ecclesia--a word that had a history both
   theocratic and democratic, and that came trailing behind it memories
   both to the Jews who were then listening to Him, and to the Greeks,
   who, at a later period, received His Gospel. To the Jew, the Ecclesia
   had been the assembly of the congregation of Israel, [3] summoned to
   meet at the door of the Tabernacle of Jehovah by men blowing silver
   trumpets. To the Greek the Ecclesia was the sovereign assembly of the
   free Greek city-state, [4] summoned by the herald blowing his horn
   through the streets of the town. To the followers of Jesus it was to be
   the congregation of the redeemed and therefore of the free, summoned by
   His heralds to continually appear in the presence of their Lord, who
   was always to be in the midst of them. It was to be a theocratic
   democracy.

   The New, if it is to be lasting, must always have its roots in the Old;
   and the phrase "My Ecclesia" recalled the past and foretold the future.
   The roots were the memories the word brought both to Jew and to Greek;
   and the promise and the potency of the future lay in the word "My." The
   Ecclesia had been the congregation of Jehovah; it was in the future,
   without losing anything of what it had possessed, to become the
   congregation of Jesus the Christ. Its heralds, like James, the brother
   of our Lord, could apply to it the Old Testament promises, and see in
   its construction the fulfilment of the saying of Amos about the
   rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David; [5] or, like St. Paul, could
   call it the "Israel of God," and repeat concerning it the prayer of the
   Psalm, "Remember thine ecclesia, which Thou hast purchased of old,
   which Thou hast redeemed to be the tribe of Thine inheritance." [6] It
   had been the self-governing Greek republic, ruled by elected
   office-bearers; hereafter the communities of Christians, which were to
   be the ecclesiae, were to be little self-governing societies where the
   individual rights and responsibilities of the members would blend
   harmoniously with the common good of all.

   The word with its memories and promises appealed to none of our Lord's
   "Sent Ones" more strongly than to St. Paul, who was at once an "Hebrew
   of the Hebrews," and the apostle to the Gentiles. The term "ecclesia"
   has its home in the Pauline literature. [7] It is met with 110 times
   within the New Testament, and of these 86 occur in the Epistles of St.
   Paul and in the Acts of the Apostles. We naturally turn to the writings
   of St. Paul to aid us in expounding the thought which is contained in
   the term. When we do so we are entitled to say that the conception
   contains at least five different ideas which embody the essential
   features of the "Church of Christ."

   The New Testament Church is fellowship with Jesus and with the brethren
   through Him; this fellowship is permeated with a sense of unity; this
   united fellowship is to manifest itself in a visible society; this
   visible society has bestowed upon it by our Lord a divine authority;
   and it is to be a sacerdotal society. These appear to be the five
   outstanding elements in the New Testament conception of the Church of
   Christ.

   1. The Church of Christ is a fellowship. It is a fellowship with Jesus
   Christ; that is the divine element in it. It is a fellowship with the
   brethren; that is the human element in it. The Rock on which the Church
   was to be built was a man confessing--not the man apart from his
   confession, as Romanists insist, nor the confession apart from the man,
   as many Protestants argue. It was a man in whom long companionship with
   Jesus and the revelation from the Father had created a personal trust
   in His Messianic mission; [8] and the faith which had grown out of the
   fellowship had the mysterious power of making the fellowship which had
   created it more vivid and real; for faith, in its primitive sense of
   personal trust, is fellowship become self-conscious. Faith is what
   makes fellow-ship know itself to be fellowship, and not haphazard
   social intercourse.

   The faith of Peter, seer as he was into divine mysteries, and prophet
   as he was, able to utter what he had seen, did not involve a very
   adequate apprehension of the fellowship he had confessed. He knew so
   little about its real meaning that shortly after his confession he made
   a suggestion which would have destroyed it; [9] a thought prompted by
   the Evil One succeeded the revelation from the Father--so strangely and
   swiftly do inspirations of God and temptations of the Devil succeed
   each other in the minds of men. The sad experience of Peter has been
   shared by the Church in all generations. He did not cease to be the
   Rock-Man in consequence; nor has the promise failed the Church which
   was founded on him and on his confession, although it has shared his
   weakness and sin.

   St. Paul rings the changes on this thought of fellowship with Jesus
   which makes the Church. The churches addressed in his epistles are
   described as in Christ Jesus. He is careful to impress on believers the
   personal relation in which they stand to their Lord, even when he is
   addressing the whole Church to which they belong. If he writes to the
   Church of God which is in Corinth, [10] he is careful to add "to them
   that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints"; and in his
   other epistles he addresses the brethren individually as "saints,"
   "saints and faithful brethren," "all that are in Rome, beloved of God,
   called to be saints." [11] The individual believer is never lost in the
   society, and he is never alone and separate. The bond of union is not
   an external framework impressed from without, but a sense of fellowship
   springing from within. The believer's union to Christ, which is the
   deepest of all personal things, always involves something social, The
   call comes to him singly, but seldom solitarily.

   Perhaps, however, St. Paul's conception of the fellowship with Christ
   which is the basis of the Church, comes out most clearly in the way he
   speaks of the "gifts" of grace, the charismata, which manifest the
   abiding presence of our Lord in His Church and His continuing
   fellowship with His people. [12] He enumerates them over and over
   again. He points to "apostles," the missionary heralds of the Gospel;
   to "prophets," to whom the Spirit had given special powers for the
   edification of the brethren; to "teachers," who are wise with the
   wisdom of God, and have those divine intuitions which the apostle calls
   "knowledge"; to "pastors," who feed the flock in one community. He
   speaks of "helps" (antilepseis) or powers to assist the sick, the
   tempted and the tried; of "insight" to give wise counsels; of gifts of
   rule (kuberneseis); of gifts of healing, and in general of all kinds of
   service. They are all gifts of the Spirit, and are all so many
   different manifestations of the presence of Jesus and of the living
   fellowship which His people have with Him. [13]

   These various gifts are bestowed on different members of the Christian
   society for the edification of all, and they serve to show that it is
   one organism, where the whole exists for the parts, and each part for
   the whole and for all the other parts. They also show that the
   Christian society is not a merely natural organism; there is divine
   life and power within it, because it has the abiding presence of
   Christ; and the proof of His presence is the possession and use of
   these various "gifts," all of which come from the one Spirit of Christ
   in fulfilment of the promise that He will never leave nor forsake His
   Church. Their presence is a testimony to the presence of the Master
   which each Christian community can supply. It is a Church of Christ if
   His presence is manifested by these fruits of the Spirit which come
   from the exercise of the "gifts" which the Spirit has bestowed upon it;
   for the Church as well as the individual Christian is to be known by
   its fruits. [14]

   This sense of hidden fellowship with its Lord was the secret of the
   Church. It was a bond uniting its members and separating them from
   outsiders more completely than were the initiated into the pagan
   mysteries sundered from those who had not passed through the same
   introductory rites. While Jesus lived their fellowship with Him was the
   external thing which distinguished them from others. They were His
   disciples (mathetai) gathered round a centre, a Person whom they called
   Rabbi, Master, Teacher--names they were taught not to give to another.
   They shared a common teaching and drank in the same words of wisdom
   from the same lips; but even then they could not be called a "school,"
   for they were united by the bond of a common hope and a common future.
   They were to share in the coming kingdom of God in and through their
   relation to their Master. After His departure the other side of the
   fellowship became the prominent external thing--their relation to each
   other because of their relation to their common Lord. New names arose
   to express the change, names suggesting the relation in which they
   stood to each other. They were the "brethren," the "saints," and they
   had a fellowship (koinonia) with each other. [15] This thought of
   fellowship, as we shall see, was the ruling idea in all Christian
   organization. All Christians within one community were to live in
   fellowship with each other; different Christian communities were to
   have a common fellowship. Visible fellowship with each other, the
   outcome of the hidden fellowship with Jesus, was to be at once the
   leading characteristic of all Christians and the bond which united them
   to each other and separated them from the world lying outside.

   2. The second characteristic of the Church of Christ is that it is a
   Unity. There was one assembly of the congregation of Israel; one
   sovereign assembly of the Greek city-state. There is one Church of
   Christ.

   It must be admitted that the word Church is seldom used in the New
   Testament to designate one universal and comprehensive society. On the
   contrary, out of the 110 times in which the word occurs, no less than
   100 do not contain this note of a wide-spreading unity. In the
   overwhelming majority of cases the word "church" denotes a local
   Christian society, varying in extent from all the Christian
   congregations within a province of the Empire to a small assembly of
   Christians meeting together in the house of one of the brethren. St.
   Paul alone, [16] if we except the one instance in Matt. xvi., uses the
   word in its universal application; and he does it in two epistles
   only--those to the Ephesians and to the Colossians--both of them dating
   from his Roman captivity. [17] But there are numberless indications
   that the thought of the unity of the Church of Christ was never absent
   from the mind of the Apostle. The Christians he addresses are all
   brethren, all saints, whether they be in Jerusalem, Damascus, Ephesus
   or Rome. The believers in Thessalonica are praised because they had
   been "imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea," who "are in
   Jesus Christ " as the Thessalonians "are in Jesus Christ." [18] The
   Epistles to the Corinthians are full of exhortations to unity within
   the local church, and the warnings are always based on principles which
   suggest the unity of the whole wide fellowship of believers. The
   divisions in the church at Corinth had arisen from a misguided
   apostolic partizanship which implied a lack of belief in Christian
   unity at the centre; the apostle repudiates this by holding forth the
   unity of Christ, and by pointing to the one Kingdom of God to be
   inherited. [19] He has the same message for all the local churches.
   However varied in environment they may be, these local churches have
   common usages, and ought to unite in showing a common sympathy with
   each other. [20]

   Besides these minor indications of the thought, we have, in various of
   his epistles what may be called its poetic expression. The Church of
   Christ is such a unity that it has thrown down all the walls of race,
   sex, and social usages which have kept men separate. [21] It has
   reconciled Jew and Gentile. It has bridged the gulf between the past of
   Israel and the present of apostolic Christianity. [22]

   These thoughts and phrases, which run through all the epistles of St.
   Paul, lead directly to the description of the glorious unity of the one
   Church of Christ which fills the great Epistle to the Ephesians. Thus,
   though it is true that we cannot point to a single use of the word
   "church" in the earlier epistles which can undoubtedly be said to mean
   a universal Christian society, the thought of this unity of all
   believers runs through them all. The conception of the unity of the
   Church of Christ is one of the abiding possessions of St. Paul in the
   earliest as in the latest of his writings; but it is only in the
   writings of his Roman captivity that it attains to its fullest
   expression. [23]

   This unity of the Church of Christ which filled the mind of St. Paul
   was something essentially spiritual. It is a reality, but a reality
   which is more ideal than material. It can never be adequately
   represented in a merely historical way. It is true that we can trace
   the beginnings of the formation of Christian communities, and the
   gradual federation of these Christian societies into a wide-spreading
   union of confederate churches; but that only faintly expresses the
   thought of the unity of the Church of Christ. It is true that we can
   see in the fellowship of Christians the illustration of the pregnant
   philosophical thought that it is not good for man to be alone, and that
   personality itself can only be rightly conceived when taken along with
   the thought of fellowship. [24] Apart, however, from all surface facts
   and philosophical ideas, there is something deeper in the unity of the
   Christian Church, something which lies implicitly in the unformed faith
   of every believer, that in personal union with Christ there is union
   with the whole body of the redeemed, and that man is never alone either
   in sin or in salvation. The unity of the Church of Christ is a primary
   verity of the Christian faith: "There is One Body, and One Spirit, even
   as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, One Faith, One
   Baptism, One God and Father of all, Who is over all and through all and
   in all." [25] And because the Unity of the Church of Christ is a
   primary verity of the Christian faith, it can never be adequately
   represented in any outward polity, but must always be, in the first
   instance at least, a religious experience. Its source and centre can
   never be an earthly throne, but must always be that heavenly place
   where Jesus sits at the Right Hand of God. [26]

   This enables us to see how the word "church" can be used, as it is in
   the New Testament, to denote communities of varying size, from the sum
   total of all the Christian communities on earth down to the tiny
   congregation which met in the house of Philemon. For the unity of the
   Christian Church is, in the first instance, the oneness of an ideal
   reality, and is not confined within the bounds of space and time as
   merely material entities are. It can be present in many places at the
   same time, and in such a way that, as Ignatius says, "Where Jesus
   Christ is, there is the whole Church." [27] The congregation at Corinth
   was, in the eyes of St. Paul, the Body of Christ or the whole Church in
   its all-embracing unity--not a Body of Christ, for there is but one
   Body of Christ; not part of the Body of Christ, for Christ is not
   divided; but the Body of Christ in its unity and filled with the
   fulness of His powers. [28] It is in this One Body, present in every
   Christian society, that our Lord has placed His "gifts" or charismata,
   which enable the Church to perform its divine functions; and all the
   spiritual actions of the tiniest community, such as the Church in the
   house of Nymphas--Prayer, Praise, Preaching, Baptism, the Holy
   Supper--are actions of the whole Church of Christ.

   The Christians of the early centuries clung to this thought, and we
   have a long series of writers, from Victor of Rome, [29] in the second
   century, down to Clement of Alexandria and Origen, [30] who tell us
   that the whole Church of the redeemed, with Christ and the angels, is
   present in the public worship of the individual congregation. The
   promise of the Master, that where two or three were gathered together
   in His Name there would He be in the midst of them, was placed side by
   side with the thought in the Epistle to the Hebrews that believers are
   surrounded with a great cloud of witnesses; and the combination
   suggested that in the simplest action of the smallest Christian
   fellowship there was the presence and the power of the whole Church of
   Christ. Tertullian pushes the thought to its furthest limits when he
   says in a well-known passage: "Accordingly, where there is no joint
   session of the ecclesiastical order, you Offer, Baptize, and are Priest
   alone for yourself; for where three are there the Church is, although
   they be laity." [31]

   3. The Church of our Lord's promise was to be a visible community. This
   note of visibility is suggested by the word ecclesia itself, and by the
   whole environment of its earliest Christian use.

   The "congregation of Israel" and the "sovereign assembly" of the Greek
   city-state had been visible things. The time of the promise suggested a
   visible community. It came when the visible people of Israel had
   manifestly refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah. His Church was set
   over against the Israel which had denied Him--one visible community
   against another. The earliest uses of the word ecclesia refer
   unmistakably to visible communities. When St. Paul persecuted the
   "Church of God," he made havoc of something more than an abstraction.
   He haled men and women to prison and confined real bodies within real
   stone walls. The churches spoken of in the Acts and in the Epistles
   were societies of men and women, living in families, coming together
   for public worship, and striving in spite of many infirmities to live
   the life of new obedience to which they had been called. They were
   little societies in the world, connected with it on all sides and yet
   not of it--lamps set on lamp-stands to enlighten the darkness of
   surrounding paganism. The "gifts" of the Spirit, which manifested the
   presence of Christ, were seen at work in the public assembly of the
   congregation, and were given to edify a visible society.

   The two universal rites of the new society--Baptism and the Lord's
   Supper--show that it was a visible thing. St. Paul makes it clear that
   entrance into the Church was by the visible rite of Baptism, and that
   he himself had come into the Church by this door. [32] The Lord's
   Supper was a visible social institution, and could only occupy the
   place it did in a visible society. [33]

   Even the Church Universal, which is described in the Epistle to the
   Ephesians, is a visible Church. It is an ideal reality; but an ideal
   Church is not invisible because it is ideal. It can be seen in any
   Christian community, great or small; seen in a measure by the eye of
   sense, but more truly by the eye of faith. For it is one of the
   privileges of faith, when strengthened by hope and by love, to see the
   glorious ideal in the somewhat poor material reality. It was thus that
   St. Paul saw the universal Church of Christ made visible in the
   Christian community of Corinth.

   St. Paul has described the Church in that great trading and
   manufacturing city of Corinth, where the rich were very rich and the
   poor were very poor; where the thoroughness of character, inherited
   from the early Roman colonists, had pushed the sensuous side of Greek
   civilization into all manner of excesses, until the city had become a
   by-word for foul living, and religion itself had become an incentive to
   lust. [34] This environment had tainted the Christian society. St. Paul
   saw it all and has described it. He has made us see the very
   Love-feasts, which introduced the Holy Supper, changed into banquets of
   display on the part of the rich, while the poor were swept into corners
   or compelled to wait till their wealthier brethren were served. He has
   shown us petty rivalries disguising themselves under the mask of
   faithfulness to eminent apostolic teachers. He has depicted the tainted
   morals of the city appearing unchecked within the Christian society.
   What a picture the heathen satirist Lucian, with his keen eye and his
   outspoken tongue, would have drawn of such a community! St. Paul saw
   all the frailty, the feebleness to resist the evil communications and
   the fickleness; and yet he saw in that community the Body of Christ. He
   needed the love that "beareth all things, that believeth all things,
   and that hopeth all things," to make his vision clear--and that is
   perhaps the reason why the wonderful chapter on Christian love comes in
   the middle of this epistle; but his vision was clear, and he saw the
   life there with its potency and promise. He could say to that Church Ye
   are the Body of Christ. He could see it, as he saw the Ephesian Church,
   becoming gradually rooted and grounded in love, gradually strengthened
   to apprehend with all saints the height, the depth, the length and the
   breadth of that love of Christ which passeth knowledge, and at last
   filled with all the fulness of God.

   All things earthly have a double element, whether they be of good or
   evil report. They are in the present and they are making for the
   future. They are what they are to be. It is the same with all things
   belonging to Christianity on the human side. We are "sons of God," and
   yet we "wait for the adoption"; we are redeemed, and yet our redemption
   "draweth nigh." Those who "have been saved" are enjoined to "work out
   their own salvation." So it is with the Church of God. It is what it is
   to be. [35] And we are definitely taught by the very ways in which St.
   Paul uses the word " Church " to see the Church Universal in the
   individual Christian community. [36]

   It will be admitted, however, that ideals are given us to be made
   manifest to the eye of sense as well as to the vision of faith. and
   that a duty is laid upon every Christian and upon every Christian
   society to make the universality of the Church of Christ which is
   manifest to faith plainly apparent to the eyes of sense. If the duty
   has been but scantily performed since the beginning of the third
   century, we may find that the neglect has come from abandoning
   apostolic methods in favour of others suggested by the great pagan
   empire of Rome. The duty of trying to make visible to the senses the
   inherent unity of the Church of Christ was always distinctly present to
   the mind of the great apostle to the Gentiles, and it may be useful to
   see how he set himself to the task.

   One thing meets us at the outset. He would not for the sake of an
   external universality agree to anything which would set limits on the
   real universality of the Church of Christ. The preservation of the
   liberty with which Jesus had made His people free was of more
   importance in His eyes than the manifestation of the visibility of the
   universal fellowship of Christians with each other. Jewish believers
   were inclined to think that the practice of circumcision "embodied the
   principle of the historical continuity of the Church," [37] and that no
   one who was outside the circle of the "circumcised," no matter how
   strong his faith nor how the fruits of the Spirit were manifest in his
   life and deeds, could plead the "security of the Divine Covenant," For
   this they could give reasons stronger than are brought forward by many
   who, in our own day, insist on different external "successions" as
   marks of catholicity. The Scripture had said: "My covenant shall be in
   your flesh, an everlasting covenant." [38] The Saviour himself had been
   circumcised on the eighth day. He had never, in so many words, either
   publicly to the people or privately to His disciples, declared that
   circumcision was no longer to be the sign of the covenant of God.

   St. Paul recognized that to limit "the security of the covenant" to
   something defined by what the Jews believed to be the "principle of the
   historical continuity of the Church," would be to destroy the real for
   a limited, though more sensibly visible, universality. He bent his
   whole energies to break down this false principle of continuity which
   placed the "succession" in something external, and not in the
   possession and transmission from generation to generation of the
   "gifts" of the Spirit within the community. This done, he used his
   administrative powers, and they were those of a statesman, to create
   channels for the flow of the manifestation of the visible unity of the
   Church of Christ.

   His ruling thought was to provide that all the various Christian
   communities should manifest their real brotherhood in the cultivation
   of the "fruits of the Spirit." The method of carving out a visibly
   universal Church by means of regulations affecting organization and
   external form is not without its attractions, which are irresistible to
   minds of the lawyer type and training, such as we see afterwards in
   Cyprian of Carthage. It seems a short and easy method of showing that
   the whole Church is visibly one. But it was not Paul's method. He seems
   to have thought as little about the special "construction of
   sheep-folds" as his Master. What concerned him was that the sheep
   should be gathered into one flock around the One Shepherd. He nowhere
   prescribed a universal ecclesiastical polity, still less did he teach
   that the universality of the Christian brotherhood must be made visible
   in this way. He regarded all the separate churches of Christ as
   independent self-governing societies. He strove to implant in all of
   them the principle of brotherly dealing with one another, and he dug
   channels in which the streams of the Spirit might flow in the practical
   manifestation of Christian fellowship.

   Fellowship (koinonia), word and thought, is what filled his mind. All
   the brethren within one Church were to have fellowship with each other.
   The local churches within a definite region were to be in close
   fellowship. The churches among the Gentiles were to maintain brotherly
   relations with the Mother-Church in Jerusalem. What this fellowship
   primarily meant can be learnt from what the apostle says in Gal. ii. 9.
   [39] He tells us that the apostles to the Jews, and he the apostle to
   the Gentiles, gave each other the right hand of fellowship, because
   they recognized that they had a common faith in the same Christ. It was
   the recognition of a common belief in the One Christ, the knowledge
   that they all had within them a new faith which had revolutionised
   their lives, and was to express itself in their whole character and
   conduct, that made them feel the kinship with each other which was
   expressed in the common name "brethren." All down through the early
   centuries this idea that Christians form one brotherhood finds abundant
   expression. Brotherhood alternates with Ecclesia in the oldest sets of
   ecclesiastical canons, [40] while omnis fraternitas and pasa he
   adelphotes are used to denote the whole of Christendom. [41]

   The graceful deference which St. Paul always showed to the leaders in
   Jerusalem, who had been in Christ before himself; his anxieties about
   the welfare of the poor "saints" at Jerusalem, and his care to provide
   for their needs; [42] the letters he asks to be read to all the members
   of the churches to which they are addressed, and sometimes to other
   churches also; [43] the eagerness with which he communicates the fact
   that the church he is writing to enjoys a reputation for hospitality
   towards wayfaring brethren; [44] the salutations his letters contain
   from one church to another, [45] and from individual Christians to the
   churches; [46] the messages sent by his assistants; his and their
   frequent journeyings from church to church--are all evidences of his
   unwearied efforts to make the universality of the Christian brotherhood
   widely manifest.

   He did more. He grouped his churches in a statesmanlike way so that
   each could support the others. His statesmanship discerned the
   advantages which the imperial system, with its trade routes, its postal
   arrangements and its provincial capitals, gave not merely for the
   propagation of the Gospel, but for the fellowship of the churches.
   Corinth was the centre for the churches of Achaia, and the second
   Epistle to the Corinthians is addressed to all the Christians within
   that important Roman province. [47] Round Ephesus [48] were grouped the
   churches of Asia--Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia,
   Laodicea, with Troas and others on the coast, and Colossae and
   Hierapolis in the Lycus valley. [49] The churches of Macedonia were, in
   al: probability, grouped round Thessalonica, [50] and those of Galatia
   formed another group, although we are not told what the centre was.
   [51]

   While engaged in giving visibility to the unity of the churches he had
   planted St. Paul was never unmindful that he wished also to see them
   united visibly with the churches of Jerusalem and Judea. He had started
   with the thought of a visible fellowship between Jew and Gentile, and
   the union which was symbolised when Barnabas and he gave and received
   the right hand of fellowship with Peter, James and John, was never far
   from his thoughts. He thought of One Church of Christ which embraced
   Jew and Gentile all the world over. [52]

   But perhaps the evidence of the apostle's method of implanting a sense
   of a visible unity within the Church of Christ is best seen in the
   methods, plan and motive of the great collection for the saints at
   Jerusalem, which fills so large a place in his epistles.

   This great collection was no mere spontaneous outburst of Christian
   charity like the previous succours sent to the poor of Jerusalem. It
   was a carefully-planned attempt to unite a host of independent
   churches, which represented wide areas, in co-operative brotherly
   action. The preparations occupied more than a year's time. The
   principle of representation was introduced. Each group of contributing
   churches sent deputies, all of whom joined the apostle at different
   places and at different dates, and accompanied him to Jerusalem,
   bearing with them the money collected. The anxiety which the apostle
   displayed in the careful arrangement of all the details; the patience
   with which he awaited the complete mustering of the delegates on the
   road; the determination that nothing should prevent him from
   accompanying the delegates to Jerusalem--not even prophetic warnings of
   danger nor the hindrance of cherished plans to visit Rome--all combine
   to show that he regarded it as the fulfilment of long cherished plans
   for making visible the fellowship of all believers in the way that best
   commended itself to his mind. [53]

   It may be that the success of this mustering of his mission churches,
   this triumphant experiment of co-operation and re-presentation,
   combined with the assurance that Jew and Gentile were at last dwelling
   harmoniously within the One Household of God, kindled the thoughts
   which find expression in the epistles of his Roman captivity. The unity
   of the wide-spreading Church of Christ was at last made visible to the
   eyes of sense, not by uniformity of external polity, but by the
   manifestation of brotherly love. The actual unity of all believers was
   conspicuous in this great fruit of the Spirit of Christ.

   If we follow the accounts given us in the Acts, the tests of what was
   required for visible fellowship by the leaders of the church in
   Jerusalem did not differ greatly from those demanded by St. Paul. It
   seemed to be their custom when they heard of some new and unexpected
   appearance of faith in Jesus to send down some one to inquire about it.
   Peter and John were sent to Samaria to inquire into the conversions
   among the Samaritans made by the preaching of Philip. [54] Barnabas was
   sent down to Antioch on a similar errand. [55] The tests applied in
   both cases seem to have been: Are there any manifestations of the
   fruits of the Spirit in the lives of the new converts? The case of
   Antioch is most instructive. The Gospel had been proclaimed there, we
   know not how or by whom. The apostles at Jerusalem seem to have had
   nothing to do with the proclamation. An infant church had come into
   being without their guidance or assistance. Its birth is unrecorded;
   its earliest history unknown; the congregation is in being before the
   apostles seem to have heard of it. When the delegate from Jerusalem
   appeared and made his inquiries, what satisfied him was that the grace
   of God was manifestly with the brethren there. The believers in Antioch
   and the delegate from Jerusalem had the same faith in the same Saviour,
   and their faith found its proper outcome in a renewed life. That was
   enough for fellowship or visible and fraternal union. We see no attempt
   to impose any external ecclesiastical ordinances, no suggestions about
   the need for showing themselves to be in the line of the "historic
   continuity of the church" by accepting circumcision or otherwise.
   Whether we take the reception of Cornelius, the welcome accorded to the
   Samaritan converts, or the joy of Barnabas when he perceived that the
   grace of God was manifest in Antioch, the unity of the Christian Church
   was made visible to the eyes of sense, not by uniformity of
   organization, but by the manifestation of the fruits of the Spirit;
   that was the one feature that was regarded as proof that it was worthy
   of being received into the common fellowship.

   IV. To this visible society belongs Authority. The very thought of a
   Christian Church visible suggests the idea of a separate community with
   a distinct sphere of religious life; and this in turn implies that the
   society must have, like every form of corporate social existence,
   powers of oversight and discipline to be exercised upon its members.
   But the authority which the Church possesses is altogether different
   from what a voluntary association of men may exercise upon its members,
   and of another kind from what is possessed by lawful civil government.
   The authority comes from Christ Himself. The Christian Democracy is
   also a Theocracy; it combines the two ideas of rule associated with the
   Greek and the Hebrew uses of the word "ecclesia." While the authority
   belongs to the whole member-ship, and is therefore democratic; it
   nevertheless comes from above, and is therefore theocratic. [56] It
   comes from Jesus Christ, who is the Head of the Church. [57]

   Our Lord has intimated that He has imparted this authority to His
   Church in many recorded sayings, and in particular in three well-known
   passages: in Matt. xvi. 13-19; Matt. xviii. 15-20, and in John xx.
   21-23.

   The first promise was made to St. Peter in very special circumstances.
   Our Lord had asked a question of all His disciples. St. Peter,
   answering impetuously in their name, made himself their representative.
   His answer was an adoring confession of his faith in the Person of
   Christ [58] --a confession which contained in germ all the future
   confessions of the Church of Christ, and which made him the spokesman
   for the mighty multitude which no man can number, who were to make the
   same confession of adoring trust in their Saviour. The confession was
   an inspired one; it had been revealed to St. Peter by the Father; there
   was divinity in it, for God gave the revelation which prompted the
   confession ; and there was humanity in it, for the man appropriated and
   made his own what the Father had revealed to him. It was the first of
   what was to become a multitudinous sea of voices of men inspired by the
   Father to know and to confess that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the
   Living God. It was to the Peter who answered as representing the
   Twelve, to Peter who was the spokesman for countless thousands of the
   faithful who down through the march of Time would make the same glad
   confession, that the promise was given.

   The promise was of authority to bear the key of the household of the
   faithful, to have the power to let in and keep out from the household.
   The words and metaphor used were the familiar Jewish terms to denote a
   delegated authority. The thought conveyed is commonly and correctly
   explained by a reference to the substitution of Shebna for Eliakim in
   the stewardship of the House of David; [59] and it is implied that our
   Lord, in the word He used, made St. Peter, and those he represented,
   stewards of the Household of the faithful with the authority to "bind"
   and to "loose," to "prohibit" and to "permit," to "admit" and
   "exclude." Other passages in the New Testament, making use of the same
   simile of the major-domo with his key and his power of letting in or
   locking out, assist us to see the fuller meaning of the promise
   recorded. The one is a warning and the other an encouragement. Our Lord
   called the attention of his followers to the scribes and Pharisees, who
   "sat in Moses' seat," and had to be obeyed. They had the keys and they
   used them to shut the door of the kingdom of heaven against men. [60]
   Jesus pronounces woe on them for using the keys in this way. Their
   shutting out, although they have the keys officially, was evidently not
   ratified in heaven. Hence we must infer that the mere official position
   of being the bearer of the "keys" does not always ensure that what is
   done on earth by the bearer will be ratified in heaven. Then in the
   message to the Church in Philadelphia, the brethren there were told
   that the real bearer of the "keys" is the Lord Himself. [61] It is only
   when He lets in that there can be no exclusion; it is only when He
   shuts out that there is any real exclusion. A real authority is
   bestowed, and real powers are given; but just as Peter's confession
   depended on the inspiration of the Father, so the ratification of the
   exercise of power depends on its Christ-like use.

   It is doubtful whether the second saying was addressed to the Twelve,
   or to a larger group of disciples, but the advice which precedes the
   promise is to be applied and can only be applied to all the followers
   of Jesus within a community. It gives directions for dealing with
   offences and offenders within the Christian society, and has been
   commonly regarded as the Scriptural warrant for the exercise of
   discipline within the Church. It proceeds on the idea that offences may
   arise from thoughtlessness as well as from wilful sin, and that the
   offender, in spite of his offence, is a brother to be won back to
   brotherliness. It prescribes a threefold attempt to win back the erring
   brother to a state of brotherly feeling. If everything fails, if the
   offender has refused to hear the offended person pleading with him in
   his own person, if he has rejected the remonstrances of two or three
   fellow-Christians pleading with him, if he finally spurns the warnings
   of the Church or whole Christian society, then, and not till then, does
   the thought of punishment enter. The punishment, if punishment it can
   be called, is expulsion of a certain kind from the Christian communion.
   The offender is to be treated as the Jewish Synagogue acted towards a
   Gentile or a publican. He was to be looked on as if he had never
   belonged to the society, or as if he had voluntarily excluded himself
   by the course of life he had chosen to persist in.

   We are told that the decisions of the Church on earth in such cases as
   those described will be ratified in Heaven. This is a confirmation of
   the promise given to St. Peter, and like it is strictly conditional.
   The condition attached is that there must be a real and living
   communion between the Church and its Head the Lord Jesus Christ, so
   that the Church decides in a Christ-like spirit. It is impossible to
   separate the promise from the verses which immediately follow. Our Lord
   Himself joins them together by very solemn words. This condition does
   not render the promise of ratification deceptive. The fellowship with
   Christ, which is the condition, is to be had provided it is sought for
   earnestly, honestly and trustingly in prayer (v. 19).

   The authority is given to the society of believers, whether two or
   three meeting together in a place far from any others, or a great and
   organised community. It is not entrusted by our Lord directly to any
   official class; it is not given to any human power not rising out of
   the company of the faithful. It is given to the visible fellowship, and
   it belongs to them in reality, as well as in name, in the measure in
   which they have living communion with Him Who is their Head.

   The third promise seems to have been made to the nucleus of the infant
   Church in Jerusalem, if we are to accept Luke xxiv. 33 ff. as the
   parallel passage--to "the disciples and those who were with them." It
   is commonly held to include all that is bestowed in the other two, and
   perhaps something even more solemn--the power to pronounce the divine
   sentence of pardon involved in the proclamation of the Gospel of
   Christ. Whatever be the powers granted, they are given to the whole
   company of believers and not to any class among them. They are also, as
   in the earlier passages, given under conditions. The power can only
   manifest itself in those who are filled with the Spirit of Christ. [62]
   In virtue of this promise with its gift of power the visible Church of
   Christ can with absolute confidence declare the gospel of pardon
   through the work of Christ, and can assert that the divine conditions
   are those which it proclaims. In virtue of the same promise every
   individual Christian is entitled to affirm with absolute certainty to
   every penitent sinner that God pardons his sins if he accepts Jesus as
   his All-sufficient Saviour. [63]

   The authority was given in the first passage to one man; in the second
   probably to the Twelve; in the third to the whole Christian community.
   In each case the more particular is absorbed in the more general. The
   power given to St. Peter in the first passage is merged in the
   authority given to the Twelve in the second; and the authority given to
   the Twelve is in turn merged in the authority given to the whole
   congregation. St. Peter received the power because he represented the
   Twelve directly, and the whole Church founded on him and on his
   confession indirectly. The Twelve received it because they represented
   the Church which was to come into existence through their ministry.
   After the Resurrection the whole infant Church received the same, if
   not greater, authority. St. Peter was to die; the Twelve also were to
   go the way of all flesh; but the society was to remain, and with it the
   authority bestowed upon it by its Lord.

   It is needless to say that very varying interpretations of these three
   passages have been given by different schools of theologians; that
   Romanists found on the promise given to St. Peter, and that some
   Anglicans insist that the third promise was made to the Eleven only,
   even if the company included other disciples, and build up the edifice
   of Apostolic Succession on this narrow foundation; and that both affirm
   that the authority which our Lord gave to His Church was placed
   directly in the hands of office-bearers, and not in those of the whole
   membership.

   To examine at length the various exegetical arguments brought forward
   in support of these positions would lead far beyond the space at our
   disposal; but two general considerations may be adduced. Such an
   interpretation seems to be against the analogy of our Lord's teaching;
   and He was not so understood by His New Testament Church.

   While our Lord chose Twelve to form an inner circle of disciples, while
   He trained them by close companionship with Himself for special
   service, while He weaned them in half-conscious ways from their old
   life, it nowhere appears that He bestowed upon them a special rank or
   instituted a peculiar or exceptional office of stewardship of divine
   mysteries in their persons. [64] It is improbable that He bestowed on
   them the name apostles to be a general and distinguishing title, and
   one unshared in by other disciples besides the Twelve. Our Lord called
   them apostles when He sent them on a special mission among the
   villages; they were apostles while this mission lasted; when it came to
   an end they were the Twelve or inner circle of intimates of the Master.
   [65] After the Death and Resurrection of the Lord the task to which
   they had been trained by companion-ship with the Saviour and in the
   apprentice mission among the villages, became their life work, but it
   was shared in from the very beginning by others who bore with them the
   common name apostle. [66] Nor does our Lord make any promises to the
   Twelve which imply that He had bestowed upon them a special rank in the
   Church which was to come. He told them that whoever received them
   received Him; but this was a privilege shared in by the least of His
   followers, for whoever received a little child in His name received
   Him. [67] It is impossible to avoid noticing how the ancient manuals of
   church organization have caught the spirit of Christ's teaching, that
   there are to be no lordships in His Church. The qualifications set
   forth for office are those which every Christian ought to possess; and
   the duties said to belong to office are those which for the most part
   all Christians ought to perform. We do not see orders in the sense of
   ecclesiastical rank whose authority does not come from the people; we
   see ecclesiastical order and arrangement of service. Whatever power and
   authority the Church of Christ possesses in gift from the Lord resides
   in the membership of the Church and not in any superior rank of
   officials who have received an authority over the Church directly from
   Christ Himself.

   The Church of the New Testament evidently interpreted the words of our
   Lord to mean that He placed the authority which He had bestowed upon
   His Church in the hands of the membership, of the community which
   formed the local church.

   Even in the Primitive Church in Jerusalem, where the presence of an
   apostle was seldom lacking, the community was self-governing, and acted
   on the conviction that the authority bestowed by Christ on His Church
   belonged to the whole congregation of the faithful and not to an
   apostolic hierarchy. The assembly of the local church appointed
   delegates and elected office-bearers. The vice-apostle Matthias and the
   Seven were, elected by the assembly, [68] and a similar assembly
   appointed Barnabas to be its delegate to Antioch. [69] The assembly of
   the local church summoned even apostles before it, and passed judgment
   upon their conduct. [70] The apostles might suggest, but the
   congregation ruled.

   When we pass from the Church at Jerusalem to the churches planted by
   the ministry of St. Paul, the proofs of democratic self-government are
   still more abundant. When the apostle urges the duty of stricter
   discipline, or when he recommends a merciful treatment of one who had
   lapsed, he writes to the whole community in whose hands the authority
   resides. He pictures himself in their midst while they are engaged in
   this painful duty. He assures them that they have the authority of the
   Lord for the exercise of discipline. For however thoroughly democratic
   the government of the New Testament Church was, it was still as
   thoroughly theocratic. The presence of the Lord Himself was with them
   in the exercise of the authority He had entrusted to their charge. [71]
   The evidence of the presence of Christ was of the same kind as
   witnessed His presence in the actions of public worship. The local
   churches recognised His presence in the manifestation of the "gifts" of
   His Spirit bestowed upon them. These "gifts" included not only the
   bestowal of grace needed for exhortation to edification, but also the
   wisdom to "govern" and to "guide." The theocratic element was not given
   in a hierarchy imposed upon the Church from without; it manifested
   itself within the community. It appeared in the presence, recognition
   and use made of gifts of government bestowed upon its membership which
   were none the less spiritual, divine and "from above," because they
   concerned the ordinary duties of oversight and manifested themselves in
   the natural endowments of members of the community. The presence of
   Christ among His people may be as easily manifested in the decision
   which the assembly of the local church arrives at by a majority [72] of
   votes as in the fiat launched from an episcopal chair. The latter is
   not necessarily from above, and the former is not of necessity from
   beneath.

   V. Lastly, the Church of Christ is a sacerdotal society.

   The Church of Christ is continually represented as the "ideal Israel."
   This is a favourite thought of St. Paul's, and it implies that the
   special function of the Church of Christ is to do in a better manner
   what the ancient Israel did imperfectly. When we ask what the special
   function of the ancient Israel was, we find it given in a great variety
   of ways, all of which include one central thought, best expressed
   perhaps by the phrase, "To approach God." This central idea was
   connected with the thoughts of special times of approach, or Holy
   Seasons; with a special place of approach, which was the Temple of
   God's Presence; and with a special set of men who made the approach on
   behalf of their fellows, and who were called Priests. When we turn to
   the Church of Christ we find the same central thought and the same
   dependent ideas. The main function of the New Testament Church is also
   to approach God. Just as in the Old Testament economy the priests when
   approaching God presented sacrifices to Him, so in the New Testament
   Church gifts are to be presented to God, and these gifts or offerings
   bear the Old Testament name of sacrifices. We are enjoined to present
   our bodies; [73] our praise, "that is the fruit of our lips which make
   confession to His name"; [74] our faith; [75] our alms-giving; [76] our
   "doing good and communicating." [77] These are all called "sacrifices,"
   or "sacrifices well-pleasing to God," and, to distinguish them from the
   offerings of the Old Testament economy, "spiritual or living
   sacrifices." [78] The exertions made by St. Paul to bring the heathen
   to a knowledge of the Saviour is also called a sacrifice or offering.
   [79] The New Testament Church is the ideal Israel, and does the work
   which the ancient Israel was appointed to do. The limitations only have
   disappeared. There is no trace in the New Testament Church of any
   specially holy places or times or persons. The Christian ideal is, to
   quote the late Dr. Lightfoot, a Holy Season extending all the year
   round, a Temple confined only by the limits of the habitable globe, and
   a Priesthood including every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. [80]

   This does not mean that the New Testament Church may not select special
   days for the public worship of God; that it may not dedicate buildings
   where the faithful can meet together to unite in offering the
   sacrifices of prayer and praise; that it may not set apart men from
   among its membership and appoint them to lead its devotions. But it
   does mean that God can be approached at all times, and in every place,
   and by every one among His people. His fellow believers may select one
   from among themselves to be their minister. There may be a ministering
   priesthood, but there cannot be a mediating priesthood within the
   Christian society. There is one Mediator only, and all, men, women and
   children, have the promise of immediate entrance into the presence of
   God, and are priests.

   Luther has expressed the thought of the sacerdotal character of the
   Church of Christ when he says, in a description of the Eucharistic
   service: "There our priest or minister stands before the altar, having
   been publicly called to his priestly function; he repeats publicly and
   distinctly Christ's words of the Institution; he takes the Bread and
   the Wine, and distributes it according to Christ's words; and we all
   kneel beside him and around him, men and women, young and old, master
   and servant, mistress and maid, all holy priests together, sanctified
   by the blood of Christ. We are there in our priestly dignity. . . . We
   do not let the priest proclaim for himself the ordinance of Christ; but
   he is the mouthpiece of us all, and we all say it with him in our
   hearts with true faith in the Lamb of God Who feeds us with His Body
   and Blood."

   This sacerdotal character of the whole Church of Christ was maintained
   in the primitive Christian Church down to at least the middle of the
   third century. Whatever evinced a whole-hearted dedication of one's
   self to God was a sacrifice which required no mediating priesthood in
   the offering. For the Christian sacrifice always means a sacrifice of
   self. When Polycarp gave his body to be burnt for the faith of Jesus,
   he gave it in sacrifice, and every martyr's death or suffering was a
   sacrifice well-pleasing to God. [81] When poor and humble believers
   fasted that they might have food to give to the hungry, they were
   sacrificing a spiritual sacrifice. [82] When Christians, either at home
   and in private or in the assembly for public worship, poured forth
   prayers and thanksgivings, they were offering sacrifice to God. [83]
   Justin Martyr does not hesitate to call such devotions "the only
   perfect and well-pleasing sacrifices to God." [84]

   And the Holy Supper, the very apex and crown of all Christian public
   worship, where Christ gives Himself to His people, and where His people
   dedicate themselves to Him in body, soul and spirit, was always a
   sacrifice as prayers, praises and almagi ring were. The Church of
   Christ was a sacerdotal society, its members were all priests, and its
   services were all sacrifices. [85]

   Such is the New Testament thought of the Church of Christ--a
   Fellowship, a United Fellowship, a Visible Fellowship, a Fellowship
   with an Authority bestowed upon it by its Lord, and a sacerdotal
   Fellowship whose every member has the right of direct access to the
   throne of God, bringing with him the sacrifices of himself, of his
   praise and of his confession.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [1] Matt. xvi. 18. Some modern critics (cf. Schmiedel in the Encyc.
   Bibl., p. 3105) declare that this passage could not have come from the
   lips of our Lord in the form in which it has been recorded, and in
   particular that He could not have used the word "ecclesia"; the main
   reason given being that our Lord sought to reform hearts and not
   external conditions. To argue from that statement, however true it may
   be, that Jesus had no intention of founding a religious community and
   could not have used the word "church," seems to me to be purely
   subjective and therefore untrustworthy reasoning. Besides, the use of
   the word by St. Paul in Gal. i. 13, shows that St. Paul found the word
   existing within Christian circles when he embraced the new faith; and
   to find it in common use at so early a period entitles us, in my
   judgment, to trace it back to Jesus Himself. The trend of modern
   criticism has been to place St. Paul's conversion much closer to the
   crucifixion than it was formerly held to be. St. Paul implies that the
   words of the eucharistic formula (Mk. xiv. 22-24, Matt. xxvi. 26-28)
   came from Jesus; he takes it for granted that every one who becomes a
   Christian (himself included) must be baptized. We have thus, quite
   independently of the Gospels or of the Acts, "church," "baptism," "the
   eucharist"--all implying a religious community, all in common use at a
   time scarcely two years after the death of our Lord, That entitles us
   to attribute them to Jesus Himself.

   [2] Compare Josephus, Antiq. XV. x. 3; Bell. Jud. I, xxi. 3. See also
   Schürer, Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes (1898, 3rd ed.), ii. 158 f.;
   G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of Palestine, p. 473 ff.; Wissowa,
   Religion and Kultus der Römer (1902), p. 284, n. 3.

   [3] Numbers x. 2, 3. In the Old Testament two words are used to denote
   the assembling of Israel, qahal and 'edah; the former is translated
   "assembly" and the latter "congregation" in the Revised Version. In the
   Septuagint ekklesia is almost always always used to translate qahal,
   and sunagoge to translate 'edah. Both Greek words appear continually in
   the later Hellenistic Judaism, and it is difficult to distinguish their
   meanings; but Schürer is inclined to think that sunagoge means the
   assembly of Israel as a matter of fact; while ekklesia has always an
   ideal reference attached to it. Compare Schürer, Geschichte des
   Jüdischen Volkes (3rd ed. 1898), ii. 432, n. 10; Hort, The Christian
   Ecclesia, pp. 5-7.

   [4] This is the common use of the word in classical Greek; in the later
   Greek the word denotes any popular assembly, even a disorderly one; it
   is this use that is found in Acts xix. 41. Dio Cassius uses the word to
   denote the Roman comitia or ruling popular assembly of the sovereign
   Roman people. The ruling idea in the word, whether in classical or in
   Hellenistic Greek, is that it denotes an assembly of the people, not of
   a committee or council. Against this view compare Hatch, The
   Organization of the Early Christian Churches (1881), p. 30, n. 11; and
   for a criticism of Hatch, see Sohm, Kirchenrecht (1892), i. 17, n. 4.

   [5] Acts xv. 16; cf. Amos ix. 11.

   [6] Gal. vi. 16; Acts xx. 28; cf. Ps. lxxiv. 2.

   [7] Weizsäcker, Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie, xviii, 481.

   [8] The rock on which the Church is founded is "a human character
   acknowledging our Lord's divine Sonship." Gore, The Church and the
   Ministry, 3rd ed. p. 38. "In virtue of this personal faith vivifying
   their discipleship, the Apostles became themselves the first little
   Ecclesia, constituting a living rock upon which a far larger and ever
   enlarging Ecclesia should very shortly be built slowly up, living stone
   by living stone, as each new faithful convert was added to the
   society." Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, p. 17.

   [9] Matt xvi. 22, 23. The suggestion of the Evil One to Peter, and
   presented to our Lord by Peter--the possibility of Messiahship without
   suffering--met the Saviour at the great moments of His earthly
   ministry; at the beginning, in the Temptation scene; here, when he had
   the vision and gave the promise of the Church; at the end, in the
   Garden of Gethsemane. There are indications in the Gospels that it was
   the temptation never absent from his mind. In the form in which it
   presents itself to His followers--the possibility of saving fellowship
   with Jesus apart from trust on a suffering Saviour--it has perhaps also
   been the crowning temptation of His Church and followers. If our Lord
   alluded to this special temptation when He said to St. Peter, near the
   end, "Simon, Simon, behold Satan asked to have you that he might sift
   you as wheat," as is most likely from His references to His own
   temptations and to St. Peter's relation to his brethren, there is a
   delicate suggestion of fellowship softening rebuke and vivifying the
   promise; Luke xxii. 31.

   [10] 1 Cor. i. 2.

   [11] Phil. i. 1; Eph. i. 1; Col. i. 2; Rom. i. 7.

   [12] 1 Cor. xii.; Eph. iv. 4-13; Rom. xii. 3-16. It is important to
   notice that St. Paul, in Rom. xii. 7, makes diakonia a "gift" which
   manifests the presence of Christ, and that this word is used to mean
   any kind of "ministry" within the Church. See below p. 62.

   [13] See p. 63 n.

   [14] For St. Paul's statement about the "gifts': compare Hort, The
   Christian Ecclesia, pp. 153-70; Heinrici, Das Erste Sendschreiben des
   Apostel Paulus an die Korinther (1880), pp. 347-463; Kühl, Die
   Gemeindeordnung in den Pastoralbriefen (1885), pp. 42-49.

   [15] Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age (English translation), I. p. 44 ff.

   [16] It ought to be noted, however, that although we do not find the
   word "ecclesia" in 1 Peter, we do find the thought of the unity of all
   believers strongly expressed in a variety of ways: "Ye are an elect
   race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own
   possession" (1 Peter ii. 9); and in v. 17 we have the word
   "brotherhood" used to bring out the same idea: This word in the early
   centuries was technically used as synonymous with ecclesia. See below
   p. 21. The double meaning of ecclesia is found in Matt. xvi. 18
   compared with Matt. xviii. 17. In the Apocalypse the unity is expressed
   in the phrase "the Bride, the Lamb's wife," and the plurality in the
   "Seven Churches" (Rev. xxi. 9; ii. 1, etc).

   [17] The various passages in which the word "ecclesia" occurs in the
   sense of the Christian society have often been collected and grouped.
   The following classification is based on that of Dr. Hort. i. The word
   "ecclesia," in the singular and with the article, is used to denote:--
   1. The original Church of Jerusalem and Judea, when there was no other;
   Acts v. 11; viii. 1, 3; Gal. i. 13; 1 Cor. xv. 9; Phil. iii. 6. 2. The
   sum total of the churches in Judea, Samaria and Galilee; Acts ix. 31.
   3. The local church:--Jerusalem, Acts xi. 22; xii. 1, 5; xv. 4.
   Thessalonica, 1 Thess. i. 1; 2 Thess. i. 1. Corinth, 1 Cor. i. 2; vi.
   4; xiv. 12, 23; 2 Cor. i. 1; Rom. xvi. 23. Cenchrea, Rom. xvi. 1.
   Laodicea, Col. iv. 16. Antioch, Acts xiii. 1; xv. 2. Each of the Seven
   Churches of Asia, Rev. ii. iii. Ephesus, Acts xi. 26; xiv. 27; xx. 17;
   1 Tim. v. 16. Caesarea, Acts xviii. 22. Also in Jas. v. 14; 3 John 9,
   10. 4. The assembly of a local church:--Acts xv. 22; 1 Cor. xiv. 23. 5.
   The House Church:--at Ephesus, 1 Cor. xvi. 19; at Rome, xvi. 5; at
   Colossae, Col. iv. 15; Philem. 2. ii. The word "ecclesia," in the
   singular and without the article, is used to denote:-- 1. Every local
   church within a definite district:--Acts xiv. 23. 2. Any or every local
   Church:--1 Cor. xiv. 4; iv. 17; Phil. iv. 15; and probably 1 Tim. iii.
   5, 15. 3. The assembly of the local church:--1 Cor. xiv. 19, 35; xi.
   18; 3 John 6. iii. The word "ecclesia" in the plural is used to
   denote:-- 1. The sum of the local churches within a definite district.
   the name being given or implied:--Judea, 1 Thess. ii. 14; Gal. i. 22.
   Galatia, 1 Cor. xvi. 1; Gal. i. 2. Syria and Cilicia, Acts xv. 41.
   Derbe and Lystra, Acts xvi. 5. Macedonia, 2 Cor. viii. 1, 19. Asia, 1
   Cor. xvi. 19; Rev. i. 4, 11, 20; ii. 7, 11, 17, 29; iii. 6, 13, 22;
   xxii. 16. 2. An indefinite number of local churches:--2 Cor. xi. 8, 28;
   viii. 23, 24; Rom. xvi. 4, 16. 3. The sum total of all the local
   churches:--2 Thess. i. 4; 1 Cor. vii. 17; xi. 16; xiv. 33; 2 Cor. xii.
   13. 4. The assemblies of all the local churches:--1 Cor. xiv. 34. iv.
   The word "ecclesia" is used in the singular to denote:-- 1. The one
   universal Church as represented in the individual local Church:--l Cor.
   x. 32; xi. 22; (and probably) xii. 28; Acts xx. 28; (and perhaps) 1
   Tim. iii. 5, 15. 2. The one universal Church absolutely:--Col. i. 18,
   24; Eph. i. 22; iii. 10, 21; v. 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 32. Compare also
   Bannerman, The Scripture Doctrine of the Church, p. 571 ff.; Hort, The
   Christian Ecclesia, pp. 116-118.

   [18] 1 Thess. ii. 14; cf. i. 1.

   [19] 1 Cor. i. 12, 13; vi. 9.

   [20] 1 Cor. iv. 17; vii. 17; xi. 2, 23; xvi. l.

   [21] Gal. iii. 28.

   [22] Rom. xi. 17.

   [23] Professor Ramsay traces a growth of definiteness in St. Paul's use
   of the word "Church" from its application to a single congregation to
   its use to denote what he calls the "Unified Church," and ingeniously
   connects the use in each case with political parallels. Thus the phrase
   "the Church of the Thessalonians" corresponds in civil usage to the
   ecclesia of the Greek city-state, while the phrase "the Church in
   Corinth," suggesting as it does, "the Church" in other places as well
   as in Corinth, corresponds in civil usage to a universal and
   all-embracing political organization like the Roman Empire. Ramsay, St.
   Paul the Traveller, pp. 124-7. Whether this be true or not, few will
   fail to find a connexion between the wide meaning the apostle puts into
   the word "Church" in the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the
   Colossians, and the imperial associations of the city from which he
   wrote. "Writing now from Rome, he (St. Paul) could not have divested
   himself, if he would, of a sense of writing from the centre of all
   earthly human affairs; all the more since we know from the narrative in
   Acts xxii. that he himself was a Roman citizen, and apparently proud to
   hold this place in the Empire. Here then he must have been vividly
   reminded of the already existing unity which comprehended both Jew and
   Gentile under the bond of subjection to the emperor at Rome, and
   similarity and contrast would alike suggest that a truer unity bound
   together in one society all believers in the crucified Lord." Hort, The
   Christian Ecclesia, p. 143.

   [24] "Not in abstraction or isolation, but in communion lies the very
   meaning of personality itself," Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, p. 5.
   "Fellowship is to the higher life what food is to the natural
   life--without it every power flags and at last perishes," Hort, Hulsean
   Lectures, p. 194.

   [25] Eph. iv. 4-6.

   [26] This thought has been beautifully expressed by Dr. Sanday, The
   Conception of Priesthood (1898), pp. 11-14.

   [27] To the Smyrnaeans, 8.

   [28] Exegetes differ about the exact translation of 1 Cor. xii. 27:
   humeis de este soma Christou A few (such as Godet) translate it: "a
   body of Christ"; by far the largest number translate: "the Body of
   Christ"; many "Christ's Body," leaving the exact thought indeterminate.
   It seems to me that the exact rendering, a or the, cannot be reached
   from purely grammatical reasoning. St. Paul is completing his metaphor
   or interpreting his parable, He has been emphasizing the fact that the
   Christian community at Corinth is an organism with a variety of parts
   differing in structure and function. It is a perfect organism in the
   sense that there is no necessary part lacking that is required for the
   purpose the organism is intended, to serve for its support or increase
   or for work. The life which pervades the organism in its totality and
   in every minutest part is Christ (Col. iii. 14). The organism is the
   Body of Christ.

   [29] "Este potius . . . Christianus, pecuniam tuam adsidente Christo
   spectantibus angelis et martyris praesentibus super mensam dominicam
   sparge." De Aleatoribus, 11; Harnack and v. Gebhardt, Texte u.
   Untersuchungen, V. i. 29.

   [30] Origen, De Or. 31:--"Kai angelikon dunameon ephistamenon tois
   athroismasi ton pisteuonton kai autou tou kuriou kai soteros hemon
   dunameos ede de kai pneumaton hagion, oimai de, hoti kai
   prokekoimemenon; saphes de, hoti kai en to bio perionton, ei kai to pos
   ouk eucheres eipein."

   [31] Tertullian, De exhortatione castitatis, 7; compare De poenitentia,
   10; De pudicitia, 21; De fuga in persecutione, 14.

   [32] Rom. vi. 3-8.; Gal. iii. 27.

   [33] 2 Cor. xi. 23-27.

   [34] Compare Dobschütz, Die Urchristlichen Gemeinden,
   Sittensgeschichtliche Bilder (1902), pp. 18 ff.

   [35] Compare Robertson, Regnum Dei, p. 54:--"It (the kingdom of Christ)
   is the Kingdom of God in its idea--in potency and in promise: but
   visibly and openly not yet. This is St. Paul's well-known paradox of
   the Christian life. Our whole task as Christians is to become what we
   are."

   [36] As in 1 Cor. x. 32; xi. 22; and xii. 28; compare above p. 11, note
   2, § iv. 1.

   [37] The principle which underlies the claim generally associated with
   the ambiguous phrase "apostolic succession" is so curiously like the
   demand made by "those of the sect of the Pharisees who believed" in
   the, days of St. Paul, that it can be most naturally expressed in the
   same language if only a "succession of bishops" takes the place of
   "circumcision."

   [38] Gen. xvii. 13.

   [39] Gal. ii. 9: "And when they perceived the grace that was given unto
   me, James and Cephas and John, they who were reputed to be pillars,
   gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should
   go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision."

   [40] See Sources of the Apostolic Canons, where ekklesia appears in § 1
   and adolphotes in § 2; Texte u. Untersuchungen, II. v. 7. 12.

   [41] For universa fraternitas, see the tract De Aleatoribus, 1; Texte
   u. Untersuchungen, V. i. 11; omnis fraternitas, V. i. 14; compare
   Tertullian, Apologia, 39; De praescriptione, 20; De pudicitia, 13. For
   pasa he adolphotes, see 1 Clem. ii. 4; and Harnack's note on the
   passage; also 1 Peter ii. 17.

   [42] Acts xi. 30; cf. xii. 25.

   [43] Col. iv. 16; where St. Paul asks that his letter be read to the
   Church of Laodicea.

   [44] 1 Thess. iv. 9-11.

   [45] Rom. xvi. 16; 1 Cor. xvi. 19.

   [46] Rom. xvi. 21-23; 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Gal. i. 2; Phil. iv. 21, 22; Col.
   i. 1, 2.

   [47] 2 Cor. i. 1.

   [48] 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Acts xix. 10.

   [49] Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, p. 274.

   [50] 1 Thess. iv. 1O.

   [51] 1 Cor. xvi. 1.

   [52] 1 Cor. x. 32; xii. 13; Rom. iii. 29.

   [53] Rendall, The Pauline Collection for the Saints, Expositor, Nov;
   1893. For St. Paul's conception of what was meant by "fellowship" and
   the methods he took to make it visible, see Weizsäcker, The Apostolic
   Age of the Christian Church (Eng. Trans.) I. p. 46 ff.; II, pp. 307-9;
   and Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 54, 130 ff.

   [54] Acts viii. 14-27.

   [55] Acts xi. 22, 23.

   [56] Some Anglican divines make strange deductions from the truth that
   the authority which belongs to the Church comes from above. They at
   once infer that inasmuch as the authority comes from above it cannot
   come directly to the whole Christian society; but must come through an
   official class of ministers who act as a species of plastic medium
   between our Lord and His people. Strange how Gnostic and Arian ideas
   banished from the creeds of the Church linger in thoughts about Orders!
   Then by a confusion of ideas they transfer the phrase "from above" to
   the human sphere, and make it an essential idea of legitimate
   ecclesiastical rule that it must be invariably communicated from a
   higher to a lower order of ministry! Why should authority imparted
   through the Christian Society be regarded as "from beneath," as of the
   earth earthy?

   [57] Ephes. v. 23; Col. i. 18.

   [58] "There is a tone of loving reverence and worship in the words Thou
   art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.' They answer to our Lord's
   picture of the spiritual experience of His disciples in His great
   intercessory prayer; I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou
   gavest Me out of the world; Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to
   Me; and they have kept Thy word. Now they know that all things,
   whatsoever Thou hast given Me, are from Thee; for the words which Thou
   gavest Me, I have given unto them; and they received them, and knew of
   a truth that I came forth from Thee, and they believed that Thou didst
   send Me." Bannerman, The Scripture Doctrine of the Church, p. 169.

   [59] Isaiah xiii. 20, 22. Compare Gore, The Church and the Ministry, p.
   223.

   [60] Matt. xxiii. 2, 3, 13:--hoti kleiete ten basileian ton ouranon
   emprosthen ton aithropon.

   [61] Rev. iii. 7:--tade legei ho hagios, ho alethinos, ho echon ten
   klein Dabid, ho anoigon kai oudeis kleisei, kai kleion kai oudeis
   anoigei.

   [62] John xx. 22, 23:--kai tou?to eipo`n enephu'sesen kai` le'gei
   autois, La'bete Pneuma Hagion an tinon aphete ta`s amarti'as, aphientai
   (apheontai Ti., W. H.) autois, a'n tinon kratete kekra'tentai.

   [63] "The main thought which the words convey is that of the reality of
   the power of absolution from sin granted to the Church and not of the
   particular organization through which the power is administered. There
   is nothing in the context to show that the gift was confined to any
   particular group (as the apostles) among the whole company present. The
   commission must therefore be regarded as properly the commission of the
   Christian society, and not as that of the Christian ministry (cf. Matt.
   v. 13, 14). The great mystery of the world, absolutely insoluble by
   thought, is that of sin; the mission of Christ was to bring salvation
   from sin; and the work of the Church is to apply to all that which He
   has gained. Christ risen was Himself the sign of the completed
   overthrow of death, the end of sin, and the impartment of His life
   necessarily carried with it the fruit of His conquest. Thus the promise
   is in one sense an interpretation of the gift. The gift of the Holy
   Spirit finds its application in the communication or withholding of the
   powers of the new life. . . . The promise, as being made not to one but
   to the Society, carries with it of necessity . . . the character of
   perpetuity: the society never dies. . . . The exercise of the power
   must be placed in the closest connexion with the faculty of spiritual
   discernment, consequent on the gift of the Holy Spirit." Westcott,
   Gospel of St. John, p. 295.

   [64] Cf. 1 Peter iv. 10: "According as each hath received a gift,
   ministering it among yourselves, as good stewards of the manifold grace
   of God."

   [65] The relations of the Twelve to the Church of Christ are strikingly
   brought out by Dr. Hort in his Christian Ecclesia, pp. 23-41. On the
   title apostle he says: "Taking these facts together respecting the
   usage of the Gospels, we are led, I think, to the conclusion that in
   its original sense the term Apostle was not intended to describe the
   habitual relation of the Twelve to our Lord during the days of His
   ministry, but strictly speaking only that mission among the villages,
   of which the beginning and the end are recorded for us." . . . "If they
   (the Twelve) represented an apostolic order within the Ecclesia then
   the Holy Communion must have been intended only for members of that
   order, and the rest of the Ecclesia had no part in it. But if, as the
   men of the apostolic age and subsequent ages believed without
   hesitation, the Holy Communion was meant for the Ecclesia at large,
   then the Twelve sat down that evening as representatives of the
   Ecclesia at large; they were disciples more than they were apostles."

   [66] St. Paul in his account of the appearances of our Lord after His
   Resurrection distinguishes between the Twelve and apostles; 1 Cor. xv.
   5-8; cf. below, pp. 74-85.

   [67] Matt. x. 40; cf. Luke x. 16; Matt. xviii. 5; Mark ix. 37; Luke ix.
   48.

   [68] Acts i. 23; vi. 5.

   [69] Acts xi. 22.

   [70] On the conduct of St. Peter at Caesarea, Acts xi. 1-4; on the
   opinions and practices of St. Paul, xv. 12, 22-29, and whatever
   differences may be found in the account of the proceedings in this
   chapter and in St. Paul's statement in the Epistle to the Galatians
   (Gal. ii. 1 ff.) there is no question that both recognize the supremacy
   of the assembly of the Church.

   [71] 1 Cor. v. 3-5; Gal. vi. 1.

   [72] The censure inflicted on the member of the Corinthian Church who
   had disobeyed the Apostle Paul was carried by a majority: 2 Cor. ii. 6.
   he epitimia au'te he hupo ton pleionon.

   [73] Rom. xii. 1: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of
   God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to
   God, which is your reasonable service (ten logiken latreian humon)."
   The thought expressed is that the Christian should consecrate the whole
   personality, body, soul and spirit to God; and thus all service whether
   of work or worship became a sacrifice. Compare Ps. li. 15-17.

   [74] Heb. xiii. 15.

   [75] Phil. ii. 17.

   [76] Paul's great collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem is an
   offering: Acts xxiv. 17; so is the contributions which the members of
   the Church at Philippi sent to the apostle: Phil. iv. 18.

   [77] Heb. xiii. 16.

   [78] Thusiai pneumatikai: 1 Pet. ii. 5; thusia zosa: Rom. xii. 1; cf.
   Phil. ii. 17.

   [79] Rom. xv. 16.

   [80] Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians (1881), 6th ed. p.
   183.

   [81] Compare Letter of the Smyrnaeans on the Martyrdom of Polycarp, 14:
   "Then he, placing his arms behind him and being hound to the stake,
   like a goodly ram out of a great flock for an offering, a burnt
   sacrifice made ready and acceptable to God, looking up to heaven, said:
   O Lord God Almighty. . . ."

   [82] Aristides, Apology, 15: "And if any among the Christians is poor
   and in want, and they have not overmuch of the means of life, they fast
   two or three days, in order that they may provide those in need with
   the food they require." A favourite phrase to describe widows and
   orphans was "the altar of God" on which the sacrifices of almsgiving
   were offered up. It is used by Polycarp, To the Philippians, 4; also in
   the Apostolic Constitutions, ii. 26 and iv. 3, of the orphans, the old
   and all who were supported by the benevolence of the faithful.
   Tertullian says of the widow: "aram enim Dei mundam proponi oportet,"
   Ad Uxor. i. 7.

   [83] Clement of Alexandria spiritualizes the Old Testament sacrifices
   to make them the forerunners of Christian prayers. "And that compounded
   incense which is mentioned in the Law, is that which consists of many
   tongues and voices in prayer . . . brought together in praises with a
   pure mind, and just and right conduct, from holy works and righteous
   prayer," Strom. vii. 6. In the same chapter he says: "For the sacrifice
   of the Church is the word breathing as incense from holy souls, the
   sacrifice and the whole mind being at the same time unveiled to God."

   [84] Dialogue, 117.

   [85] The conception of a mutilated sacerdotalism, where one part of the
   Christian worship is alone thought of as the true sacrifice, and a
   small portion of the fellowship--the ministry--is declared to be the
   priesthood, did not appear until the time of Cyprian, and was his
   invention.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER II

  A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN APOSTOLIC TIMES

   Can we, piercing the mists of two thousand years, see a Christian
   Church as it was in Apostolic times--a tiny island in a sea of
   surrounding heathenism? Our vision gets most assistance from the
   Epistles of St. Paul, which not only are the oldest records of the
   literature of the New Testament, but give us much clearer pictures of
   the earliest Christian assemblies for edification and thanksgiving than
   are to be found in the Acts of the Apostles. The more we study these
   epistles the more clearly we discern that we must not project into
   these primitive times a picture taken from any of the long organized
   churches of our days. On the other hand, we can see many an analogy in
   the usages of the growing churches of the mission field. This is not to
   be wondered at. The primitive church and churches growing among heathen
   surroundings have both to do with the origins of organization.

   For one thing, we must remember that the meetings of the congregation
   were held in private houses; [86] and as the number of believers grew,
   more than one house must have been placed at the service of the
   brethren for their meetings for public worship and for the transaction
   of the necessary business of the congregation. We are told that in the
   primitive church at Jerusalem the Lord's Supper was dispensed in the
   houses, [87] and that the brethren met in the house of Mary the mother
   of John Mark, [88] in the house of James the brother of our Lord, [89]
   and probably elsewhere. At the close of the Epistle to the Romans, St.
   Paul sends greetings to three, perhaps five, groups of brethren
   gathered round clusters of distinguished Christians whom he names. One
   of these groups he calls a "church," and the others were presumably so
   also. [90] The account of Saul, the persecutor, making havoc of the
   Church, entering every house and haling men and women to prison, reads
   like a record of the persecution of the Huguenots among the
   house-churches of Reformation times in France, or like raids on
   house-conventicles in the Covenanting times in Scotland. It becomes
   evident too as we study these early records that when it was possible,
   that is, when any member had a sufficiently large abode and was willing
   to open his house to the brethren, comparatively large assemblies,
   including all the Christians of the town or neighbourhood, met together
   at stated times and especially on the Lord's Day, for the service of
   thanksgiving. Gaius was able to accommodate all his fellow Christians,
   and was the "host of the whole Church." [91]

   Traces of these earliest house-churches survived in happier days. The
   ground plan of the earliest Roman church, discovered in 1900 in the
   Forum at Rome, is modelled not on the basilica or public hall, but on
   the audience hall of the wealthy Roman burgher, and the recollections
   of the familiar surroundings at the meetings in the house-churches
   probably guided the pencil of the architect who first planned the
   earliest public buildings dedicated to Christian worship. [92] Old
   liturgies which enjoin the deacon, at the period of the service when
   the Lord's Supper is about to be celebrated, to command the mothers to
   take their babies on their knees, bring [93] with them memories of
   these homely gatherings in private houses, which lasted down to the
   close of the second century and probably much later, except in the
   larger towns. [94]

   It is St. Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, who gives us
   the most distinct picture of the meetings of the earliest Christian
   communities. The brethren appear to have had three distinct
   meetings--one for the purposes of edification by prayer and
   exhortation, another for thanksgiving which began with a common meal
   and ended with the Holy Supper, [95] and a third for the business of
   the little society.

   1. In his description of the first the apostle introduces us to an
   earnest company of men and women full of restrained enthusiasm, which
   might soon become unrestrained. We hear of no officials appointed to
   conduct the services. The brethren fill the body of the hall, the women
   sitting together, in all probability on the one side, and the men on
   the other; behind them are the inquirers; and behind them, clustering
   round the door, unbelievers, whom curiosity or some other motive has
   attracted, and who are welcomed to this meeting "for the Word."

   The service, and probably each part of the service, began with the
   benediction: "Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the
   Lord Jesus Christ," which was followed by an invocation of Jesus and
   the confession that He is Lord. [96] One of the brethren began to pray;
   then another and another; one began the Lord's Prayer, [97] and all
   joined; each prayer was followed by a hearty and fervent "Amen." [98]
   Then a hymn was sung; then another and another, for several of the
   brethren have composed or selected hymns at home which they wish to be
   sung by the congregation. [99] Several of these hymns are preserved in
   the New Testament, and one is embodied in one of our Scotch
   paraphrases: [100] --


   To Him be power divine ascribed,

   And endless blessings paid;

   Salvation, glory, joy, remain

   For ever on His Head:


   Thou hast redeemed us with Thy Blood,

   And set the prisoners free;

   Thou mad'st us kings and priests to God,

   And we shall reign with Thee,


   *   *   *   *   *


   To Him that sits upon the throne

   The God whom we adore,

   And to the Lamb that once was slain;

   Be glory evermore. [101]

   After the hymns came reading from the Old Testament Scriptures, and
   readings or recitations concerning the life and death, the sayings and
   deeds of Jesus. [102] Then came the "instruction"--sober words for
   edification, based on what had been read, and coming either from the
   gift of "wisdom," or from that intuitive power of seeing into the heart
   of spiritual things which the apostle calls "knowledge." [103] Then
   came the moment of greatest expectancy. It was the time for the
   prophets, men who believed themselves and were believed by their
   brethren to be specially taught by the Holy Spirit, to take part. They
   started forward, the gifted men, so eager to impart what had been given
   them, that sometimes two or more rose at once and spoke together; [104]
   and sometimes when one was speaking the message came to another, and he
   leapt to his feet, [105] increasing the emotion and taking from the
   edification. When the prophets were silent, first one, then another,
   and sometimes two at once, began strange ejaculatory prayers, [106] in
   sentences so rugged and disjointed that the audience for the most part
   could not understand, and had to wait till some of their number, who
   could follow the strange utterances, were ready to translate them into
   intelligible language. [107] Then followed the benediction: "The Grace
   of the Lord Jesus be with you all"; the "kiss of peace"; and the
   congregation dispersed. Sometimes during the meeting, at some part of
   the services, but oftenest when the prophets were speaking, there was a
   stir at the back of the room, and a heathen, who had been listening in
   careless curiosity or in barely concealed scorn, suddenly felt the
   sinful secrets of his own heart revealed to him, and pushing forward
   fell down at the feet of the speaker and made his confession, [108]
   while the assembly raised the doxology: "Blessed be God, the Father of
   the Lord Jesus, for evermore. [109] Amen."

   Such was a Christian meeting for public worship in Corinth in apostolic
   times; and foreign as it may seem to us, the like can be still seen in
   mission fields among the hot-blooded people of the East. I have
   witnessed everything but the speaking "with tongues" in meetings of
   native Christians in the Deccan in India, when European influence was
   not present to restrain Eastern enthusiasm and condense it in Western
   moulds.

   The meeting described by the apostle is not to be taken as something
   which might be seen in Corinth but was peculiar to that city; it may be
   taken as a type of the Christian meeting throughout the Gentile
   Christian Churches; for the Apostle, in his suggestions and criticisms,
   continually speaks of what took place throughout all the churches.
   [110]

   It is to be observed that if the apostle finds fault with some things,
   he gives the order of the service and expressly approves of every part
   of it, even of the strange ejaculatory prayers. [111] He gives his
   Corinthian converts one broad principle, which he expects them to apply
   for themselves in order to better their service. Everything is to be
   done for the edification of the brethren, and the first qualification
   for edification is that all things be done "decently and in order," for
   God is not a God of confusion but of peace. [112] He gives examples of
   his principle. The prophets were to restrain themselves; they were to
   speak one at a time, and not more than two or three at one meeting;
   [113] and those who prayed "in tongues" were to keep silence altogether
   unless some one who could interpret was present, for it is better to
   speak five words with understanding than ten thousand in a tongue. The
   women too who had the gift of prophecy were to use it in private, and
   not start forward at the public meeting and deliver their message
   there. So far from finding fault with the kind of meeting described,
   St. Paul seems to look on the manifestation of these gifts of praise,
   prayer, teaching, and prophecy, within the congregation at Corinth, as
   an evidence that the Christian community there was completely furnished
   within its own membership with all the gifts needed for the building up
   in faith and works. [114]

   What cannot fail to strike us in this picture is the untrammelled
   liberty of the worship, the possibility of every male member of the
   congregation taking part in the prayers and the exhortations, and the
   consequent responsibility laid on the whole community to see that the
   service was for the edification of all. When we consider the rebukes
   that the apostle considered it necessary to administer, it is also
   somewhat surprising to find so few injunctions which take the form of
   definite rules for public worship, and to observe the confidence which
   the apostle had that if certain broad principles were laid down and
   observed, the community was of itself able to conduct all things with
   that attention to decency and order which ensured edification.

   Our wonder is apt to be increased when we remember the social
   surroundings and conditions of these Corinthian Christians. They were a
   number of burghers, freedmen and slaves, who, as their names show, were
   mostly of Roman origin, gathered from the wealthiest and most
   profligate city on the Mediterranean. The population of Corinth was as
   mixed as that of Alexandria. At Cenchrea, on the eastern shore of the
   isthmus, the wealth of Asia and Egypt poured in, and was sent off to
   Rome and Italy from Lechaeum, the western harbour. The flow of commerce
   brought with it the peoples, religions and habits of all lands. The
   religion of the city was a strange medley of cults Eastern and Western.
   Aphrodite and Astarte, Isis and Cybele, were among her deities; Romans,
   Jews, Egyptians and Phoenicians among her people. The familiar
   illustrations which the apostle uses in his epistles indicate the
   habits of the population. He speaks of the arena and the wild-beast
   fights, [115] of the theatre, [116] of the boxing match and the stadium
   race, [117] of the great idol-feasts and processions. [118] The city,
   we know, was honeycombed with "gilds"--religious corporations for the
   practices of the Eastern religions, and trades unions for the artizans
   and the seamen. The Christian society was gathered from all classes;
   from the poor and the slaves, [119] from the well-to-do like the city
   treasurer, [120] and an elder from the Jewish Synagogue; [121] it
   included ladies of rank like Chloe, [122] and men of abounding wealth
   like Gains. [123] It was this hcterogenous society, including so many
   jarring elements, that the apostle expected to develop into an orderly
   Church of Christ in virtue of the " gifts " of the Spirit implanted
   within it.

   2. It is by no means so easy to get a clear picture of the second
   meeting of the Christian community--the meeting for thanksgiving--as it
   is to see what the meeting for edification was like. [124] With the
   latter we have only to remove the blemishes which the apostle found,
   and the vision of the meeting as he approved of it stands clearly
   before us. But the abuses which had corrupted the meeting for
   thanksgiving had so changed it, from what it ought to have been, that
   it could not serve what it was meant to do. The framework of the
   degenerate meeting and of the same gathering re-organized according to
   the apostle's directions can easily be traced. The members of the
   Christian community in Corinth assembled together in one place, where
   they ate together a meal which they themselves provided; and this
   meeting ended with the celebration of the Lord's Supper. The Holy
   Supper was the essential part. The common meal and what belonged to it
   were accessories, the casket to contain the one precious jewel, the
   body to be vivified by this soul. It was the Holy Supper that really
   brought them together; but their conduct had made it impossible for
   them to be the Lord's guests at His Table. [125] The apostle tells the
   Corinthians that their meeting could not be a Lord's Supper nor even a
   love-feast if each ate his own meal and one was hungry, while another
   drank his fill. [126] The common meal showed that all the brethren
   belonged to one living organism which was the Church in Corinth, of
   which the Lord was the Head. Nothing could so wound this thought as
   making the distinctions between rich and poor, which had been done. It
   banished the whole idea of fellow-ship, and sensuality was introduced
   where, above all places, it ought to have been absent. [127] God had
   manifested His displeasure by sending sickness and death into the
   congregation. [128] The apostle lays down a general principle, and
   gives instances of its application, which if followed out will make the
   common meal a fitting introduction to the Holy Supper, and then shows
   how the Lord's Supper itself is to be solemnly and fitly celebrated
   according to the commands of Jesus. If we take the principles which the
   apostle lays down and suggestions from other portions of the New
   Testament, with those which come from the earliest post-apostolic
   descriptions of similar meetings, we may perhaps venture to reconstruct
   the scene.

   The apostle shows that this meeting for thanksgiving is to be a social
   meal representing the fellowship which subsists between all the members
   of the brotherhood, because they have each a personal fellowship with
   their Lord. They are therefore to eat all together, and if anyone is
   too hungry to wait for his neighbours he ought to eat at home. It is
   also to be a fitting introduction for the Lord's Supper, which both
   symbolises and imparts that personal fellowship with Christ which is
   the permanent basis of their fellowship with each other. This thought
   that the Holy Supper is to come at the end of it must dominate the
   meeting during its entire duration. From beginning to end the brethren
   are at the Lord's Table and are His guests.

   The whole membership of the Church at Corinth met together at one place
   on a fixed day, the Lord's day, [129] for their Thanks-giving Meeting.
   The meeting was confined to the member-ship; even catechumens, as well
   as inquirers and unbelievers, were excluded. The partakers brought
   provisions, according to their ability. Some of the brethren, who
   belonged to that honoured number who were recognized to have the
   prophetic gift, presided. [130] The food brought was handed over to
   them, and they distributed so that the superfluity of the rich made up
   for the lack of the poor. They also conducted the devotional services
   at the feast and at the Holy Supper which followed. The presidents
   began with prayers of thanksgiving for the food prepared for them and
   before them; [131] it was an evidence of the bounty of God the Creator;
   a pledge of His fellowship with them His creatures; a warrant for their
   continuous trust in His Fatherly care and providence; and a suggestion
   of the bounties of His redemption which were more fully symbolised in
   the Holy Supper which followed. [132] During the feast the brethren
   were taught to regard themselves as in God's presence and His guests;
   but this did not hinder a prevailing sense of gladness, nor prevent
   them satisfying their hunger and their thirst; God the creator had
   placed the food and drink before them for that purpose. [133] It did
   prevent all unseemly behaviour, all unbrotherly conduct in speech or
   action, and it insisted on the absence of all who were at variance with
   their neighbours until the quarrel had been put an end to. [134] During
   the feast hymns were sung at intervals, and probably short exhortations
   were given by the prophets. [135] Then when all was decently finished
   the Holy Communion was solemnly celebrated as commanded by the apostle.

   3. It is to be remembered that the apostle regarded the community of
   Christians at Corinth as something more than a society for performing
   together acts of public worship, whether eucharistic or for prayer,
   praise and exhortation. It was a little self-governing republic. This
   made the third kind of meeting necessary. The common worship of the
   society, especially the eucharistic service, united it with the whole
   brotherhood of believers throughout the world, and showed it to be in
   the succession from the ancient people of God; [136] but it had a
   corporate unity of its own which manifested itself in actions for which
   the whole body of the Corinthian believers were responsible. This local
   unity took shape in the meeting of the congregation which is expressly
   called the "Church" [137] by the apostle, at which all the members
   apparently had the right of appearing and taking part in the discussion
   and voting--women at first as well as men.

   This meeting had charge of the discipline of the congregation and of
   the fraternal relations between the community and other Christian
   communities. Letters seeking apostolic advice were prepared and
   dispatched in its name; [138] it appointed delegates to represent the
   church and gave them letters of commendation, [139] and in all
   probability it took charge of the money gathered in the great
   collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem. [140] The whole
   administration of the external affairs of the congregation was under
   its control; and this was a work of very great importance, because it
   was this fraternal intercourse that made visible the essential unity of
   the whole Church of Christ.

   It exercised the same complete control over the internal administration
   of the affairs of the congregation. It expelled unworthy members; [141]
   it deliberated upon and came to conclusions about the restoration of
   brethren who had fallen away and showed signs of repentance. [142] It
   arrived at its decisions when necessary by voting, and the vote of the
   majority decided the case. [143] We hear nothing in the epistles of a
   common congregational fund for purposes common to the brethren; if such
   existed it was probably under the care of this meeting also.

   All these things implied independent self-government; and the apostle
   asks the brethren to undertake another task which shows even more
   clearly how independent and autonomous he expected the congregation to
   be. He censured Christians for bringing their fellow-believers before
   the ordinary law-courts should disputes arise between brethren; he
   urged that such matters should be settled within the congregation. He
   used stronger language about this than about any other side of the
   practical expression of their religious life. "Dare any of you," he
   says, "having a matter against his neighbour, go to law before the
   unrighteous, and not before the saints?" [144] To grasp the full
   significance of his meaning we must remember that the apostle is
   speaking to men living in the busiest commercial city of the age, and
   to a little community within it which included city officials,
   merchants, and artizans, as well as slaves. He is not addressing men
   belonging to a small rural village where life is simple and the
   occasions of dispute few and mainly personal. The Christians of Corinth
   lived in the grasp of a highly artificial and complicated commercial
   life, where the complexity of affairs offered any number of points at
   which differences of opinion might honestly arise between brethren
   related as masters and servants, buyers and sellers, traders and
   carriers. It was men living in these surroundings whom the apostle
   ordered to abstain from going before the ordinary law courts for the
   purpose of settling disputes which might arise between them, and whom
   he commanded to create tribunals within the community before which they
   were to bring all differences. Have they not one single "wise man," he
   asks, among them who could act as judge? [145] We are apt to forget
   that Christianity came to establish a new social living as well as a
   religion, and that from the first it demanded that all the relations
   between man and man ought to be regulated on Christian principles. That
   means now that our national laws ought to conform to the principles of
   the Gospel; it meant then that all disputes were to be settled within
   the Christian community, and that nothing was to be taken before the
   heathen tribunals.

   Such is the picture of a Christian church in the Apostolic age, as it
   appears in the pages of the Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians,
   and, although no such clear outline is given us of any other Christian
   community, still we are warranted, as we shall see, in assuming that
   the Church in Corinth did not differ much from the other churches which
   came into being through the mission work of the great apostle to the
   Gentiles. [146] We see a little self-governing republic--a tiny island
   in a sea of surrounding paganism--with an active, eager, enthusiastic
   life of its own. It has its meetings for edification, open to all who
   care to attend, where the conversions are made which multiply the
   little community; its quieter meetings for thanksgiving, where none but
   the believing brethren assemble, and where the common meal enshrines
   the Holy Supper as the common fellowship among the brethren embodies
   the personal but not solitary fellowship which each believer has with
   the Redeemer; its business meetings where it rules its members in the
   true democratic fashion of a little village republic, and attaches
   itself to other brotherhoods who share the same faith and hope, trust
   in and live for the same Saviour, and have things in common in this
   world as well as beyond it. The meeting for thanksgiving represents the
   centre of spiritual repose, the quiet source of active life and
   service; the meeting for edification, the enthusiastic, eager,
   aggressive side of the life and work; and the business meeting, the
   deliberative and practical action of men who recognize that they are in
   the world though not of it.

   We can see our brethren in the faith living, loving, working together,
   quarrelling and making it up again, across these long centuries, and
   all very human as we are.

   The evidence for the independence and self-government of the churches
   to which St. Paul addressed his epistles is so overwhelming that it is
   impossible even to imagine the presence within them of any
   ecclesiastical authority with an origin and power independent of the
   assembly of the congregation, and the apostle does not make the
   slightest allusion to any such governing or controlling authority,
   whether vested in one man or in a group of men. The apostle was so
   filled with the sense of high rank to which all Christians are raised
   in being called to be "sons of God" through Jesus Christ, that in his
   view this sublime position makes all believers of equal standing no
   matter with what spiritual gifts and natural abilities particular
   individuals may be endowed. [147] It was a natural and practical
   consequence of this thought that all believers should share the
   responsibilities of control in the community to which they belonged. So
   we find it as a matter of fact in the churches to which St. Paul
   addressed his epistles. He did not write to ecclesiastical persons to
   whom the brethren owed obedience as to an authority different from, and
   superior to, the assembly of the congregation. He addressed his letters
   to the whole community, who, in his eyes, are responsible for the
   progress and good behaviour as for the misdeeds and decline of the
   society and of individual Christians within it. His letters are quite
   consistent with the existence of ministering officials who owe their
   position to the assembly and are responsible in the last resort to it;
   but they are not consistent with the existence within the community of
   any authority whose power comes directly from a source outside the
   brotherhood.

   In his letters to the Church at Corinth, the apostle makes scant
   allusion to office-bearers of any kind. The meeting of the congregation
   is the one thing which gathers up the unity of administration within
   the community. The apostle appears to acquiesce in this state of
   matters, unless we consider the query as to whether there are no wise
   men within the society who can settle disputes within the brotherhood
   to be a suggestion that some kind of recognized officials are needed
   for the furtherance of the orderly life of the local church. In verses
   3-15 of the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, whether these be
   a short letter addressed to the Church at Ephesus, as some think, or
   whether they be an integral part of the letter to "all that be in Rome,
   beloved of God, called to be saints," the apostle ad-dresses Christians
   who appear to be living in an even less organized condition of
   Christian fellowship. They form a unity because of their common faith
   and love; but that unity does not appear to find expression even in one
   common congregational meeting. Little companies, to whom the apostle
   unhesitatingly gives the name of "churches," have gathered round
   prominent persons who appear to have been the first converts, or those
   who had placed their houses at the disposal of the brethren for holding
   meetings for worship, or those who had voluntarily done special
   services to their fellow believers. The same condition of things is to
   be found at Colossae and at Laodicea. The apostle sends greetings to
   persons of different sexes and positions in life, but never to
   office-bearers as such. Nor among his many exhortations does he allude
   to the need of organization under hierarchical authority, still less
   does he prescribe a form of organization which was to be uniform
   throughout the whole Church of Christ.

   We do, however, find traces of an organization within the Christian
   communities, if we use the word in the most general way, in the
   Epistles of St. Paul. The meeting of the congregation is almost as
   prominent in the Church of the Thessalonians as it is at Corinth; it
   exercises discipline; [148] it selects faithful men to accompany the
   apostle to Jerusalem with the money brought together in the great
   collection; [149] it evidently has all administrative powers in its
   hands. But besides this, we hear of men who are called "those who are
   over you in the Lord," and the brethren of Thessalonica are told to
   value them highly for their works' sake. [150] In the Corinthian Church
   we hear of "gifts," of "helps" (antilepseis), anything that could be
   done for the poor or outcast brethren, either by rich and influential
   brethren, or by the devotion of those who stood on no such eminence;
   and guidances or "governments" (kuberneseis), men who by wise councils
   did for the community what the steersman or pilot does for the ship.
   [151] These "gifts" were bestowed on members of the community for the
   service of all; and men who were recognized to be able to guide wisely
   as well as others from whom all kinds of subordinate service could be
   expected, were present within the Christian community at Corinth. [152]
   Again the Corinthian Christians are told "to be in subjection" to
   Stephanas, the first convert, and others like him who have ministered
   to the saints and who have laboured among them, putting heart into
   their work. [153] In the Epistle to the Romans there is express mention
   of men who are over their brethren, and they are told to do their work
   diligently. [154] These references and others show us that there were
   men in these Christian societies who were recognized as leaders and who
   rendered continuous and valued services to their brethren by so doing.
   They may not have been office-bearers by election and appointment, but
   they were engaged in doing the work that office-bearers do in a
   Christian church.

   Altogether apart, however, from the organization of the local churches,
   whether developed or undeveloped, we find a ministry which existed in
   all the churches of the Epistles of St. Paul, and indeed in all the
   churches of the New Testament. We meet everywhere with men who are
   called prophets, and who occupy a distinguished place in the primitive
   churches. St. Paul esteemed them highly. He placed them second to
   apostles in his enumeration of the "gifts" bestowed by God on the
   churches. [155] He exhorts the Corinthian Christians to cultivate the
   "gift" of prophecy, and the Thessalonian Christians are told to cherish
   "prophesyings." It becomes evident the more these epistles of St. Paul
   are studied, that teaching and exhortation, associated afterwards in a
   very special manner with the functions of rule and leadership, were in
   the hands of the prophets to a very large extent in the apostolic
   Church, and that no inquiry into the "ministry" of the primitive Church
   can omit the functions and position of prophets and prophecy.

   This brings us to consider the "ministry" and organization of the
   churches in the apostolic age, a thing necessary to complete our
   conception of what a Christian society was like in these early times.
   The subject is interesting, but confessedly difficult. Yet we have
   light enough, from the writings of the New Testament and the earliest
   extra-canonic literature, to show us that it was entirely unlike
   anything which has existed in any part of the Christian Church from the
   beginning of the third century downwards.

   Before we begin to inquire what this ministry and organization were, it
   may be useful to note two things: first, it must be remembered that our
   Lord has clearly intimated that leadership within His Church was to
   have a distinctive character of its own; and secondly, there is from
   the very first beginnings of organization a clearly marked separation
   between two different kinds of ministry. [156]

   The distinctive character of leadership in the Christian Church is
   given in the saying of our Lord contained in Luke xxii. 26: "He that is
   greater among you let him become as the younger, and he that is chief
   as he that doth serve"; and this junction of service and leadership is
   maintained throughout the Epistles of St. Paul. The Corinthian
   Christians were to place themselves under the guidance of Stephanas and
   those like him who had served them and laboured among them. Those that
   are "over the Thessalonian brethren in the Lord" are the men who spend
   most labour upon them. Everywhere service and leadership go together.
   These two thoughts are continually associated with a third, that of
   "gifts"; for the qualifications which fit a man for service and
   therefore for rule within the Church of Christ are always looked upon
   as special "gifts" of the Spirit of God, or charismata. [157] Thus we
   have three thoughts: of qualification, which is the "gift" of God; the
   service to the Church of Christ which these "gifts" enable those who
   possess them to perform; and lastly the promise that such service is
   honoured by the Father, [158] and is the basis of leadership or rule
   within the Church of Christ.

   The earliest evidence we have for the beginnings of the organization of
   a local church is given in Acts vi., where we are told about "seven"
   men being set apart for what is called the "ministry of tables," and
   which is contrasted with the "ministry of the Word." [159] We have thus
   at the very beginnings of organization a division of ministry, or
   rather two different kinds of ministry, within the Church of Christ in
   the apostolic age. Harnack calls this division the "earliest datum in
   the history of organization." [160] The distinction which comes into
   sight at the very beginning runs all through the apostolic Church, and
   goes far down into the sub-apostolic period. It can be traced through
   the Pauline epistles and other New Testament writings, and down through
   such sub-apostolic writings as the Didache, the Pastor of Hermas, the
   Epistle of Barnabas, the Apology of Justin Martyr, and the writings of
   Irenaeus. It is also found in the Christian literature which does not
   belong to the main stream of the Church's history, among the Gnostics,
   the Marcionites and the Montanists. [161] The distinction ceases to be
   an essential one or one inherent in the very idea of the ministry when
   we get down as far as Tertullian, but it does not cease entirely.
   Prophets are found long after Tertullian's time, but they no longer
   occupy the position which once was theirs.

   The common name for those who belong to the first kind of ministry is "
   those speaking the Word of God," and this name is given to them not
   only in the New Testament, but also in the Didache, by Hermas, and by
   Clement of Rome. To the second class belonged the ministry of a local
   church by whatever names they came to be called, pastors, elders,
   bishops, deacons. We may call the first kind the prophetic, and the
   second kind the local ministry. The great practical distinction between
   the two was that the prophetic ministry did not mean office-bearers in
   a local church; while the local ministry consisted of these
   office-bearers. The one was a ministry to the whole Church of God, and
   by its activity bound all the scattered parts of the Church visible
   together; the other was a ministry within a local church, and, with the
   assembly of the congregate in, manifested and preserved the unity and
   the independence of the local community. In the apostolic and early
   sub-apostolic church the prophetic ministry was manifestly the higher
   and the local ministry the lower; the latter had to give place to the
   former even within the congregation over which they were
   office-bearers.

   But while this higher ministry can be clearly separated from the lower
   ministry of the local churches, it does not follow that these
   office-bearers did not from the first count among their number men who
   possessed the prophetic gift. Prophecy or the gift of magnetic
   utterance might come to any Christian, and St. Paul desired that it
   might belong to all. [162] The two ministries can be clearly
   distinguished, but no hard and fast line can be drawn between the men
   who compose the ministries. The "prophetic" gift of magnetic speech was
   so highly esteemed that it is only natural to suppose that when
   congregations chose their office-bearers they selected men so gifted,
   if any such were within their membership. This, we can see, was the
   case in later times. Polycarp was an office-bearer in the Church at
   Smyrna, but he was also a "prophet." [163] Ignatius of Antioch was a
   prophet. [164] Cyprian and other pastors in North Africa had the same
   gift, which was a personal and not an official source of enlightenment.
   [165] We have by no means obscure indications that what took place
   later happened in the earliest period. The "Seven," who were selected
   for the lower ministry in Jerusalem, did not confine themselves to the
   "service of tables," but were found among those who "spoke the Word of
   God" with power. [166]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [86] It is true that we read in Acts xix. 9, 10 that St. Paul held
   meetings in the Schola of Tyrannus: but this is a unique instance.

   [87] Acts ii. 46: klontes te kat' oikon a'rton.

   [88] Acts xii. 12: "The house of Mary, the mother of John whose surname
   was Mark; where many were gathered together and were praying."

   [89] Acts xxi. 18; xii. 17.

   [90] Rom. xvi. 3-5: "Salute Prisca and Aquila . . . and the church that
   is in their house"; xvi. 14: "Salute Asynsritus, Phlegon, Hermes,
   Patrobas, Hermas, and the brethren that are with them"; 15: "Salute
   Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and O1ympas, and all the
   saints that are with them"; 10: "Salute them which are of the household
   of Aristobulus"; 11: "Salute them of the household of Narcissus." The
   groups saluted in verses 10 and 11 may have been a number of freedmen
   or slaves belonging to the households of the two wealthy men mentioned;
   but the other three groups are evidently house-churches. St. Paul sends
   salutations to other house-churches; to that meeting in the house of
   Philemon at Colossae (Philem. 2), to that meeting in the house of
   Nymphas in Laodicea (Col. iv. 15), and to that meeting in the house of
   Stephanas (1 Cor. xvi. 15).

   [91] Rom. xvi. 23.

   [92] Compare C. Dehio, Die Genesis der christlichen Basilika in the
   Sitzensber. d. München. Akad. d. Wiss. 1882, ii. 301 ff.

   [93] In the so-called Liturgy of St. Clement there is the following
   rubric:-- "The order of James, the brother of John, the son of Zebedee.
   "And I James, the brother of John, the son of Zebedee, command that
   forthwith the deacon say, Let none of the hearers, none of the
   unbelievers, none of the heterodox stay. Ye who have prayed the former
   prayer, depart. Mothers, take up your children. Let us stand upright to
   present unto the Lord our offerings with fear and trembling." Neale and
   Littledale, Translations of Primitive Liturgies, p. 75. The writer had
   the privilege of worshipping in a house-church in the Lebanon under the
   shoulder of Sunim in the autumn of 1888. The long low vaulted kitchen
   had been swept and garnished for the occasion, though some of the pots
   still stood in a corner. The congregation sat on the floor--the men
   together in rows on the right and the women in rows on the left. During
   the services which preceded the Holy Communion, babies crawled about
   the floor making excursions from mother to father and back again. When
   the non-communicants had left, and the "elements," as we say in
   Scotland, were being uncovered, the mothers secured the straggling
   babies and kept them on their laps during the whole of the communion
   service, as was enjoined in the ancient rubric quoted above.

   [94] The earliest trace we find of buildings set apart exclusively for
   Christian worship dates from the beginning of the third century
   (202-210): Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, vii. 5. Clement speaks of a
   building erected in honour of God, while he insists that it is the
   assembly of the people and not the place where they assemble that ought
   to be called the church.

   [95] The best account of the Agape is in Keating's The Agape and the
   Eucharist (1901).

   [96] St. Paul does not mention the benediction as forming part of the
   Christian worship, but the way in which it occurs regularly at the
   beginning of his epistles, preserving always the same form, warrants us
   in supposing its liturgical use in the manner above indicated. The
   invocation of Jesus as the Lord is made the test of all Christian
   public utterance for edification, and must have preceded the prophetic
   addresses if not the whole service: 1 Cor. xii. 3.

   [97] The use of the Lord's prayer is not mentioned but it may be
   inferred. "Paul nowhere mentions the Lord's prayer. But we may assume
   that we have a trace of it in Rom. viii. 15, and in Gal. iv. 6. In
   speaking of the right to call God Father, he gives the Aramaic form for
   father, in each instance adding a translation; and this is only to be
   explained by supposing that he had in mind a formula which was known
   wherever the Gospel had penetrate, and which, by preserving the
   original language, invested the name with peculiar solemnity, in order
   to maintain its significance unimpaired in the believer's
   consciousness." Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age, ii. p. 258 (Eng.
   Trans.). According to the Didache the Lord's Prayer was to be said
   three times every day (Did. viii.).

   [98] 1 Cor. xiv. 16.

   [99] 1 Cor. xiv. 26.

   [100] If it be permitted, as I think it is, to believe that the author
   of the Apocalypse used the outline of the Christian worship of the
   earliest age as the canvas on which he painted his glorious prophetic
   visions, then we can disentangle many a short hymn used in the services
   of the apostolic Church and also get many a detail about that service.
   The paraphrase quoted above combines two of the songs given in
   Revelation (v. 9-13). We have another in xv. 3 f.:--


   Great and marvellous are Thy works,

   O Lord God the Almighty;

   Righteous and true are Thy ways,

   Thou King of the Ages.

   Who shall not fear Thee, Lord, and glorify Thy Name?

   For Thou only art Holy;

   All the Nations shall come and worship before Thee;

   For Thy righteous acts have been made manifest;
   and yet another in xi. 17:--


   We give Thee thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty,

   Which art and which wast;

   Because Thou hast taken Thy great power and didst reign,

   And the Nations were wroth,

   And Thy wrath came,

   And the time of the dead to be judged,

   And the time to give their reward to Thy servants,

   To the prophets and to the saints,

   And to them that fear Thy Name,

   The small and the great;

   And to them who destroy the earth.
   It is likely that the singing was antiphonal; there are alternate
   strophes in the hymns in the heavenly worship, and Pliny says that the
   Christians "carmen Christo quasi Deo dicere secum invicem" (Ep. 96
   [97]).

   [101] Scotch Paraphrases, lxv. 7-11.

   [102] St. Paul does not mention the reading of Scripture in his order
   of worship; but it must have been there. In his epistles to the
   Corinthians, to confine ourselves to them, he implies such a knowledge
   of the Old Testament and of deeds and sayings of Jesus as could only be
   got from the continuous public reading of the Scriptures, and the
   reciting sentences about Jesus. He takes it for granted that the Old
   Testament Scriptures are known and known to be the law for life and
   conduct, in 1 Cor. vi. 16; ix. 8-13; xiv. 21; 2 Cor. vi. 16, 18; viii.
   15; ix. 9. In the beginning of 1 Cor. xv. he clearly refers to formal
   statements, not yet perhaps committed to writing, which he himself had
   handed over as he had received them, and which recited the facts about
   the sayings and deeds of Jesus. The opening and reading from the book
   comes after the singing in the heavenly worship (Rev. v. vi.).

   [103] Instruction (didache), teaching or doctrine includes the "wisdom"
   and "knowledge" of 1 Cor. xii. 8; "wisdom," (logos sophias) is
   described in 1 Cor. ii. 7; vi. 5; and "knowledge" (logos gnoseos) in 2
   Cor. x. 5; xi. 6; and perhaps the pistis of 1 Cor. xii. 9, which may
   mean depth of loyal spiritual experience.

   [104] 1 Cor. xiv. 31.

   [105] 1 Cor. xiv. 30.

   [106] I have followed Weizsäcker's conception of what was meant by
   speaking "in a tongue." These things have to be noted about the
   phenomenon. It occurred in prayer only (1 Cor. xiv. 2, 14); it appeared
   like a soliloquy (1 Cor. xiv. 2); the speaker edified himself (xiv. 4),
   but seems to have lost conscious control over himself (xiv. 14); what
   was said was not intelligible to others (xiv: 2); it could be compared
   to the sound of a trumpet which gave no clear call (xiv. 7, 8); or to
   the use of a foreign and barbarous language (xiv. 10, 11); the speaker
   in a tongue ought to interpret what he has said, and that he may be
   able to do this he ought to pray for divine assistance (xiv. 13); that
   such speaking was not all of one sort--there were "kinds of tongues"
   (xii. 10). Upon the whole then we may conceive it to have been rapt
   ejaculatory prayer uttered during unrestrained emotion, where words
   often took the place of sentences. This enables us to see how brethren,
   who were sympathetio enough, could follow the obscure windings of
   thought and expression, and interpret. Our knowledge is exclusively
   derived from 1 Cor. xiv.; the two passages in Acts x. 46; xix; 8, and
   the references in the post-apostolic period do not enlighten us.
   Compare Heinrici, Das Erste Sendschreiben an die Korinther, pp.
   376-393; Bleek, Studien u. Kritiken (1829), pp. 3-79; Hilgenfeld, Die
   Glossolalie in der alien Kirche, Leipzig, 1850. This "gift" of tongues
   is referred to by Irenaeus, v. 6, and Tertullian, Adv. Marcion, v. 8.

   [107] 1 Cor. xiv. 27, 28.

   [108] 1 Cor. xiv. 25.

   [109] The other form of doxology common to St. Paul's epistles is "Unto
   God our Father, be glory for ever, Amen." These doxologies are found
   running through St. Paul's and other epistles in the New Testament.
   They are used to end a prophetic utterance, or an exposition of divine
   wisdom, and they occur in the description of the heavenly worship in
   the Apocalypse.

   [110] 1 Cor. xiv. 33; xi. 16.

   [111] 1 Cor. xiv. 39. The order of service is given by St. Paul in 1
   Cor. xiv. 26; where the "psalm" includes the supplication and
   thanksgiving of xiv. 16.

   [112] 1 Cor. xiv. 33, 40.

   [113] 1 Cor. xiv. 29-33.

   [114] 1 Cor. xii. 4 ff.: cf. Eph. iv. 16.

   [115] 1 Cor. xv. 32.

   [116] 1 Cor. iv. 9; vii. 31.

   [117] 1 Cor. ix. 24-27.

   [118] 1 Cor. viii. 10.

   [119] 1 Cor. i. 26.

   [120] Erastus, Rom. xvi. 23.

   [121] Crispus, Acts xviii. 8; 1 Cor. i. 14.

   [122] 1 Cor. i. 11.

   [123] Rom. xvi. 23; 1 Cor. i. 14.

   [124] It is strange that, apart from the descriptions of the Last
   Supper in the Synoptic Gospels (and for obvious reasons they cannot be
   taken as descriptions of the way in which the Eucharistic service was
   celebrated in the Apostolic and post-Apostolic Church), we have no very
   clear account of how the Service of Thanksgiving was observed among the
   primitive Christians till the middle of the second century, when we
   have the statement of Justin Martyr in his Apology, i. 67. The earliest
   account, so far as I know, which gives as full a description of the
   Holy Communion as we have of the meeting for exhortation in the First
   Epistle to the Corinthians, is to be found in the Canons of Hippolytus
   (Gebhardt and Harnack, Texte u. Untersuchungen, VI. iv. pp. 118-22).
   Yet the whole line of the history of worship, of the organization of
   the local churches, and of the administration of ecclesiastical
   property follows the development of this part of the public worship of
   the Church. We can learn many details, but we have no complete account.
   In the account of the Last Supper, here in the Epistle to the
   Corinthians, in the Didache (x. 1), in the description of Pliny, in
   Clement of Alex. (Paidagogos, ii. 1), in Ignatius (Ad Smyrnæos, viii.),
   the celebration follows a common meal; in Justin it takes place during
   the meeting for exhortation; in the Canons of Hippolytus, the meeting
   for exhortation, the Holy Communion, and the Lord's day common meal are
   all separate from each other.

   [125] 1 Cor. xi. 20.

   [126] 1 Cor. xi. 21.

   [127] 1 Cor. xi. 22.

   [128] 1 Cor. xi. 30-32.

   [129] The Lord's day: Acts xx. 7; Didache, xiv. 1; Canons of Hippolytus
   (Texte u. Untersuchungen, VI. iv. p. 105, cf. p. 183 n.).

   [130] Didache, x.

   [131] The beautiful prayer given in the Didache is (x.): "We thank
   Thee, Holy Father, for Thy holy name, which Thou hast caused to dwell
   in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which
   Thou hast made known to us through Jesus Thy Servant; to Thee be the
   glory for ever. Thou, Lord Almighty, didst create all things for Thy
   Name's sake, both food and drink Thou didst give to men for enjoyment,
   in order that they might give thanks to Thee; but to us Thou hast
   graciously given spiritual food and drink and eternal life through Thy
   Servant. Before all things we thank Thee that Thou art Mighty; to Thee
   be the glory for ever. Remember Thy Church, Lord, to deliver it from
   every evil and to make it perfect in Thy Love, and gather it from the
   four winds, the sanctified, into Thy Kingdom. Let Grace come and let
   this world pass away. Hosanna to the Son of David. Whoever is holy, let
   him come; whoever is not let him depart. Maranatha. Amen." This prayer
   was to be said at the close of the feast. "Now after ye are filled thus
   do ye give thanks" is the introductory sentence. It is also to be
   remembered that when prophets conducted the love-feast they were not
   confined to prescribed prayers. "Permit the prophets to give thanks as
   much as they will."

   [132] The common meals which our Lord shared with His disciples were
   always looked upon as showing His intimate fellowship with them, and
   spiritual associations clustering round the thought were enhanced by
   His frequent comparison of the Kingdom of God to a common meal (Matt.
   xxii. 4; Luke xiv. 15 f.; Luke xxii. 30; cf. Rev. iii. 20). Those who
   had sat at meat with Him supposed that they had a claim upon Him (Luke
   xiii. 26); while the miraculous feeding was a picture of the providence
   of God which ought to awaken our continuous trust in Him. There are
   evidences of all these thoughts.

   [133] The note of gladness is always marked. The brethren in the
   primitive Church at Jerusalem "breaking bread at home, did eat with
   gladness and singleness of heart." Acts ii. 46; cf. Acts xxvii. 33-35.
   "Both food and drink Thou didst give to man for enjoyment, in order
   that they might give thanks to Thee," Didache, x. "Edant bibantque ad
   satietatem, neque vero ad ebrietatem; sed in divina praesentia cum
   laude Dei," Canons of Hippolytus (Texte u. Untersuchungen, VI, iv. p.
   107).

   [134] " But every one that hath controversy with his friend let him not
   come together with you until they be reconciled," Didache, xiv. In the
   special "Lord's day" love-feast which may be given to the poor, as set
   forth in the Canons of Hippolytus, it is said: "Ne quis multum loquatur
   neve clamet, ne forte vos irrideant, neve sint scandalo hominibus, ita
   ut in contumeliam vertatur qui vos invitavit, cum appareat, vos a bono
   ordine aberrare" (Texte, etc. VI. iv. p. 108). These love-feasts
   naturally became the means of helping the poor attached to the
   Christian congregations, as we can see in the primitive Church at
   Jerusalem (Acts vi. 1, 2), and from such ancient ecclesiastical manuals
   as the Canons of Hippolytus. Gentile Christians had been accustomed to
   pagan banquets and the more modest common meals of the "gilds," and
   could the more readily accommodate themselves to the Christian
   observance, but this familiarity with the heathen usages would the more
   readily lead to such corruptions as St. Paul censures in the Corinthian
   Church. Cf. W. Liebenam, Zur Geschichte u. Organisation des Römischen
   Vereinswesens, pp. 260-261. Liebenam thinks that the evidence goes to
   prove that the eating at these common meals of the confraternities was
   for the most part frugal and that the excess arose from over-drinking.
   He and Foucart (Des associations religieuses chez les Grecs, p. 153
   ff.) have collected the evidence. The excesses at Corinth arose from
   the pagan associations connected either with these common meals of the
   confraternities or more probably with the temple banquets (1 Cor. x.
   14-22).

   [135] "Psalmos recitent, antequam recedant," Can. Hipp. (Texte, VI. iv.
   106)

   [136] 1 Cor. x. 1-4.

   [137] 1 Cor. xiv. 19, 34, 35; xi. 18.

   [138] 1 Cor. vii. 1. The epistle known as the First Epistle of Clement
   begins: "The Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth, elect and
   consecrate, greeting."

   [139] 2 Cor. iii. 1, 2; viii. 19.

   [140] 1 Cor. xvi. 1-2.

   [141] 1 Cor: v. 1-8.

   [142] 2 Cor. ii. 6-9.

   [143] 2 Cor. ii. 6

   [144] 1 Cor. vi. 1. This advice of St. Paul passed into the
   ecclesiastical legislation of the primitive Church. We read in the
   Apostolic Constitutions (II. xlvi. xlvii. xlviii. xlix.): "Let not
   therefore the heathen know of your differences among one another, nor
   do you receive unbelievers as witnesses against yourselves, nor be
   judged by them . . . but render unto Caesar the things that are
   Caesar's . . . as tribute, taxes or poll-money. . . . Let your
   judicatures be held on the second day of the week, that if any
   controversy arise about your sentence, having an interval till the
   Sabbath, you may be able to set the controversy right and to reduce
   those to peace who have the contests one with another before the Lord's
   day. Let the deacons and the elders be present at your judicatures, to
   judge without acceptance of persons, as men of God with clear
   conscience. . . . Do not pass the same sentence for every sin, but one
   suitable to each crime, distinguishing all the several sorts of
   offences with much prudence, the great from the little. Treat a wicked
   action after one manner, and a wicked word after another; a bare
   intention still otherwise . . . Some thou shalt curb with threatenings
   only; some thou shalt punish with fines to the poor; some thou shalt
   mortify with fastings; others shalt thou separate according to the
   greatness of their several crimes. . . . When the parties are both
   present (for we will not call them brethren until they receive each
   other in peace) examine diligently concerning those who appear before
   you. . . ."

   [145] 1 Cor. vi. 5.

   [146] Compare Weizsäcker's The Apostolic Age, ii. 246-290. Heinrici,
   Das Erste Sendschreiben des Apostels Paulus an die Korinther, passim.

   [147] Gal. iii. 26-28; cf. 1 Cor. xii. xiii.

   [148] 1 Thess. v. 14.

   [149] 2 Cor. viii. 19.

   [150] 1 Thess. v. 13.

   [151] Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, p. 159.

   [152] 1 Cor. xii. 28.

   [153] 1 Cor. xvi. 15, 16. The phrase "to minister unto the saints" (eis
   diakonian tois hagiois) corresponds with the diakonein trapezais of
   Acts vi. 2. This ministry to the saints, which is connected with
   leadership of some kind, is expanded in the Epistle to the Romans to
   include liberality, showing mercy and leadership (Rom. xii. 6-8); and
   these three heads read like a brief summary of the qualifications of
   the elder or episcopus enumerated in the First Epistle to Timothy (1
   Tim. iii. 1-9). In the First Epistle to the Thessalonians the thought
   of ministry to the saints includes the three heads of caring for the
   spiritual and bodily wants of the brethren, having oversight of moral
   behaviour, and leadership or presidency--kopiontes, nouthetountes, and
   proistamenoi. (1 Thess. v. 12).

   [154] Rom. xii. 8.

   [155] 1 Cor. xii. 28.

   [156] If we examine the various uses of the words "minister" or
   "servant" or "deacon" (diakonos), "he who ministers or serves" (ho
   diakonon) "ministry or service" (di9akonia), and "to minister or to
   serve" (diakonein) we have the following extensive application:-- 1.
   The ordinary service which a hired servant renders to his master, such
   as waiting at table, etc., as in Luke xii. 37 and elsewhere. 2. Kindly
   personal attentions rendered to our Lord, as by St. Peter's mother-in
   law (Matt. viii. 15; Mk. i. 31; Luke iv. 39), by Martha (Lu. x. 40;
   John xii. 2), or by the women from Galilee (Matt. xxvii. 55; Mk. xv.
   41; Luke viii. 3); or rendered to our Lord's followers and looked on as
   done to Himself (Matt. xxv. 44; Heb. vi. 10); or rendered to St. Paul
   by Timothy, Erastus and Onesimus (Acts xix. 22; Philem. 13; 2 Tim. i.
   18). 3. The service of angels rendered to our Lord and to men (Matt.
   iv. 11; Mark i. 13; Heb. i. 14). 4. The service rendered by the O. T.
   economy (1 Peter i. 12; 2 Cor. iii. 7). 5. The work of our Lord Himself
   (Matt. xx. 28; Mark x. 45; Luke xxii. 26, 27; 2 Cor. iii. 8; v. 18;
   Rom. xv. 8). 6. WITHIN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH we find the following
   widely extended application:-- a. Discipleship in general (John xii.
   26). b. Service rendered to the Church because of "gifts" bestowed and
   specially connected with the bestowal and posesssion of these "gifts"
   (Rom. xii. 7; 1 Cor. xii. 5; 1 Peter iv. 10. 11). c. Hence all kinds of
   service, whether the "ministry of the Word" or ministry not distinctly
   of the Word (Acts vi. 2; Matt. xx. 26; xxiii. 11; Mark ix. 35; x. 43).
   d. Specifically the "ministry of the Word" (Acts vi. 4; Eph. iv. 12; 2
   Tim. iv. 5); and most frequently the "Apostleship" (Acts i. 17; xx. 24;
   xxi. 19; Rom. xi. 13; 2 Cor. iii. 3, 6; iv. 1; vi. 3 f.; 1 Tim. i. 12;
   1 Cor. iii. 5; Eph. iii. 7; Col. i. 23, 25). e. Service which was not a
   "ministry of the Word":--Feeding the poor (Acts vi. 1); providing,
   bringing and dispensing resources in the time of famine (Acts xi. 29;
   xii. 25); organizing, gathering and conveying the great collection for
   the poor saints at Jerusalem (Rom. xv. 25, 31; 2 Cor. viii. 4, 19, 20;
   ix. 1, 12, 13); to which we may probably add the service of the whole
   Church of Thyatira (Rev. ii. 19). f. Services rendered by specially
   named men, and which probably included both the "ministry of the Word"
   and other kinds of service:--The ministry of Stephanas (1 Cor. xvi.
   15), of Archippus (Col. iv. 17), of Tychicus (Eph. vi. 21; Col. iv. 7),
   of Epaphras (Col. i. 7), and of Timothy (1 Thess. iii. 2; 1 Tim. iv.
   6). g. Men who are office-bearers in a local church and are called
   "deacons" as a title of office (1 Tim. iii. 8-13); men who may be
   office-bearers but who may get the name applied to them not because of
   office but because of the work they do--a work which has not yet
   ripened into a permanent office as in Phil. i. 1, and as in Rom. xvi. 1
   ("Phoebe, our sister, who is a deacon of the Church which is at
   Cenchrea," and who is also called "patroness"). 7. The idea of "rule"
   is conveyed in Rom. xiii. 4, where kings are called the "deacons" of
   God; and in John xii. 26; Matt. xxv. 44; Heb. vi. 10, where it is said
   that those who serve are honoured of the Father, and where all service
   done to the Church or its members is said to be done to our Lord
   Himself.

   [157] The "gifts" (charismata) are individual capacities or
   excellencies laid hold on, strengthened, vivified and applied by the
   Spirit to service within the community. They are the natural capacities
   which men possess apart from their own power of acquiring them and
   which come from the free bounty of God the Creator. Men are not all
   alike; their capacities and natural powers differ; and thus when the
   Spirit works through these powers there is nothing mechanical in the
   activities set in motion. These natural endowments are laid hold on by
   the Spirit, strengthened by His agency, and used, each of them, for a
   special service (diakonia) within the Christian society. They may be
   the natural capacities for teaching, for evangelization, for the
   vision, and utterances of spiritual truths, for ecstatic praise, for
   leadership of men, for organization, for duties to the poor and sick,
   for the performance of all the practical and social duties needed for
   the welfare of the community. These natural endowments are seized by
   the Spirit and so influenced that they become the specialized "gifts"
   of the Spirit, and fit the possessors for all kinds of service, so that
   as Chrysostom says, "energemata kai charismata kai diakoniai onomaton
   diaphorai monai, epei pragmata ta auta" (Cat. 233). Lists of these
   "gifts" are given, none of them being meant to be exhaustive. In 1 Cor.
   xii. 4-11 appear: the word of wisdom (lo'gos sophi'as), the word of
   knowledge (lo'gos gno'seos), faith (pi'stis) gifts of healing
   (chari'smata iama'ton), prophecy (prophetei'a), workings of powers
   (energe'mata duna'meon), testing of spirits (diakri'seis pneuma'ton),
   kinds of tongues (ge'ne glosson), and interpretation of tongues
   (ermenei'a glosson). In 1 Cor. xii. 28-31 appear: apostles
   (apo'stoloi), prophets (prophetai), teachers (dida'skaloi), powers
   (duna'meis), gifts of healing (chari'smata iama?ton), helps
   (antilepseis), governments (kuberneseis), kinds of tongues (gene
   glosson). In Rom. xii. 6-8 appear:--prophecy (propheteia), service
   (diakonia), teaching (didaskalia), the liberal man (ho metadidous), the
   ruler (ho proistamenos), and the merciful man (ho eleon). And in Eph.
   iv. 11 we have: Apostles (apostoloi), prophets (prophetai), evangelists
   (euangelistai), pastors and teachers (poimenas kai didaskaloi). To
   these we may add "a man's capacity for the married or celibate life" (1
   Cor. vii. 7). The conception of "gifts" in their relation to the
   Christian society is given in its widest extent in 1 Peter iv. 9-11:
   "Using hospitality one to another without murmuring: each, as he bath
   received a gift,' ministering it to one another, as good stewards of
   the manifold bounty of God."

   [158] John iii. 26.

   [159] Acts vi. 2.

   [160] Expositor, Jan.-June, 1887, p. 324.

   [161] The evidence has been collected by Harnack in Texte u.
   Untersuchungen, II. ii. pp. 111 f.

   [162] 1 Cor. xiv. 5.

   [163] "The glorious martyr Polycarp, who was found an apostolic and
   prophetic teacher in our own time." Epistle of the Smyrnaeans, 16.

   [164] Epistle to the Philadelphians, 7.

   [165] Epistles, lvii. 5 (liii.): lxvi. 10 (lxviii.).

   [166] Acts viii. 5, 40.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER III

  THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY

   St. Paul's conception of a Christian community [167] is a body of which
   the Spirit of Christ is the soul. The individual members are all full
   of the Spirit, and their individual powers and capacities are laid hold
   of, vivified, and strengthened by the indwelling Spirit in such a way
   that each is "gifted" and enabled to do some special service for Christ
   and for His Church in the society in which he is placed. Every true
   Christian is "gifted" in this way. In this respect all are equal and of
   the same spiritual rank. The equality, however, is neither monotonous
   nor mechanical. Men have different natural endowments, and these lead
   to a diversity of "gifts," all of which are serviceable in their
   places, and enable the separate members to perform different services,
   useful and necessary, for the spiritual life of the whole community and
   for the growth in sanctification of every member. Some have special
   "gifts" bestowed on them which enable them to do corresponding
   services, and some are "gifted" in a pre-eminent degree. Thus, although
   every Christian is the dwelling place of the Spirit, and is therefore
   to be called "spiritual" [168] (pneumatikos), some are more fitted to
   take leading parts than others, and are called the "spiritual" in a
   narrower and stricter sense of the word. These specialized gifts of the
   Spirit included all kinds of service, and were all, in their own place,
   valuable and equally the "gifts" of the one Spirit. Some of them,
   however, were sure to be more appreciated than others. To men and
   women, quivering with a new fresh spiritual life, nothing could be more
   thirsted after than to hear again and again renewed utterances of that
   "word of the Spirit," which had first awakened in them the new life
   they were living. Hence among the specially "gifted" persons, those who
   had the "gift" to speak the "Word of God," for edification and in
   exhortation, took a foremost place, and were specially honoured. [169]
   It would be a mistake, however, to call this ministry of the "Word" the
   "Charismatic Ministry," as if it alone depended on and came from the
   "gifts" of the Spirit; for every kind of service comes [170] from a
   "gift," and the ministry of attending to the poor and the sick, or
   advising and leading the community with wise counsels, are equally
   charismatic. [171]

   St. Paul always assumes that this "gift" of speaking the "Word of God"
   required a "gift" in the hearers which corresponded to the "gift" in
   the speakers, and that it would have small effect apart from the
   general "gift" of discernment of spirits. The spiritual voice needs the
   spiritual ear. The ministry of the Word depends for its effectiveness
   upon the ministry of discernment: for the "natural man receiveth not
   the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; and
   he cannot know them because they are spiritually examined." [172] There
   was therefore in this ministry of the "Word" the exercise of a two-fold
   "gift" or charisma; on the one hand the charisma which enabled the
   speaker to declare what was the message of God, and on the other hand
   the charisma in the hearers which enabled them to recognize whether the
   message was really what it professed to be, a declaration of the
   Spirit, to receive it if it was and to reject it if it was not. The
   duty laid upon the speakers was to speak forth the Word of God in the
   proportion of the faith that was in them, or to the full measure of the
   Christ that was in them; and the duty laid upon the hearers was to test
   whether what was said to them was really an utterance of the Spirit.
   [173]

   This "ministry of the Word" was the creative agency in the primitive
   Church, and it may almost be said to have had the same function
   throughout the centuries since. It was overthrown or thrust aside and
   placed under subjection to an official ministry springing out of the
   congregation, and it has never regained the recognized position it had
   in the first century and a half. But whenever the Church of Christ has
   to be awakened out of a state of lethargy, this unofficial ministry of
   the Word regains its old power though official sanction be withheld.
   From point of view, and that not the least important, the history of
   the Church flows on from one time of revival to another, and whether we
   take the awakenings in the old Catholic, the mediaeval, or the modern
   Church, these have always been the work of men specially gifted with
   the power of seeing and declaring the secrets of the deepest Christian
   life, and the effect of their work has always been proportionate to the
   spiritual receptivity of the generation they have spoken to. The
   Reformation movement, which may be simply described as the translation
   into articulate thought of the heart religion of the mediaeval Church,
   and which revived in so many ways the ideas and usages of the primitive
   times, has expressed the two cardinal ideas of this primitive ministry
   of the Word, in its declaration that the essential duty of the ministry
   of the Church is the proclamation of the Gospel, and in its statement
   that the principle of authority in the last resort is always the
   witness of the Spirit in the hearts of believers. [174]

   The divine "gift," whose possession placed men among the class of those
   who spoke the Word of God (lalountes ton logon tou Theou) [175] gave
   the primitive Church its preaching ministry. [176] Those so endowed
   were in no sense office-bearers in any one Christian community; they
   were not elected to an office: they were not set apart by any
   ecclesiastical ceremony; the Word of God came to them, and they spoke
   the message that had been sent them. They all had the divine call
   manifested in the "gift" they possessed and could use. They were sent
   for the extension and edification of the whole Church of God, and
   although they used their gifts in the meetings of the local communities
   yet they were always to be conceived as the ministers of the Church
   universal. Some of them were wanderers by the very nature of the work
   they were called to; many of them, perhaps most, did not confine
   themselves to one community. They came and went as they pleased. They
   were not responsible to any society of Christians. The local church
   could only test them when they appeared, and could receive or reject
   their ministrations. The picture of these wandering preachers, men
   burdened by no cares of office, with no pastoral duties, coming
   suddenly into a Christian community, doing their work there and as
   suddenly departing, is a very vivid one in sub-apostolic literature.
   Their presence--men who were the servants of all the churches and of no
   one church--was a great bond which linked together all the scattered
   independent local churches and made them one corporate whole.

   We find in this "prophetic ministry" a threefold division. They are
   apostles, prophets and teachers. It does not seem possible to make a
   very strict or mechanical division between the kinds of "Word of God"
   spoken by each class of men, but it may be said that what was needed
   for zealous missionary endeavour was the distinguishing characteristic
   of the first class, exhortation and admonition of the second, and
   instruction of the third. In virtue of their personal "gifts" they were
   the venerated but not official leaders [177] (hegoumenoi) of every
   community where they were for the time being to be found, and were
   worthy, not only of honour, but of honorarium. [178] We can trace this
   threefold ministry of the Word from the most primitive times down till
   the end of the second century, if not later. It existed in the oldest
   Gentile Christian community, that of Antioch, where a number of
   prophets and teachers sent forth two apostles from among their own
   number. [179] Apostles, prophets and teachers are mentioned in the
   First Epistle to the Corinthians and in the Epistle to the Ephesians.
   [180] The same threefold ministry is given in the Pastor of Hermas,
   which dates about [181] 140 A.D., and in the Pseudo-Clementine
   Homilies, which can scarcely be earlier than 200 A.D. [182] In all
   these authorities we have the three classes mentioned together, and in
   all save one we have them in the same order. The three classes are also
   placed in pairs: apostles and prophets in the Epistle to the Ephesians
   and in the Apocalypse; [183] prophets and teachers in the Didache and
   in the Pseudo-Clementine Letters; [184] apostles and teachers in Hermas
   and in the Epistles to Timothy. [185]

   1. Apostles. The distinguishing characteristic of an apostle [186] was
   that he had given himself, and that for life, [187] to be a missionary,
   preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of Christ to those who did not know
   it. He had received the "gift" of speaking the "Word of God," and he
   was distinguished from others who had the same "gift" in this, that he
   had been called either inwardly or outwardly to make this special use
   of it. The prophet and the teacher had the same "gift" in the same or
   in less measure than the apostle, but they found their sphere of its
   use within the Christian community, while the apostle's sphere was for
   the most part outside, among those who were not yet within the Church
   of Christ. They built on the foundation laid by the apostle; he laid
   the foundation for others to build upon. [188] The apostles were men
   who in virtue of the implanted "gift" of "speaking the Word of God" and
   of the "call" impelling them, were sent forth to be the heralds of the
   kingdom of Christ. This was their life-work. They were not appointed to
   an office, in the ecclesiastical sense of the word, but to a work in
   the prosecution of which they had to do all that is the inevitable
   accompaniment of missionary activity in all ages of the Church's
   history.

   Our Lord has Himself shown us where to look for the origin and meaning
   of the term "apostle." He declared Himself to be the Apostle or Sent
   One of the Father; as the Father had sent Him, so He sent others in His
   name to be His apostles or sent ones, to deliver His message of
   salvation. [189] The apostles were the representatives and "envoys" of
   Christ, the pioneers of Christianity. The word, therefore, lends itself
   to a very wide application, for in a sense every Christian ought to be
   an " envoy " or herald of the Master. Our Lord sanctioned the widest
   use of the word when He declared that whoever received a little child
   in His name received Himself; [190] the little ones can be and are His
   "envoys."

   But there were concentric rings in this wide circle of application; and
   the men belonging to each were distinguished from the others by the
   kind of preparation they had received, and by the nature of the call
   which had come to them.

   Our Lord, personally and by living human voice, selected twelve men and
   called them "apostles," [191] that by personal companionship with Him
   in the inner circle of His disciples, and by experience gained in a
   limited mission of apprenticeship among the villages of Galilee, where
   following their Master's example closely they preached and cast out
   demons, they might have the training to be witnesses for Him in the
   universal mission which was to be theirs after His death. Their
   preparation was their intimate personal companionship with their Lord
   and their apprentice work under His eyes. Their call was the living
   voice of the Master while He was with them in the flesh. These two
   things separated the "Eleven" from all others; they were both of them
   incommunicable and rested on a unique experience.

   One, Matthias, who had enjoyed the personal companionship with Jesus,
   though in a lesser degree, and who had been an eyewitness during the
   Lord's ministry on earth and could testify to the Resurrection, was
   called by the voice of his fellow-believers and by the decision of the
   lot to the same "service and sending forth" (diakonia kai apostole).
   [192] His preparation was the same as that of the "Eleven," though less
   complete; but his call was quite different.

   Another, Paul, was "called" and prepared by Jesus Himself, but in
   visions and inward inspirations. We have no evidence that St. Paul ever
   saw Jesus in the flesh, still less that he had any opportunity of
   converse with Him. His "call" came to him on the road to Damascus in
   the vision of the Risen Christ Whom he had been persecuting; it was
   repeated from the lips of Ananias, also instructed in vision; [193] it
   came to him over and over again in his lonely musings, where he was
   obliged to think out for himself the principles which were to guide him
   in his new life. His preparation was altogether different both from
   that of the "Eleven" and of Matthias. They had been gradually prepared;
   they had been led step by step, and had been weaned from their old life
   in half-conscious ways. He had been torn out of his by a sudden wrench;
   and his preparation had been given him in inward moral struggle and
   spiritual experience, in musings and visions and raptures, "whether in
   the body or out of the body" he could not tell. [194] It was this
   difference in "call" and preparation--the difference between personal
   intercourse with Jesus in the flesh and intercourse with Him in
   visions--that separated St. Paul from the "Eleven." And it was this
   difference that St. Paul's opponents of the "sect of the Pharisees who
   believed" seized upon when they refused to acknowledge his claims to
   apostolic authority. If we take the Pseudo-Clementine literature to
   represent the opinions of these men and their successors, and discern
   in the attacks made on Simon Magus an example of their arguments
   against the apostle to the Gentiles, there is abundant proof of this.
   The whole argument in the last chapter of the 17th Homily turns on the
   impossibility of trusting to information received in visions, or of
   verifying and authenticating them. The argument comes to a climax in
   the question: "Can any one be rendered fit for instruction through
   visions? And if you say, It is possible,' then I ask, Why did our
   teacher abide and discourse a whole year to those who were awake? And
   how are we to believe your word, when you tell us that He appeared to
   you?" [195]

   In others who were called "apostles" the Spirit had implanted the
   inward "call" to consecrate themselves to a life of missionary
   endeavour, and had given them that gift of speaking the Word of God
   which made the "call" fruitful. Yet another class had been selected by
   Christian communities and sent forth to be their apostles, the
   "apostles of the churches," who were also the apostles of the Master,
   and who were called by St. Paul "the glory of Christ." [196]

   Men belonging to all these classes, and to others besides, are called
   "apostles" in the writings of the New Testament, where the name is by
   no means confined to the "Eleven," Matthias, and St. Paul. Barnabas
   [197] was an "apostle." He had been selected at the bidding of the
   Spirit by the circle of prophets and teachers at Antioch, and had been
   sent, with prayer and laying on of hands, to be the companion
   missionary of St. Paul; he is called an apostle to the Gentiles in the
   Epistle to the Galatians, and St. Paul associates him with himself when
   he claims the privileges everywhere accorded to acknowledged apostles.
   Andronicus and Junias were "apostles," who had been in Christ before
   St. Paul. [198] Silas or Silvanus and Timothy are, on the most natural
   interpretation, classed as apostles in the First Epistle to the
   Thessalonians. St. Paul and his companions in his missionary work among
   the Thessalonians had received no material support for their labours,
   "though we might have been burdensome to you, being apostles of
   Christ"; and the we most probably includes Silas and Timothy, whose
   names appear with that of St. Paul in the superscription of the letter.
   [199] In 1 Cor. iv. 9, when St. Paul says: "I think that God hath set
   forth us the apostles last of all as men doomed to death; for we are a
   spectacle unto the world, both to angels and to men," Apollos, on the
   most natural interpretation of the passage, is classed with St. Paul
   among the apostles who are thus set forth. [200] Epaphroditus is
   mentioned as one of the "apostles of the churches," (the church of
   Philippi), and is called by St. Paul "my brother, and fellow-worker and
   fellow-soldier." [201] Many scholars include James the brother of our
   Lord among those called apostles by St. Paul; but the evidence is very
   doubtful, and James had not the missionary work which belongs to an
   apostle. [202] Besides these St. Paul speaks of men whom he calls
   ironically "pre-eminent apostles," [203] and more gravely "false
   apostles," who had come among the Corinthian believers to seduce them
   from their allegiance to the apostle, probably from Jerusalem,
   furnished with letters of commendation [204] from St. Paul's enemies
   there, and who had insinuated that St. Paul was no true apostle. There
   is no reason to believe that St. Paul denied that these men were
   apostles so far as outward marks went. They were missionaries and had
   given themselves to the work; they had come furnished with credentials.
   In all outward respects they were apostles like many others; but their
   message was false; they preached another Christ; they were among the
   false prophets who the Master had said would come. [205]

   As the earlier decades passed the number of men who were called
   apostles increased rather than diminished. They were wandering
   missionaries whose special duties were to the heathen and to the
   unconverted. In writings like the Didache they are brought vividly
   before us. They were highly honoured, [206] but had to be severely
   tested. They were not expected to remain long within a Christian
   community nor to fare softly when they were there. They were the
   special envoys of One Whose kingdom is not of this world, and Who had
   sent forth His earliest apostles with the words: "Go, provide neither
   gold nor silver nor brass in your girdle nor wallet for your journey,
   neither two coats, neither shoes nor staff." [207] Primitive Christians
   insisted on as rigorous an imitation as did St. Francis, and
   accordingly formulated the saying into the rule that if the apostle
   spent more than three days among his fellow Christians, if he asked for
   money, if he were not content with bread and water, he was no true
   apostle, and was not to be received. [208]

   All these men, called apostles, have one distinguishing characteristic:
   they have given themselves for life to be missionary preachers of the
   Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ. Hence it seems superfluous to
   accumulate from the epistles of St. Paul a great variety of marks of
   the apostolic character and work. [209] The one distinctive feature
   about all of them was not so much what they were, but what they did.
   They were all engaged in a life work of a peculiar kind, aggressive
   pioneering missionary labour. The crowning vindication of their career
   was what they put into it and what they were able to accomplish; their
   courage, [210] their self-sacrificing endurance, [211] the "signs,
   wonders and mighty deeds" which accompanied their labours, [212] and,
   above all, the results of their work. It was to this last that St. Paul
   appealed over and over again. His Corinthian converts were the seal of
   his apostleship; he did not need written certificates from coterie or
   council, from Jerusalem or Antioch, for the Corinthians were his living
   "letter" of commendation known and read of all men. [213] He appealed
   to what every great missionary would point to if he were asked to
   justify his work, to what our Lord Himself appealed to when He was put
   to the question. [214]

   There could not but be gradations in this wide company of apostles, and
   these depended on things personal and incommunicable. Nothing could
   take from the "Eleven" the fact that they had been personally selected
   and trained for their missionary work by Jesus while He was still with
   them in the flesh. This gave them a unique position not only within the
   Jewish Christian Church, but also throughout all Christendom. This also
   was the basis of the apostolate in the narrower sense of the term.
   Others might be, and were, "separated unto the Gospel of God," might
   devote themselves, in obedience to the "call" that came, to a life of
   active missionary work, and have their "call" vindicated in the
   abundant fruit of their labours. The Risen Christ had appeared to many
   others besides themselves. What separated the "Eleven" from other
   apostles was that the Lord, while in the flesh, had selected them and
   had spent long months in training them for their work. They were
   missionaries like the others, and made missionary tours like them, but
   this special and unique preparation which no others possessed gave them
   a position apart. St. Paul claimed that he too belonged to this inner
   circle; his claims were admitted when Peter, James and John "saw that
   he had been entrusted with the Gospel of the uncircumcision, even as
   Peter with the Gospel of the circumcision," in that memorable
   interview, when the older apostles gave Barnabas and Paul the right
   hand of fellowship. St. Paul proved to them that his call and
   preparation had been as intimate as theirs. Christ, Who "had wrought
   for Peter unto the apostleship of the circumcision," had "wrought for
   Paul unto the Gentiles," [215] and they had seen that it was so. And as
   his preparation had been the same, so the "call" had come to him
   directly, as distinctively, and as immediately from God, as it had come
   to the Twelve, [216] and his vision of the Risen Saviour had been as
   evident. [217]

   These two uses of the term apostle, the wider and the narrower,
   continued beyond the apostolic age. We can see this in the Didache,
   which carries the reference to the narrower circle in its title, [218]
   while in its description of the wandering "apostles" it paints the
   itinerant missionaries to whom the term belonged in its widest extent.
   We can also see it in the difficulties which the early fathers had to
   determine what was the number of the apostles, and who were to be
   included within it. [219]

   The unique position occupied by the "Eleven" and by St. Paul was
   personal to themselves; it was based on a unique and immediate
   experience; no succession could come from it. But apostles, in the
   wider sense of the term, have always existed in the Church of Christ,
   and are with us still in the missioners and missionaries of the various
   branches of the Christian Church. In lands where the language of the
   New Testament is still spoken. the name as well as the thing survives;
   the missionaries and missioners of the modern Greek Church are still
   called "holy apostles." [220]

   It was the apostolate in its widest extent that was a part of the
   "prophetic ministry" of the primitive Church. When we think of apostles
   as part of the triad of "apostles, prophets and teachers," we must have
   in mind, not twelve or thirteen, but large numbers who were
   missionaries in the Church, and took the first rank in the prophetic
   ministry because their duty was to extend the boundaries of the Church
   of Christ. They all belonged to the class of those "gifted" to "speak
   the Word of God," men who were to be tested by the discriminating
   "gift," but who, when received, were to be honoured and their word
   obeyed. The spiritual "gift" which they possessed was a personal and
   not an official thing; and in one sense they were all on the same
   level, for they had all the same " gift." But they differed in natural
   endowments, and the spiritual gift had been bestowed in larger measure
   on some than on others. Some could, and did, fill a large sphere and
   wield an enormous influence; others had to content themselves with a
   much inferior position; but whether their sphere was large or small
   they had the same work to do. They were the pioneers of primitive
   Christianity. They cannot be compared with the officials of a long
   established church. The only safe comparison is with the missionary of
   modern times, and their work has the curious double action which must
   characterize pioneer Christian work in all places and at all times.

   They had to teach Christian morality to converts ignorant of its first
   principles, and this could only be done when stern command mingled with
   sweet persuasiveness. They had to deal with people who could but
   awkwardly apply the moral principles they had been taught, and had to
   select typical cases, and to point out how they must be decided. On the
   one side their action must appear to be highly autocratic; on the other
   their influence was entirely personal, and their only means of
   enforcing their decisions was by persuasion.

   They had to show their converts not merely how to live lives worthy of
   their new profession; they required to train them in the art of living
   together in Christian society, and they had to do it in such a way as
   to foster social as well as individual responsibility. So on the one
   hand they can be represented as shaping constitutions, selecting and
   appointing office-bearers, and generally controlling in autocratic
   fashion the communities their teaching had gathered together; and on
   the other hand this very work can be truly described as the almost
   independent effort of the communities themselves. [221] For it is the
   missionary's business, and often the hardest part of it, to create the
   feelings of corporate responsibility and independent action. His work
   is that of a parent training his children, and dependent on natural
   relationship and personal character for the obedience he demanded, not
   that of an ecclesiastical superior with official rights to support his
   injunctions.

   If this double characteristic inherent in all missionary work be
   forgotten, it is possible to take the most opposite views of apostolic
   methods and of the rights which an apostle claimed to have and to
   exercise. [222] Men, like Sohm, who dwells upon the power to command
   inherent in the possession of the "gift" of speaking the Word of God,
   search for, find and point to St. Paul's interference in the details of
   the life of his communities. While others, like Loening, who see the
   plain evidences of the independence and self-government in these same
   communities, insist that the apostle's whole relation to his converts
   was purely ethical, and had nothing to do with organization and its
   working. Six months spent in watching a missionary at work would have
   taught them how to combine their views.

   No apostle stands forth so clearly before later generations as does St.
   Paul. His letters reveal the man, his modes of work, the authority he
   possessed and the way in which he used it. We may take him as the
   highest type of the first, order of the prophetic ministry. His duties
   and the authority which lay behind them were what belonged to the
   planting of Christianity.

   His claims to authority rested upon a double basis. He had received
   words, sayings and commandments of Jesus which he could hand on to his
   converts and which were the "traditions" which he asked them to hold
   fast; [223] and being filled with "the Spirit of God," i.e., one of
   those who were "gifted," to "speak the Word of God," he could give the
   authoritative interpretation of these commands, and could show the true
   application of the principles of Christian morality. [224] He might
   have demanded to be honoured for these possessions and "gifts," [225]
   but he preferred to rest his claims to the obedience, reverence, and
   affection of his converts on the personal relation which had grown up
   between them and himself. [226]

   He was the first who had made the Gospel known to them, and their faith
   in the Lord was of itself witness to his power over them and to his
   claims upon them; and this intimate personal relation between teacher
   and pupil, between preacher and convert, between guide and follower on
   the pathway heavenward, ought to beget on their part gratitude,
   affection, trust and imitation. [227] He was their spiritual father,
   and he could claim the affectionate obedience due to a parent, while as
   a father he had the right both to praise and to blame, and that with
   severity. [228]

   St. Paul never forgot that he was doing the work of a pioneer, and that
   his work was but half done if his communities of converts remained in a
   state of pupilage. He was therefore careful to cultivate their sense of
   personal and corporate responsibility. While he was ready to answer any
   questions about difficulties [229] which had arisen in the communities,
   he was very careful to make suggestions only, and to leave the full
   responsibility for the decisions to come on the shoulders of the
   society. Even in the case of the gross sin of incest "the condemnation
   he pronounces is not from a distance or in his own name only; he twice
   represents himself as present, present in spirit, in an assembly where
   the Corinthians and his spirit are gathered together with the power of
   our Lord Jesus. That is, while he is peremptory that the incestuous
   person shall be excluded from the community, he is equally determined
   that the act shall be their own act, and not a mere compliance with a
   command of his." [230]

   It is not to be supposed that all the numerous apostles of the
   primitive Church were men like St. Paul; his natural endowments and the
   large "gift" of the Spirit he possessed give him a place by himself.
   Yet, the due deductions made, we can see in him the type of these
   unknown men who were the pioneers of Christianity in the first century;
   men who carried the Gospel to Antioch, who sowed its seeds in imperial
   Rome, who made hundreds of little barren spots the gardens of the Lord.
   They went first; the prophets and the teachers followed in their steps.

   2. While the apostle was the missionary of the primitive Church, the
   prophet [231] found his work within the Christian communities which had
   been created by the energy of the apostles. Prophecy was the universal
   and inseparable accompaniment of primitive Christianity and one of its
   most distinctive features. Wherever the Spirit of Jesus had laid hold
   on men, and believers were gathered into societies, there appeared
   among them some who believed themselves to be specially filled with the
   Spirit of the Master, and able to speak His Word as He wished it to be
   spoken. When such an one addressed them, his fellow Christians seemed
   to hear the Lord Himself speaking: "for," they said, "where that which
   pertaineth to the Lord is spoken, there the Lord is." [232]

   Prophecy had its home in Palestine; the ancient prophets, with the
   "Word of Jehovah" on their lips, were the spiritual guides in Israel of
   old. It had been silent for generations, but its reappearance was
   expected and longed for by pious Israelites as a sign of the nearness
   of the Messianic time. They looked for the return of Elijah or Jeremiah
   or another of the prophets; [233] and the apostles could appeal to the
   prophecies of Joel to explain the outpouring of the Spirit and its
   universal diffusion en the day of Pentecost. [234] Our Lord too had led
   His followers to expect a revival of prophecy. He had said that He
   would send prophets; had foretold that unbelievers would maltreat them
   when they appeared; [235] and had promised a prophet's reward to those
   who received His prophets.

   We need not wonder then that Christian prophets arose in the Jewish
   Christian Church, and were to be found there from the very beginning;
   but what is to be remarked is that prophecy was not confined to the
   Jewish Church. It appeared spontaneously wherever the Christian faith
   spread. We find prophets in the churches of Jerusalem and Caesarea
   among purely Christian Jewish communities; [236] at Antioch where Jews
   and Gentiles mingled in Christian fellowship; [237] and everywhere
   throughout the Gentile churches--in Rome, in Corinth, in Thessalonica,
   and in the Galatian Church. [238] Prophets are mentioned by name in the
   New Testament writings--Agabus, [239] Barnabas, Saul, Symeon Niger,
   Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, [240] Judas and Silas. [241] Women
   prophesied, among them the four daughters of Philip. [242] Prophecy,
   with prophets and prophetesses, appears in almost uninterrupted
   succession from the very earliest times down to the close of the second
   century, and indeed much longer, although it did not retain its old
   position. From the beginning too we find the true prophet confronted by
   the false, who preached a strange Christ, and attempted to turn
   believers away from the faith.

   The primitive Church had its birth at a time when the old religions,
   whether Jewish or Pagan, had lost their power; when the old religious
   formulae no longer appealed to the hearts and consciences of men; when
   an immediate revelation of the mind of the Master was the one pressing
   religious need for which all craved. Prophecy gave this to the young
   Christian communities. The effect of the presence of these inspired
   men, who spoke soberly enough at times, and often burst forth into
   raptures and recited the visions they had received, can scarcely be
   overrated. They confirmed the weak, they admonished the lax, they
   edified the whole society.

   The word "prophet," like the term "apostle," was used in a wider and in
   a narrower sense. In its widest meaning it could be, and it was,
   applied to all the three classes who were "gifted" to "speak the Word
   of God." St. Paul himself was called a prophet long after he had begun
   his apostolic mission. [243] He had the peculiar prophetic gift of
   speaking in visions and "revelations." [244] The "teachers" also had
   something in common with the "prophets." [245] In this wider use the
   whole Church was said to be composed of "saints and prophets," [246]
   and the prophets when present, assumed the lead in the local churches
   (hegoumenoi). [247]

   In the narrower sense of the term prophecy had its distinct sphere
   between apostleship and teaching. St. Paul, following his Master,
   places it second in his list of the "gifts" which God has bestowed on
   His Church. [248] It had its place within the congregation, and was
   part of the preaching ministry of the apostolic Church. In the picture
   St. Paul gives us of the meeting for edification, prophecy in the order
   of service [249] comes between the part devoted to instruction and
   "speaking in a tongue." St. Paul's statements lead us to believe that
   the prophetic "gift" was not confined to a favoured few. He expected
   that it should manifest itself in every community of Christians. He
   desired that every member of the Corinthian Church should possess it,
   and that all should strive to cultivate it. [250] The Christians in
   Thessalonica were exhorted to cherish "prophesyings," [251] and the
   brethren in Rome to make full use of the "gift." [252] If he criticised
   the action of prophets at Corinth it was for the purpose of teaching
   them how to make the best of the "gift" which had been entrusted to
   them for the edification of their brethren. [253]

   What then was prophecy? The new revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the
   new way of approach to the Infinite Father manifested in the appearance
   of the Son, had created for the primitive Christians a new life and had
   illumined them with a new light. It gave them a new insight into the
   relations between God and man, and a fresh manifestation of the bonds
   uniting our Father in Heaven with His children on earth. It made them
   see with new vividness the way of God's salvation and the duties which
   God required of man. There arose in the midst of the primitive
   Christian societies men specially filled with all this wealth of
   insight, and inspired or "gifted" to disclose to their fellows the
   divine counsels and the hidden mysteries of the faith. These were the
   prophets.

   They were teachers. A large part of what they uttered was instruction,
   but their peculiar "gift" was distinct from that of the teacher. He had
   to make known the new facts and events which the Gospel had disclosed;
   he had to trace the connexion between these divine events, and to
   explain the rationale of the divine forces at work for man's salvation.
   He had to show the bearings of these divine facts and forces upon
   beliefs and ways of living. The distinctively prophetic task was
   different. The prophet was a producer, not an expounder simply, not a
   man whose task was finished when he had taught others to assimilate the
   divine knowledge which lay at their disposal. The prophet added
   something more. He was a revealer bringing forth something new. For
   prophecy presupposed revelation; it rested upon it; and apart from
   revelation it did not exist. [254] The prophet was a man of spiritual
   insight and magnetic speech. What he uttered came to him as an
   intuition of the Spirit, as if he had heard a voice or seen a sight.

   This does not mean that the prophet spoke in a state of ecstasy or
   amentia. St. Paul's suggestions in 1 Cor. xiv. 29-33 imply that the
   prophet retained his consciousness throughout and had the power to
   control himself. The apostle counselled that whatever number of
   revelations had been received, not more than two or three should be
   uttered during one meeting, and that if a brother received a revelation
   while another was speaking the speaker should give way. Prophecy might
   be ecstatic, and we have evidence that it frequently was, but it was
   not so necessarily. Non-ecstatic prophecy lasted in the Church for two
   centuries, and can be shown to have existed among the Montanists,
   notwithstanding the accusations of their opponents. [255]

   Prophecy might be based on "visions." St. Paul appeals to his own
   visions as well as to his "revelations." [256] The Apocalypse, which is
   the great prophetic book of the New Testament and the most conspicuous
   relic we have of the prophecy of the primitive Christian Church, is a
   series of visions seen by a prophet and related by him. [257]
   Sub-apostolic prophecy had its "visions" also. The Pastor of Hermas, a
   Roman presbyter or elder who was a prophet, is largely composed of
   "visions." [258] But "visions" were not essential to prophecy, nor do
   they seem to have been its common accompaniment. All inspired
   witness-bearing was prophecy, and we may almost say that free,
   spontaneous discourse about spiritual things was its essential
   characteristic. We learn, for example, from the Didache that, while a
   definite form of words was prescribed for the celebration of the
   Eucharist, the prophets were not bound to use it. They were to be
   allowed to "give thanks as much as they will." [259] At the same time
   it must be remembered that the prophets were always believed to speak
   in a very special fashion in the name of God and with His authority.
   When the prophet spoke God was present, and the prophet was to be
   listened to as the messenger of God. [260]

   There is nothing in the whole series of descriptions of prophecy which
   have come down to us from apostolic and from sub-apostolic times to
   suggest that the prophets held any office, or that they were the
   recognized heads of local churches. Office-bearers, indeed, might be
   prophets; for the "gift" might come to anyone, and St. Paul desired
   that it should be the possession of every member of the Corinthian
   Church. Office neither brought it nor excluded it; a prophet was a gift
   of God to the whole Church, and no community could make exclusive claim
   to him.

   Nevertheless prophets had an important influence within the local
   churches of primitive times. We can see this from the Epistles of St.
   Paul and, from sub-apostolic literature, we can discern that their
   influence grew rather than diminished during the first decades of the
   second century. This power seems to have been exercised more
   particularly in the two matters of discipline and absolution or
   restoration to membership after gross cases of sin. St. Paul does not
   lend his sanction to any such special powers of interference. When he
   speaks of excommunication or of restoration he addresses himself to the
   whole Christian community, in whose hands he takes for granted that
   these duties rest. [261] But in writing to the Galatian church about
   dealing with sinners he uses the words, "Ye that are spiritual"
   (pneumatikoi). [262] This term "spiritual man" or pneumatikos came to
   be used, in a fashion quite different from St. Paul's use, almost
   exclusively of the prophets; [263] and the phrase of the apostle must
   have had some effect in leading primitive Christians to believe that
   the prophets were the persons to deal with these matters. The primitive
   Church early adopted the idea that certain sins, of which varying lists
   are given, were of such a grievous kind that the sinner could not be
   received back again into the Christian society. They did not hold that
   these sins were beyond the mercy of God; but they did think that,
   without the direct voice of God commanding them, it was not permitted
   to them to restore such sinners to the communion of the Christian
   society. The voice of God they believed that they could hear in the
   judgment of the prophet; and the prophets could declare the forgiveness
   which the community felt to be beyond its power. Tertullian, who
   represents the older view, expresses this very strongly. [264] It was
   also believed that God dwelt in the martyrs as He did in the prophets,
   and that confessors and martyrs had the right to declare whether
   sinners ought to be absolved and restored. [265] There are evidences
   also that the prophets had a large share in declaring who were to be
   chosen to fill the posts of office-bearers in the local churches. All
   these things go to show, that if the statement that the prophets
   exercised a "despotism" [266] over the primitive Christian churches is
   too strong, they did possess very great authority--the authority which
   belongs to one who is believed to utter the Word of God.

   The prophets who are referred to in St. Paul's epistles seem to have
   been members of the communities which they edified with their "gift" of
   exhortation and admonition, and this was no doubt the case with the
   largest number of these gifted men. But many who had the "gift" in a
   pre-eminent way took to wandering from one local church to another, in
   order to awaken Christian life and service in newly planted
   congregations; and the wandering habit easily grew when the services of
   the travelling prophets proved welcome to the infant communities. This
   custom was foreshadowed by our Lord Himself when He promised a
   prophet's reward to those who received His prophets, [267] and it
   evidently existed from the earliest times. Agabus wandered from church
   to church; we hear of his being at Jerusalem, Antioch and Caesarea.
   [268] Such wandering prophets might easily become apostles, and we can
   see an example of this change of work when Barnabas, who did a
   prophet's work in Antioch, was, at the call of the Spirit, sent, along
   with Saul, to undertake the work of an apostle or missionary in Cyprus,
   Pamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia. When these wandering prophets settled
   down for a time with their families, [269] in any Christian community,
   far from home and employment, it was but right that the community they
   benefited by their labours should support them. St. Paul had laid down
   the principle that it was a commandment of the Lord's that "they which
   proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel," [270] and had said to
   the Galatian Christians, "let him that is taught in the word
   communicate to him that teacheth in all good things." [271] Primitive
   Christians had also the Lord's promise made to those who received His
   prophets. [272] Hence the Christian communities made regulations for
   the support of the wandering prophets who gave them that exhortation
   and admonition which were the things chiefly sought in the meeting for
   edification. The prophets were to have the first-fruits of wine and
   oil, of corn and bread, of oxen and sheep, of clothing and of money.
   [273] The local churches supported the wandering prophets while they
   settled among them. In return the prophets exhorted in the meetings for
   edification and presided at the meetings for thanksgiving. [274]

   The conception that a prophet was inspired to speak the Word of God
   invested him with such a sacred authority that his position would have
   been completely autocratic had it not been under some controlling
   power. This power of control lay in the fact that every prophet
   required the permission or authorisation of the congregation in order
   to exercise his "gift" among them. This authorisation followed the
   testing or the recognition whether the supposed prophet had or had not
   the true spirit of Jesus. The power of testing lay in the witness of
   the Spirit, which was living in every Christian and in every Christian
   community. For, as has been before remarked, the prophetic ministry
   rested on a double "gift," or charisma; one, the "gift" of speaking the
   Word, in the prophet, and the other, in the members of the Christian
   community, the "gift" of discernment. [275] The possession and use of
   this "gift" of testing preserved the freedom and autonomy of the local
   Christian churches in presence of men who were persuaded that they
   spoke in the name of God. Every prophet had to submit to be tested
   before he was received as one worthy to exhort the brotherhood; and his
   decisions or admonitions on points of discipline or absolution had to
   be approved by the congregation ere they were enforced. The right and
   the duty of Christian communities to test every one who came with a
   prophetic message was urged repeatedly by St. Paul and in other New
   Testament writings. The apostle insisted that all prophets, apostles,
   and even himself, ought to be tested by all Christians to whom they
   presented themselves. He appealed to their power of judging his own
   message. [276] The power to discriminate between the true and the false
   spiritual gifts was a special charisma which ought to be used. [277]
   The Lord had warned His followers against " false " prophets, and had
   predicted that they would bring evil upon His Church; [278] and St.
   Paul, after telling the Thessalonians to cherish prophesyings, insists
   on their using their power of discrimination. The same command is given
   in 1 John iv. 1. [279] The Church of Ephesus was praised for trying and
   rejecting men who called themselves apostles and were not. [280] The
   Churches of Smyrna and Thyatira were blamed for the untested and
   unrejected teaching which they had permitted. [281]

   There was need for testing, for if the genuine Old Testament prophecy
   was confronted with "gilds" of diviners and soothsayers belonging to
   the old Semitic naturalist religions, as well as with colleges of
   Jewish prophets who had retained the external prophetic
   characteristics, but had lost the true spirit of Jehovah, [282] the
   prophets of Jesus also had their rivals and their innocent or designing
   imitators. In that age of crumbling faiths in the Graeco-Roman world,
   Eastern religions were entering to possess the land. The great imperial
   system of roads and sea-routes served other purposes besides the
   traffic of trade, the convoy of troops, or the ordinary coming and
   going of the population. Bands of itinerant devotees, the professional
   prophets and priests of Syrian. Persian, and perhaps of Indian cults,
   passed along the high-roads. Solitary preachers of oriental faiths,
   with all the fire of missionary zeal, tramped from town to town, drawn
   by an irresistible impulse towards Rome, the centre of civilization.
   the protectress of the religions of her myriads of subject peoples, the
   tribune from which, if a speaker could only once ascend it, he might
   address the world. It was the age of wandering preachers and teachers,
   of religious excitements, of curiosity about new faiths, [283] when all
   who had something new to teach hawked their theories as traders dragged
   about and exposed their merchandise. We need not suppose that these men
   were all charlatans or self-conscious impostors. We must not thrust
   aside carelessly and without question the claims made by the prophets
   and preachers of many of these Eastern faiths to the possession of a
   knowledge of hidden powers and processes of nature, and of a command
   over them. Above all, we must not forget the strange assimilative
   character of so many Oriental faiths, which was as strong in Syria and
   Asia Minor in the early centuries as it is in India now. Christianity
   attracted men then as now; they were curious about it; they seized on
   sides of the new religion which they could best appreciate, and could
   so present their beliefs as to be able to plead that they themselves
   were Christians of a more sympathetic character and with a wider
   outlook than others. The great cities which were the centres of trade
   and commerce--the ganglia of the great empire, as the roads were its
   nerve-system--Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Rome, where we find the
   Christian prophets most active within the Gentile Christian Church,
   were the very places where this pagan Oriental prophecy most abounded.
   Nothing hindered the presence of such men at the meetings for
   edification; nothing prevented them from claiming to speak in the
   Spirit; only the diakrisis lying in the Christian society, only the
   power of discernment and testing through that "gift" of spiritual
   insight which was in every true Christian, and therefore in the
   Christian community, prevented the claims of such men to be inspired
   guides being admitted.

   The testing was for the purpose of finding whether the prophetic "gift"
   was genuine or not. It had little or nothing to do with the external
   appearance of the prophet or with the kind of utterance which he
   selected to convey his message. The question was: Were the contents of
   the prophetic message such as would come from the spirit of Jesus? had
   it the self-evidencing ring about it? had it the true ethical meaning
   which must be in a message from the Master?--something which
   distinguished it from everything heathenish or Jewish, something which
   showed that the prophet had drunk deeply at the well of Christ?

   The test that St. Paul gives: "no man speaking in the Spirit of God
   saith, Jesus is anathema; and no man can say that Jesus is Lord, but in
   the Holy Spirit" [284] may seem inadequate and easily eluded; but St.
   Paul is not delivering a short verbal creed; he is setting forth a
   principle. Prophecy must be filled with the sense of the Lordship of
   Jesus over the believer's heart, soul and life, if it is true prophecy.
   [285] In the later days of the Didache the need for testing was felt as
   strongly, if not more so; the tests, however, took a much more
   mechanical aspect. The fine spiritual sense which the apostle trusted
   to has gone into the background and some wooden maxims have taken its
   place. "Not every one that speaketh in the spirit," says the Didache
   warningly, "is a prophet, but only if he have the ways of the Lord."
   [286] The phrase "ways of the Lord" does not, taken by itself, suggest
   anything mechanical, and has a flavour of the old spirituality. But the
   subordinate tests appear to indicate a degeneracy both in the prophetic
   office and in the spiritual discernment of the people. For the
   prophetic office and its discrimination demanded a somewhat high tone
   of spiritual life, and might very easily deteriorate. In this, as in
   other things, there is a close parallel to be drawn between the
   prophets of the New and of the Old Testament.

   3. The third class of persons who belonged to this prophetic ministry
   were the teachers (didaskaloi).

   We can trace their presence along with that of the apostles and the
   prophets in the promise of Jesus, in the most conspicuous of the
   "gifts" of His Spirit to the apostolic church, in the records of the
   sub-apostolic period. Our Lord promised to send "wise men and
   scribes"--a "gift" to be recognized and appreciated by His followers,
   and rejected with hatred by those who refused His salvation. [287] St.
   Paul emphasized their presence, when he said that God had set in the
   Church "thirdly teachers." [288] We find them mentioned throughout the
   apostolic and sub-apostolic periods, holding an honoured place in the
   infant Christian communities.

   They were not office-bearers necessarily, though there was nothing to
   prevent their being chosen to office. What made them "teachers" was
   neither selection by their brethren nor any ceremony of setting apart
   to perform work which the Church required to be done. They were
   "teachers" because they had in a personal way received from the Spirit
   the "gift" of knowledge, which fitted them to instruct their fellow
   believers. Their more public sphere of work was in the meeting for
   edification, where, according to St. Paul, they had a definite place
   assigned to them after the praise and before the prophesyings; [289]
   but it may be inferred that their work was not limited to public
   exhortation, and that they devoted time and pains to the instruction of
   catechumens and others who wished to be more thoroughly grounded in the
   principles of Christian faith and life. [290] St. Paul gives us some
   indications of the work of the "teacher." The apostle always brought to
   the communities he had founded what may be called the "oral Gospel" of
   the Lord Jesus or the saving deeds of the Evangelical history, and
   certain institutions and commandments of the Master. [291] These were
   the things which he "had received," and which he "handed over" to his
   converts to be stored up in the retentive Oriental memory uncorrupted
   by reading and writing. He had added others--hidden things revealed to
   him because he was a prophet--which he called "mysteries," about the
   Resurrection or the universality of the Gospel. [292] These things he
   had handed over to them either "by word or by epistle." [293] To these
   he had added suggestions and opinions of his own. [294] All these
   things formed the stock of material on which the "gift" of the teacher
   enabled him to work for the edification of the community. St. Paul's
   own discourses furnished the teachers in his communities with examples
   of the way in which all these stores of communicated knowledge could be
   brought to bear upon the faith, life and morals of the members of the
   local churches. He had given them a "pattern of teaching" [295] which
   they could strive to imitate, and which they without doubt did copy in
   their public exhortations or private instructions and admonitions.

   From St. Paul's epistles it would appear that the apostle expected that
   every Christian community would furnish from its own membership, the
   teachers required to instruct the members; [296] but it is evident, at
   least when we get beyond the apostolic period, that many gifted men,
   whose services were appreciated, went from church to church teaching
   and preaching, and that without having any pretension to the prophetic
   gift. Justin Martyr and Tatian, well-known apologists of the second
   century, were wandering teachers of this kind.

   Such a wandering master, we learn from the Didache, belonged to the
   class of "honoured" persons (tetimemenoi), and at once attained a
   leading position in the community he entered or to which he belonged.
   He had to submit to the same tests as the prophet, but like him, when
   once received, he was honoured as one who spoke the "Word of God."
   [297]

   A position such as this, carrying with it both privilege and support,
   would be sought after by those who thought more of the honourable
   position in which the teacher stood than of the serious
   responsibilities which his office involved, and there are warnings both
   in apostolic and sub-apostolic literature that the work of a teacher is
   not to be lightly undertaken. [298] It is perhaps worthy of remark that
   the "teachers" seem to have maintained their position as a distinct
   class of men, apart from the office-bearers of a local church, much
   longer than the prophets did. In the general overthrow of the prophetic
   "ministry" during the second century the office of "teacher" was
   absorbed by the local ministry; but "teachers" apart from
   office-bearers seem to have maintained themselves in the Church for
   some centuries, [299] and some churches, notably that of Alexandria,
   seem to have possessed large numbers of teachers. [300]

   This prophetic ministry and the peculiar place it occupied was the
   distinctive feature of the organization of the Church of Christ during
   the apostolic and sub-apostolic periods. It gives this age a place by
   itself, and separates it from all other periods of the Church's
   history; for it must be remembered that while this ministry lasted it
   dominated and controlled. Whatever administrative organization the
   local churches possessed had to bend before the authority of the
   members of this prophetic circle. To them belonged the right to lead
   the devotions of their brethren--to speak the "Word of God" in the
   meeting for edification, and to preside at the Eucharistic service--and
   to influence in a large but indefinite manner the whole action of the
   infant Christian communities. Yet they were not office-bearers in any
   sense of the word. They were not elected, nor were they set apart by
   any ecclesiastical action to a place of rule. Their vocation was
   immediate and personal. They could be tested, and their ministry might
   be accepted or rejected, but there the power of the Church with regard
   to them and to their ministry came to an end.

   They appear on the pages of the apostolic and sub-apostolic literature
   in the three classes which have been described; but the divisions, we
   can see, represented functions, not offices, nor can it be said that
   these functions were separated by any hard and fast line.

   The apostle or wandering missionary was also a prophet and a teacher;
   his vocation required him to be all three. The prophet might become an
   apostle, if he gave himself permanently to the aggressive creative work
   which was the characteristic of the apostolic activity; and he was also
   a teacher, for his prophetic utterances must often have been teaching
   of the highest and most stimulating kind. But a teacher could fulfil
   the special work of his vocation without having the "gift" of
   revelation added to that of knowledge.

   In all three classes we can discern the effects of a real outpouring of
   the Spirit, imparting special spiritual gifts, and creating for the
   service of the infant Christian communities a ministry which "spoke the
   Word of God" in the same sense as did the prophets of the Old Testament
   Dispensation. St. Paul was a prophet in the same sense that Isaiah was,
   and the author of the Apocalypse had visions as vivid as those of
   Ezekiel. [301] The one great difference between the prophesying of the
   two dispensations was that the gift was much more widely bestowed in
   the New than it had been in the Old Dispensation.

   It seems to be impossible to draw any line of demarcation between the
   prophecy of the Old and that of the New Testament, except that the
   latter partook of the universalist character of the new revelation of
   the Kingdom which our Lord proclaimed, and the "gift" was imparted to
   Gentiles as well as to Jews. The same outstanding features
   characterized the prophets and prophecy in the two dispensations. In
   both cases the prophetic "call" came to the prophet personally and
   immediately in a unique experience; and when the "call" came everything
   else had to be set aside, and the "word" from God had to be spoken. It
   is possible to compare narrowly St. Paul and Isaiah, St. John and
   Ezekiel, Polycarp and Jeremiah. In neither case was the prophetic
   "call" a call to office in the Church. The New Testament prophets were
   no more presbyters or bishops in virtue of their "call" than were the
   Old Testament prophets elevated to the priesthood in Israel; and in
   both cases the regular office-bearers had to give way to and bow before
   the men through whom the Spirit of God spoke.

   In Old Testament prophecy, as in the prophecy of the New Testament, the
   Spirit of God was given in a larger measure to some men and in a
   smaller degree to others, and in each case the natural faculties of the
   prophet had full play to exert themselves according to the capacities
   of the man. There were gradations in the prophetic order from men like
   St. Paul and Isaiah, who stood in the foremost rank, to the nameless
   prophet whom the lion slew, or the impetuous prophet who interrupted
   his brother in the meeting of the Corinthian congregation.

   In both cases true prophecy was surrounded with a fringe of prophet
   life which was hostile, and which was inspired by a spirit at variance
   with the purposes of Jehovah and with the principles of Jesus. In the
   Old Testament, as in the New, there was a marked tendency towards
   deterioration within the prophetic order.

   In both cases the power to discriminate between the true and the false
   prophecy, between the man who spoke full of the Spirit of God and the
   member of the prophetic "gild," was left to the spiritual discernment
   of the people spoken to. The discerning faculty was often at fault;
   pretenders were received by and misled the faithful. Jeremiah had to
   protest against the way in which the people received men who claimed to
   be prophets, and Origen had to repudiate the prophets, or their
   caricatures, whom Celsus described with graphic irony. [302] Yet this
   power of spiritual insight was the only touchstone, and, indeed, there
   could have been no other in the last resort. For men can never get rid
   of their personal responsibility in spiritual things.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [167] This is equally true of the whole Church of Christ throughout the
   whole world: for each local church is the Church in miniature. The
   relation of the prophetic ministry to the whole Church on the one hand
   and to the local church on the other is an instructive illustration of
   the visibility of the Church Universal in every Christian community.

   [168] 1 Cor. iii. 1; cf. Gal. vi. 1, and 1 Cor. ii. 15.

   [169] Compare the tetimemenoi of the Didache (iv. 1; xv. 2) and 1 Tim.
   v. 17: "ohi kalos proestotes presbuteroi diples times axiousthosan,
   malista hoi kopiontes en logo kai didaskalia."

   [170] Rom. xii. 7: "ei'te diakonian, en te diakonia," is any kind of
   service in the Christian community.

   [171] "Helps" (antilepseis) and "wise counsels" (kuberneseis) are
   placed in the same list of "gifts" with apostles, prophets, teachers
   and those who have powers of healing. The ministry of the local church,
   which is the foundation whence has come the present ministry in the
   Church in all its branches, was as much founded on the "gifts" of the
   Spirit as was the ministry of the Word. Sohm appears to ignore this in
   his otherwise admirable discussion of the "Lehrgabe" (Kirchenrecht, i.
   28 ff.); and Harnack does not have it always before him, as it ought to
   be, in the dissertations appended to his epoch-making edition of the
   Didache (Texte u. Untersuchungen, II. ii.).

   [172] 1 Cor. ii. 14.

   [173] The prophets who speak the "Word of God" are told to prophesy
   according to the measure of the faith that is in them: kata ten
   analogian tes pisteos (Rom. xii. 6); and the hearers are told to test
   the speakers (1 Cor. xii. 10, compare vv. 1, 4; 1 Thess. v. 21; cf. 1
   Cor. x. 15; xi. 13); and in 1 John iv. 1-3 it is said, "Beloved,
   believe not every spirit, but test the spirits whether they be of God,"
   etc. This charisma of discernment lay at the basis of the "call" given
   by the congregation to men to be their office-bearers: compare Canons
   of Hippolytus, ii. 7-9 (Texte und Untersuchungen, VI. iv. pp. 39, 40);
   and its use showed that the spiritual "gift" which belonged to the
   whole community was higher than the gift " possessed by an individual
   prophet inasmuch as it was the judge of that gift." Compare Sohm,
   Kirchenrecht (1892), i. 56 ff., whose remarks, however valuable, seem
   too doctrinaire.

   [174] "Ut hanc fidem consequamur, institutum est ministerium docendi
   Evangelii et porrigendi Sacramenta" (Augsburg Confession, Pt. I. art.
   v.); "Nam sicuti Deus solus de se idoneus est testis in suo sermone;
   ita etiam non ante fidem reperiet sermo in hominum cordibus, quam
   interiore Spiritus testimonio obsignetur" (Calvin, Instit. I. vii. 4).
   "Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine
   authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing
   witness by and with the Word in our hearts" (West. Conf. i. 5).

   [175] Heb. xiii. 7: Didache iv. 1: "My child, him that speaketh to thee
   the Word of God thou shalt have in remembrance day and night, and
   honour him as the Lord: for, where that which pertaineth to the Lord is
   spoken, there the Lord is."

   [176] This statement ought to be qualified: the local presidents or
   proistamenoi of 1 Thess. v. 12 seem to have had other duties besides
   merely to exercise oversight; they had also to warn and instruct.

   [177] Heb. xiii. 7: "Mnemoneuete ton hegoumenon humon, hoitines
   elalesan humin ton logon tou Theou."

   [178] 1 Cor. ix. 13, 14; Gal. vi. 6; cf. 2 Cor. xi. 8, 9, and Phil. iv.
   10 ff. "But every true prophet who will settle among you is worthy of
   his support. Likewise a true teacher, he also is worthy, like the
   workman, of his support. Every first-fruit then, of the products of the
   wine-press and threshing-floor, of oxen and of sheep, thou shalt take
   and give to the prophets." Didache. xiii, 1-3. Time has the two
   meanings of "honour" and "honorarium," and it is difficult to know
   sometimes how to translate it; a case in point is 1 Tim. v. 17.

   [179] Acts xiii. 1-3.

   [180] 1 Cor. xii. 28; Eph. iv. 11.

   [181] Hermas, Simil. ix. 15: "The thirty-five are the prophets of God
   and His ministers; and the forty are the apostles and teachers of the
   preaching of the Son of God."

   [182] Homilies, xi. 35: "Wherefore, above all, remember to shun apostle
   or prophet or teacher who does not first accurately compare his
   preaching with that of James, who was called the brother of my Lord."

   [183] Rev. xviii. 20: "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye saints and
   ye apostles and ye prophets." Eph. ii. 20: "Being built on the
   foundation of the apostles and the prophets." Didache, xi.

   [184] Didache, xiii. 1, 2; xvi. 2. Pseudo-Clementines, De Virginitate,
   i. 11, "Ne multi inter vos sint doctores, fratres, neque omnes sitis
   prophetae"; but this is a quotation, said to be from Scripture. For
   fuller list of authorities compare Harnack, Texte u. Untersuchungen,
   II. ii. 93-110, and tabular summary in note pp. 110-112.

   [185] Hermas, Pastor, Vis. iii. 5; 1 Tim. ii. 7; 2 Tim. i. 11.

   [186] For the meaning and work of an apostle: compare Lightfoot, St.
   Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, 7th ed. pp. 92-101; note on The name
   and office of an apostle; Harnack, Texte u. Untersuchungen, II. ii.
   111-118; Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age (Eng. Transl.), ii. 291-299;
   Sohm, Kirchenrecht, i. 42-45; Loening, Die Gemeindeverfassung des
   Urchristenthums, pp. 33-37; Armitage Robinson, Encyc. Bibl., art.
   Apostle, pp. 264-6; Schmiedel, Encyc. Biblic., art. Ministry, pp.
   3114-3117; Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, pp. 22-41; Seufert, Ursprung
   and Bedeutung des Apostolats; Gwatkin, art. Apostle, Hastings' Bible
   Dictionary, i. 126.

   [187] 1 Cor. xv. 10; Gal. ii. 7, 8.

   [188] Rom. xv. 20.

   [189] This appears to be the line of thought in our Lord's address in
   the synagogue at Nazareth. He quoted from Isaiah lxi. 1, about the one
   sent from God, and declared that He was the "Sent One" (Luke iv. 18,
   21); He had come to deliver a message from the Father which was to be
   proclaimed in the cities of Palestine (Luke iv. 41; cf. Matt. xv. 24).
   He made His followers His representatives in Matt. x. 40-42 (cf. the
   parallel passages in Mark ix. 37, and Luke ix. 48). The two thoughts
   are combined in John xx. 21: "Jesus therefore said unto them again,
   Peace be unto you; as the Father hath sent Me, even so I send you"; cf.
   Clement, Ep. I. xlii. 1, 2; Tertullian, De Praescriptione, 37. In
   earlier classical Greek "apostolos " meant a messenger who is also a
   representative of the man who sent him; in later Greek, the Attic use
   of the word to mean "a naval expedition, a fleet dispatched on foreign
   service," seems to have superseded every other. The word however was
   used in later Judaism to mean the messengers sent from Jerusalem to
   collect the Temple tribute from the Jews of the Dispersion and who were
   at the same time charged with the business of carrying letters and
   advice from the Jewish leaders in the capital of Judaism, and of
   promoting religious fellowship throughout all the Jews scattered over
   the civilized world. Hence Dr. Lightfoot says, "In designating His
   immediate and most favoured disciples Apostles' our Lord was not
   introducing a new term, but adopting one which from its current usage
   would suggest to His hearers the idea of a highly responsible mission."
   Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (7th ed.); The name and
   office of an Apostle, pp. 93, 94; cf. also Seufert, Ursprung and
   Bedeutung des Apostolats, pp. 8-14. But is is very doubtful if the word
   was in use in Judaism until after the time of our Lord, and it seems in
   every way simpler to believe that the Christian origin and use of the
   word were what are given above.

   [190] Matt. xviii. 5.

   [191] In Mark iii. 13-16 we are told that Jesus appointed Twelve, "whom
   He also called Apostles" (that is the reading adopted by Westcott and
   Hort) for a double purpose (the two parts of the purpose being made
   emphatic by the repetition of hina), of being in close companionship
   with Him, and of sending them forth to preach and to cast out demons,
   This, that they had to do, was what Jesus Himself had been doing (Mark
   i. 39; cf. Mark i. 14-34). Thus their training was both intimate
   companionship and close imitation in service. The account is confirmed
   by Luke vi. 13, where He called the Twelve; by Luke ix. 2, where He
   sent them forth to do and to teach; and by Luke ix. 10, where we are
   told that they did what they had been commanded. Hort, The Christian
   Ecclesia, pp. 22-41.

   [192] Acts i. 25.

   [193] Acts ix. 10 ff.

   [194] 2 Cor. xii. 1-4; Gal. i. 15-17.

   [195] Clementine Homilies, xvii. 13-20; the quotation is from sect. 19.

   [196] 2 Cor. viii. 23: "Our brethren, the apostles of the churches, the
   glory of Christ."

   [197] Acts xiii. 2, 3: "The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and
   Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. Then when they had
   fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away";
   xiv. 4: "But the multitude of the city was divided; and part held with
   the Jews and part with the apostles (Barnabas and Paul)"; xiv. 14: "But
   when the apostles, Barnabas and Saul heard it . . ."; Gal. ii. 9: "They
   who were reputed to be pillars gave to me and to Barnabas the right
   hands of fellowship that we should go unto the Gentiles and they to the
   circumcision." Compare 1 Cor. ix. 5, 6.

   [198] Rom. xvi. 7: "Salute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen and my
   fellow prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also have
   been in Christ before me." The phrase "of note among the apostles" has
   often been translated "highly esteemed among the apostles." Upon this
   Dr. Lightfoot remarks: " Except to escape the difficulty involved in
   such an extension of the apostolate, I do not think the words hoitines
   eisin episemoi en tois apostolois would have been generally rendered
   "who are highly esteemed by the apostles"; and he goes on to say that
   the Greek fathers took the more natural interpretation and included
   Andronicus and Junias among the apostles. He quotes Origen and
   Chrysostom. The latter thought that Junias or Junia was a woman's name,
   and yet he numbered her among the apostles; Lightfoot, Commentary on
   the Epistle to the Galatians (7th ed.), p. 96 ff.

   [199] 1 Thess. i. 1, 6. Dr. Lightfoot includes Silas among those who
   are called apostles by St. Paul, but refuses to include Timothy: (1)
   because Timothy had not seen the Lord, and (2) because when the apostle
   mentions Timothy elsewhere he carefully excludes him from the
   apostolate. He writes in Col. i. 1 and in 2 Cor. i. 1, "Paul an apostle
   and Timothy the brother"; and in Phil. i. 1: "Paul and Timothy servants
   of Jesus Christ." In the Pastoral Epistles Timothy is described as an
   evangelist: "Do the work of an evangelist; fulfil thy ministry" (2 Tim.
   iv. 5). It is held by many, among others by Lightfoot and Sohm, that
   the evangelists of 2 Tim. iv. 5, of Eph. iv. 11, and of Acts xxi. 8
   (Philip the evangelist), were men who did the work of wandering
   missionaries but lacked the indispensable characteristic (as they
   think) of an apostle, viz. having seen the Lord and received a
   commission from Him (Luke xxiv. 48; Acts i. 22; 1 Cor. ix. 1). This
   distinction may prove good for the apostolic period, though it seems
   doubtful that it does, but it entirely falls to the ground in the
   immediately succeeding times. I am inclined to conclude that there is
   really no distinction between a wider use of the term apostle and the
   evangelist. The word "evangelist" occurs very seldom. The three
   references exhaust the New Testament uses; it disappears entirely in
   the immediately post-apostolic literature, it is not to be found in the
   Apostolic fathers nor in the Didache. When it reappears, as in
   Tertullian, De Praescriptione 4 (Qui pseudapostoli nisi adulteri
   evangelizatores) and in Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. III. xxxvii. 2, 4) it is
   used to describe such men as were called "apostles" in the Didache. On
   the other hand the apostles are described as "entrusted with the
   evangel" (Gal. i. 7, 8); as those who "preach the evangel" (1 Clement,
   42); as the twelve evangelizers (Barnabas, viii. 3). Light., Com. on
   the Epistle to the Galatians (7th ed.), p. 96 n., 97. Sohm,
   Kirchenrecht, i. 42 n.; Harnack, Texte und Unters. II. ii. 113 n., 114;
   Sources of the Apostolic Canons (Eng. Trans.), p. 16, n. 8.

   [200] Lightfoot excludes Apollos on the double ground that it is
   extremely unlikely that he had seen the Lord, and because Clement of
   Rome, speaking of Peter, Paul and Apollos, calls the two former
   apostoloi memarturemenoi and the latter aner dedokimasmenos (1 Clem.
   48).

   [201] Phil. ii. 25.

   [202] The evidence for including James, the brother of our Lord among
   those called apostles by St. Paul is contained in 1 Cor. xv. 7: "Then
   He appeared to James; then to all the apostles; and, last of all, as
   unto one born out of due time, He appeared to me also"; in 1 Cor. ix.
   5: "Even as the rest of the apostles, and the brethren of our Lord, and
   Cephas"; and Gal. i. 19, which may read: "But other of the apostles saw
   I none, save James the Lord's brother," and would then include James
   among the apostles, or: "But I saw no other apostle, but only James the
   Lord's brother." which would exclude James. James is included by
   Lightfoot, Sohm, Weizsäcker (Apostolic Age (Eng. Trans.), ii. 294) and
   many others.

   [203] The phrase, ton huperlian apostolon is translated in the R. V.
   "the chiefest apostles," which would imply that the "Twelve" were
   meant. But this is impossible. St. Paul would never have called the
   "Twelve" "false apostles, deceitful workers, fashioning themselves into
   apostles of Christ" (2 Cor. xi. 13), as he does the men mentioned in
   xi. 5 and xii. 11. The marginal reading, "those pre-eminent apostles,"
   is in every way to be preferred. Cf. Heinrici's masterly exposition,
   Das Zweite Sendschreiben des Apostel Paulus an die Korinther, pp.
   401-412; also Schmiedel, Encyc. Bibl. art. Ministry, p. 3114.

   [204] Cor. iii. 1.

   [205] Matt. xxiv. 11; Mark xiii. 22.

   [206] Didache, xi. 4: "Every apostle who cometh to you let him he
   received as the Lord."

   [207] Matt. x. 10; cf. Luke ix. 3; Mark vi. 8.

   [208] Didache, xi. 5, 6: "He shall not remain except for one day; if
   however, there be need, then the next day; but if he remain three days,
   he is a false prophet. But when the apostle departeth, let him take
   nothing except bread enough till he lodge again; but if he ask for
   money, he is a false prophet."

   [209] Dr. Lightfoot has made a list of what he conceives St. Paul
   thought were the indispensable qualifications for the apostolic
   office:--the apostle must have been a witness of the Resurrection (Acts
   i. 21-23); and this was supplied to St. Paul by a miraculous
   revelation; a commission received either directly from our Lord or
   through the medium of the Church as was the case with Matthias (Acts i.
   23-26), and with St. Paul himself, who was not actually invested with
   the rank of apostle till he received it along with Barnabas at Antioch
   (Acts xiii. 2); the conversions which resulted from his work (1 Cor.
   ix. 2); possessing the signs of an apostle, which were partly moral and
   spiritual gifts such as patience, self-denial, effective preaching, and
   partly supernatural "signs, wonders and mighty deeds." Com. on the
   Epistle to the Galatians (7th ed), pp. 98, 99. Weizsäcker has also made
   a collection of the qualifications of an apostle, but he, rightly
   enough, considers that they were the qualifications demanded from St.
   Paul by his enemies, and are therefore what they declared a true
   apostle ought to possess. "According to them the candidate for the
   apostolate required above all to be a Jew by birth (2 Cor. xi. 22). He
   must have seen Jesus (1 Cor. ix. 1; cf. 2 Cor. v. 16) and been an
   acknowledged promoter of His cause (2 Cor. xi. 23; cf. Acts i. 21).
   Personal qualities, like courage (2 Cor. x. 1 ff.) and eloquence seem
   also to have been required. On the other hand the apostle was then
   expected to attest himself by certain signs (2 Cor. xii. 12), above all
   by miraculous powers and achievements; again by visions and revelations
   (2 Cor. xii. 1), and further, by attacks which could not fail to be
   made upon him, and by his bearing under them (2 Cor. xi. 13 ff.)." He
   adds, "All this would have been meaningless, if only a given number of
   definite individuals had been recognized as apostles." The Apostolic
   Age, ii. 295 (Eng. Trans.).

   [210] 2 Cor. iii. 12; x. 1 rf.; xi. 21.

   [211] 2 Cor. vii. 5; xii. 10.

   [212] 2 Cor. xii. 12.

   [213] 1 Cor. ix. 2; 2 Cor. iii. 1-3.

   [214] Matt. xi. 2-5.

   [215] Gal. ii. 7-9.

   [216] 1 Cor. i. 1: "Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, by
   the will of God." 2 Cor. i. 1. Gal. i. 1: "Paul, an apostle not from
   men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father."

   [217] 1 Cor. ix. 1; xv. 8.

   [218] The full title is Didache ton dodeka Apostolon, "The Teaching of
   the Twelve Apostles."

   [219] Compare Lightfoot, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians,
   99, 100.

   [220] Missionaries and missioners in the Greek Church are called
   hierapostoloi. "The delegates of the Archbishop of Canterbury's mission
   to the Nestorians are regularly called apostles by the Syrians of Urmi"
   (Armitage Robinson, Encyc. Bibl., art. Apostle, p. 265). So are the
   priests who itinerate in the Peloponnesus preaching to great open air
   gatherings on the market-days at such towns as Tripolitza.

   [221] Many of the differences, which make the Pastoral Epistles so
   different from the earlier epistles of St. Paul, disappear when the
   character of the apostle's work is kept steadily in view.

   [222] Sohm (Kirchenrecht, i. pp. 42-5) declares that with the "gift" of
   "speaking the Word of God" there went as its accompaniment the "gift"
   of spiritual rule, and that all "apostles, prophets and teachers " who
   had the one were also entrusted with the other. He shows how the
   apostles in the primitive church of Jerusalem led in all things: in the
   ministry of the "Word," in prayer, in the appointment of office-bearers
   (the community elected but the apostles appointed--katastesomen, Acts
   vi. 3--and presided in the laying on of hands); and when they were
   absent at their missionary work James took their place. St. Paul
   decided for his communities questions of arrangement, sometimes by
   quoting a "word of the Lord," sometimes by giving his own opinion (1
   Cor. xiv. 37); decided upon questions of marriage (1 Cor. vii. 10, 12),
   of virgin daughters (1 Cor. vii. 25, 40), and generally declared "how
   ye ought to walk" (1 Thess. iv. 1). Timothy and Titus, not because they
   were the apostle's delegates, but because they had the "gift" of the
   "Word," appointed to office (Titus i. 5; 1 Tim. iii. 1 ff. 8 ff.), and
   directed ecclesiastical discipline (1 Tim. v. 19, 20; Titus iii. 10).
   Loening (Die Gemeindeverfassung des Urchristenthums, pp.34, 35), on the
   other hand, thinks that the duties of an apostle were purely ethical:
   to teach believers how they should behave as Christians, and in
   particular what changes they had to make in their conduct (1 Cor. iv.
   16, 17); when the apostle has a "word of the Lord" then he commands,
   but otherwise the apostle is not master of the faith of his converts (2
   Cor. i. 24), and his directions are only counsels founded on his own
   experience; and it is with entreaties and persuasion that he asks the
   exclusion of a grievous sinner and the reception again of a repentant
   one (1 Cor. v. 3 ff.; 2 Cor. ii. 5 ff.; viii. 11 ff.).

   [223] 1 Cor. xi. 2; "Hold fast the traditions, even as I delivered them
   to you."

   [224] The direct command of Jesus St. Paul calls epitage, while his own
   suggestions receive the name of sungnome or gnome; cf. l Cor. vii. 6,
   10, 25; these suggestions have a measured authority for the giver has
   the Spirit of God: 1 Cor. vii. 40; xiv. 37.

   [225] 1 Thess. ii. 6: "When we might have claimed honour from you, as
   apostles of Christ."

   [226] 1 Cor. ix. 2; 2 Cor. iii. 1-3.

   [227] Gal. iv. 13 ff.; 1 Cor. iv. 16; xi. 1; Phil. iii. 17.

   [228] Gal. iv. 19. 1 Cor. iv. 14; 18-21; 2 Cor. ii. 9; xiii. 2, 3.

   [229] Cor. vii.-x.

   [230] Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, p. 130; cf. pp. 84-5. For the case
   mentioned above, cf. 1 Cor. v. 1-13, with the conclusion: "Do ye not
   judge them that are within, whereas them that are without God judgeth?
   Put away the wicked man from among yourselves." For the authority
   exercised by the apostles, besides Hort as above, compare Weizsäcker,
   The Apostolic Age, ii. 297-299; (Eng, Trans.); Schmiedel, Encyc. Bibl.,
   art. Ministry, pp. 3116, 3117. Gore, The Church and the Ministry (3rd
   ed.), pp. 233-238, an account in which history suffers from being
   looked at through the coloured glass of apostolic succession. Gwatkin,
   art. Apostle in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, i. 126.

   [231] For the Prophetic Ministry compare: Mosheim, Dissertationes ad
   historiam ecclesiasticam pertinentes (1743), ii. pp. 132-308: De
   prophetis ecclesiae apostolicae dissertatio; Harnack, Encyclopædia
   Britan. art. Prophet (New Testament); Texte und Untersuchungen, II. ii.
   119 ff.; Heinrici, Das erste Sendschreiben des Apostel Paulus an die
   Korinther, pp. 347-462; Loening, Die Gemeindeverfassung des
   Urchristenthums, pp. 33 ff.; Robinson, Encyc. Biblica, 3883 ff.;
   Gayford, Hastings' Bible Dictionary; art. Church, i. 434 ff.; Selwyn,
   Christian Prophets (1899); Weinel, Die Wirkungen des Geistes and der
   Geister im nachapostolischen Zeitalter bis Irenaeus (1899)--an
   extravagant book.

   [232] Didache, iv. 1.

   [233] Matt. xvi. 14; Mark vi. 15; viii. 28; Luke ix. 8.

   [234] Acts ii. 16; cf. Joel ii. 28, 29.

   [235] Matt. x. 41; Matt. xxiii. 34; Luke xi. 49.

   [236] Acts xi. 27; xv. 32; xxi. 9, 10.

   [237] Acts xi. 27; xiii. 1.

   [238] Rom xii. 6, 7; 1 Cor. xiv. 32, 36, 37 ff.; 1 Thess. v. 20; Gal.
   iii. 3-5.

   [239] Acts xi. 28; xxi. 10.

   [240] Acts xiii. 1.

   [241] Acts xv. 32.

   [242] Acts xxi. 9.

   [243] Acts xiii. 1. Dr. Lightfoot seems to think that Saul was only a
   prophet until he had received the "call" from the prophets and teachers
   at Antioch. "The actual investiture, the completion of his call, as may
   be gathered from St. Luke's narrative, took place some years later at
   Antioch. It was then that he, together with Baranbas, was set apart by
   the Spirit acting through the Church, for the work to which God had
   destined him, and for which he had been qualified by the appearance on
   the road to Damascus." Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (7th
   ed.), p. 98. But this surely contradicts St. Paul's own statements. He
   claimed to have been an apostle from his conversion, in Acts xxii. 21,
   and in Acts xxvi. 17. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 66, 67,
   answers this curious theory very thoroughly.

   [244] 2 Cor. xii. 1-5.

   [245] The "prophet" is continually called a teacher and said to teach,
   Didache, xi. 10; and the woman Jezebel, who called herself a prophet,
   is said to have taught and seduced many in the church at Thyatira, Rev.
   ii. 20.

   [246] Rev. xi. 18; xvi. 6.

   [247] Silas and Judas, who were prophets in the church at Jerusalem are
   called hegoumenoi there: Acts xv. 22; cf. Heb. xiii. 7 and above p. 73.

   [248] 1 Cor. xii. 28.

   [249] See above, p. 46.

   [250] 1 Cor. xiv. 1, 5, 39.

   [251] 1 Thess. v. 20.

   [252] Rom. xii. 6.

   [253] 1 Cur. xiv. 29-33.

   [254] 1 Cor xii. 3; xiv. 6, 26, 30, 32; Matt. xvi. 17.

   [255] Cf. Ritschl, Die Enstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, p, 475.

   [256] 2 Cor. xii. 1-5.

   [257] Rev. xxii. 9.

   [258] Compare the very full account of Hermas in the Dict. of Chr.
   Biog. ii. 912-927. It is interesting to notice how many of the
   "visions" of the sub-apostolic prophets were concerned with some
   question of Christian life and practice. Hermas had a vision about the
   restoration of repentant sinners to Church privileges (Vis. iii. 7);
   Cyprian had one about the subject which interested him most--the
   obedience which ought to be given to bishops; and Eusebius (Hist. Eccl.
   V. iii. 2-3) relates how while the confessors of Lyons were in prison,
   it was revealed to one of them, Attalus, after his first conflict in
   the arena, that his companion did not act wisely in prison in keeping
   to his ascetic living, that he told his vision to his companion
   Alcibiades, who gave heed to him and left off his ascetic usages, for,
   it is added "they were not deprived of the grace of God, but the Holy
   Spirit was their director."

   [259] Didache, x. 7.

   [260] 1 Cor. xiv. 25; Gal. iv. 14; Didache, iv. 1: "My child, remember
   night and day him that speaketh to thee the word of God and honour him
   as the Lord; for where that which pertaineth to the Lord is spoken,
   there the Lord is." Acts xiii. 1, 2: "Now there were at Antioch, in the
   church that was there, prophets . . . and as they ministered to the
   Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate Me Barnabas and Saul
   . . ."

   [261] 1 Thess. v. 14; 1 Cor. v. 1-8; 2 Cor. ii. 5-8.

   [262] Gal. vi. 1: humeis hoi pneumatikoi katartizete ton toiouton.

   [263] Pseudo-Clem., De Virginit. i. 11: "With the gift therefore that
   thou hast received from the Lord, serve the spiritual brethren, the
   prophets." Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. V. vi. 1: "In like manner we do hear of
   many brethren in the Church, who possess the prophetic gifts . . . whom
   also the apostle terms spiritual.'"

   [264] Tertullian, De Pudicitia, xxi.: "The Church it is true will
   forgive sins; but it will be the Church of the Spirit, by means of a
   spiritual man; not the Church which consists of a number of bishops.
   For the right and judgment is the Lord's, not His servant's; God's
   Himself, not the priest's." Hermas, Pastor, Mandata, IV. iii

   [265] Sohm has collected the evidence for the right assigned to martyrs
   to pronounce absolution on the belief that God was specially present in
   His martyr, in his Kirchenrecht, i. 32, n. 9. The office-bearers
   deprived the prophets of the right of absolution and took it upon
   themselves in the end of the second and in the beginning of the third
   centuries; and Cyprian's long struggle with the confessors in North
   Africa ended in the overthrow of all such rights in the hands of any
   but the regular office-bearers in the Church.

   [266] Harnack, Theol. Lit. Zeitung, 1889, pp. 420, 421.

   [267] Matt. x. 41.

   [268] Acts xi. 28; xxi. 10.

   [269] 1 Cor. ix. 5.

   [270] 1 Cor. ix. 14; Matt. x. 10.

   [271] Gal. vi. 6.

   [272] Matt. x. 41.

   [273] Didache, xiii.: "But every true prophet who will settle among you
   is worthy of his support. Likewise a true teacher, he also is worthy,
   like the workman of his support. Every first-fruit then of the products
   of the wine-press and threshing-floor, of oxen and of sheep, thou shalt
   take and give to the prophets; for they are your high-priests. But if
   ye have no prophet, give it to the poor. If thou makest a baking of
   bread, take the first of it and give according to the commandment. In
   like manner also when thou openest a jar of wine or oil, take the first
   of it and give to the prophets; and of money and clothing and every
   possession take the first, as may seem right to thee, and give
   according to the commandment."

   [274] Didache, x. 7. The mode of conducting the Eucharistic meeting is
   quite unknown except the one fact that when prophets were present they
   led. It is easy to conceive a collegiate superintendence of the meeting
   for edification; but it is hardly possible to think of a collegiate
   presidency at the dispensation of the Lord's Supper. Did the prophets
   select one of their number to preside, or did they preside in turn? We
   do not know. Nor can we get out of this difficulty by supposing that
   the Lord's Supper was dispensed in the family, when the father would
   naturally preside; for St. Paul's description clearly implies a common
   dispensation.

   [275] Compare pp. 70-72.

   [276] 1 Cor. x. 15; xi. 13; 2 Cor. xiii. 5, 6; cf. Rev. ii. 2; compare
   H. Weinel, Paulus als Kirchlicher Organisator (1899), pp. 18, 19.

   [277] 1 Cor. xii. 10; cf. vv. 1, 4.

   [278] Matt. vii. 15; xxiv. 11.

   [279] 1 Thess. v. 21; 1 John iv. 1-3; cf. Didache, x. 1, 2, 11; xiii.
   1.

   [280] Rev. ii. 2.

   [281] Rev. ii. 14, 15, 20.

   [282] Deut. xiii. 3; Jer. xxiii. 21-32.

   [283] Compare Wissowa, Religion and Kultus der Römer (1902), pp. 78-83;
   Boissier, La Religion Romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins (1878), i.
   354-403.

   [284] 1 Cor. xii. 3.

   [285] The test given in 1 John iv. 1: "Beloved, believe not every
   spirit, but test the spirits, whether they be of God; because many
   false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit
   of God: every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the
   flesh is of God; and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus (annulleth
   Jesus) is not of God," also looks like a creed; but what follows makes
   us see that it is to be taken as a principle which can be felt and
   which means much more than the form of words in which it is expressed.
   In both cases the statement of the test is immediately followed by an
   exposition of the necessity of Christian love permeating the whole
   Christian life.

   [286] Didache, xi. 8. The subordinate tests are: A prophet who orders a
   meal in the spirit and eateth it; a prophet who does not himself
   practise what he teaches; a prophet who asks for money--are all false
   prophets. But a prophet who has the "ways of the Lord," and who
   practises more than he preaches is a true prophet. (Did. xi. 9-12.)

   [287] Matt. xxiii. 34: "prophets, wise men and scribes." Luke xi. 49:
   "prophets and apostles." Cf. Matt. x. 41.

   [288] 1 Cor. xii. 28.

   [289] 1 Cor. xiv. 26.

   [290] Gal. vi. 6.

   [291] We can see from 1 Cor. xv. 1-3, how St. Paul had made his
   converts acquainted with the sufferings, death, and rising again of our
   Lord; how he had enlarged on His character and ethical qualities (2
   Cor. viii. 9; x. 1); etc., etc. He had taught them the institutions of
   Jesus (1 Cor. xi. 23 ff.). We have references to "commandments" of the
   Lord in 1 Cor. vii. 6, 25.

   [292] 1 Cor. xv. 51: "Behold I tell you a mystery: We shall not all
   sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an
   eye, at the last trump." 1 Cor. ii. 6 ff. Cf. xiii. 2; xiv. 2.

   [293] 2 Thess. ii. 15.

   [294] 1 Cor. vii. 6, 10, 25.

   [295] Rom. vi. 17: tupos didaches.

   [296] Eph. iv. 15, 16.

   [297] Didache, xiii. 2; xv. 2.

   [298] James iii. 1; Barnabas, Epistle iv. 9: "Being desirous to write
   many things to you, not as your teacher, but as becometh one who loves
   you."

   [299] Compare the curious sentence in the Apostolic Constitutions
   (VIII. xxxii.) which can scarcely be earlier than the beginning of the
   fifth century: "Let him that teaches, although he be one of the laity,
   yet, if he be skilful in the word and grave in his manners, teach;"
   where the reference is evidently to the instruction of catechumens. The
   teachers of the famous catechetical school of Alexandria were laymen
   during some part of their time as teachers. The Christian communities,
   especially in large towns, must have needed teachers for Christian
   schools; for all teaching within pagan lands is closely associated with
   idolatry. Tertullian (De Idolatria, x.) has discussed the difficulties
   of schoolmasters amidst a pagan populace; the same difficulties attend
   native Christians in India now. When a Marathi boy first goes to school
   he is placed upon a small carpet and a board covered with red tile dust
   is placed before him. The image of Saravasti, the goddess of learning,
   is painted on the board. Then the master sitting beside him first
   worships Ganesa and Saravasti, and teaches the boy to make the letters
   which form the name Ganesa. The difficulties are exactly those which
   Tertullian describes.

   [300] Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. VII. xxiv. 6: "The presbyters and the
   teachers of the brethren in the villages."

   [301] Compare Plumptre, Theology and Life, p. 90: "Strange as the
   thought may seem to us, there were in that age (the apostolic) some
   hundreds it may be, of men as truly inspired as Isaiah or Ezekiel had
   been, as St. Paul or St. Peter then were, speaking words which were, as
   truly as any that were ever spoken, inspired words of God, and yet all
   record of them has vanished."

   [302] Origen, Contra Celsum, vii. 9: "Again inasmuch as Celsus
   announces that he will describe from personal observation and an
   intimate knowledge of the facts, the manners peculiar to the prophets
   of Phenicia and Palestine, let us consider these statements. Firstly,
   he declares that there are several kinds of prophesyings, although he
   gives no list of them . . . . The prophets,' he says, are many and
   unknown persons. They are apparently and very readily moved to speak as
   if in a divine ecstasy without any special occasion both at the time of
   service and at other times. Some go about as beggars and visit
   encampments and towns. Every one of them says readily and simply: I am
   God,' or I am the Son of God,' or I am the Holy Spirit. I have come;
   for the world is about to be destroyed; you, O men, will be lost
   through your wickedness. I am willing to save you; and you shall see me
   again coming with heavenly power. Blessed is he who now worships me. On
   all others I shall cast eternal fire, on cities and lands and on men.
   Men who do not recognize their impending judgment will repent and groan
   in vain; but those who have hearkened unto me, I will protect for
   ever.' With these threats they mingle words, half-frantic, meaningless
   and altogether mysterious, whose significance no sensible man could
   discover. For words that are vague and without meaning give every fool
   and wizard an opportunity of giving any particular meaning they wish on
   any matter, to what has been said." One must remember that Celsus was
   what would now be called a cultured agnostic. His statements are not
   unlike some criticisms of the Salvation Army preachers.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER IV

  THE CHURCHES CREATING THEIR MINISTRY

   In approaching the subject of the ministry of the local Christian
   communities it may be well to note these things at the outset. We have
   abundant evidence of the thorough independence of the local churches
   during the apostolic age, whether we seek for it in the epistles of St.
   Paul or in the Acts of the Apostles. [303] We must remember the
   uniquely Christian correlation of the three thoughts of leadership,
   service and "gifts"; leadership depends on service, and service is
   rendered possible by the bestowal of "gifts" of the Spirit which enable
   the recipients to serve their brethren. [304] The possession of these
   "gifts" of the Spirit was the evidence of the presence of Jesus within
   the community, and gave the brotherhood a divine authority to exercise
   rule and oversight in the absence of any authoritative formal
   prescriptions about a definite form of government. [305] We have also
   to bear in mind the general evidence which exists to show that there
   was a gradual growth of the associative principle from looser to more
   compact forms of organization. [306] Nor should it be forgotten that
   the members of these earliest congregations of believers were well
   acquainted with social organization of various kinds which entered into
   their daily life in the world. When we remember these facts it need not
   surprise us that though in the end the organization of all the churches
   was, so far as we can see, pretty much the same, this common form of
   government may have arisen independently and from a variety of roots
   which may at least be guessed if they cannot be proved. There are
   traces of several primitive types of organization within the churches
   of the apostolic age.

   The first notice we have of organization within a local church is given
   us in the sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles when, at the
   suggestion of the apostles, seven men were chosen for what is called
   the service of tables. This took place probably in the year 34 A.D.
   These men were selected and set apart to take care of the poor and to
   administer the charity of the congregation.

   It is too often forgotten that this service had not the second-rate
   importance which now belongs to it in ecclesiastical organization. It
   is plain that in apostolic times the primary duty overshadowing all
   others, was that those who had this world's goods should help their
   poorer brethren who had need. The sayings of our Lord were ringing in
   their ears: "If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast
   and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven"; "Every
   one that hath left houses and lands for My name's sake shall receive an
   hundredfold and shall inherit eternal life"; [307] "Seek ye His
   kingdom, and these things shall be added unto you . . . sell that ye
   have and give alms; make for yourselves purses which wax not old."
   [308] Their devotion to the invisible God was to manifest itself in
   practical love to the visible brethren. [309] The first duty of
   presbyters, according to Polycarp, was to be compassionate and
   merciful, "visiting all the infirm, not neglecting a widow or an orphan
   or a poor man"; [310] and he calls widows "God's altar"--a phrase
   repeated by Tertullian. [311] These men were chosen to fill the highest
   administrative position which the Church could give, and were to take
   charge in the name of the community of the most sacred of all
   ecclesiastical duties. The office instituted was required by the
   ordinary and permanent needs of the Christian society, for the Lord had
   said that the poor were always to be with them. [312]

   A few years later we read of money collected outside Palestine and
   brought for distribution among the poor of the Church in Jerusalem by
   Barnabas and Saul, who placed it in the hands of men who are called
   elders or presbyters. Unless we are to believe that the appointment of
   the seven was a merely temporary expedient, it is only natural to
   suppose that the duty of distributing money among the poor was
   performed by the men who were appointed by the Church to do it, or by
   others appointed in the same way and for the same purpose; and the
   natural inference is that the Seven of Acts vi. were the elders of Acts
   xi., and that we have in the narrative the account of the beginnings of
   the organization as a whole in the Church at Jerusalem, and not merely
   the institution of a special order of the Christian ministry. [313]

   The Church in Jerusalem appointed seven men. The apostles suggested the
   number. "Look ye out therefore, brethren, from among you seven men."
   [314] They are never called deacons; the Seven is the technical name
   they were known by. Philip, one of them, is not called "Philip the
   Deacon," but "Philip one of the Seven." [315] Why this name? To say
   with Dr. Lightfoot that the number is mystical is scarcely an
   explanation, and it is not likely that it was merely haphazard. The
   Hebrew village community was ruled by a small corporation of seven men,
   [316] as the Hindu village is managed by the council of the Five or the
   Punchayat. The Seven was a title as well known in Palestine as the Five
   is now in India. The Church in Jerusalem, in founding their official
   council of administration, created an entirely new organization
   required by the needs of the young community, but one which brought
   with it associations which had deep roots in the past social life of
   the people. Modern missionary enterprise, which has the same problems
   of organization before it as confronted primitive Christianity,
   frequently sheds light on the procedure of the latter. The Church of
   Scotland (Established) missionaries at Darjeeling, who have based the
   organization of their native church on the Hindu Punchayat; the
   missionaries of the Presbyterian Church of England, who have laid hold
   on the village representative system in China; Bishop Patteson, who
   made a similar use of the native organizations in the South Seas--have
   all unconsciously followed in the footsteps of the apostles when they
   suggested the Jewish village government as a basis for the organization
   of the primitive Church in Jerusalem.

   This earliest example of Christian ecclesiastical organization contains
   in it three interesting elements--apostolic guidance and sanction; the
   self-government and independence of the community evinced in the
   responsibility for good government laid upon the whole membership; and,
   as a result, a representative system of administration suggested by the
   every-day surroundings of the people.

   When we trace the expansion of Christianity and the creation of
   Christian communities outside Jerusalem, we have no such distinct
   picture of the beginnings of their organization as is given in Acts
   vi., but there are indications of what took place. The preaching of the
   Gospel gave rise to Christian communities in various parts of Palestine
   which regarded the Church at Jerusalem as their common mother church,
   and all these communities together made the Church of God which St.
   Paul persecuted. [317] It is probable also that when this
   Judeo-Christianity spread beyond the bounds of Palestine throughout
   Syria and Cilicia, [318] the community in the capital of Judaism,
   presided over by its college of office-bearers with St. James at their
   head, was regarded as the mother church and the centre of the whole
   movement. They had before them the example of Judaism which appeared
   one visible whole centred in the great council. of the elders in
   Jerusalem.

   Further, the Acts of the Apostles relates that Paul and Barnabas left
   behind them at Derbe, Lystra and Iconium, communities of Christians
   with elders at their head. We are told that the apostles "appointed for
   them elders in every church." [319] The word, cheirotonesantes, means
   strictly to elect by popular vote. It suggests that Paul and Barnabas
   followed the example of their brethren at Jerusalem. and suggested and
   superintended an election of office-bearers, and the title "elders"
   (presbuteroi) was probably derived from the Church of Jerusalem. It
   need not have been so, however, for the word was common enough among
   the Greeks, and the more mature men in the congregations would be
   naturally selected. [320] A second and very different type of
   organization, though capable of being joined with the first, also comes
   to us from the primitive Church in Jerusalem. The accounts of the
   earliest condition of the Church, whether taken from the Acts of the
   Apostles or from the Epistles of St. Paul, reveal an independent
   self-governing community under the guidance of the apostles St. Peter
   and St. John. The leadership of these two apostles is conspicuous
   throughout the first eleven chapters of the Book of Acts. Then there is
   a sudden change which is quite unexplained, and in the twelfth chapter
   (ver. 17) and onwards St. James, the brother of our Lord, is seen to be
   in a position of pre-eminence. [321] The letters of St. Paul also
   reveal the change, but equally give no hint of when it took place or of
   the causes which led to it. But if canonical Scripture tells us nothing
   about the reasons for the change, tradition and early Church history
   have a good deal to say about it. It is quite impossible to explain the
   continuous and marked influence of St. James, on any theory of the
   organization of the Church at Jerusalem which makes it borrow its
   constitution from the Jewish Synagogue system. When we read the story
   of the election of his successors we have suggestions of another and
   very different organization. The James, who was the recognized and
   honoured head of the community in Jerusalem, was the eldest male
   surviving relative of our Lord. [322] We are told by Eusebius, quoting,
   it can hardly be doubted, from Hegesippus, that after the martyrdom of
   St. James and the fall of Jerusalem, the remaining apostles and
   personal disciples of our Lord, with those that were related to our
   Lord according to the flesh, the greater part of them being yet living,
   met together and unanimously selected Symeon to fill the vacant place.
   [323] In another passage he says that Symeon was the son of Clopas our
   Lord's paternal uncle, and adds that "he was put forward by all as the
   second in succession, being the cousin of the Lord"; in a third he
   speaks of "the child of the Lord's paternal uncle, the aforesaid
   Symeon, son of Clopas," and in a fourth he tells us that Hegesippus
   relates that Clopas was "the brother of Joseph." [324] In short he
   dwells pertinaciously on the natural kinship between the head of the
   primitive Christianity in Jerusalem and our Lord. The last glimpse we
   have of our Lord's kinsfolk has been recorded by the same gossipy
   writer, who made it his business to preserve such details, and it
   reveals them at the head of the Jewish Christian community. He tells us
   that in the fifteenth year of the Emperor Domitian "there still
   survived kinsmen of the Lord, grandsons of Judas, who was called the
   Lord's brother according to the flesh." They were dragged to Rome and
   brought before the Emperor. He questioned them. They showed him their
   hands horny with holding the plough, and said that their whole wealth
   amounted to about 9,000 denarii, the value of thirty-nine acres
   (plethra) of land, which they cultivated themselves and on which they
   paid taxes. The Emperor contemptuously sent them back to Palestine, and
   there they were made the rulers of the Church because they had been
   martyrs and were of the lineage of the Lord. They lived till the reign
   of Trajan, and their names were James and Zoker. [325]

   A succession in the male line of the kindred of Jesus, where the eldest
   male relative of the founder succeeds, where the election to office is
   largely regulated by a family council, and where two can rule together,
   has no analogy with any form of organization known in the Christian
   Church. But the type of organization is easily recognizable. It was,
   and is to this day, a common Oriental usage that the headship of a
   religious society is continued in the line of the founder's kindred
   according to Eastern line of succession, from eldest male surviving
   relative to eldest male surviving relative, whether brother, uncle, son
   or cousin. Here again we have a Christian community organizing itself,
   and that under apostolic sanction, on a plan borrowed from familiar
   social custom. [326]

   When we turn to the churches which owed their being to the apostolic
   work of St. Paul, we find the independence and self-government
   evidently taken for granted and formulated in principles laid down by
   the apostle in his epistles. The churches at Rome and at Corinth were
   churches because the presence and power of Christ were manifested
   within the Christian fellow-ship in a series of "gifts," which provided
   everything necessary for their corporate life as churches, organized
   according to any form of self-government which recommended itself to
   them. There is not a trace of the idea that the churches had to be
   organized from above in virtue of powers conferred by our Lord
   officially and specially upon certain of their members. On the contrary
   the power from above, which was truly there, was in the community, a
   direct gift from the Master Himself.

   We find in the earlier Epistles [327] of St. Paul traces of men who
   exercised rule or at least leadership of some kind within the churches.
   [328] They may have been elected office-bearers or they may have been
   men who, without being office-bearers in the strict sense of the words,
   performed services necessary for the well being of the community such
   as office-bearers are accustomed to do.

   Even in the case of the simplest and smallest Christian communities
   certain services must always be rendered to the whole fellowship. Some
   one must provide a room for the meetings, take care of the Scriptures
   and other books required for the acts of public worship, keep the
   records of the society. The meetings need a president, if only for the
   time being. There is also need for services which may be called
   spiritual. Some one must see that brotherly intercourse is maintained,
   that quarrels are avoided, and that persons at variance are reconciled.
   The sick have to be visited, inquirers and the young have to be
   instructed and encouraged in the faith. Some persons have to see to all
   these things. They will naturally season their work with advice,
   admonition, warning, and encouragement. The men who begin to do these
   things from their love to the cause and the work naturally go on doing
   them; and their activity which was at first purely personal and
   voluntary, tends to become recognized and official. This is what may be
   seen on any mission field in the present day, especially in such lands
   as China and India, where Christianity is doing aggressive work among a
   civilized people habituated to work together in a society. The epistles
   of St. Paul reveal the same state of things. The men who are to be
   honoured as leaders are those who work for their brethren and put some
   heart into their labour (hoi kopiontes en humin). Their work might
   include exhortation and admonition, for the term applied to them by St.
   Paul is the word he used to describe his own labours, [329] or it might
   be work of some other kind. [330] Whatever it was, it was necessary for
   the foundation, growth and stability of the infant churches. The men
   who laboured in these ways were the natural leaders of the community,
   for leadership was to be based on service, and the apostle declared
   that they were to be "esteemed highly for their work's sake." [331]
   These workers, as is the case in modern missions, were the first
   converts, like Stephanas, [332] or the men who had given their houses
   for the meetings of the brethren. [333] These brethren were to have the
   pre-eminence, and were to be obeyed for their work's sake. [334]

   These natural leaders receive a special name in the epistles to the
   Romans and to the Thessalonians. They are called "those who are over
   you in the Lord." The word is proistamenoi; and the term has a history,
   and would at all events suggest a special kind of relationship between
   leaders and led. It suggested the relation of patron and client, of
   prostates and metoikos, familiar enough in Rome and in Thessalonica,
   which no longer bore the old strictly legal meaning, but which in a
   less definite sense permeated the whole social life of the times. The
   word or a cognate one (proestos) lingered long in the Roman Church. It
   is found in the writings of Hermas, the Roman presbyter, and was used
   by Justin Martyr when he wished to explain the organization of a
   Christian congregation to a Roman Emperor. [335] Archaeological
   investigation has proved how families among the privileged Roman
   aristocracy were the patrons of their poorer Christian brethren. The
   "church in the house" was not necessarily a "kitchen meeting." The
   investigations of the late Commendatore de Rossi have shown us that the
   Christian faith made its way at a very early period into the families
   of some of the noblest and wealthiest Romans. They could, and probably
   did, open their houses to their poorer brethren and give their great
   audience halls (basilica) for the worship of the common brotherhood,
   interposing the protection of the legal sacredness of their private
   life as a shield on all who joined in their devotions. [336]
   Congregational meetings of this kind had the appearance of an assembly
   of powerful patrons and their humble clients, and thus took the form of
   a well recognized condition of Roman social life in all its
   ramifications. This idea is con-firmed by the shape of the earliest
   Roman churches, which, as has been before remarked, resemble the
   audience hall of the wealthy Roman burgher. When buildings were erected
   for the exclusive use of the Christian worship in happier days, the
   architects naturally copied the arrangement of the buildings they had
   been used to, and unconsciously transmitted architectural proof of the
   churchly organization of earlier times. Here, for a third time, we can
   see the Christian fellowship organizing itself under social usages well
   understood by the members of the infant brotherhood.

   In the Epistles to the Corinthians, while we find exhortations to obey,
   we do not find any words which designate those to whom obedience is
   due; nor have we any description of the organization which prevailed in
   the Corinthian Church, nor any advice given by the apostle about what
   it ought to be. The Christians of Corinth lived amidst so many forms of
   associated life that if organization was to be worked out by the
   congregation for itself, they would naturally have more aptitude for it
   than most Christian communities. For the people of Corinth were
   accustomed to confraternities of all kinds, and above all to private
   religious associations for the practice of special cults. Under the
   universal state religion of the Roman Empire there were innumerable
   religions with their different forms of worship. The state religion had
   its colleges of priesthoods, its great temples and its public
   sacrifices; these private religions had their associations for the
   performance of their peculiar rites. The Jewish synagogues of the
   Dispersion were enrolled as private religious societies, and seemed to
   their heathen neighbours to be one out of many kinds of institutions
   for the practice of a religion admitted to be lawful (religio licita),
   although it was the faith of only a small minority of their neighbours.

   The organization of these confraternities, as far as the western
   division of the Empire is concerned, is known in a general way; and
   although it differed in details in different societies, certain common
   features can be recognized. The confraternities were thoroughly
   democratic to the extent of admitting slaves to be members provided
   their masters gave consent. The confraternity was regarded as a great
   family, and the associates called each other "brothers" and "sisters."
   They had a common meal at stated times. They paid a monthly
   subscription to the common fund (stips menstrua). They were permitted
   to make their own laws provided nothing was enacted which came into
   collision with the regulations of the State. These confraternities
   elected their own office-bearers, who were commonly called decuriones;
   and the society was strictly divided into office-bearers and commons,
   though occasionally we find an intermediate class of honoured persons.
   [337] The confraternities exercised discipline over their members and
   inflicted fines in money and in kind for offences. A book was kept
   (album) containing the names of all the associates. Women were members
   of a large number of these confraternities, more especially of the
   burial clubs. [338] Their places of meeting were generally called
   scholae, [339] because they were the scenes of leisure and re-creation,
   though the words curia and basilica are sometimes found (the Greek word
   is almost always oikos). There they had their common meals and their
   business meetings; the two were never held together. "Item," says a
   decretum, "placuit si quis quid queri aut referre volet, in conventu
   referat, ut quieti et hilares diebus solemnis epulemur." Almost all
   these confraternities had a patron or a patroness, who was always
   elected by acclamation and never by a mere majority of votes. Sometimes
   we hear of confraternities belonging to or having their seat in a
   private house, [340] consisting probably of the servants or slaves of
   the mansion. Almost all these confraternities, like their lineal
   descendants the "gilds" of mediaeval times, whether in England or on
   the Continent, had a distinctly religious side even when they were not
   formed for the express purpose of practising a foreign cult. They
   placed themselves under the protection of some deity or
   deities--merchants honoured Mercury; the dealers in grain, Ceres and
   the Nymphs; the wine?dealers, Liber; the weavers and spinners, Minerva;
   and the fishermen, Neptune, etc.--and paintings of the protecting deity
   and images of the emperors adorned the walls of the Schola. [341]

   A large number of the Christian converts must have belonged to these
   confraternities before their conversion; many maintained their places
   as members after their entrance into the Christian Church in spite of
   all the efforts of masterful ecclesiastics, like Cyprian of Carthage
   and some bishops of Rome, to prevent the practice. [342] They must have
   known how the associations were organized, and they must have carried
   that knowledge with them into Christianity. They were likely to make
   use of that knowledge in the interests of the new faith to which they
   had attached themselves.

   This line of argument may easily be pressed too far. Scholars like
   Renan, Heinrici, Hatch and Weingarten, to say nothing of Schmiedel,
   [343] have pushed the relation which they think subsisted between the
   heathen confraternities and the organization of the primitive Gentile
   Christian communities much further than the evidence seems to warrant.
   Nothing that they have brought forward bears out the idea that the
   Christian societies were framed on the model of these pagan
   confraternities. On the contrary, all the evidence laboriously
   accumulated to establish the similarity between the Christian
   organization and that of the pagan confraternities, has not produced
   many points of resemblance which are not the common property of all
   forms of social organization. [344] The primitive Christian communities
   organized themselves independently in virtue of the new moral and
   social life that was implanted within them; but they did not disdain to
   take any hints about organization which would be of service from the
   pagan associations to which they had been accustomed.

   Here then we have, not a fourth type, but a fourth root of early
   Christian organization.

   A fifth may be found in the Jewish synagogues of the Dispersion; for
   many of the converts must have been Jews, or Gentiles who had become
   Jewish proselytes. The communities of the Jewish people scattered over
   the Roman Empire occupied very different positions in different places.
   In Alexandria and in Cyrene they had acquired almost complete political
   independence, and formed one large and separate community distinct from
   the surrounding population. In Rome, they had no rights that could be
   called political, and were divided into a number of separate
   communities apparently quite independent the one of the others.

   Everywhere however throughout the Roman Empire, thanks to the
   legislation of Julius Caesar and Augustus, the Jews had acquired
   complete legal protection for their religion. [345] This had been held
   to include the right to administer their property within their own
   communities according to their own laws, and to have a limited
   jurisdiction over their own members. Thus even where they had the
   fewest political rights the Jewish communities were always recognized
   as lawful associations permitted to practise the rites of a religio
   licita. The unit of the Jewish organization was the synagogue. In
   Alexandria the syngagogues seem to have been united under a common
   council; but in Rome, as has been said, the synagogues were independent
   associations, each having its own council, its own president, and its
   own office-bearers. [346] The privileges of administering their own
   property and of exercising jurisdiction over their own members, made
   these synagogues as much civil as religious communities, and it is very
   difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between the two sides. At
   the head of each community was a council, the gerousia, with a
   president, the gerousiarches; the official leaders of the community
   were called archontes, and these archons were commonly elected for a
   term of years and sometimes for life. [347] They were purely civil
   officials; they decided questions of property; they had some criminal
   jurisdiction; and they were permitted to punish disobedience. The
   communities had also almoners--at least three, who are commonly classed
   among the ecclesiastical office-bearers, but whose work was almost
   purely civil. The only purely ecclesiastical office was that of
   archisunagogos. All the actions of public worship, reading the
   Scriptures, preaching, praying, were performed by the private members,
   and it was the duty of the official to select those who were to take
   part in the services. Some synagogues had more than one archisunagogos,
   and in later times the title must have become an honorary one, for we
   find it given to women and to boys. Besides this purely ecclesiastical
   official there was the "servant of the synagogue" (huperetes), who
   seems to have combined the offices of school-master, beadle and public
   executioner; he taught the children, brought in and removed the copies
   of Scripture used in public worship, and corporal punishment for
   misdeeds was administered by him. [348]

   However the internal organization of these Jewish communities differed
   from the pagan confraternities, their external appearance was such that
   they were undoubtedly classed among them, and by the names they gave
   their officials and by some of their customs they would appear to have
   tried to carry out the likeness as far as possible. [349]

   This synagogue organization has some points in common with that of the
   early Christian communities, and these were probably taken over into
   Christianity, but the differences were so great that it is impossible
   to say that the one organization comes from the other. Whether we
   regard its connexion with the pagan confraternities on the one hand, or
   with the Jewish synagogues on the other, it may be said that the
   organization of the Christian communities proceeded by a path peculiar
   to themselves. Starting from the simplest forms of combination they
   framed their ministry to serve their own needs in accordance with what
   they saw was best fitted for their own peculiar work. [350] This did
   not mean that the training acquired in pagan confraternity or in Jewish
   synagogue was altogether without effect on the members of the infant
   Christian churches, or that usages suitable for their purposes were not
   adopted; but it does mean that the organization of the primitive
   Gentile churches was not a copy either of pagan confraternity or of
   Jewish synagogue. What is to be insisted upon is that, on the
   supposition that the apostles did not prescribe any definite form of
   Church government (and there is not only no evidence that they did, but
   the indications are all the other way), the Christians of Corinth and
   of other cities in the East and in the West were sufficiently
   acquainted with forms of social organization to be able to organise
   their communities in such a way that the possibilities of rule and
   service which lay in the possession of those gifts of the Spirit that
   manifested the presence of Christ, could find free exercise for the
   benefit and edification of the whole community.

   One thing, however, in this connexion must not be forgotten, as it
   often is. The infant Christian churches came into being in the
   Graeco-Roman world at a time when the imperial policy was extremely
   jealous of any forms of social organization, and when its officials
   were on the watch to prevent any new development of the principle.
   Julius Caesar, on political grounds, had suppressed all confraternities
   except those of ancient origin, [351] but, also from motives of policy,
   had expressly excepted the Jewish synagogues. [352] His nephew and
   successor Augustus followed in his uncle's footsteps, and in addition
   had ordered all religious associations to be placed under the strictest
   control and surveillance. [353] The well-known contempt which the first
   emperor entertained for Oriental religions was doubtless partly
   responsible for this. [354] The Jewish synagogues were again specially
   exempted. All new confraternities had to get a special permit from the
   senate, if they were in the senatorial provinces, and from the emperor,
   if they belonged to the imperial ones. The only associations which were
   perhaps exempted were the collegia tenuiorum, when they were also
   burial clubs; but it is doubtful whether there was ever a general
   concession made till the time of Severus. There existed, however,
   throughout the empire a multitude of confraternities which had not
   received the sanction of either senate or emperor, and which were
   therefore illicit, but which were undisturbed although under police
   supervision. They could be suppressed at any time, and it was provided
   that no very serious punishment accompanied the suppression. [355]
   Christianity was never recognized as a religio licita till the time of
   Constantine, and could never have received official sanction for its
   assemblies; but it was not impossible for the Christian churches to
   take the place of an illicit confraternity provided they had such an
   external resemblance to some well recognized confraternities as would
   permit the police to connive at their existence. It is undoubted that
   the Christian Church was at first believed by the Romans to belong to
   the tolerated and protected Judaism. Tertullian meets the charge that
   Christianity was "hiding something of its presumption under the shadow
   of an illustrious religion (Judaism), one which has at any rate the
   authorization of law." [356] So long as the Roman Government did not
   perceive the difference between the Christians and the Jews, the infant
   Christian churches could remain sheltered under the laws which
   permitted legalized confraternities; [357] but when the difference
   became manifest, and when Jews themselves began to denounce the
   Christians, some other shelter was required. [358] This could be and no
   doubt was furnished by the general external resemblance of the
   Christian societies to the pagan confraternities for religious
   practices. Hence conformity with the usages of a pagan confraternity
   gave the Christians the best means of escaping the attention of the
   authorities, alert to notice any attempts to start altogether new
   associations. [359] It is evident that the Christian communities had
   some usages in common with the confraternities, and precisely those
   which would be the most likely to attract attention. They met together
   for a common meal (which was one of the things that Pliny noticed);
   [360] they made a distinction between the meetings for the common meal
   and those for edification and for business; they honoured the dies
   natalis of a martyr as the confraternities celebrated the birthdays of
   benefactors; they exhibited a reverence for their dead brethren in ways
   that could be compared with the practices of the confraternities; [361]
   above all, after the time of the Emperor Nerva they tried to assimilate
   themselves to the collegia tenuiorum, which obtained an easier
   recognition on the part of the authorities, and this came to a head
   when Bishop Zephyrinus was able to get the Roman Church registered as a
   burial club. [362] There was sufficient external resemblance between
   the confraternities to enable Tertullian to plead that the Church
   should be recognized as a legally permitted association, and to make
   Pliny suggest that he might proceed against the Christians as members
   of an illicit collegium. [363] All these things enable us to see how
   the Christian churches during the earliest part of their existence
   could maintain a position of precarious security in face of the
   imperial policy of not permitting new associations. But we are scarcely
   warranted in drawing conclusions about the inward organization of the
   primitive Christian communities. What we can infer is, that the
   Christians of the primitive Gentile churches had the ordinary
   experience to enable them to make use of all the divine gifts of rule
   and service in creating for their churches from their midst a
   ministering service.

   Churches like that of Corinth and Philippi, whatever may have suggested
   their forms of organization, and whatever bands held them together, had
   within them persons with the "gifts" which enabled them to offer wise
   counsels, to assist their neighbours, to lead the devotions and to
   manage the affairs of the community. If it be said, as it is sometimes
   done, that the churches of Corinth and Rome were not properly organized
   because we do not hear of bishops or presbyters or deacons, then that
   means that a Christian community could be addressed as a Christian
   church, could be called "Christ's Body," could admit catechumens by the
   sacred door of baptism, could assemble together for public worship,
   could partake together of the Holy Supper, could exercise Christian
   discipline, and all this without office-bearers set apart for the
   purposes of the ministry in regular and ecclesiastical fashion. It
   shows, as nothing else can, that the Church comes before the ministry,
   and that it creates for itself and its own needs its ministering
   service; the natural leaders led, the people followed, the organization
   grew and the new moral and social life had full liberty to develop
   itself in all manner of Christian service. The two types of the
   earliest local ministry, the serving and the leading, the antilepseis
   and the kuberneseis, the diakonein and the episkopein appeared first as
   forms of doing what service was required of them, and then as permanent
   offices.

   Hitherto, with one exception, we have been working at those portions of
   the New Testament whose dates are well ascertained. Our material has
   been drawn chiefly from the earlier Epistles of St. Paul, all of which
   belong to the years before 57 A.D. When we come to the material given
   in the Epistle of James, 1 Peter, and the Pastoral Epistles, we are at
   once confronted with questions of date and authorship, on which modern
   scholars hold very varying opinions.

   For our purposes, however, these questions are by no means so important
   as might at first be supposed. No critic, whose opinions deserve
   serious consideration, denies the truth of the pictures of the
   ecclesiastical organization exhibited in the Pastoral Epistles or in
   the later chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. While they may refuse
   to admit that St. Paul or St. Luke was the author and while they may
   relegate the composition to the last decade of the first or to the
   second or third decades of the second century, they all admit that the
   representations of ecclesiastical polity found in these documenta are
   true for this later period and may be true for a much earlier one. The
   Church, it is held universally, did pass through the stage of
   organization shown in these documents. The only question is the date of
   the stage. No reasonable critic would affirm that a special feature of
   ecclesiastical organization may not have been in existence long before
   it is mentioned, or that the date when we first hear about it is the
   date of its origin, unless there is the express statement that it took
   its beginning at that time. For example, when it it said that Paul and
   Barnabas did not see elders set over the churches of Derbe, Lystra and
   Iconium (Acts xiv. 23), no one denies that the passage is evidence for
   the existence of elders in these churches in the beginning of the
   second century. Only some critics believe that the statement so
   conflicts with St. Paul's own account of his conduct towards his
   missionary churches that it is impossible to accept the idea that the
   office of eldership, which was certainly present when the document was
   written, dates as far back as the planting of the churches. They say
   that the writer, not unnaturally, attributes the polity of his own time
   to the earlier period. Others, who accept the late date of the
   document, find certain corroborative evidence of the existence of
   elders in these churches long before this date, and have no difficulty
   in believing that the institution of the office may have come from the
   missionary journey of St. Paul, whatever the date or authorship of the
   document which relates the circumstance. The same remark applies to the
   Pastoral Epistles. If the late date of the documents be accepted, and
   if it is also believed that the accounts of the organization of the
   churches given in them indicate a difference of polity from what
   appears in the undisputed Epistles of St. Paul, the result is not to
   discredit the information the documents give us about ecclesiastical
   organization, but to accept it as evidence for what existed in the
   first and second decades of the second century. If the late date of
   composition be maintained, and if it is held that the information given
   is not inconsistent with what existed in earlier days, then nothing
   compels us to conclude that the beginnings of the polity described are
   as late as the accepted date of the documents describing them. In
   either case the documents are held to describe truly the condition of
   the ministry of the Church at an earlier or at a later period--the
   question of time being settled not by the date of the document but by a
   comparison between the information it gives with what we know of the
   earlier period. The matter involved does not concern a general
   conception of ecclesiastical organization, but whether a certain stage
   of development, which did exist some-time, was of an earlier or of a
   later appearance--a question which, when we consider the utmost limits
   of time involved, is comparatively unimportant.

   We need not, therefore, concern ourselves here with the problems which
   the date and authorship of the Book of Acts and of 1 Peter suggest.
   [364] But prevailing critical opinions about the Pastoral Epistles
   place the portions which concern our subject so very late that it is
   necessary either to dissent from them or to relegate the information
   these documents give to the period which produced the Epistles of
   Ignatius and the Sources of the Apostolic Canons. [365] These Pastoral
   Epistles were extensively used in the Primitive Church as a document
   giving directions about ecclesiastical organization and discipline. The
   Muratorian Fragment tells us this. [366] Like all documents used in
   this way, they were apt to be interpolated to suit the needs of time
   and place. Statements about prevailing errors to be shunned were liable
   to be altered in order to be more sharply descriptive of existing
   heresies or tendencies to heresy and disciplinary directions might
   easily have taken a more technical language to suit a later period. But
   when due allowance is made for these natural effects of the primitive
   use of these documents, there does not seem to be evidence strong
   enough to warrant our refusing to believe that they are what they
   declare themselves to be--letters from St. Paul to two of his most
   trusted fellow-workers, instructing them how to carry on his missionary
   work, which he was not able to superintend personally. If this be the
   case these letters show us what St. Paul was in the habit of doing in
   the mission fields which be-longed peculiarly to himself. Titus [367]
   had accompanied the apostle, released from his Roman captivity, to
   Crete, and had been left there to complete the work which the apostle,
   pressed for time, could not stay to finish. His duty was to see that
   "elders" were chosen in every local church. The charge recalls the
   account given in the Acts of the Apostles of the missionary journey of
   Paul and Barnabas through the district which included the cities of
   Derbe, Lystra and Iconium. On that missionary tour the apostles did not
   see to the appointment of "elders" when their converts were first
   gathered from Judaism and heathenism. They allowed the believers in the
   new faith some little time to prove themselves. It was on their return
   journey, when they were "confirming " their converts, that the elders
   were appointed. So here Titus was left till the sufficient time had
   elapsed, and then he was to see to the selection of elders in the local
   churches of Crete. His work was one that could be finished within a
   comparatively short time, for the apostle expected him to follow to
   Nicopolis, where St. Paul was to pass the winter. There is no
   suggestion that his function was anything like a permanent office in
   the Church. The work given him to do is perfectly familiar to modern
   missionaries. The other deputy was Timothy. [368] He had come with the
   apostle to Ephesus, and circumstances, we know not what, had required
   that one of the two should remain and "confirm" the Church there. St.
   Paul had other work to do; Timothy was selected to remain, and he
   received two letters advising him how to act. Such is the setting of
   these Pastoral Epistles as related in the writings themselves.

   In these letters to Titus and to Timothy we find, as we might expect in
   such documents, much more detailed references to the organization of
   the churches than in the Epistles addressed to the churches themselves.
   We find unmistakably an official ministry which appears to consist of
   two grades. We see evidence of a congregational roll on which the names
   of the poor, who are to receive the support of the congregation, are
   entered. There are also traces of a ministry of women. We find the
   apostle laying down rules to guide his deputies in the selection of
   office-bearers and in the removal of ecclesiastical excommunication. In
   short, we find a great deal more definite information about the
   organization and the ministry of the primitive churches than in any
   other of the New Testament writings.

   If we believe that the apostle was above all things a missionary, and
   that his deputies were to do the work of missionaries, which seems to
   be the only view which is consistent with the nature of the function
   and the description of their work which is given in the New Testament
   writings, these Pastoral Epistles may be expected to show us the
   organization of the primitive Gentile churches from the inside, while
   in the Epistles of St. Paul, written either before or during the Roman
   captivity, we see the same organization from the outside. They tell us
   how the apostle personally superintended the building into churches of
   the communities of believers his preaching had gathered together. The
   two sets of letters are complementary. In the earlier letters we see
   the apostle encouraging every form of spontaneous action, and how he
   made the infant communities feel that the whole responsibility lay upon
   their shoulders. In the later epistles the master-builder shows his
   deputies how carefully he was accustomed to guide the exercise of that
   responsibility with scarcely felt touches of the hand.

   The duties of the two deputies varied with the wants of the places in
   which they were set. Timothy had to do with an older community whose
   special circumstances demanded special care; Titus had to deal with
   comparatively newly-established congregations, and to guide them
   carefully but unobtrusively to organize themselves. Both had to do the
   work which the apostle was himself accustomed to do in similar
   circumstances. It was the most difficult and delicate work that falls
   to the lot of a missionary--to guide into right channels of
   self-government communities comparatively young in the faith, and to do
   it in such a way that the community may feel that it is doing the work
   itself, and will be able to sustain itself when the guiding hand shall
   be removed. In modern times nothing tests the ability of a missionary
   for his work like this very task.

   The apostle gave both Titus and Timothy a master-thought to guide them.
   The infant Christian communities were to be looked on as Households of
   God, and as every great household needs servants who superintend, so
   the Household of God needs men who have the oversight. He that has
   proved faithful in small things is the most likely to prove faithful in
   all-important work, and the man who has shown that he can guide and
   rule his own household well is declared to be the best fitted to
   super-intend the Household of God. Hence we are told very little about
   the special duties of the presbyters or bishops, or whatever their
   usual name was, and find little mention of qualities fitted for special
   functions. What the apostle insists on is character, and that kind of
   character which is shown in family relationships.

   Titus is told that a presbyter or elder must be a man who is above
   suspicion, who is a faithful husband [369] and whose children are
   Christians of well regulated lives. He is not to be self-willed, nor
   soon angry, nor given to wine, nor turbulent, nor given to money; he is
   to be a lover of strangers, a lover of what is good, sober-minded,
   upright, pious and temperate in all things. Besides, he ought to be so
   well-grounded in the principles of Christian morality and religion that
   he can exhort the brethren and answer the common Jewish and heathen
   objections to the Christian faith.

   Timothy was placed in temporary charge in a district where the
   Christian community had existed for a longer period; and the
   differences in the advice given all gather round this fact. The
   office-bearers selected by the community were not to be taken from the
   most recently converted, but from men who had some experience of
   Christianity, and whose character had stood the test of time. [370] The
   office of "oversight" had become sought after, and there was the more
   need for careful selection. [371] But as in the letter to Titus what
   St. Paul insists on is character, as that has displayed itself within
   the family, for rule in the human household is the best training for
   management within the Household of God. [372] The list of
   qualifications is practically the same as was given to Titus, with this
   added, that he who has the oversight ought to be a man respected by the
   heathen [373] as well as by his fellow Christians. [374]

   The qualifications demanded of deacons also practically consist of
   character tested by behaviour in the household--faithfulness to wife,
   and evidence of parental control over children and wise dealing with
   servants. [375] It is also interesting to notice a ministry of women.

   Presbyters or elders who rule well are to be honoured, and those who in
   addition assist in the ministry of the Word are to be doubly honoured,
   or perhaps to receive a double honorarium from the free-will offerings
   of the people. Elders who do not rule well are to be looked after; but
   the apostle charges his deputy not to accept accusations against them
   rashly, but to follow the old Jewish rule which required at least two
   grave witnesses to any accusation affecting character. But if an elder,
   or indeed any member of the congregation, did fall into sin, public
   rebuke was to be given without respect of persons. [376] The apostle
   also insists that his deputy is to be very cautious in admitting to
   Church Communion those who have lapsed. He is not "to lay hands
   hastily," [377] according to the usual form in restoration, "on any
   man, neither to be a partaker of other men's sins."

   The picture of the relief of the poor of the community is both vivid
   and homely. It brings before our eyes not merely that far-off primitive
   Christian Church of Ephesus, but also the present work of a Scottish
   country kirk-session. When the bread-winner dies careful inquiries are
   to be made, whether the bereaved widow and orphans have any means of
   support, or can receive any aid from their relations, who are to be
   stirred up to do their duty to those who are left helpless. If the
   children or grandchildren are able to work they are to be commanded to
   support her who has been left a widow; but if such help fails, and if
   the widow is too old to earn her own living and has always borne a good
   character, then she is to be placed on the poor roll of the
   congregation and supported by the community.

   According to our view, these Pastoral Epistles are to be regarded as
   complementary to the earlier Epistles of St. Paul, in so far as they
   give us information about the organization of the Gentile Christian
   communities. The earlier epistles, written to the various churches,
   reveal the principles of the growth of the organization lying within
   the communities themselves; while the Pastoral Epistles, written to
   guide the men who were to be the apostle's deputies, and had to be
   instructed in his methods, show how he watched over the communities his
   preaching had gathered together. The apostle acted like a wise father,
   who encourages every appearance of independent and responsible action,
   but at the same time carefully guides it into the proper channels. From
   one point of view it can be truly said that the churches of St. Paul's
   mission were thoroughly independent and acted on their own
   responsibilities; from another the apostle or his deputies watched over
   and guided this activity. There was control, but it was the control of
   the missionary, and partook largely of parental monition and guidance.

   If we combine what is given us in the earlier Epistles of St. Paul with
   what we find in the Pastoral Epistles, we can discern the principles of
   organization within the Pauline communities. According to the ideas of
   the apostle, a Church of God was thoroughly organized when it found
   within its membership a variety of persons endowed with various
   spiritual gifts producing activities helpful to the whole community.
   That was the real basis of the common life, the divine element without
   which all else was of little moment, and with which everything else was
   a matter of executive detail. These gifts were divided into two great
   classes, those which served for the ministry of the Word, and those
   which were at the foundation of other kinds of ministry. It was from
   this second class of "gifts" that the ministry of the local churches
   proceeded. Among them we find two which crystallise into ecclesiastical
   office. St. Paul calls them "wise counsels" and "helps" (kuberneseis
   and antilepseis, 1 Cor. xii. 28); we may call them "oversight" and
   "subordinate service." Whatever may have been the original principle of
   association, whatever suggestions of social combination earliest
   presented themselves to the minds of the primitive Christians in the
   Gentile Christian communities, whatever the human bands that bound them
   together, these two classes of officials were sure to emerge--the one
   fitted to guide and lead the brethren and the other to render
   subordinate service.

   Some time must have elapsed before active services crystallised into
   offices, but it need not have been a long period. [378] Things move
   fast in young communities organizing themselves for the first time, and
   the spiritual gift of discernment which belonged to the whole community
   was an instrument of organization lying ready to hand. This gift of
   "discernment," when applied to teaching, implied that those who were
   really believed to be the mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit were to be
   heard with reverence, and that the hearers ought to fashion their lives
   according to what was taught. The same gift, when applied to the
   discernment of abilities for rule and service, implied the power to
   select and bestow office upon men so gifted, and the duty of the
   community to obey its chosen leaders in all practical matters.

   In young communities full of a fresh and active enthusiasm, feeling
   that the possession of "gifts" of rule and help was the fulfilment of
   the promise of the Master to be present with them, and that the "gift"
   of discernment enabled them to select their leaders with something of
   divine authority, activities helpful to the community would speedily
   become offices. There is no reason to prevent us from believing that
   Stephanas and the others whom the Corinthian Church are ordered to
   reverence were office-bearers in the full sense of the word. [379]
   Harnack and many others are disposed to deny this. They argue that
   there is no trace of office-bearers properly so-called in St. Paul's
   writings composed before his Roman captivity, although they naturally
   admit there must have been ministries from the very first, and that the
   ministries took shape under the two conceptions of "oversight" and
   "subordinate service." It may be so, but the arguments do not convince
   me. [380] If the proistamenoi of the Epistles to the Thessalonians and
   to the Romans were not office-bearers they did the work of
   office-bearers. To assert that a period of fifty years must have
   elapsed before the proistamenoi of the earlier epistles could become
   the official presbuteroi of the Pastoral Epistles (which is practically
   Loening's contention), or that the development required eighty years
   (which Harnack requires), seems to me to be quite unwarrantable. As has
   been said before, things move fast in young communities and, so far as
   the development in organization goes, there is no reason whatever why
   the state of matters described in the Pastoral Epistles should not have
   arrived at a comparatively early date.

   It is quite in accordance with what has been said, that in all the New
   Testament writings, and indeed in all the earlier books of discipline,
   the work done is always thought more of than the persons selected to do
   it, and office-bearers are honoured for their work's sake rather than
   for their rank. The one thought running through all the earlier
   documents is that the power to render special service to the
   community--for rule and leadership according to primitive modes of
   thought are always founded on "service" and never on
   "lordship"--depends on the possession of "gifts" engrafted by the
   Spirit on individual character, and the occasion of these particular
   services is their recognition by the community, who appoint the
   brethren to serve it in ruling it. One of the chief services which
   belonged to those who were placed at the head of the Christian
   communities was to set an example to those under their charge, and what
   the leaders did all the brethren in their several places were expected
   to do. Hence in the New Testament writings, as well as in the earlier
   canons, the qualities which were to determine the selection of men to
   be leaders were those qualities of stable Christian character which all
   Christians ought to possess. The function of the missionary or his
   deputy, as we can see from the Pastoral Epistles, was to advise the
   community in their selection of those who were to be over them, and to
   inculcate such principles of selection as would abide permanently in
   their minds, and thus secure a succession of worthy office-bearers when
   the first missionaries of the Gospel were no longer present to advise;
   or to use the words of St. Clement of Rome: "Our apostles knew through
   our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife over the name
   (dignity) of the overseer's office. For this cause, therefore, having
   received complete foreknowledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons
   (i.e. their first converts) and afterwards gave a further injunction
   that if they should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to
   their administration" [381] --a description of what takes place now on
   every mission field of the whole Christian Church.

   The earlier Epistles of St. Paul show us, as has been said, that the
   services rendered to the local churches by those whom the brethren are
   commanded to obey for their works' sake were of two kinds, which we
   have called "oversight" and "subordinate service." I think that we may
   presume that these were office-bearers, if not from the beginning, at
   all events from a very early period; but we can at least say that these
   two different kinds of service were rendered by the leaders to the led.
   Later writings, both within and without the New Testament Canon, make
   it plain that these services were rendered by two classes of officials
   who bore official names, which still exist within the Christian Church.
   We read of pastors, overseers, elders and deacons (poimenes, episkopoi,
   presbuteroi, diakonoi). [382] The references to the office-bearers of
   the local churches are always in the plural, and the government must
   have been collegiate. Whatever the special origin and primitive
   meanings of the first three names, they appear to have denoted the same
   office, and the service they gave was what the foremen or the
   proistamenoi of the Epistles to the Thessalonians and to the Romans
   rendered to their respective communities. The terms "pastors"
   (poimenes) and "overseers" (episkopoi) describe the kind of work done,
   and "elder" (presbuteros) was the title of the office. This name
   naturally suggests a Jewish origin; for among Jewish people we find
   "elders" from the earliest to the latest times. The principles of
   social organization which were current among the Jews no doubt
   insensibly moulded the earliest ecclesiastical organization in
   Palestine; and when we find "elders" in charge of the community in
   Jerusalem, ready to receive the contributions for the relief of those
   who were suffering from the famine which overtook them in the reign of
   Claudius, [383] it is impossible to doubt that the name came from their
   Jewish surroundings. At the same time it must always be remembered that
   Christian "elders" had functions entirely different from the Jewish,
   that the vitality of the infant Christian Communities made them work
   out for themselves that organization which they found to be most
   suitable, and that in this case nothing but the name was borrowed.
   [384] The respect which St. Paul always inculcated toward the mother
   Church in Jerusalem and the reception among the primitive Christian
   congregations of converts from Jewish synagogues, can easily account
   for the presence of the name within Gentile Christian churches. This
   does not mean that every Christian congregation had presbyters
   designedly copied from the Jewish synagogue. The largest number
   probably copied their neighbours when they came to make use of the word
   in a technical fashion. The constant intercommunication between
   Christian communities which was such a feature of primitive
   Christianity that the keen-sighted Lucian recognized it as their
   special possession, [385] promoted the gradual assimilation of
   constitution even when the beginnings were of different origins. But it
   is not necessary to suppose that the Gentile Christian communities took
   the word from Judaism. The term was common enough to denote rulers in
   the Graeco-Roman civilization; [386] and the frequent and familiar use
   of the word to denote a ruling body in the ordinary social life around
   them, if it did not altogether suggest the use, must have at least
   facilitated it and ensured its spread. Besides, we must remember that
   the word "elder," in the sense of ruler, is one of the commonest
   expressions among all nations. The English have their aldermen and the
   Romans had their senators, as Dr. Lightfoot has reminded us. [387] We
   may add to this the well-known fact that in young Christian communities
   recently won from paganism the word elder is applied naturally to those
   who have been earliest brought to believe in Christ, and that the first
   office-bearers, or those to whom obedience is due, are usually taken
   from the first converts, like Stephanas in the Corinthian Church.

   All this shows us that during the last decades of the first century
   each Christian congregation had for its office-bearers a body of
   deacons and a body of elders--whether separated into two colleges or
   forming one must remain unknown--and that the elders took the
   "oversight" while the deacons performed the "subordinate services."
   These constituted the local ministry of each Christian church or
   congregation--for these terms were then equivalent. These men watched
   over the lives and behaviour of the members of the community; they
   looked after the poor, the infirm, and the strangers; and in the
   absence of members of the prophetic ministry they presided over the
   public worship, especially over the Holy Supper. [388]

   Before the close of the first century the labours of apostles (and
   under this name a large number of wandering missionaries must be
   included) had given birth to thousands of these local churches. They
   were all strictly independent self-governing communities--tiny islands
   in the sea of surrounding paganism--each ruled by its session or senate
   of elders. There is no trace of one man, one pastor, at the head of any
   community. The ruling body was a senate without a president, a
   kirk-session without a moderator; and if its members did not themselves
   possess the "prophetic gift," their authority, however defined, had
   continually to bend before that of the "prophets" and "teachers," to
   whom they had to give place in exhortation and even in presiding at the
   Lord's Table. The organization of the Primitive Christian Church in the
   last decades of the first century without one president in the
   community, and with the anomalous prophetic ministry, has no
   resemblance to any modern ecclesiastical organization, and yet contains
   within it the roots of all whether congregational, presbyterian
   (conciliar) or episcopal.

   It must not be forgotten that while each Christian community was a
   little self-governed republic, the visible unity of the corporate
   Church of Christ was never forgotten. Although each local church was an
   independent society, although it was not connected with other Christian
   communities by any organization of a political kind, it was
   nevertheless conscious that it belonged to a world-wide federation of
   equally independent churches. Its self-containedness did not produce
   isolation. On the contrary, every local church felt itself to be a real
   part of the universal and visible Church of God to which many hundreds
   of similar societies belonged. "All the churches of Christ," said
   Tertullian, "although they are so many and so great, comprise but one
   primitive Church . . . and are all proved to be one in unbroken unity
   by the communicatio pacis, et appellatio fraternitatis et contesseratio
   hospitalitatis." [389] They kept the conception of this unity alive in
   their hearts by the thought that all shared the same sacraments, were
   taught the same divine mysteries, obeyed the same commandments of God,
   and shared the same hope of the same kingdom. They made this corporate
   unity apparent by mutual help in all Christian social work, and by
   boundless and brotherly hospitality to all fellow-Christians. The
   picture of this corporate unity was always before their eyes in the
   fraternal intercourse of church with church by official letters and
   messengers, and was made vivid by the swift succession of wandering
   "apostles," "prophets" and "teachers," who, belonging to no one
   community, were the ministers of the whole Church of Christ--the
   binding-stones which made it visibly cohere.

   The view taken about presbyters or elders at the close of the preceding
   chapter was for a long time undisputed by all serious students of the
   conditions of the primitive Church. It may be found stated at length in
   the late Dr. Lightfoot's Note on "The synonymes ` bishop' and
   presbyter,'" in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians. [390]
   It has been disputed by such distinguished scholars as Harnack, Sohm
   and Weizsacker, and their divergence from the opinion which was
   previously held with great unanimity arose after and in consequence of
   the publication of the late Dr. Hatch's Bampton Lectures in 1881.

   The theory about early ecclesiastical organization which embodies this
   change of view as to the relation between the "presbyters" and
   "deacons," will be discussed in an Appendix. The matter which concerns
   us here is whether "presbyters " were church officials, chosen and
   appointed as such, in the Church of the first century, and identical
   with "bishops," or whether Harnack is right when he says that "We meet
   with chosen or appointed presbyters for the first time in the second
   century. The oldest witnesses for them are the Epistle of James, the
   Acts of the Apostles, the Pastoral Epistles, the Original Document of
   the so-called Apostolic Ordinances, and the Shepherd of Hermas." [391]

   Harnack's opinion, if I do not mistake him, is, when put briefly, as
   follows. He believes that in the last decades of the first century
   there was at the head of each Christian congregation what may be called
   a three-fold organization--a prophetic, a patriarchal and an
   administrative one. The patriarchal rule was based upon the natural
   deference of the younger to the older members of the community, and the
   circle of elders, in all emergencies which affected the congregation,
   could come forward as their guides; these elders watched over the
   conduct and the evangelical character of the members, and admonished,
   punished and exhorted the congregation. The elders were the natural
   heads of the community, the aged members who were revered on account of
   age and character, but were not elected or appointed officials. The
   real officials, who formed the administration, were the bishops and the
   deacons--men who possessed the "gifts" of government and of public
   service. They were appointed primarily to preside at public worship.
   Originally there was no distinction between the bishops and the deacons
   save what came from age and experience, but their work naturally fell
   into two divisions, in which the oversight belonged to the bishops and
   the subordinate services were performed by the deacons. The bishops, in
   consequence of their position as the officials appointed to conduct
   public worship, became naturally the custodians and administrators of
   the property of the congregation, the distributors of the gifts of the
   faithful, the recognized guardians of the poor, the sick, the infirm
   and strangers, and the representatives of the society to people
   outside.

   Harnack, therefore, holds that presbyters and bishops were distinct
   from the first. He believes, besides, that while a circle of elders, in
   the sense of "honoured" old men, existed from the most primitive times,
   there were no elected or chosen elders forming a college of
   office-bearers till the second century; but he thinks that the bishops
   were usually selected from the circle of honoured old men, were
   sometimes called "elders," and were invariably classed among them. In
   reaching this conclusion he rejects as unhistorical the statement in
   Acts xiv. 23, which tells us that the apostles, Paul and Barnabas, saw
   to the appointment of elders in the churches, which they had formed in
   Derbe, Lystra and Iconium; he believes that the "elders" of Acts xx. 17
   were bishops; he concludes that the "elders" of 1 Peter v. 1 ff. were
   not office-bearers; he rejects, as an interpolation, the verses in
   Titus i. 7-9, [392] which practically assert the identity of bishops
   and presbyters; and he finds a complete justification of his views in
   the statements about presbyters and bishops in the Epistle of Clement
   to the Corinthians.

   Let us accept, for the sake of argument, the critical conclusion of
   Harnack about the dates of documents [393] and the interpolations which
   may have come into texts, and then see what emerges from an examination
   of the authorities in which presbyters and bishops are mentioned.

   The Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians is the best starting point,
   for there is practical unanimity among scholars of all schools that
   this document belongs to about the middle of the last decade of the
   first century. The letter was sent from the Roman Church to remonstrate
   with the Corinthian Christians about the dismissal of the leaders of
   the Church there from their office. We find three names given to these
   men--hegoumenoi, episkopoi, presbuteroi. [394] Harnack's contention is
   that presbuteroi invariably denote the members of the circle of revered
   old men in the community, and that when the term is used to denote
   office-bearers, [395] they are so called because they were always
   members of that circle. On the other hand, Light-foot, [396] in the
   past, and Loening, Loofs and Schmiedel in the present, declare that
   presbuteros is the technical name for the office, while epispokos
   describes what was done (having episkope or oversight), or at all
   events that presbuteros and episkopos are synonymous terms for the same
   officials.

   One thing to begin with is significant. Three men were sent from Rome
   to Corinth with the letter, Valerius Bito, Claudius Ephebus and
   Fortunatus, "men that have walked among us," says the writer, "from
   youth to old age unblameably." They belonged, therefore, to that class
   whom Harnack supposes to have been generally called "presbyters," and
   if his theory were correct we should expect them to be so designated in
   an official letter, but they are not.

   In the Church in Corinth some men had been thrust from office, and the
   office is always referred to as episkope [397] This is what is said:
   "For it will be no light sin for us, if we have thrust out of the
   oversight (episkope) those who have offered the gifts (i.e. the prayers
   of the congregation) unblameably and holily. Blessed are those
   presbyters who have gone before, seeing that their departure was
   fruitful and ripe, for they have no fear lest any one should remove
   them from their appointed place. For we see that ye have displaced
   certain persons though they were living honourably, from the
   ministration (leitourgia) which they had kept blamelessly." [398]
   Everything implies that the men who had been thrust out from their
   episkope were called presbyters. This inference is strengthened by what
   follows: "It is shameful . . . that it should be reported that the very
   steadfast and ancient Church of the Corinthians, for the sake of one or
   two persons, maketh sedition against its presbyters." [399] "Only let
   the flock of Christ be at peace with its duly appointed presbyters."
   [400] "Ye therefore that laid the foundation of the sedition, submit
   yourselves unto the presbyters." [401] The only sentence in the epistle
   which lends itself to the theory of Harnack is: "Let us reverence our
   rulers (proegoumenoi), let us honour our elders (presbuteroi), let us
   instruct our young men in the lesson of the fear of God; let us guide
   our women toward that which is good"; [402] where elders' evidently
   mean old men. Sshmiedel's remark on the rhetorical effect of
   substituting "elders" (presbuteroi) for "old men" (presbutai) is a
   sound explanation of the use of the words. [403]

   It appears to me that the Epistle of Clement, on which Harnack so
   firmly relies to establish his conclusion that "elders" had no official
   position until the second century, fails him utterly, and that his own
   earlier position is much more in accordance with the facts of the case.
   In his edition of the Epistles of Clement, published in 1875, Harnack
   said, commenting on the words episcopi et diaconi (xlii. 5): "Luce
   clarius est, duo in clero ordines tum temporis (i.e. in the time of the
   apostles) fuisse, episcopos (= presbyteros) et diaconos." [404] This
   seems still to hold good.

   When we turn to 1 Peter (v. 1, 2) we find there that, even if we
   discard the disputed reading "exercising the oversight"
   (episkopountes), the elders are told to "shepherd the flock of God
   which is among you." There is no word in the whole round of primitive
   ecclesiastical phraseology which is more frequently used to express the
   relation of office-bearers than "to shepherd" (poimainein); and the
   difference between "shepherds" and "flock" is much greater than between
   the more aged and the younger members of the society. [405]

   In Acts xx. 17, St. Paul summoned the presbyters (tous presboterous) of
   the Church of Ephesus to meet him at Miletus; he charged them to
   "shepherd the Church of God"; he called the Church a "flock"
   (poimnion); and he said that the Holy Spirit had made them overseers
   (episkopous) in this flock. Whatever be the date or authorship of the
   book the fact remains that the author did believe that the presbyters
   (not some of them) were the "overseers" and the "shepherds" of the
   Church in Ephesus. They were the office-bearers there and were called
   both presbyters and overseers or bishops.

   These statements carry us a long way. They prove to us that before the
   close of the first century bodies of presbyters existed as ruling
   colleges in Christian congregations over a great part of the Roman
   Empire. The Epistle of Clement proves this for the Roman Church. The
   First Epistle of Peter proves it for Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia
   and Bithynia. [406] The Apocalypse confirms the proof for Ephesus,
   Smyrna, Pergamus, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. [407]
   The Acts of the Apostles adds its confirmation for Ephesus and
   Jerusalem. [408] The writings all imply that the colleges of presbyters
   at the head of congregations were no new institution. They had
   evidently existed for a long time. It will be observed that the places
   include the sphere of the mission-journey of Paul and Barnabas. They
   seem to me to confirm what the Acts of the Apostles tell us of the
   institution of presbyters by the apostles. [409] All this has been
   reached on the dates of the writings as given by advanced critics.

   The proofs for the identity of the offices of elders and bishops in the
   Church of the first century have often been collected. They may be
   arranged thus: (1) Acts xx. 17; St. Paul sent for the elders of
   Ephesus, and in his address to them said that "the Holy Spirit had made
   them bishops; (2) in 1 Peter v. 1, 2, elders are told to act as pastors
   and as bishops (presbuteroi . . . poimanate . . . episkopountes); (3)
   in 1 Clement it is made clear that at Rome presbyters or elders and
   bishops are the same officials; (4) in 1 Timothy a description of
   bishops is given (iii. 1-7), then follows what is required of deacons
   (iii. 8-13); in v. 17-19 the former ministers are alluded to as
   presbyters; (5) in Titus i. 5-7 we find that "thou shouldest set in
   order the things that were wanting, and appoint elders in every city
   . . . for the bishop must be."; (6) in the Peshito Syriac Version of
   the New Testament episkopos is usually translated by kashisho--elder or
   presbyter; (7) the opinion of the ancient Church, founding on these
   passages, and voiced by Jerome, unhesitatingly declared that in the
   apostolic age elders and bishops were the same; and this idea may
   almost be said to have prevailed throughout the Middle Ages down to the
   Council of Trent. [410]

   The word episcopus had a long and varied history before it was used in
   connexion with the Christian Church. Hatch has tried in a very
   interesting but not quite conclusive manner to show that episcopi were
   officers of administration and finance; [411] Lightfoot has shown that
   the Attic bishop was the commissioner appointed to inspect a newly
   acquired province, and that the word was used in a similar way outside
   the sphere of Athenian influence. In the Septuagint episcopus means an
   official set to oversee work, a military officer, a commissioner to
   carry out the orders of the king. [412] But while all these parallels
   are interesting much may be said for the more commonplace idea that the
   word episcopus means simply one who has an episcope, one who has
   oversight or superintendence. If so the word is not, during the first
   century, the technical term for an office-bearer; it is rather the word
   which describes what the office-bearer, i.e. the elder, does. The elder
   was the episcopus, overseer or superintendent, while the deacon
   rendered the subordinate services. The office connected itself
   therefore with the kuberneseis, while deacon was related to the
   antilepseis of 1 Cor. xii. 28. [413] The use of the words in the
   earliest Christian literature seems to bear out this idea, [414] This
   leads to the conclusion in the end of the preceding chapter that elder
   is the name for the office, while bishop is the title describing what
   the elder has to do. It can claim the support of Professor Sanday of
   Oxford and of Professor Loofs of Halle. [415] Dr. Loofs asserts that in
   his opinion the idea that episkopos is the name of an office, and not
   the term describing the work done by the official, is the proton
   pseudos of many of the modern attempts to investigate and describe
   primitive ecclesiastical organization.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [303] Compare what has been said on pp. 32, 33; 54-57.

   [304] Compare what has been said on pp. 62 ff.

   [305] Compare p. 33 and pp. 69 ff.

   [306] This growth of the associative principle is seen in the names
   given to believers as a united company. The earliest title was
   disciples (mathetai); which implied that Jesus, their Lord, was also
   their teacher, and their only teacher-for Jesus expressly forbade His
   followers calling any one but Himself Master, Teacher, Father or Lord
   (Matt. xxiii. 8-10); and the command was repeated by St. Paul when he
   forbade the Christians of Corinth to call themselves the followers of
   any of the apostles (1 Cor; iii. 3-9): The name Teacher, with the
   corresponding term disciples, lingered long in a sporadic way in
   Christian literature (for example in Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 13), and
   in Sources of the Apostolic Canons, vi. p. 23), and the word disciples
   occurs frequently in the Acts of the Apostles. It is a name which
   suggests a purely personal relationship to Jesus, and it was soon
   displaced in favour of other designations which implied association
   among the followers of Jesus. Among them we may select the terms
   saints, brethren, the people of the Way. The last mentioned--hoi tes
   hodou ontes--is specially interesting. It suggests a common worship and
   therefore an organization for worship. It implies groups of men and
   women, who, though far apart from each other, are united in spite of
   intervening space by the ties of a common worship. The Christians in
   Damascus and by implication those in Jerusalem, are so called (Acts ix.
   2; xxii. 4). It was the name given to the Christians at Ephesus (Acts
   xxiv. 14); it was applied by St. Paul to himself when justifying the
   special services of the Christian worship as distinguished from the
   Jewish (Acts xxiv. 14). St. Paul himself usually employs the terms
   saints or brethren when he speaks of his fellow Christians. The
   brethren or the saints who form an independent community, whether in a
   house or in a town or in a province, are called by St. Paul a Church;
   and he, in his epistles to the Galatians and to the Corinthians, uses
   the same word to denote all the brethren, wherever they may be. These
   two terms saints and brethren are, like the phrase those of the Way;
   collective, and imply organization of some kind or other. When the
   brethren or the saints met together for worship the meeting or the
   building in which they met was frequently called a synagogue (James ii.
   2), and this word was used not only by the judaising Christians
   (Epiphanius, xxx. 18); but also by the Marcionites, though they were
   the Christians furthest removed from the Jewish believers in Jesus. The
   oldest inscription stating that the building on which it is carved was
   used as a Christian place of worship comes from Syria, and states that
   the erection was a Marcionist church: Sunagoge Markioniston komes
   Lebaeon tou Kuriou kai Soteros Iesou Christou. It dates from 318 A.D.
   (Compare Le Bas and Waddington, Inscriptions No. 2558, iii. 583).
   Compare Weizsäcker; The Apostolic Age, i. 45-8 (Eng. Trans.). Harnack
   Texte und Untersuchungen, II. v. p. 25, or English Translation, Sources
   of the Apostolic Canons, p. 22, n. 10, for the use of Teacher. For the
   general question of designations, cf. Harnack, Expositor, 1887,
   Jan.-June, pp. 322-4.

   [307] Matt. xix. 21, 23; 29.

   [308] Luke xii. 31-33.

   [309] 1 John iv. 20.

   [310] Polycarp, Philippians, 6.

   [311] Polycarp, Philippians, 4. thusiasterion Theou. Tertullian, Ad
   Uxor. i. 7: aram Dei. The phrase thusiasterion Theou is used in the
   Apostolic Constitutions to denote widows, orphans and the poor aided by
   the congregation. ii. 26: "Let the widows and orphans be esteemed as
   representing the altar of burnt-offering"; iv. 3: "But an orphan who,
   by reason of his youth, or he that by feebleness of old age, or the
   incidence of disease, or the bringing up of many children, receives
   alms . . . shall be esteemed an altar to God." The phrase is almost
   always accompanied with the thought that those who receive alms are to
   pray for their benefactors.

   [312] Dr. Hatch in his Organization of the Early Christian Churches,
   pp. 32-36 (1st ed.), has, I think, exaggerated somewhat the pauperism
   of the early centuries throughout the Roman Empire; but the case of
   Jerusalem must have been peculiar. The population of the city was
   largely supported by the profits the citizens made from the crowds of
   pilgrims who came from all parts of the Jewish Dispersion to the great
   festivals. Conversion to the Christian faith must have deprived the
   converts of this means of support and brought them into a chronic state
   of poverty.

   [313] Dr. Lightfoot calls the attempt to identify the Seven with the
   elders afterwards mentioned in the church at Jerusalem a "strange
   perversity," although it has the support of Boehmer (Diss. Jur. Eccl.
   p. 373 ff.), of Ritschl (Entstehung der Altkatholisch. Kirche, 2nd ed.,
   p. 355 ff.), and of Lange (Apostol. Zeitalt. ii. 75), and Gwatkin
   regards the idea as a possible one (Hastings' Bible Dictionary, i. 440,
   574); it appears to me that it must be made unless we suppose that the
   appointment of the Seven was a merely temporary expedient to provide
   for an immediate necessity, or discredit the narrative altogether,
   which is what not even such a destructive critic as Schmiedel is
   inclined to do (Encyc. Biblica, art. Community of Goods, i. 879, 880).

   [314] Acts vi. 3.

   [315] Acts xxi. 8.

   [316] Josephus, Antiq. IV. viii. 14, 38; Bell. Jud. II. xx. 5. Compare
   Schürer, Gesch. d. Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalt. Jesu Christi (1898),
   ii. 178 (3rd ed.). Schürer quotes from the Talmud, Megilla, 26a, where
   the "Seven" of the town also appear.

   [317] Gal. i. 13; 1Cor. xv. 9.

   [318] Gal. i. 22.

   [319] Acts xiv. 23: cheirotonesantes de autois presbuterous kat'
   ekklesian.

   [320] Deissmann, Bib. Studies (Eng. Trans.), pp. 154-157: The names
   which afterwards came to denote fixed offices in the Church have all
   general as well as technical uses, and this adds greatly to the
   difficulty of investigation.

   [321] Acts xii. 17; xv. 13; xxi. 18; GaL i. 19; ii. 9, 12. This is
   confirmed by later tradition, Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. II. i. 2, 3.

   [322] Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3; Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. I. xii. 4;
   II. i. 2, 3; III. xi. 1.

   [323] Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. III. xi. 1, 2.

   [324] Ibid. xi. 1, 2; xxxii. 4; IV. xxii. 4.

   [325] Ibid. III. xx. 1-8: tous de apoluthentas hegesasthai ton
   ekklesion, hosan de marturas homou kai apo genous ontas tou Kuriou. For
   the names of the two young men, see the ecclesiastical historian
   Philippus of Side, in the fragment printed in Cramer, Anecdota Graeca,
   ii. 88.

   [326] Dr. Harnack thinks that the position assigned to the "relatives
   of our Lord" in the choice of the head of the community shows that the
   thought of Jesus as the "Teacher" had given place to the conception of
   "king"; but according to Oriental usage it is precisely the position of
   a religious "teacher" which is transmitted in the line of the founder's
   kinsfolk. Compare Expositor, 1887, Jan.-June, p. 326.

   [327] 1 and 2 Thessalonians written about 48-52 A.D.; 1 Corinthians and
   Galatians written about 53-55 A.D; 2 Corinthians written about 53-56
   A.D.; Romans written about 54-67 A.D.

   [328] Compare above pp. 60 ff.

   [329] 1 Cor. xv. 10: "I laboured (ekopiasa) more abundantly than they
   all." Gal. iv. 11: "Lest by any means I have bestowed labour
   (kekopiaka) upon you in vain."

   [330] Rom. xvi. 6, 12; where providing for material wants seems to be
   the meaning.

   [331] 1 Thess. v. 13.

   [332] 1 Cor. xvi. 15, 19, cf. Acts xviii. 2, 26; Clement, 1 Epistle,
   xlii. 4.

   [333] Rom. xvi. 5, 10, 11, 14, 15; 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Col. iv. 15; Philem.
   2.

   [334] 1 Cor. xvi. 16.

   [335] We find the series of related words:--proistamenos, proistamenoi
   (used as a noun), prostatis, prostates and proestos, Rom. xii. 8; xvi.
   2; 1 Thess. v. 12; Hermas, Pastor, Vis. ii. 4; Justin, i. Apol. lxv;
   lxvii. The term prostates was used technically in Greek city life (and
   Thessalonica in Paul's time was a Greek city which had been permitted
   by the Romans to retain its ancient Greek constitution) to denote those
   citizens who undertook to care for and rule over the metoikoi, or
   persons who had no civic rights. It denoted technically the Roman
   relation of patron and client and what corresponded thereto in Greek
   social life. The word was used by Plutarch to translate the Latin
   patronus (Plutarch, Rom. 13; Mar. 5). Clement, in his Epistle to the
   Corinthians, applies the word in three different places to denote our
   Lord: "the Patron and Helper of our weakness" (xxxvi. 1); the
   Highpriest and Patron of our souls" (lxi. 3; lxiv.). It was the custom
   that the Roman confraternities, especially those among the poorer
   classes, had a "patron" or "patrons," who were frequently ladies of
   rank and wealth; compare Liebenam, Zur Gesch. und Organis. d. roem.
   Vereinswesens, pp. 213-18. The Jewish synagogues in Rome, which
   externally resembled the pagan confraternities for religious cults, not
   only had patrons but called their synagogues by their names; Schürer,
   Die Gemeindeverfassung der Juden in Rom in der Kaiserzeit, p. 15 f.,
   31. It is probable that Phoebe, who is called by St. Paul a "patroness
   of himself and of many" (Rom. xvi. 1-3), had a position of this kind at
   Cenchrea, and that this was the service she had rendered.

   [336] "Nam servis, respublica et quasi civitas, domus est," Pliny Ep.
   viii. 16.

   [337] This finds its parallel in the honoured class which existed in
   the Christian congregations of the early centuries, and who ranked
   between the clergy and the people--the confessors, martyrs, widows,
   virgins.

   [338] This peculiarity has descended to modern times; it is not very
   easy, those who have tried it say, to induce women to form trades
   unions, but they are always ready to become members of burial clubs.

   [339] "The schole Turannou" (Acts xix. 9) was probably such a
   place--the meeting place of a confraternity, and named after the patron
   of the "gild" according to a usual practice, with a hall which could be
   hired when not needed for the meetings of the society.

   [340] The "collegium quod est in domu Sergiae Paulinae" corresponds to
   "the church which is in the house of Philemon."

   [341] For the confraternities which existed in the Graeco-Roman world,
   compare: Foucart, Des Associations Religieuses chez les Grecs (1873);
   Lüders, Die dionysischen Künstler (1873); Ziebarth, Das Griechische
   Vereinswesen (1895), the fullest and most accurate for the Greek
   associations; Mommsen, De collegiis et sodaliciis (1843); Gérard, De
   corporations ouvriéres à Rome (1884); Boissier, La religion romaine
   d'Auguste aux Antonins (1878), ii. 292 ff.; Cohn, Zum römischen
   Vereinsrecht (1873); Liebenam, Zur Geschichte und Organisation des
   roömischen Vereinswesen (1890), the fullest and most accurate. For the
   relation of these confraternities to the primitive Christian
   organization, compare: Renan, Les Apôtres (1866), p. 351 ff.; Heinrici,
   Zeitschrift für wissenschaftlichen Theologie (1876), pp. 465 ff.;
   (1877) pp. 89 ff; Theologischen Studien und Kritiken (1881), pp. 556
   ff.; Weingarten, in his preface to Rothe's Vorlesungen über
   Kirchengeschichte (1876), p. xiv.; and in Sybel's Historische
   Zeitschrift, vol. xlv. (1881), pp. 441 ff.; Hatch, The Organization of
   the Early Christian Churches (1881), p. 36 ff.; Holtzmann, Die
   Pastoralbriefe (1880), pp. 194-202; Loening, Die Gemeindeverfassung des
   Urchristenthums (1889), p. 8 ff.; and Geschichte des deutsehes
   Kirchenrechts (1878), i. pp. 195-210; Liebenam, as above, pp. 264-274;
   Schmiedel, Encyclopædia Biblica (1902), pp. 3110-1; Ziebarth, as above,
   pp. 126-132; Réville, Les Origines de l'Episcopat (1894), pp. 180-194.

   [342] Cyprian's Epistles, lxvii. 6: "Martialis also, besides
   frequenting the disgraceful and filthy banquets of the Gentiles in
   their collegium, and placing his sons in the same collegium, after the
   manner of foreign nations, among profane sepulchres, and burying them
   together with strangers . . . such persons attempt to claim for
   themselves the episcopate in vain; since it is evident that men of that
   kind may neither rule over the Christian Church, nor ought to offer
   sacrifices to God, especially since Cornelius, our colleague, a
   peaceable and righteous priest, and moreover honoured by the
   condescension of the Lord with martyrdom, has long ago decreed with us,
   and with all the bishops appointed throughout all the world, that men
   of this sort might indeed be admitted to repentance, but were
   prohibited from the ordination of the clergy and from the priestly
   honour. "Martialis was bishop of Astorga or of Merida in Spain, and was
   a libellaticus.

   [343] Encyclopædia Biblica, iii. 3110-3111. Schmiedel seems to
   exaggerate the connexion between the confraternities and the Christian
   societies when he refuses to see any connexion between the latter and
   the Jewish communities and their synagogue system.

   [344] The points of similarity which Heinrici has endeavoured to
   establish between the Christian community at Corinth and the pagan
   confraternities do not amount to mere than this; Hatch has certainly
   overrated the evidence he has brought forward that episcopi were
   finance officials in the confraternities; points of resemblance found
   in the records of Greek associations for religious purposes are almost
   entirely taken from pre-Christian times, and it is forgotten that under
   the imperial rule the constitutions and formations of confraternities
   for all purposes were entirely altered and that we know almost nothing
   about these confraternities in the eastern provinces of the Empire
   during the first century and a half of the imperial rule. What can be
   shown is, that to an outsider there was an external resemblance of the
   most general kind between the Christian communities and the
   confraternities; and this can be proved only in a general way: Pliny
   wrote to Trajan that he had meant to proceed against the Christians of
   Bithynia as belonging to an illicit confraternity (Ep. 96 (97));
   Tertullian in his Apology plainly pleads for the recognition of the
   Christian Churches as lawful confraternities; Bishop Zephyrinus
   succeeded in getting the Roman church recognized as a burial club in
   the end of the second century; and Lucian, in his Peregrines Proteus,
   describes Peregrinus while a Christian in words which would be
   applicable to the official of a Greek confraternity for religious
   purposes (thiasarches), which would imply that he looked on the
   Christian community as thiasos or an association for the promotion of a
   private cult. Compare Liebenam, Die Geschichte and Organisation des
   römischen Vereinswesen, pp. 264-74, and Ziebarth, Griechische
   Vereinswesen, pp. 126-32.

   [345] Both Julius Caesar and his nephew aid successor began legislation
   against the confraternities that abounded; but the Jewish communities
   were recognized by them as lawful confraternities.

   [346] These synagogue communities were sometimes named after their
   patrons--the "synagogue of the clients of Augustus," of Agrippa, of
   Volumnus; sometimes after the quarter of Rome where they stood--the
   synagogue of Campus Martius, of the Subura, etc.; sometimes after the
   occupations of the members--the synagogue of the burners of lime.
   Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi (3rd
   ed. 1898), iii. 44-7.

   [347] The term "elder," which one expects, is not found in inscriptions
   nor in laws until the fourth century; archon is found almost
   universally. Schürer seems to think that the members of the gerusia
   were the elders and that they were not office-bearers, but the honoured
   heads of the community by whom the archons were appointed. If so this
   would be a parallel to what Harnack believes to be the organization of
   the early Christian communities, where the elders were not
   office-bearers but honoured persons from whom the episcopi were chosen.

   [348] For the organization of the Jewish synagogue system, compare
   Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi (3rd
   ed. 1898), ii. pp. 427-463 (Eng. Trans. ii. 55-68, 243-270); also his
   Gemeindeverfassung der Juden in Rom in der Kaiserzeit (1879); Vitringa,
   De Synagoga vetere (1696).

   [349] Schürer notes these customs among others: the Greek communes were
   accustomed to honour with garlands and with special seats at the public
   entertainments their public benefactors, the leaders of the synagogues
   voted garlands and front seats in the synagogues to theirs; slaves were
   set free in the temples, among the Jews they were brought to the
   synagogues; women were honoured with titles--presbytera, mater
   synagogae, archisynagogos. As for the names of office-bearers, none of
   them are exclusively Jewish; even archisunagogos has a pagan use so
   common that it is impossible to say that it is of strictly Jewish
   origin.

   [350] Schürer, Theologische Literaturzeitung for 1879, pp. 544-6.

   [351] Suetonius, Caesar, 42: Cuncta collegia, praeter antiquitus
   constituta, distraxit.

   [352] Josephus, Antiquitates, XIV. x. 8: "Julius Caius, praetor of
   Rome, to the magistrates, senate and people of the Parians, sendeth
   greeting. The Jews of Delos, and some other Jews that sojourn there, in
   the presence of your ambassadors, signified to us, that, by a decree of
   yours you forbid them to make use of the customs of their forefathers
   and their way of sacred worship. Now it does not please me that such
   decrees should be made against our friends and confederates, whereby
   they are forbidden to live according to their own customs, or to bring
   in contributions for common suppers and holy festivals, while they are
   not forbidden to do so even in Rome itself; for even Caius Caesar, our
   imperator and consul, in that decree wherein he forbade the Bacchanal
   rioters to meet in the city, did yet permit these Jews, and these only,
   both to bring in their contributions, and to make their common suppers.
   Accordingly when I forbid other Bacchanal rioters I permit these Jews
   to gather themselves together, according to the customs and laws of
   their forefathers, and to persist therein. It will therefore be good
   for you, that if you have made any decree against these our friends and
   confederates, to abrogate the same, by reason of their virtue and kind
   disposition towards us."

   [353] Dio Cassius, lii. 36; Suetonius, Augustus, 32.

   [354] Dio Cassius, liv. 6.

   [355] "Collegia si qua fuerint illicita, mandatis et constitutionibus
   et senatusconsultis dissolvuntur; sed permittitur eis, cum
   dissolvuntur, pecunias communes si quas habent dividere pecuniamque
   inter se partiri: Dig. XLVII. xxii. 3.

   [356] Tertullian, Apology, 21.

   [357] De Rossi, Roma Sottereana, iii. 509; Bulletino di Archaeologia
   Cristiana (1865), pp. 90-94; Liebenam, Zur Geschichte and Organisation
   des römischen Vereinswesen, 268. Holtzmann, Die Pastoralbriefe, 197.
   The protection was not restricted to those who were Jews by birth; it
   extended to proselytes (sebomenoi); cf. Bulletino di Archaeologia
   Cristiana (1865), p. 91.

   [358] Authorities differ about the date when the Roman officials first
   recognized the difference. Ramsay (The Church in the Roman Empire, p.
   266 ff.) differs from most German authorities in thinking it to been
   have much earlier than the time of Domitian; I agree with him
   thoroughly. When we remember the wise political dread of religious
   combinations which the emperors from Augustus downward showed; their
   discernment that religion was the most powerful political motive power
   in the East; the presence in every province of men trained to note the
   beginnings of all movements which might disturb the state; and when we
   glance at the objective picture of that old system of ruling provinces
   which modern India furnishes--none but an arm-chair critic would deny
   it. British officials in India know of all the small beginnings of
   religious movements in their districts long before the public know
   anything about them, if they ever acquire the knowledge.

   [359] Schmiedel, Encyclopædia Biblica, 3111; Holtzmann, Die
   Pastoralbriefe, 197 f. Schmiedel, however, is not warranted in making
   the deductions he does from the external conformity; there must have
   been the same outward conformity between the Christian communities and
   the Jewish synagogues.

   [360] Pliny, Epist. 96 (97).

   [361] For the burial usages of the confraternities, compare Liebenam,
   Zur Geschichte and Organisation des römischen Vereinswesens (1890), p.
   254 ff.; Schultze, Katacomben (1882), pp. 9-14, 48-53; De Rossi, Roma
   Sottereana, iii. 501-507.

   [362] This is commonly inferred from the fact mentioned by Hippolytus,
   that Zephyrinus "appointed him (Calixtus) over the cemetery";
   Refutation (Philosophumena), ix. 7.

   [363] Compare above p. 128, n. 2.

   [364] Personally I am not disposed to brush aside the difficulties
   which the Book of Acts presents; they relate chiefly to the limited
   time which the Eusebian chronology (and it appears to me to be the most
   trustworthy) allows for the events recorded down to the conversion of
   St. Paul; but difficulties seem to me to be increased and not lessened
   by any proposed reconstruction. So far as our subject of investigation
   is concerned all "critics" recognize the election of the "Seven" as an
   historical fact; and the only remaining question of organization is the
   statement that "elders " were appointed (not "ordained," for that is
   not the word) in the churches of the Galatian mission by Paul and
   Barnabas; and this it seems to me is rendered highly probable by
   evidence which is altogether independent of the date and authorship of
   the Acts of the Apostles. As to the date of the book, I follow
   Professor Sanday who believes the book to have been written about 80
   A.D. and that its author was St. Luke. Dr. Harnack on the other hand
   declares that the date of the book is some time between 79 and 93 A.D.
   Geschichte der altchristliche Literatur bis Eusebius, II.; Chronologie,
   i. 246-50.

   [365] The "critical view" of the date of the Pastoral Epistles may
   perhaps be best taken from the short summary in Harnack's Geschichte
   der altchristliche Literatur bis Eusebius, II., Chronologie, i. 480-5,
   supplemented from Holtzmann, Die Pastoralbriefe (1880). It is as
   follows:--The three Epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, go together
   and are to be treated as a whole; the same arguments and the same
   results apply to all. These epistles contain some genuine sayings of
   St. Paul--a few verses in 2 Timothy scarcely a third of Titus, but not
   a verse of 1 Timothy--enough to say that the writings are founded on
   genuine apostolic letters. But in the state in which they have come to
   us they represent an entirely different authorship. The reasons given
   for this judgment may be classed under three heads: the language is
   different from St. Paul's, and in particular the epistles contain a
   very large number of words and phrases quite unlike what St. Paul uses
   in his authentic works; warnings are given against erroneous beliefs
   and especially against Gnostic opinions which were not in existence
   before the death of St. Paul; the description of the ecclesiastical
   organization is entirely different from what we find in the authentic
   letters of St. Paul. When it is sought to determine the date of the
   epistles two definite points of time present themselves. Polycarp
   distinctly quotes 2 Timothy ii. 12; and the redaction cannot be later
   than 110 A.D. On the other hand the kinds of errors which the author
   denounces and warns against had no existence until the close of the
   first century. Hence the probable date of the letters must be sometime
   between 90-110 A.D. But, it is said, portions must be much later; the
   closing verses, 17-21, of 1 Tim. vi. were evidently added after the
   real end of the epistle at verse 16. Of these verses 17-19 contain
   warnings which find a parallel in the admonitions of the Pastor of
   Hermas and belong to a period later than 100 A.D.; while verses 20-21
   have no connexion with the rest of the epistle, are directed against
   the "antitheses" of Marcion and cannot be earlier than 130 A.D.
   Similarly verses 1-13 in 1 Tim. iii. and verses 17-20 in 1 Tim. v.
   17-20, and verses 7-9 in Titus i., have little connexion with the
   context and are portions of an ancient book of discipline. They present
   striking parallels to the Sources of the Apostolic Canons and cannot be
   much earlier than 130 A.D. This is what "criticism" makes of the
   Pastoral Epistles. It places those portions which concern our subject
   as late at 130 A.D. and forbids us to use them to describe the
   organization of the Churches within the first century. The reasons
   given are briefly these: a quotation from St. Luke's gospel is called a
   scripture and that of itself, it is said, is sufficient to show the
   late date of the document; Timothy is represented as the president of a
   college of elders and in this capacity is the judge and administrator
   of justice--functions which are much later than even 100 A.D. A few
   remarks may be admitted in the way of briefly indicating why I refuse
   to accept the "critical" theories about these epistles. While I
   gratefully acknowledge Dr. Harnack as the greatest living authority on
   early Church history, I never read what he has to say about the two
   subjects of Gnosticism and ecclesiastical organization without longing
   that he could spend a few months in the mission field where aggressive
   work is being done among educated pagans whose minds are full of the
   same curious oriental faiths and their allied philosophies as were
   present to the earliest Christian converts in the first and second
   centuries. I am convinced that if this experience were his he would
   modify much that he has said both about Gnosticism and about
   ecclesiastical organization. The Oriental mind, tenacious of its own
   beliefs and at the same time curiously receptive in religious
   conceptions, strives from the first to weave Christian thoughts into
   its system of Oriental beliefs and is surprised that the amalgam thus
   produced is not accepted as Christian doctrine by the missionary. The
   very errors denounced by the Pastoral Epistles may be found among Hindu
   inquirers who never get further than inquiry and a certain measured
   sympathy with Christian teaching. They are the beginnings of Gnosticism
   apparent to the missionary long before they have acquired the definite
   shape of such a system as the Arya Somaj, to take one of the forms
   which modern Indian gnosticism has assumed. If the living picture were
   studied fresh insight would be acquired about ancient documents. It
   would be seen for example, that if Timothy or Titus were acting as
   deputy for an apostle or missionary it does not follow that he must be
   president of a college of elders in order to be obliged to listen to
   accusations against "elders" or to act as the one who rebukes in public
   and in private. The more I study these pastoral epistles the more
   evident it becomes to me that they are just what every experienced
   missionary has to impart to a younger and less experienced colleague
   when he warns him about the difficulties that he must face and the
   tasks, often unexpected, he will find confronting him. It is scarcely
   to be wondered at then that the Pastoral Epistles are always among the
   earliest portions of the scriptures translated in almost every
   Christian mission. A study of the living picture would also teach
   students that while the declaration of Hegesippus may be accepted that
   gnosticism did not trouble the Church till about the time of Trajan
   (which is the deduction usually drawn from his statements given in
   Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. III. xxxii. 7) that need not prevent our
   believing that incipient gnosticism had to be guarded against from the
   very beginning. At the same time it is very probable that the Pastoral
   Epistles contain many interpolations in which statements about errors
   and even directions about discipline have been somewhat altered to suit
   the requirements of the middle of the second century, That is what
   would naturally happen to a document which was used, as we know these
   epistles were used, for a manual of ecclesiastical procedure (the
   Muratorian Fragment tells us that). The insertion of "scripture"
   (graphe) might easily have come in in this way. But all this does not
   prevent me accepting these epistles as the work of St. Paul or of a
   companion who wrote for him. It may be said that the supposition that
   these letters come from St. Paul requires us to believe that the
   apostle was released from his first captivity, and made missionary
   journeys of which no record has remained; but this is rendered more
   than likely by the statement of Clement (I. v. 7) that St. Paul visited
   the furthest parts of the West (to terma tes duseos)--an expression
   which, notwithstanding all that has been said against the idea, seems
   more naturally applicable to Spain than to Rome. As for the
   language--"Tous ceux qui ont 1'experience de la parole en publique ne
   savent-ils pas que le ton n'est plus le même quand on parle à une
   assemblée que lorsqu'on s'addreese à une peraonne en particulier"
   (Réville, Les Origines de l'Episcopat (1894), p.497.)

   [366] "Ad Filemonem una, et ad Titum una, et ad Timotheum duas, pro
   affecto et dilectione in honore tamen ecclesiae catholice in
   ordinatione ecclesiastice descepline sanctificatae sunt."

   [367] Titus had been one of the earliest gentile converts from
   heathenism--a convert or spiritual son of St. Paul himself (Titus i.
   4). The apostle had esteemed him so highly that he had taken him up to
   Jerusalem when he went there to plead the cause of gentile liberty.
   Titus went with St. Paul to be shown as a specimen of what these
   gentile converts of his were like (Gal. ii. 3); and he had passed the
   test so well that the leaders of the Church at Jerusalem had not
   required that he should be circumcised. He had been employed by St.
   Paul on work involving tact and confidential discretion (2 Cor. xii.
   18), and had acquitted himself well.

   [368] Timothy was the favourite fellow-worker with the great apostle.
   When we piece together his story from the Acts of the Apostles and from
   St. Paul's epistles, we find something like the following. When St.
   Paul left Antioch with Silas on his second visit to the Galatian
   Churches, feeling sadly, no doubt, that Barnabas was no longer with
   him, either he or his companion had an assurance given in "prophecy"
   that St. Paul would find in a brief time a helper who would be to him
   as another Barnabas (1 Tim. i. 18; iv. 14). When St. Paul reached
   Lystra he suddenly recognized in a young man there the fellow-worker
   who had been divinely promised to him. "And behold," says Luke, "a
   certain disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a Jewess who
   believed; but his father was a Greek. Him Paul would have to go forth
   with him" The apostle received him with the kindly Jewish benediction,
   laying his hands on his head (2 Tim. i. 6); and the elders of the
   Church also gave the young man their benediction before he set out on
   his new life-work (Acts xvi. 1-4; 1 Tim. iv. 14). There is a striking
   parallel between the "call" of Timothy and the earlier "call" of the
   great apostle himself--the vision of Ananias and the prophetic
   intuition of St. Paul; Ananias' benediction, when he laid his hands on
   the future head of the Apostle to the Gentiles, and the benediction of
   Timothy by St. Paul; the blessing of Saul and Barnabas by the "prophets
   and teachers" at the head of the Church at Antioch, when they started
   on their first mission tour, and the blessing of the elders of Lystra
   when Timothy started on his life work as an apostle or evangelist. From
   this time he and St. Paul were almost always together; they were like
   father and son. Timothy's name occurs frequently in the epistles of St.
   Paul. When difficult questions arose in St. Paul's mission Churches
   which needed delicate handling and when the Apostle could not go
   himself to settle them Timothy was his favourite deputy (1 Cor. xvi.
   10; 1 Thess. iii. 2). The apostle saw himself living his life over
   again in the person of his son Timothy.

   [369] "A faithful husband" appears to be the best translation of
   gunaikos andra--one who acts on the principles of Christian morality
   and is not led astray by the licentious usages of the surrounding
   heathenism.

   [370] 1 Tim. iii: 10; 2 Tim: ii. 2.

   [371] 1 Tim. iii. 1.

   [372] 1 Tim. iii. 5.

   [373] 1 Tim. iii. 7.

   [374] Harnack, who thinks that the verses in 1 Tim. which relate to the
   organization of the Church are an interpolation and represent an old
   book of the Church Order not unlike the Sources of the Apostolic Canons
   and perhaps derived with these fragments from a common source, points
   out a number of interesting coincidences:--"Let a woman learn in
   quietness with all subjection." (1 Tim. ii. 11): "in order that it (the
   congregation) may be at rest without disturbance, after it has been
   first proved in all subjection" (Apost. Can. ii); "I permit not a woman
   to teach" (1 Tim. ii. 12): compare with the whole of Apost. Can. viii.,
   especially "How then can we, concerning women, order them services?"
   "The bishop must therefore be without reproach, the husband of one
   wife, temperate, sober-minded, orderly, given to hospitality, apt to
   teach, no brawler nor striker, but gentle, not contentious, no lover of
   money . . . . moreover he must have good testimony from them that are
   without" (1 Tim. iii. 2-7); "If he (the bishop) has a good report among
   the heathen, if he is without reproach, if a friend of the poor, if
   sober-minded, no drunkard, nor adulterer, not covetous nor a slanderer
   . . . it is good if he is unmarried; if not, then the husband of one
   wife; educated . . . if unlearned, gentle" (Apost. Can. i.); "Deacons,
   in like manner, must be grave, not double tongued, not given to much
   wine . . . and let these also be first proved, then let them serve as
   deacons . . . let the deacons be husbands of one wife, ruling their
   children and their own houses well" (1 Tim. iii. 8, 9, 12); "The
   deacons shall be approved in every service . . . husbands of one wife,
   educating their children, sober-minded . . . not double-tongued . . .
   not using much wine" (Apost. Can. iv.); (of deacons) "Not using much
   wine, not greedy of lucre" (1 Tim. iii. 8); (of widows) "Not greedy of
   lucre, not using much wine" (Apos. Can. v.); "For they that have served
   well as deacons gain to themselves a good standing" (1 Tim. iii: 13);
   For they who have served well as deacons . . . purchase to themselves
   the pastorate" (Apost. Can. vi.); and so on. It appears to me, however,
   that the interesting series of parallels affords striking evidence that
   the statements in the Pastoral Epistles are much older than those in
   the Sources of the Apostolic Canons. In the former it is women who are
   to be in subjection, and the phrase corresponds to 1 Cor. xiv. 34;
   while in the Sources of the Apostolic Canons it is the congregation who
   are to be in subjection to the office-bearers: the leaders and the led
   of the Pauline Epistles have given place to the clergy and the laity of
   a later period. Then in the Pastoral Epistles the deacons who have
   served well gain to themselves "a good standing"; in the later document
   they are promised clerical promotion, which is a very different idea
   and suggests a much later period. Again in the former document the
   senior office-bearers are to be faithful husbands (husbands of one
   wife); in the latter it is said that it is better that they be not
   married, which shows either a growth in ascetic sentiment or perhaps
   difficulties in a fair distribution of the offerings of the
   congregation and the desire for distributors who have no claims on
   themselves to influence their judgment, or both of these conceptions.
   Compare Chronologie, pp. 483, 484.

   [375] 1 Tim. iii. 8-10, 12, 13.

   [376] 1 Tim. v. 17-20.

   [377] 1 Tim. v. 22. Compare Hort, The Christian Ecclesia, p. 175 ff.

   [378] Compare the evidences of growth in organization collected by
   Gayford, Hastings' Bible Dictionary, art. Church, i. 434.

   [379] Compare Schmiedel, Encyc. Bibl., art. Ministry, 3111 (d).

   [380] Expositor (1887, Jan.-June), 328-31; The arguments put shortly
   are:--St. Paul addresses his advice about discipline, etc., to the
   whole community and not to special individuals who are in the position
   of office-bearers; all the members of the Christian community are
   exhorted to do what is enjoined upon the leaders (1 Thess. v. 14); the
   word ergon (verse 12) shows that an office is not thought of; while in
   Rom. xii. 6-8 presidency stands between "liberality" and "showing
   mercy," and is described as a "gift"! The same arguments, it appears to
   me, would exclude the presence of office-bearers in the Didache and in
   the Epistle of Clement; for there the exhortations to exercise
   discipline are addressed to the whole community. The fact that the
   congregational meeting is the supreme judge does not exclude the fact
   of office-bearers. Compare below pp. 171 ff. for the Didache and 176 n.
   for 1 Clement.

   [381] Clement, 1 Epist. xliv., 1; cf. xlii. 4; of. Sanday's The
   Conception of Priesthood (1898), pp. 70-2. The sentence in Clement (1
   Epist. xlii. 4) is:--"So preaching everywhere in town and in country,
   they appointed their first-fruits (tas aparchas auton) when they had
   proved them by the Spirit, to be overseers and deacons unto them that
   should believe."

   [382] Compare Lightfoot, Philippians (1881), 6th ed. pp. 95-9.; Loofs,
   Theologische Studien and Kritiken (1890), 628-42; Schmiedel, Encyc.
   Bibl. pp. 3135-9; Loening, Die Gemeindeverfassung des Urchristenthums
   (1889), pp. 58-63. Compare note on Presbyters' and Bishops' at the and
   of the ohapter.

   [383] Acts xi. 30.

   [384] It ought to be remembered that the organization which prevailed
   among the Judaising Christians, who refused all fraternal intercourse
   with the Gentile believers, was on the strict Jewish lines and was
   quite different from the Christian. Epiphanius tells us (Heresies, xxx.
   18) that their congregations were presided over by archons and an
   archisynagogos like the Jewish synagogues of the Dispersion. Compare
   pp. 130-131.

   [385] Lucian, De Mode Peregrini, 12, 41.

   [386] Deissmann, Bible Studies, Eng. Trans. pp. 154 ff. and 233 ff.
   Deissmann shows that the term presbuteros was common for the rulers of
   a a corporation in Asia Minor, and it must have been familiar to the
   inhabitants of those towns which furnished the Christian communities
   among which St. Paul saw elders chosen on his return mission journey
   through Derbe, Iconium and Lystra (Acts xiv. 23). One of the most
   interesting series of facts which Deissmann has unearthed is that the
   term "elder" was a religious official name in Egypt, and that the
   affairs of the whole Egyptian priesthood in the times of the Ptolemies
   were conducted by an assembly whose members (twenty-five in number)
   were called presbuteroi. Milton had very old authority for his saying
   that "new presbyter is but old priest writ large."

   [387] Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians (1881), 6th ed. p.
   96.

   [388] While everything goes to show that In primitive times the
   function of teaching was not confined to the office-bearers or rulers
   it is difficult to believe that leadership and teaching were not
   frequently associated. The "prophetic" gift was so highly prized that
   it was only natural that men possessing it in combination with the
   "gift" of oversight should be selected. The use of the phrase "to
   shepherd" in connexion with the leaders of the Christian community as
   in 1 Peter v. 2 (poimanate to en humin poimnion tou Theou) appears to
   include more than simple oversight, and the word "admonish," applied to
   the proistamenoi in Thessalonica, seems to point to something more than
   mere leadership in the very early times.

   [389] De Praescript. 20.

   [390] Pp. 95-9 of the 6th ed. (1881).

   [391] Expositor for 1887. Jan.-June, p. 334. In a footnote Harnack
   says, "It seems to me very improbable that the Acts of the Apostles was
   written during the first century."

   [392] Compare Otto Ritschl in the Theologische Literatur-Zeitung for
   1885, No. 25.

   [393] It is important to bear in mind the dates which Harnack assigns
   to the various documents he deals with. The following are taken from
   his Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius (1897):--1
   Peter was probably written, he thinks, some time between the years 83
   and 93 A.D., but it may have been written one or two decades earlier,
   which gives at the extreme limits of time 63-93 A.D. (pp. 454, 718). I
   Clement he dates about 93-95 but perhaps as late as 97 A.D. (pp. 255,
   718). The dates he gives for the writings which he says are the first
   witnesses for presbyters are:--The Epistle of James about 120-140 (pp.
   491, 719); the Pastoral Epistles, or at least those verses in them
   which are in question about 130 A.D. (p. 483); the original document of
   the so-called Apostolic Ordinances, about 140-180. Harnack classes the
   Acts of the Apostles among this set of documents in the Expositor
   (1887, Jan.-June), p. 334, and says that the book belongs to the second
   century. But in his Chronologie which was published ten years later, he
   says that the Acts of the Apostles was written some time between 80-93
   A.D. (pp. 250, 718). There may not be much difference between the year
   93 A.D. and the second century; but the change of date lifts the Acts
   of the Apostles out from the other writings named along with it in the
   Expositor, and places it as early as the Epistle of Clement to the
   Corinthians and perhaps as early as the Epistle of Peter.

   [394] hegoumenos and proegoumenos, I. i. 3; xxi. 6. episkopoi, I. xlii.
   4, 5. presbuteros, I. i. 3; iii. 3; xxi. 6; xliv. 5; xlvii. 6; 1v. 4;
   liv. 2; lvii. 1.

   [395] I. xliv. 5; xlvii. 6; liv. 2; lvii. 1.

   [396] Lightfoot, Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians (1881),
   6th ed. p. 95 ff.; Loening, Die Gemeindeverfassung des Urchristenthums
   (1889), p. 58 ff.; Loofs, Studien and Kritiken (1890), pp. 628 ff.;
   Sehmiedel, Encyclopaedia Biblica (1902) p. 3134 if. If we apply the
   well-recognized critical principle that the statement that there were
   "elders" in Derbe, Lystra and the neighbourhood when the book which
   describes them was written, this change of date gives us "elected"
   elders before the close of the first century.

   [397] I. xliv. 1, 4.

   [398] I. xliv. 4-6.

   [399] I. xlvii. 6.

   [400] I. liv. 2.

   [401] lvii. 1.

   [402] xxi. 6.

   [403] "In iii. 3 allusion is made to the deposition of certain Church
   leaders, but in dependence on Isaiah iii. 5, where of old age it is
   said: "the child will press against the old man," Clement can very well
   have preserved this meaning in his words "the young are stirred up
   against the elder," as he has also retained the other general
   antithesis from Isaiah: "the base again the honourable." Yet the
   selection of the word "elders" (presbuteroi) instead of "old men"
   (presbutai) points to the fact, only too well known to the readers,
   that it was against official presbyters that the rising was. "Elders"
   (presbuteroi) in this case has a double meaning which rhetorically is
   very effective; and so also young men. For since according to xlvii. 6
   only one or two persons had given occasion to the offence, it is
   possible that these were young persons, but at the same time also that
   they stood in the position of laymen towards the presbytery in so far
   as these were official persons." Encyclopaedia Biblica, p. 3135.

   [404] Patrum apostol. opera, I. p. 132 n. (p. 68, n. 4, in ed. of
   1876).

   [405] Loofs says that he is so convinced that the presbyters of 1 Peter
   v. 1 are office-bearers, that if the argument needed it (which it does
   not) he would rather believe with Mosheim and others that the neoteroi
   were deacons; Studien and Kritiken (1890), p. 638. Schmiedel, who takes
   the same view, asserts that the fact that the presbyters have to be
   warned against "discontent with their office, greed and ambition"
   points against the early date of the epistle (Encyclopaedia Biblica, p.
   3134); he would not have said this had he known much about Churches in
   the mission field; the pregnant remark of Denney (Hastings' Dictionary
   of the Bible, iii. 82 b), that tendencies to antinomianism seem
   inseparable from every revival of religion, religion transcending even
   while it guarantees morality, ought to be kept more in mind than it is
   by students of early Church history.

   [406] 1 Peter i. 1.

   [407] Rev. iv. 4, 10; v. 5, 6, 8, etc.

   [408] Acts xx. 17, 28 (Ephesus); xi. 30; xv. 4, 6, 22; xvi. 4; xxi. 18;
   (Jerusalem).

   [409] Acts xiv. 23.

   [410] Compare Lightfoot, Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians
   (1881), 6th ed. 95-9; Loofs, Studien and Kritiken (1890), 639-41;
   Lightfoot gives quotations from Jerome, but omits some of his strongest
   sayings; it may be useful to quote at greater length from his
   Commentary on Titus, i. 7:--Idem est ergo presbyter, qui episcopus; et
   antequam diaboli instinctu studia in religione fierent, et diceretur in
   populis: ego sum Pauli, ego Apollo, ego autem Cephae, communi
   presbyterorum consilio ecclesiae gubernabantur. Postquam vero
   unusquisque eos, quos baptizaverat, suos putabat esse, non Christi; in
   toto orbe decretum est, ut unus de presbyteris electus superponeretur
   caeteris, ad quem omnis ecclesiae cura pertineret, et schismatum semina
   tollerentur. Putat aliquis non scripturarum, sed nostram esse
   sententiam, episcopum et presbyterum unum esse, et aliud aetatis, aliud
   ease nomen officii; relegat apostoli ad Philippenses verba, dicentis
   (then follow the passages quoted above in the text) . . . Haec
   propterea, ut ostenderemus, apud veteres eosdem fuisse presbyteros,
   quos et episcopos; paulatim vero ut dissensionum plantaria
   evellerentur, ad unum omnem sollicitudinem esse delatam. Sicut ergo
   presbyteri sciunt, se ex ecclesiae consuetudine ei, qui sibi
   praepositus fuerit, esse subjectos; ita episcopi noverint se magis
   consuetudine, quam dispositionis dominicae veritate, presbyteris esse
   majores, et in commune debere ecclesiam regere." Gieseler in his
   Compendium of Ecclesiastical History, i. pp. 88-90, n. 1, collects a
   large number of authorities to show that this opinion of Jerome was
   held throughout the Mediaeval Church until the time of the Council of
   Trent. He concludes by saying "Since the Tridentine Council, the
   institutio divina of episcopacy and its original difference from the
   presbyterate became the general doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church,
   which the English Episcopalians also followed in this particular, while
   the other Protestant Churches returned to the most ancient doctrine and
   regulation on the subject."

   [411] Bampton Lectures (1881), pp: 36-46.

   [412] Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians, pp. 95, 96.

   [413] Compare for example the suggestive phrase in Hermas:
   episkeptesthe allelous kai antilambanesthe allelon (Vis. iii. 9).

   [414] The word episkopos is used of Christ in 1 Peter ii. 25 and of God
   in 1 Clem. lix. 3. The word episkope is used of the providence of God
   in Luke xix. 44 and in 1 Pet. ii. 12. In 1 Clement episkope, in the
   sense of exercising oversight, is a much more prominent thought than
   episkopos. The author speaks of onoma episkopes, leitourgia episkopes,
   dora episkopes not episkopon; Hermas of episkopoi . . . episkopesantes
   hagnos. Loofs has collected a number of similar phrases from later
   authorities in Studien und Kritiken (1890), p. 629, showing that there
   are traces of this way of regarding episkopos as late as the end of the
   second century. Then in Titus i. 7 the article is prefixed (ton
   episkopon) to denote that a type is spoken of: cf. Lightfoot,
   Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians, p. 97, n. 1.

   [415] After declaring that he does not regard episkopos any more than
   poimen or hegoumenos as a technical term denoting an office, Loofs goes
   on to say:--"Mir scheint in der vorschnellen Annahme, episkopos sei
   frühe Amtsname, Titel gewesen, ein proton pseudos vieler neuerer
   Konstructionen zu liegen; die ältere Anschauung halte ich durchaus
   nicht für veraltet; episkopos ist eine Funktionsbezeichnung and bis ins
   endende zweite Jahrhundert hinein gehen die Spuren davon, dass man ein
   Bewusstsein davon hat, dass episkopos weniger Amtsname als
   Amtsbeschreibung ist." Studien und Kritiken (1890), p: 628. Compare
   Professor Sanday, The Conception of Priesthood, pp. 61-62.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER V

  THE MINISTRY IN THE SECOND CENTURY

   During the first century we can see the local churches creating their
   ministry. The same independence marks their action in the second
   century. They can be seen changing the ministry they have inherited.
   The beginnings of the change date from the early decades of the second
   century; by the end of the century it was almost complete. The change
   was two-fold, and concerned both the prophetic and the local ministry.
   Stated in the briefest manner it may be described thus: the "prophetic"
   ministry passed away, its functions being appropriated by the permanent
   office-bearers of the local churches; and every local church came to
   supplement its organization by placing one man at the head of the
   community, making him the president of the college of elders. The one
   part of the change which came about in the second century, that which
   gave the senate of the congregation its president, was simple, natural
   and salutary; it came about gradually and at different times in the
   various portions of the Empire; it was effected peacefully, and we hear
   of no disturbances in consequence. [416] The other change, which meant
   the overthrow of the "prophetic" ministry of the apostolic and
   immediately subsequent period, was a revolution, provoked a widespread
   revolt and rent the Church in twain.

   To understand the change in the ministry of the local churches it is to
   be kept in mind that at the close of the first century every local
   church had at its head a college or senate or session of rulers, who
   were called by the technical name of elders, and were also known by
   names which indicated the kind of work they had to do--pastors,
   overseers (episkopoi). This was the ministry of oversight. To each
   congregation there was also attached a body of men who rendered
   "subordinate service," and who were called deacons--but whether they
   formed part of the college of elders, or were formed into a separate
   college of their own, it is not easy to say. The change made consisted
   in placing at the head of this college of rulers one man, who was
   commonly called either the pastor or the bishop, the latter name being
   the more usual, and apparently the technical designation. The ministry
   of each congregation or local church instead of being, as it had been,
   two-fold--of elders and deacons--became three-fold--of pastor or
   bishop, elders and deacons. This was the introduction of what is called
   the three-fold ministry. It is commonly called the beginning of
   episcopacy; but that idea is based on the erroneous conception that a
   three-fold ministry and episcopacy are identical. [417]

   In order to show what the change was and what it meant, three relics of
   the oldest Christian literature may be taken, the Didache or the
   Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, certain fragments which are sources of
   the Apostolic Canons, and the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch.
   Authorities differ about the dates of these documents, but it may be
   taken as well ascertained that they all belonged to the years between
   100 and 180 A.D. [418]

   In the first mentioned we find the Christian society ruled by a college
   of office-bearers who are called "overseers and deacons"; in the second
   we see one bishop or pastor (the terms are synonymous in the document),
   a session of elders and a body of deacons, but the elders rule over the
   bishop as they rule the congregation, and the bishop is not their
   president; in the third we have the three-fold ministry of bishop,
   elders and deacons constituting a governing body [419] at the head of
   the congregation or local church.

   The Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles [420] is a short
   Christian manual, of composite character, containing rules for the
   conduct of individual men and women, and regulations for the guidance
   of small Christian communities, hundreds of which must have been
   scattered over the wide face of the Roman Empire in the second century.
   The sixteen paragraphs of this little manual are well-arranged when
   compared with most manuals of the same kind. The first six contain
   simple directions for living the Christian life, based upon the
   Beatitudes of our Lord and the Ten Commandments. They seem to have
   formed the instruction administered to catechumens before baptism. Then
   follow directions about baptism, fasting and prayer and the Eucharist.
   Three sections are devoted to injunctions which concern the "prophetic
   ministry." Then follow instructions about the Lord's Day services, and
   the selection of office-bearers. The whole concludes with a warning
   about the last days.

   Tertullian has said: "We Christians are one body knit together by a
   common religious profession, by a unity of discipline and by the bond
   of a common hope." [421] This little manual reads like a commentary on
   the saying. Every wayfaring stranger seeking food and lodging was to be
   received and fed if he came with a profession of the Christian faith.
   The letter of commendation which was in use among the Jews and to which
   St. Paul refers, was not required to ensure a hospitable reception
   [422] for one night at least. It was better to be imposed upon
   sometimes than to miss the chance of entertaining a brother Christian.
   But this hospitality was not to be without discrimination. "Let every
   one coming in the name of the Lord be received, but afterwards ye shall
   test him and know the true from the false; for ye shall have insight.
   If he cometh as a traveller, help him as much as you can; but he shall
   not remain with you unless for two or three days if it be necessary. If
   he will take up his abode with you and is an artizan, let him work and
   so eat; but if he has no trade provide employment for him, that no
   idler live with you as a Christian. But if he will not act according to
   this he is a Christ-trafficker; beware of such." [423] The brotherly
   love of these early Christians was a real and practical thing which no
   experience of imposition seems to have damped. Their simple rules are
   witness to the fact that they were sometimes imposed upon, and Lucian's
   account of the impostor Peregrinus, shows how a heathen could see that
   their charity was often abused. [424]

   One does not naturally expect to find an elaborate ecclesiastical
   organization among these simple folk, and there are no traces of it.
   The Didache reveals a state of matters not unlike what we see in the
   Epistles of St. Paul. The control in all things evidently rested with
   the community met in congregational meeting. It is to the community as
   a whole that all the directions are addressed. It receives, tests,
   finds work for or sends away the travelling strangers who ask
   assistance or hospitality. It discharges all these duties of Christian
   benevolence which we find elsewhere laid upon the president. [425] It
   is the community, in congregational meeting, which tests and receives
   or rejects the members of the "prophetic ministry" when they appear.
   The injunctions about baptism, fasting, prayers, are all given to the
   whole community, [426] and not to the office-bearers; and yet
   office-bearers did exist among them whom the community are required to
   elect and to honour.

   The manual bears evidence to the value of the "prophetic ministry." Its
   members are to be honoured in a very special fashion. If a prophet is
   present he is to preside at the Lord's Table, and his prayers are to
   follow his heart's promptings; [427] if no prophet was present, one of
   the office-bearers presided; but he had to use a fixed form of prayer.
   The duty of obeying the members of the "prophetic ministry" who speak
   the Word of the Lord is laid down in the most solemn manner. Prophets
   and teachers who happen to be residing within the community are to be
   supported by the members; the first fruits are to be set aside for
   them; and in this respect they are like the high priests of the Old
   Testament. [428]

   The figures of these prophets, true and false, which are somewhat
   shadowy in the New Testament, take definite shape in this ancient
   church directory. We see the stir in the community when the prophet
   arrives. The women hasten to set apart the first baking of bread, the
   first cup of the newly opened wine-skin or jar of oil, the first yard
   or two of the newly spun cloth [429] for the use of these men, gifted
   with magnetic speech, who have come to edify the little society and
   instruct them in the ways of the Lord.

   Not that every one who comes among them saying that he is a prophet is
   to be received as such. If he asks for money, if he does not practise
   more than he preaches, if he has not the ways of the Lord--then he is a
   false prophet and is to be sent away. [430] For the Christian
   communities felt that they had the presence of their Lord with them
   according to His promise, and had the gift, however rudely it might be
   shown and exercised, of testing even "prophets" and "apostles." When
   the members of this prophetic ministry were received they were the only
   persons permitted to abide within the community without earning their
   living by artisan or other labour. Their labour was the instruction and
   edification of the members of the society. [431]

   Although the community was honoured with the presence of these gifted
   men, and although the congregational meeting was, as in the Churches of
   Corinth and Thessalonica, the centre and seat of rule, the brethren
   were directed to elect office-bearers. The context gives the reason.
   "But on the Lord's Day do ye assemble and break bread and give thanks,
   after confessing your transgressions, in order that your sacrifice may
   be pure. But every one that hath controversy with his friend, let him
   not come together with you until they be reconciled. . . . Therefore
   appoint for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men meek
   and not avaricious, upright and proved, for they too render you the
   service of the prophets and teachers." [432]

   The office-bearers are needed to act as judges in quarrels within the
   community, and to act as the "wise men" whom St. Paul asked the
   Corinthians to appoint. [433] They are also, whether in turn or
   otherwise we do not know, to preside at the Holy Supper and to edify
   the community, for they are to serve as "prophets and teachers." [434]
   There is no division of labour indicated between the bishops
   (presbyters) and the deacons; and the same qualities of meekness,
   uprightness, proved Christian character and the absence of avarice are
   demanded of both.

   What went on in the smaller took place in the larger Christian
   communities; the outlines of the picture sketched for us in the Didache
   appear also in the Epistle of Clement [435] and in the quaint Pastor of
   Hermas. At the head of the community, as regular office-bearers, were a
   number of men presbyter-bishops with deacons as their assistants, but
   the congregation is seen to be the supreme judge in the last resort.
   The people rule and form a little democracy; they choose their
   office-bearers who lead their devotions and act as arbiters in all
   disputes. They are a self-governing community. They can even reject the
   services of men who assert that they are members of the prophetic
   ministry. They can do this in God's name. They are a theocracy as well
   as a democracy. The "gifts" of the Spirit are present in their midst
   and are manifest in the power of judging.

   Our second document is what Harnack calls the Original Sources of the
   Apostolic Canons. [436] These sources are but fragments, preserved
   because they have been incorporated in a much later law-book of the
   Christian Church. We do not know from what land they came nor how wide
   or narrow was the sphere of their authority. They show us, however,
   what a small Christian community was in the last decades of the second
   century, and they describe the way in which it was created out of a
   number of Christian families. We can see the birth and growth of a
   Church with its complete organization. In many respects the process
   described can be seen now in any mission field, especially among
   peoples of ancient civilization. Perhaps the most interesting thing
   about it is that every body of Christians however small is ordered to
   form itself into a congregation, and the implied thought that the
   Christian life must be lived within an orderly Christian society before
   the full benefits which accompany it can be enjoyed.

   The document takes us back to a time when a few Christian families
   found themselves the only believers in the midst of a surrounding
   paganism. Few or many, they are commanded to organize themselves as a
   church. [437] If the families number less than twelve, or rather if
   they include fewer than twelve persons entitled to vote in the
   election, it is supposed that they need aid in the first important step
   in the organization, which is the selection of some one to be their
   pastor or bishop--the names are synonymous in the document. [438] In
   this case they are to apply to a neighbouring Christian community which
   has been established for some time, and ask them to appoint three men
   to assist them to select their pastor. [439] Along with these three,
   presumably experienced Christians, but not necessarily office-bearers,
   they are to select some one (whether from their own number or from the
   outside is not said) to be their bishop. A list of qualifications is
   given them to direct their choice, from which it appears that character
   and Christian experience are the things really needful for the office.
   [440] A pastor or bishop is to be one whose character stands so high
   that no one may be expected to bring any charge of misconduct against
   him. He is not to be given to drinking, nor to covetousness nor to foul
   living. He must not be a respecter of persons. It is better that he
   should be unmarried, but if he has a wife he must be a faithful
   husband. It is advisable that he should be an educated man and able to
   expound the Scriptures, but that is not indispensable. If he is
   unlearned he must at least be gentle and full of love towards all
   persons. He has to represent the community to the outside world, and
   must therefore be a man whom the heathen respect. He is to be the
   leader in public worship, and the elders are to support him, seated on
   his right hand and on his left. He must be a valiant fighter against
   sin, and the elders are to aid him in this duty also. He is, under the
   control of the elders, to administer the property of the Church, which
   in these early days consisted of the gifts brought by the faithful to
   the meeting for thanksgiving. They were handed over to him, and
   distributed under the watchful supervision of the elders.

   Besides the pastor the congregation is required to appoint at least two
   elders or presbyters. [441] They are to be men advanced in years and
   presumably unmarried (the meaning of the phrase is somewhat doubtful).
   [442] They must not be respecters of persons. They are to be ready to
   assist the pastor at all times in the conduct of public worship and in
   dealing with sinners. They are the rulers in the strict sense of the
   word. They are responsible for summoning the people to public worship,
   and it is their place to preserve order during Divine Service. The
   women who visit the sick are to report to them and not to the bishop.
   They are to see that the bishop distributes in a proper manner the
   offerings of the faithful. They have charge of the discipline of the
   congregation including the pastor. [443]

   Every church must have at least three deacons, who are to be the
   ministers of the people in their private and home life. They are to
   report on any unseemly conduct which may call for discipline at the
   hands of the elders. They are to be men well esteemed in the
   congregation, faithful husbands, with well-behaved families. [444] It
   is their duty to move among the people, "and carefully give heed to
   those who walk disorderly, warning one, exhorting another, threatening
   a third, but leaving scoffers entirely to themselves." They were to be
   men of generous disposition, for part of their duty was to insist that
   the wealthier members of the Brotherhood, as the congregation is
   called, "open their hands" to support the poor and for other
   ecclesiastical needs, and example is better than precept. In short
   their duties, as laid down in these ancient canons, are almost
   identical with those of the deacons in presbyterian churches now, both
   in what they do and in what they are to refrain from doing.

   Every church was also to have a ministry of women. Three were to be
   appointed. They are called widows, and a curious division of duties is
   enjoined. [445] One of them is to act as a combination of nurse and
   Bible-woman. She is to assist the sick women of the congregation. To
   this end she " must be ready for the service, discreet and not
   avaricious, nor given to much love of wine, so that she may be sober
   and capable of performing the night services and other loving ministry
   if she will." The duty of the other two was to "persevere in prayer for
   all who are in temptation"; and they were also to pray for the
   reception of revelations where these were necessary. They took the
   place in the congregation of the old prophetic ministry, and were among
   the number of the New Testament prophetesses.

   There was another official. The congregation is told to appoint a
   Reader. He is to be an experienced Christian. His duty is to read the
   Scriptures during Divine Service, and it is required that he should
   have a good voice and a clear delivery. He is told to come early to the
   church on the Lord's Day. He is to be able to expound the Scripture
   that he has read. He is to remember that "he fills the place of an
   evangelist." The Reader in these ancient times did what the pastor or
   bishop was expected to do in later times. There was the more need for
   the office when we remember that the bishop might be an unlearned man,
   and by unlearned was frequently meant one who did not know the
   alphabet.

   Such is a picture of a small Christian Church in the last decades of
   the second century. It may be taken as the type of hundreds. It is
   independent and self-governing, but it is not isolated. It is a
   brotherhood (adelphotes), consisting of brethren organized under
   office-bearers chosen by themselves, but it has relations with, and a
   knowledge of, a wider brotherhood of which it is a minute part. When
   need comes it can appeal for and get help in the selection of its
   pastor. Its ministry need not be learned; Christian character, saintly
   behaviour, the power to exhort and teach which comes from deep
   Christian experience, are more highly valued than ability to read. The
   Brotherhood has the Wise Men whom St. Paul desired to see in the
   Corinthian Church in its elders or presbyters who share the
   responsibilities of the pastor's work, and in this respect are his
   assistants, but whose superintendence and rule extends over the pastor
   himself in other respects. We see the deacons going out and in among
   the members of the society, encouraging, warning, rebuking, if need be,
   and endeavouring to excite to Christian liberality by precept and
   example. We descry through the mists of seventeen hundred years the
   homely and simple ministry of women; on the one hand an active motherly
   woman, able to nurse her sick sisters, strong enough to endure, as
   women only can, long periods of night-watching, giving wholesome
   motherly advice to the women and girls of the community; and on the
   other two solitary women, in the weakness and loneliness of their sex
   and of their widowhood, powerful to wrestle with God in prayer, and to
   assist with their supplications the whole congregation and the strong
   men who are tempted and tried in the daily battle of life. The strong
   supporting the weak; and the weak, powerful in prayer, helping the
   strong; the picture is one which only a Christian community could show,
   and there it often appeared. Early Christian literature abounds in
   references to the prayers of the widows of the congregation. They are
   expected to bear the whole burden of the brethren upon their hearts,
   and to entreat the Lord in prayer. The prayers of believers are the
   sacrifice of primitive Christianity, and because the widows abound in
   prayer they are the altar of sacrifice. [446]

   These ancient fragments of old ecclesiastical canons are, however,
   specially interesting, because they represent the transition stage
   between the organization of the churches, shown

   in the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians or in the Didache, and the
   three-fold ministry of the third century. They do this in two ways; The
   prophetic ministry has departed, but its memories linger in the prayers
   of the widows for revelations and in the exhortation to the Reader that
   he holds the place of an evangelist. For our immediate purpose,
   however, it is most interesting to have in the fragments an
   organization lying between that of a church or congregation, ruled by a
   college of presbyter-bishops as in the Didache, and one where the
   bishop or pastor is the president of a compact circle of elders and
   deacons, and where these office-bearers have their fixed places under
   their head. In these fragments the bishop or pastor has neither the
   power nor the position he afterwards came to occupy almost universally
   in the third century.

   But there is this advance on the older organization. There is now one
   man who has a distinct position which he occupies by himself. He is the
   recognized leader of the congregation or church in several definite
   ways. He represents the congregation to those outside, else why should
   it be a necessary qualification for office that he is respected by the
   heathen? He leads the congregational worship in the meeting for
   thanksgiving at any rate, and if he is learned and can expound the
   Scriptures, probably at the meeting for edification also. The gifts of
   the congregation are given into his hands for distribution, and he is
   the almoner. He stands alone and separate from the other office-bearers
   in all this. In these respects also he stands forth as the
   representative of the unity of the congregation or church.

   On the other hand, he has not yet been placed in the position which the
   bishop or pastor afterwards held. In the Apostolic Constitutions it is
   the bishop who calls the congregation together for worship; here that
   duty belongs to the elders, who also watch over the behaviour of the
   people while in Church. [447] In later ecclesiastical manuals the
   deacons and deaconesses report tai the bishop; there they, or at least
   the deaconesses, report to the elders, who have the responsibilities
   for the sick and infirm of the congregation, which in later days
   belonged to the bishop. [448] All these things show that the discipline
   of the congregation is in the hands of the elders exclusively, and that
   the bishop is not the president of their court. If any doubt remained
   on this head it must vanish when we consider the unique regulation that
   the bishop himself is under the supervision of the elders in one of the
   most important of his functions. [449] When he acts as almoner they are
   to see that he acts rightly, and, what is of the highest importance for
   understanding the situation, the word used to express the control of
   the elders over the bishop is the same word (pronoeisthai), which
   describes their power of discipline over the congregation. The bishop
   has emerged from the circle of presbyters, but he is not their
   president; and while he is the leader of the congregation in many
   respects he is, in one respect at least, like the members of the
   congregation, amenable to the discipline of the elders.

   Probably had we other relics of ecclesiastical manuals belonging to
   this transition period we should find other instances of organizations
   on the road towards the three-fold ministry, but travelling by
   different paths. We know that the three-fold ministry grew more rapidly
   in some places than in others, and the organization probably passed
   through several transition stages, of which this is one, before it
   attained to maturity.

   Our third group of writings consists of the famous Letters of Ignatius
   of Antioch--a series of documents which have provoked an immense amount
   of criticism which cannot be said to be ended. Without entering into
   the controversy we may accept the results of the scholarly criticism of
   the late Dr. Lightfoot in this country, and of Dr. Zahn in Germany,
   according to which the Seven Epistles in the shorter recension are
   genuine documents. These letters came from the head of the Christian
   community in Antioch in Syria. Ignatius had been seized in an outburst
   of persecution and was being dragged across Asia Minor, a prisoner in
   charge of a band of Roman soldiers. He wrote to the Christians of
   Ephesus that he was on his way from Syria, in bonds for the sake of the
   common Name and hope, and was expecting to succeed in fighting with
   wild beasts at Rome, that by so succeeding he might have power to
   become a disciple. [450] The journey was an apprenticeship in
   suffering; for the ten soldiers, who guarded him, treated him as ten
   leopards might have done, and only waxed worse when they were kindly
   entreated. [451] The churches of Asia Minor had sent him comforting
   messages by special delegates. The letters are his answers. [452]

   They exhale the fragrance of a saintly and impassioned Christian life.
   They dwell on the need that the sin-sick children of men have for the
   One great Physician of souls. [453] The Christian preacher of the
   second century lives in them still, embalmed there and treasured up for
   a life beyond life. We find in them bursts of poetic fancy: the Lord
   was a Star which shone forth in the heaven above all stars; and its
   light was unutterable; and its strangeness caused astonishment; and all
   the rest of the constellations, with the sun and the moon, formed
   themselves into a chorus about the star; but the Star itself far
   out-shone them all. [454] They abound in simple but striking metaphors,
   such as the lyre and its strings, the athlete and his training; the
   chorus with its keynote; the wheat ground in the hand-mill. [455] We
   find quaint emblems: "Ye are stones of a temple, which were prepared
   beforehand for a building of God, being hoisted up to the heights
   through the engine of Jesus Christ, which is the Cross, and using for a
   rope the Holy Spirit; while your faith is your windlass, and love is
   the way that leadeth up to God." [456] They show deep knowledge of the
   human heart: "No man professing faith sinneth, and no man possessing
   love hateth" [457] --a sentence which might have come from Thomas à
   Kempis. Sometimes the words seem insensibly to take the form of a
   prophetic chant, and have a rhythmic cadence all their own. [458]
   Throughout there is that taste of Oriental extravagance which makes
   them so natural. [459]

   The letters breathe the storm and strain of a time of persecution. The
   rallying cry which rolls from the first to the last is union! Keep
   united! Close the ranks! Intimate union with Christ; that is the main
   thing, and that which comes first. This is how he puts it. "For being
   counted worthy to bear a most godly name, in these bonds, which I carry
   about, I sing the praise of the churches; and I pray that there may be
   in them union of the flesh and of the Spirit which are Jesus Christ's,
   our never-failing life--an union of faith and of love which is
   preferred before all things, and--what is more than all--an union with
   Jesus and with the Father, in whom, if we patiently endure all the
   despite of the prince of this world and escape therefrom, we shall
   attain unto God." [460]

   Varying pictures of the Christian Churches rise in his imagination. Now
   they are ships driven and tossed in the storm of persecution; there
   must be a strong man at the helm and discipline in the crew; they need
   a favouring wind and a sheltering haven. [461] Or they are so many
   households of God: the office-bearers are the upper servants set there
   by the Master to rule, and the other members obey the Master Himself
   when they are submissive to those whom He has set over them. [462] Or
   they are disciple companies, cherishing an imitation of Christ, not in
   the solitary fashion of Thomas à Kempis, but in companionship. The
   pastor represents Jesus, the elders are His apostles, [463] and the
   deacons and the faithful those who followed Him in Galilee--and all,
   pastor and elders and people, look for the footprints the Master has
   left, and try to set their steps where He trod. Perhaps this picture of
   a disciple company is his favourite one. It has been a thought tenderly
   cherished through the centuries, and has often been set forth with a
   certain quaint realism. Columba and twelve companions came from Ireland
   to Iona. Columbanus with twelve companions appeared among the Franks
   and the Burgundians to preach the Gospel. Bernard and twelve companions
   left Citeaux to found his new dwelling at Clairvaux. In each case the
   chronicler lovingly adds: "a disciple company."

   We miss the main thought in Ignatius if we neglect to see that the
   unity which is his passion is primarily and fundamentally something
   spiritual and mystical. The Person of Christ is the centre round which
   the Church crystallizes. By His death on the Cross and by His
   Resurrection our Lord has elevated a standard round which His troops of
   believers can rally and form a disciplined army. [464] This sacred
   mystical attraction is the inward essence and source of that union
   which he has always in view. So strong is it that all believers may be
   said to have one mind, a godly concord and one spirit of perseverance.
   [465] The unity which he insists upon is first of all a union with
   Christ Jesus, and then, and arising from that, a common religious
   belief and a common affection diffused throughout all believers who
   ought to live in a harmony of love. The unity Ignatius yearns after is
   first of all a unity of faith and love. [466]

   But this unseen mystical unity ought to make itself manifest according
   to the ordinances of Jesus and of His apostles. It can make itself seen
   in the best way in the attachment of believers to the visible local
   church which is the assembly of believers for prayer, exhortation, and
   for the celebration of the Holy Supper and for baptism. Those who are
   truly the Lord's, and who share in the invisible mystical union, cannot
   fail to assemble together with one heart and mind, nor to unite in one
   common prayer. Ignatius addresses himself more than once to men who
   seem to think that the Christian life can be lived apart from the
   Christian visible fellowship; [467] and he declares that apart from the
   office-bearers there is not even the name of a Church. [468] Christians
   ought to manifest this inward unity which they have in an external
   unity, which can best show itself in the manifestation of mutual
   respect for each other, in reverencing each other and in loving one
   another in Jesus Christ. [469]

   This submission which is due by all believers to each other is
   specially due to those who have been placed at the head of the
   Christian communities, and who are there to be examples to their
   flocks. [470] Submission to one another and to the office- bearers--a
   submission founded on love--is the outward manifestation of the inward
   mystical union which all true believers have with Christ, who is the
   true centre of the union. For Ignatius never loses sight of the
   mystical union fed by faith and love. [471]

   The real centre of this unity is God and Christ Who is God; the real
   oversight lies with Him. In his fervent Oriental way which expresses
   abstract thoughts in defective, though picturesque, material and
   external representations, Ignatius sees this Divine and invisible unity
   manifest in the bishop (or in whatever may be the visible centre of the
   ecclesiastical rule). [472] For it must not be forgotten in attempting
   to interpret the thoughts of Ignatius that he belonged to what has been
   called the "enthusiastic" age of the Church, and that he shared in an
   exalted degree in the spirit of his times. He claimed to be a prophet
   and to possess the prophetic gift. "I am in bonds," he says, "and can
   comprehend heavenly things and the arrays of angels and the musterings
   of principalities, things visible and invisible." [473] He describes
   how, when he was preaching at Philadelphia, the prophetic afflatus
   suddenly possessed him, and he felt compelled to cry out "with a loud
   voice, with God's own voice, Give ye heed to the bishop and the session
   and the deacons." His hearers thought that this had been a studied
   reference to persons accused of causing division in the Church, but
   Ignatius assured them that was not so. The Divine afflatus had
   possession of him, and it made him cry out: "Do nothing without the
   bishop; keep your flesh as a temple of God; cherish union; shun
   divisions; be imitators of Jesus Christ, as He Himself also was of His
   Father." [474] With the prophetic eye he saw the invisible and mystical
   unity which lay hidden within the actual visible Christian community,
   and every little local church was a symbol of what existed in the
   Heavenly Places where God was the centre and source of unity. It is
   from this mystical standpoint that we must view the impassioned
   exhortations to obey the office-bearers, [475] remembering also that
   obedience to the rulers in the Church is only the superlative of the
   submission of love which all Christians owe to one another.

   When due allowance is made for the exaltation of the writer, and for
   the Oriental extravagance of language natural to a Syrian, the
   exhortations of Ignatius do not differ so widely from the calm
   injunctions issued in the measured language of Rome to the church of
   Corinth which we find in the Epistle of Clement: "Let us mark the
   soldiers that are enlisted under our rulers, how exactly, how readily,
   how submissively, they execute the orders given them. All are not
   prefects, nor commanders of thousands, nor of hundreds, nor of fifties,
   and so forth; but each man in his own rank executeth the orders given
   by the prince and the government." [476]

   It is also to be remembered that Ignatius is writing to churches in
   Asia Minor, exposed to the temptations to division caused by the
   presence of men teaching the separative doctrines of a Judaising
   Christianity and of Doketism. The epistles themselves afford abundant
   evidence that these sources of division existed and had proved strong
   temptations in the communities to which he was writing. [477] His
   passionate anxiety was that each local church should present an
   unbroken front and manifest a complete unity. The simple means which he
   believed would effect this was that all Christians should rally round
   the office-bearers who were at the head of the little Christian
   societies. Most, though not all, of the churches he addressed had the
   three-fold ministry in some form or other, and he enforced obedience to
   that form of ecclesiastical rule. "There is no indication that he is
   upholding the episcopal against any other form of Church government, as
   for instance the presbyteral (i.e. the government by a college of
   presbyters without a president). The alternative which he contemplates
   is lawless isolation and self-will. No definite theory is propounded as
   to the principle on which the episcopate claims allegiance. It is as
   the recognized authority of the churches which the writer addresses,
   that he maintains it. Almost simultaneously with Ignatius, Polycarp
   addresses the Philippian Church, which appears not yet to have had a
   bishop, requiring its submission to the presbyters and deacons.' [478]
   If Ignatius had been writing to this church, he would doubtless have
   done the same. As it is, he is dealing with communities where
   episcopacy (the three-fold ministry) had been already matured, and
   therefore he demands obedience to their bishop." [479] He makes no
   attempt certainly when writing to the Roman Church, which was still
   under the government of a college of presbyter-bishops without a
   president, to insist that the three-fold ministry is an essential thing
   to the well-being of a Christian community. [480] What is more, he
   evidently regards union with the college of elders as the same thing as
   union with the bishop; for he invites the malcontents at Philadelphia,
   who had repented, to return "to the unity of God and of the council of
   the bishop." [481]

   We can scarcely look for a calm statement about the organization of the
   Christian churches in letters of this kind. They were the impassioned
   outpourings of a man on his way to death; full of fears, not for
   himself, but for the brethren he was leaving behind in a persecuting
   world. It is pathetic to see the fiery, impassioned words of the martyr
   used as missiles by some reckless preacher of episcopal supremacy, or
   subjected to the scalpel of a cold-blooded critic, neither of whom seem
   to recognize the Oriental extravagance of language which makes them so
   natural. Yet the letters do give us a good deal of information about
   our subject.

   Ignatius insists that the unity of the society has for its centre and
   source of strength the supremacy of the pastor, who is always called
   the bishop. His writings are a proof that the three-fold ministry in
   some form or other did exist, early in the second century, in some
   parts of the Church though not in others. But they are not to be taken
   as proof that the Ignatian conception of what the three-fold ministry
   ought to be existed in any part of the Church whatever. [482]

   According to the conception of Ignatius, every Christian community
   ought to have at its head a bishop, a presbyterium or session of
   elders, and a body of deacons. These constitute its office-bearers to
   whom, jointly and severally, obedience is due. Ignatius regards these
   three elements as going together to form one whole. He mentions the
   three classes of officials together twelve times in his seven epistles,
   and in ten out of the twelve they form an inseparable unity--presumably
   they do so also in the remaining two, but that is not evident from the
   passages themselves. [483] There is not a trace of sacerdotalism in the
   sense that the Christian ministry is a special priesthood set apart to
   offer a special sacrifice; there is a great deal about the sacredness
   of order, but not a word about the sanctity of orders. Ignatius only
   once refers to priests and high priests, and he does so in the
   thoroughly evangelical fashion of contrasting the imperfect Old
   Testament priesthood with the perfect priesthood of the Redeemer. [484]
   The bishop is not an autocrat. There is a "council of the bishop,"
   which includes the bishop himself. [485] The people are told to obey
   all the office-bearers, bishops, elders and deacons. [486] The ruling
   body is a court in which the bishop sits as chairman surrounded by his
   council or session of elders; and the one is helpless without the
   other, for if the bishop is the lyre the elders are the chords, and
   both are needed to produce melody. [487] There is no apostolic
   succession in any form whatsoever; even in the poetic conception of the
   disciple company it is the elders who represent the apostles. [488]
   Lastly, there is no trace of diocesan rule. We undoubtedly find the
   phrase ton episkopon Surias; but as Lightfoot and Zahn, to say nothing
   of others, have pointed out, it must be translated "the bishop from
   Syria." A bishop of Syria would have been an anachronism in the fourth
   century, and is much more so in the second. [489] It is unquestionable
   that the bishop is made the centre of everything in the Church or
   congregation. "It is not permitted without the bishop either to baptize
   or to hold a love feast," [490] and the love feast must include the
   Holy Supper. It is even declared that when men and women marry they
   should unite themselves with the consent of the bishop, that the
   marriage should be after the Lord and not after concupiscence. [491]
   But this only means that in such a solemn action as matrimony the
   blessing of the Church should be joined to the civil contract.

   But if there be no sacerdotalism, no apostolic succession, no one-man
   rule, and no diocese; if every Christian community is to be organized
   under a leader, who is called a bishop and some-times a pastor, who
   presides over a court of elders, [492] and has under him a body of
   deacons; further, if, as the Sources of the Apostolic Canons inform us,
   every small Christian community, even when consisting of fewer than
   twelve families, is to have its bishop, its elders and its deacons; if
   nothing is to be done without the consent of the pastor or bishop,
   neither sacrament nor love-feast, nor anything congregational--then
   while the resemblance to modern episcopacy, with its diocesan system,
   is but small, there is a very great amount of resemblance to that form
   of ecclesiastical organization which re-emerged at the Reformation and
   which is commonly called the presbyterian, though it might be more
   appropriately named the conciliar system of Church government.

   A more minute examination of the letters reveals some details of the
   organization of the churches which were familiar to Ignatius.

   For one thing, it seems clear that whatever the authority of the bishop
   may have been, it did not extend beyond his own church or congregation.
   The corporate unity of the Churches of Christ was still a sentiment,
   strongly felt no doubt, but not yet expressed in any kind of polity.
   Ignatius did not write as a bishop of the Catholic Church; he says
   expressly that he was no apostle. [493] He wrote as a confessor of
   Christ to brethren who might soon be required to confess Christ in the
   same way of threatened martyrdom. Nor does Polycarp claim to write as a
   superior to the Philippians. He wrote because he had been asked for
   advice. [494] The various churches were still independent units in
   fraternal intercourse with each other, but without any signs of
   inter-congregational jurisdiction.

   The Epistle to Polycarp show what Ignatius believed to be the duties of
   a bishop within his own community. He was the administrator of the
   finances of the Church; to him the widows and the poor of the
   congregation had to look for their support, and the funds to buy the
   manumission of slaves were in his hands; [495] he had the moral
   oversight of the whole congregation, and was therefore the president of
   the court of discipline; [496] he had the right to call, and presumably
   to preside over, the congregational meetings; [497] he had the sole
   regulation of the sacraments of Baptism and of the Holy Supper and of
   everything congregational. [498] But large as were the bishop's powers,
   he had to exercise them under serious limitations. There is not a hint
   that the bishop can by himself, or even in conjunction with his session
   or elders, excommunicate an offender. The power which Ignatius urges
   Polycarp to use is only that of moral suasion. [499] It is more than
   probable that the final power in all cases of discipline lay with the
   congregational meeting, as was the case in Corinth in the time of St.
   Paul. It is the congregation who are warned against false teachers and
   evil-minded persons, and they are directed to act in certain ways with
   regard to them. [500] The passages, however, do not warrant us in
   drawing any distinct conclusion. On the other hand, it is clear that
   the congregational meetings had powers. It was they who appointed
   delegates and messengers. The Christians at Smyrna are asked directly
   to send a delegate into Syria, whereas the bishop is only asked to
   convene a meeting of the congregation in order that the messenger may
   be appointed; and elsewhere it is made plain that this power belonged
   to the whole Church, who could order on a mission their bishops as well
   as their elders or their deacons. [501]

   Readers who know something about the work of Church extension at home
   and on the mission field, may wonder how it was possible in these early
   centuries that the smallest bodies of Christians could have had, and
   were commanded to have, such a complete ecclesiastical organization as
   these Epistles of Ignatius and the Sources of the Apostolic Canons
   require, and how they could be at the same time so independent and
   self-supporting. A large part of the problem of ecclesiastical
   extension in our own days, at home and on the mission field, has to do
   with money. Churches and other buildings have to be erected, and a
   salaried ministry has to be supported. But it must be remembered that
   in those early days the ministry was not paid as we understand payment,
   and that money for buildings was not needed. Church buildings did not
   exist until the second century was drawing to a close, and then only in
   large and populous centres. The only property which the Church had
   besides its copies of the Scriptures, its congregational records and
   perhaps a place of burial, were the offerings, mostly in kind, which
   the faithful presented during the meeting for thanksgiving, and which
   were almost immediately distributed. Justin Martyr gives the earliest
   description in his Apology. "On the day called Sunday, all who live in
   town or country gather together in one place, and the memoirs of the
   apostles or of the prophets are read as long as time permits; then when
   the reader has ceased the president verbally instructs, and exhorts us
   to the imitation of these good things. Then we all stand together and
   pray, and, when prayer is ended, bread and wine are brought and the
   president offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability,
   and the people assent, saying Amen. Then there is a distribution to
   each of that over which thanks has been given, and a portion is sent by
   the deacons to those who are absent. Then they who are well to do and
   are willing, give what each thinks fit; and it is collected and
   deposited with the president, who succours orphans and widows and those
   who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, those who are in
   bondage and the strangers sojourning among us--in a word all who are in
   need." [502]

   The gifts so bestowed and distributed were the property of the early
   Church--all that it had. Both Justin and Tertullian insist on the fact
   that these offerings were of free-will, contrasting them, it is
   probable, with the monthly compulsory payments made by the members of
   confraternities; but this did not hinder indications being given about
   these offerings. We find a continuous series of recommendations that
   the first fruits of all the necessaries of life ought to be given. All
   the oldest ecclesiastical manuals, from the Didache downwards, contain
   injunctions to the people about these first fruits. In the Didache
   these offerings went to support the prophets, and failing them the poor
   of the community; and the Pastoral Epistles [503] mention a church roll
   of members who ought to share because of their poverty. In the
   quotation just made from Justin Martyr these first fruits are
   distributed among the widows, orphans, poor strangers and so on;
   Tertullian describes a similar mode of distribution; so do the Canons
   of Hippolytus, which expressly prohibit any claim on the part of the
   ministry to share. [504] In the ancient Sources of the Apostolic Canons
   the elders superintend the bishop, while he makes the distribution,
   [505] but in Justin and in the Canons of Hippolytus the full control of
   this distribution lies with the president or bishop. It is probable
   that the members of the ministry from the beginning had some share in
   these offerings, but not in the way of stipend, and only if they could
   be classed among the poor. The ancient Sources of the Apostolic Canons
   teach us that the pastor may share if need be, but not by way of
   stipend. Dr. Hatch has only summed up what the history of the whole
   period teaches when he says: "The funds of the primitive communities
   consisted entirely of voluntary offerings. Of these offerings those
   office-bearers whose circumstances required it were entitled to a
   share. They received such a share only on account of their poverty.
   They were, so far, in the position of the widows and orphans and
   helpless poor." [506]

   The idea that when men are once set apart for the function of
   office-bearers in the Christian Church it becomes the duty of the
   Church to provide them with the necessaries of life does not belong to
   the times of primitive Christianity. The office-bearers of the early
   Church were clergy in virtue of their call, election, and setting apart
   by special prayer for sacred office; but they worked at trades, carried
   on mercantile pursuits, and were not separate from the laity in their
   every-day life. We find bishops who were shepherds, weavers, lawyers,
   shipbuilders, [507] and so on, and the elders and deacons were almost
   invariably men who were not supported by the churches to which they
   belonged. An interesting series of inscriptions was found on the
   gravestones of the cemetery of the little town of Corycus, in Cilicia
   Tracheia, records of the Christian community there. They can scarcely
   be older than the fifth, and not later than the sixth century. One of
   them marks the burial place of a master potter and another that of a
   goldsmith, both of whom were elders or presbyters of the Church there.
   [508] The power of the laity in the early Church did not depend simply
   on the fact that they chose the office-bearers and had some indefinite
   influence over councils, as some modern writers put it, [509] but on
   the fact that in the earliest times none of the office-bearers, and for
   many centuries few of them, depended upon the Church as a whole to
   provide them with the necessaries of life. They were clergy, as has
   been said, in virtue of their selection for office and of their solemn
   setting apart to perform clerical functions; but they had daily
   association with the laity in the workshop, on the farm, in the
   warehouse, in the law-courts, and in the market-place. They held what
   must seem to be a very anomalous position to mediaeval and modern
   episcopalians. When the ancient practice is revived, as it was by the
   Reformed Church at the Reformation, episcopalians speak disdainfully of
   lay-elders and lay-deacons, as if an ecclesiastical stipend and not
   consecration by prayer and the laying on or giving of hands were the
   true and essential mark of ordination. But the practice had its value
   in the early centuries and has its importance now. It knit clergy and
   laity together in a very simple and thorough fashion, and brought men,
   whose life and callings made them feel as laymen do, within the circle
   of the hierarchy which ruled, and so prevented the hierarchy
   degenerating into a clerical caste.

   During the last decades of the second and throughout the third century
   the conception of Ignatius, to him perhaps only a devout dream, [510]
   dominated the whole Church, or at least a great part of it. Every
   Christian community had at its head a single president who is almost
   always called the bishop. He presided over the session of elders, over
   the body of deacons, and over the congregation. The whole Christian
   activity of the community found its centre in him, as it does in
   presbyterian congregations in the present day. He presided over the
   public worship in all its parts; had chief charge of the sick and of
   the sinful; he was over the discipline and over the administration of
   the property of the community whatever that happened to be. This was
   his position as a matter of fact. On the other hand, his position
   theoretically was by no means so unique. There is many a trace in the
   ancient canons, as we shall afterwards see, that the bishop was only
   primus inter pares in the session of elders, and that he was
   distinguished from them by two things only--a special seat in the
   church and the power to ordain elders and deacons. The practice made
   him the centre of the whole congregational life and the ruler; the
   theory recalled the earlier days when every congregation was governed
   by a council of elders who had no president. We find the theory in such
   law-books as the Canons of Hippolytus; [511] it was repeated by Jerome;
   it never lacked supporters during the Middle Ages, of whom Thomas
   Aquinas was one; it re-emerged at the Reformation when the Reformed
   Church revived the ecclesiastical organization of the early centuries;
   and the same difference between theory and practice exists among the
   Reformed Churches in the present day.

   The great change in the ministry which we have seen evolving itself in
   the three documents selected, and which belonged to the second and
   third centuries, was that the ruling body in every congregation changed
   from being a session of elders without a president and became a session
   with a president. The president, sometimes called the pastor, but
   usually the bishop, became gradually the centre of all the
   ecclesiastical life of the local Christian church and the one potent
   office-bearer. We have now to ask how this came about. In answer one
   thing only can be asserted with confidence. The change came gradually.
   It provoked no great opposition. It was everywhere, or almost
   everywhere, accepted. But when we seek for the causes that produced the
   change, or ask what were the paths along which the change manifested
   itself--then we can only give conjectural answers.

   Probably the main impulse came from the pressure of
   temptation--intellectual and moral--and persecution, and the feeling
   that resistance to both would be strengthened by a more thorough unity
   than could be attained under the leadership of a number of men who had
   no individual head. One man can take a firmer grip of things. Divided
   responsibility continually means varying counsels. What is the business
   of many is often the work of none. A divided leadership continually
   brings with it fickle and impotent action. The need for an undivided
   front in time of danger was what inspired Ignatius, when, with the eye
   of a statesman and the fire of a prophet, he pleaded for the union of
   the congregation under one leader. The circumstances of the times and
   the voices of those who led in the movement, all suggest that the
   supreme need of the moment was unity; and that unity could be best won
   and maintained by the change which was made.

   The paths along which the change progressed probably differed in
   various places. It is quite unnecessary to suppose that the process was
   everywhere the same. It is much more natural that there should have
   been several at work simultaneously. Differences in racial temperament
   and in experience in the art of governing; greater or less exposure to
   the disruptive influences of strange teaching; more or less capacity to
   endure temptations; differences in local environment and in inherited
   political usages, might easily produce different modes in the evolution
   of the ecclesiastical organization. Dr. Lightfoot has shown, with his
   usual careful minuteness, how the three-fold ministry came into being
   much sooner in some parts of the Empire than others, and that it
   appeared first in Asia Minor, [512] which differed in the fact that it
   was more exposed to the divisive influences of strange teachings, and
   that the people had been long accustomed to the rule of one man in
   secular affairs. It well may be imagined that the different social
   surroundings which belonged to Rome, to the cities of Greece, and to
   Asia Minor, bred different ecclesiastical conditions, which led to the
   selection of differing paths in the development of the ecclesiastical
   organizations.

   Professor Ramsay has suggested, ingeniously, one way in which the
   change may have come. His idea is that any member of the session of
   presbyters or elders became an episcopus or overseer when he was given
   the oversight of any special duty by his brethren. The episcopus who
   did his work well would naturally continue to do it, and the tendency
   was for his function to become permanent. One of the most important
   duties which fell to the college of elders was correspondence with
   other Christian churches and the reception and entertainment of the
   delegates who came from other churches to visit them. The elder who had
   the oversight of, or was the episcopus for this work, naturally became
   a very important man. He was the representative of his own church to
   all Christians outside it. He might easily come to represent the unity
   of the Church to those who also were inside it, more especially as he
   was the official who would naturally be selected to hold the property
   of the congregation when it became possessed of a place of burial. Thus
   he came to stand forth from among the other elders as the episcopus par
   excellence. Thus gradually one of the presbyters or elders became the
   episcopus for everything within the community, and the session of
   elders received its permanent head. [513] There is a great deal to be
   said for this conjecture. For one thing, there is evidence that the
   appointment of one of the elders to look after the communications with
   other churches was actually a custom; [514] for another it gives a
   reasonable explanation of those lists of bishops in various churches
   dating back to times when all the evidence shows that there was no real
   permanent president in existence. They are the lists of the men who,
   being the foreign correspondents, represented the unity of their
   respective churches to all Christians outside, and were therefore
   regarded as the most prominent members.

   It is also probable that the celebration of the Holy Supper suggested
   one permanent president. It is easy to conceive how the meeting for
   "exhortation" could be conducted by a session of elders, but it is very
   difficult to imagine a collegiate superintendence of the meeting for
   "thanksgiving." Did the members of the session of presbyter-bishops or
   elders take it in turn to preside, or in what way was it done? We do
   not know. But we do know that in the second century there was one
   official who presided at the Lord's Supper, and that he, the proestos
   or president of Justin Martyr, [515] is clearly the anticipation of the
   later bishop. There was evidently some close connexion in thought
   between the one bishop and the unity of the congregation or church at
   the Holy Supper. One bishop, one place of celebration (thusiasterion)
   and one Eucharist are almost equivalent terms in Ignatius. This thought
   would lead us to imagine that the episcopus was the presbyter or elder
   selected by his brethren to preside at the Eucharist, and that he was
   bishop while he was so presiding. [516] The presbyter who had a special
   gift for this sacred work would naturally be frequently called to
   undertake it, and the duty might easily become a permanent one. In the
   Sources of the Apostolic Canons it is the bishop or pastor who presides
   at the Holy Communion, although he is under the disciplinary authority
   of the elders.

   It may also be said that the need for one authority in doctrinal
   matters led to the selection of one man, and to placing on him the
   responsibility of seeing that the members of the congregation were not
   tempted away from the true faith by irresponsible teachers, who offered
   themselves to instruct the community. This conception, as we shall see
   later, was developed in a special way with reference to the
   office-bearer by Irenaeus, and some critics see it foreshadowed in the
   letters of Ignatius.

   No one way needs to be selected as the only path by which the
   organization advanced, and the college of elders received a president
   who was the permanent head of the community, and the living and
   personal representative of its unity. They might all have their effect
   and that simultaneously.

   It must always be remembered that the duty of presiding at the Holy
   Supper, which is invariably seen to belong to the bishop as soon as he
   emerges from the college of presbyters or elders, brought with it the
   control over the gifts of the faithful which were presented after the
   Eucharistic service, and formed for long the only property of the
   congregation. If we add to this that the presbyter or elder chosen for
   this highest portion of the worship was frequently a man possessed of
   the prophetic gift as Ignatius was, additional reverence and obedience
   would not fail to be bestowed upon him; and we can see how the old
   reverence for the "prophetic ministry" could easily be transferred to
   the new authority.

   Whatever paths led to the change in the ministry whereby the rule was
   transferred from a college of elders without a president to a college
   with a president, when once the change was made the power of the
   episcopus grew rapidly; and one source of this increase of authority
   lay in the fact that he was always the administrator of the property of
   the local church.

   Without any apostolic sanction, in virtue of the power lying within the
   community and given to it by the Master, the Church of the second
   century effected a change in its ministry quite as radical, if not more
   so, as that made by the Reformed Church in the sixteenth century, when
   it swept away mediaeval excrescences, restored the bishops to their
   ancient position of pastors of congregations, and vested the power of
   oversight in councils of greater and lesser spheres of authority. What
   was within the power of the Christian people of the second century
   belongs to it always when providential circumstances seem to demand a
   change in the organization, for the ministry depends on the Church and
   not the Church on the ministry.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [416] Ritschl's idea that the dissensions in the Church in Rome
   witnessed to in the Pastor of Hermas arose from the attempt to force on
   this change finds little acceptance. Compare Ritschl, Die Entstehung
   der altkatholischen Kirche (1857), pp. 403, 535.

   [417] The Presbyterian or Conciliar system of Church government is as
   much a three-fold ministry as episcopacy.

   [418] My own opinion inclines to the following dates: The Epistles of
   Ignatius, about 116 A.D.; the Didache, not earlier than 135 A.D.; the
   Sources of the Apostolic Canons, between 140-180 A.D. Compare note on
   next page.

   [419] In the Ignatian Epistles the bishop, elders and deacons are named
   together twelve times: Magn. ii. vi., xiii.; Trall. vii.; Philad.
   pref., iv., vii.; Smyrn. viii., xii.; Polyc. vi.; Trall. ii.; Philad.
   x.; and, in the first ten at least, the three classes of office-bearers
   form an inseparable unity.

   [420] The manuscript of the Didache was discovered in 1873 in the
   library of the monastery of the Holy Sepulchre in the Phanar or Greek
   quarter of Constantinople by Philotheus Bryennios, Patriarch of
   Nicomedia. It was published by him in 1883. It is now known by numerous
   editions. Of these by far the best comes from the pen of Professor
   Harnack of Berlin, and it is to that edition that the references in the
   notes here are made. It is difficult to say what country gave birth to
   this manual. The external evidence is all in favour of Egypt; and
   Harnack and Lightfoot conclude that it came from that land. The only
   evidence worth mentioning which seems to invalidate this conclusion is
   the sentence in the eucharistic prayer:--"Just as this broken bread was
   scattered over the hills and having been gathered together became one,
   so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into
   Thy kingdom"--words which cannot refer to Egypt but which might
   appropriately describe the corn of the Lebanon or the regions beyond
   the Jordan. But there is no reason why the eucharistic prayer might not
   come from Palestine and be received into the Churches of Egypt. The
   external evidence proves the use and the knowledge of the manual in
   Egypt, and the internal, with the exception of the sentence quoted,
   confirms the idea. A few Anglican scholars have done their best to
   minimise the value of the book and its evidence. A good example of this
   depreciation is to be found in Bishop Gore's The Ministry of the
   Christian Church (1893), 3rd ed., App. L. p. 410. It is very difficult
   to determine the date. The Didache quotes the Epistle of Barnabas and
   is quoted by Clement of Alexandria, and the date assigned is
   practically determined by the date fixed for the Epistle of Barnabas.
   The probable date of this epistle depends on whether the events
   referred to in the sixteenth section describe the condition of things
   in the time of Domitian or of Hadrian. Personally I am inclined to
   think that the references in the Epistle of Barnabas are to the later
   period. If this be the case it is scarcely possible to place the
   Didache earlier than 135 A.D., i.e. later than the Ignatian letters.
   The majority of scholars place it very much earlier. The commonest date
   is about 100 A.D.--Wordsworth, Hitchcock and Brown, Spence, Bonwetsch,
   Massebieau; a few place it earlier--Funk and Loening, between 80 and
   100 A.D.. Zahn dates it 80-120 and more exactly about 110 A.D.;
   Bryennios, its first editor, gives 120-130, and Harnack 130-160 A.D. as
   the probable date. Hilgenfeld, who finds traces of Montanism in the
   writing, places it later than 160. For our purposes an exact
   determination of date is unnecessary; all that we have to deal with is
   that the Didache describes the condition of a Christian organization
   some time between the Epistles of S. Paul and the third century.

   [421] Apology 39; elsewhere (De Praescrip. 20) he speaks of the
   contesseratio hospitalitatis which linked all Christians together.

   [422] Compare 2 Cor. iii. 1. These commendatory letters became the rule
   at a later period in the Christian Church. Compare Smith's Dictionary
   of Christian Antiquities, I. 407.

   [423] Chapter xii.

   [424] Peregrinus Proteus, 13.

   [425] In Justin Martyr's Apology it is the president (proestos) who
   succours strangers and travellers: Apology, i. 67.

   [426] "Now concerning baptism, thus baptize ye : having first uttered
   all these things (i.e. the instructions given in cc. i.-vi.), baptize
   into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost in
   living (running) water. But if thou hast not living, baptize in other
   water: and if thou canst not in cold then in warm. But if thou hast
   neither, pour water thrice upon the head unto the name of the Father,
   the Son and the Holy Ghost. But before the baptism let the baptizer and
   the baptized fast and whatever others can; but the baptized thou shalt
   command to fast for one or two days before," c. vii.

   [427] "But permit the prophets to give thanks as much as they will," x.
   7.

   [428] "Every first fruit . . . thou shalt take and give to the
   prophets; for they are your high-priests," xiii. 3.

   [429] "Every first fruit then of the produce of the wine-press and of
   the threshing-floor, of oxen and of sheep, thou shalt take and give to
   the prophets. . . . If thou bakest a baking of bread, take the first of
   it and give according to the commandment. In like manner when thou
   openest a jar of wine or oil, take the first of it and give to the
   prophets; and of money and clothing and every possession take the
   first, as may seem good unto thee, and give according to the
   commandment," xiii. 3-7.

   [430] xi.

   [431] "But every true prophet who will settle among you is worthy of
   his support. Likewise a true teacher, he also is worthy, like the
   workman, of his support"; xiii. 1, 2.

   [432] xiv. 1-2; xv. 1, 2.

   [433] 1 Cor. vi. 5.

   [434] "They render you the service of the prophets and teachers.
   Therefore neglect them not; for they are your honoured ones along with
   the prophets and the teachers": xv. 1, 2. This passage is rightly
   regarded by Harnack, and in this Sanday follows him, as of the utmost
   importance to enable us to trace the development of the Christian
   ministry in the primitive Church. It must be referred to later. It is
   sufficient to say here that we see the change taking place whereby the
   ministry of the local Church secured the place at an earlier period
   possessed by the prophetic ministry. Compare Harnack's edition of the
   Didache in Texte und Untersuchungen, II. i. 58 note; ii. 140 ff.;
   Sanday, Expositor (1887), Jan.-June, p. 14 ff. The word time was
   specially used to denote the respect due to spiritual guides (compare
   Harnack's note for references); it is a question whether the "honoured
   ones" are also those who "receive an honorarium" (for the Greek word
   has the double reference); the prophets and teachers received the
   firstfruits in preference to the poor. Did the bishops and deacons who
   are placed among the honoured spiritual guides partake of these first
   fruits also? The Didache does not answer the question.

   [435] In the Epistle of Clement we find that the congregation is the
   supreme authority; the letter is addressed to the whole Church:--"To
   the Church which sojourneth in Corinth" (preface); the evil-doers are
   urged to do "what is ordered by the people" (liv. 2). The
   office-bearers are a number of presbyter-bishops and deacons (compare
   above pp. 159 ff.). The epistle says little or nothing about a
   "prophetic ministry" but that is not to be wondered at as it was
   written for a definite purpose which had nothing to do with the
   question. In Hermas we have the same organization and the distinct
   traces of prophets and their ministry.

   [436] A summary of the critical history of the Apostolic Canons (to be
   distinguished from the Apostolic Constitutions) will be found in
   Harnack's edition of the Didache (Texte und Untersuchungen, II. ii. p.
   193-209) followed by Harnack's critical reconstruction based on the
   discovery of the Didache (pp. 209-25), and lastly the full text of the
   canons (pp. 225-37), tables and summary (pp. 237-41). According to
   generally accepted critical opinions the compiler of the Canons used
   four sources, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache (or more probably an
   abridgement of the Didache), and two fragments from an old
   ecclesiastical law-book. It is with these fragments that we have now to
   do, or rather with the first of them. Harnack dates it at some time
   between 140 and 180 A.D. These fragments, with commentary and excursus,
   have been published by Harnack in the Texte und Untersuchungen, II. v.
   Professor Sanday appears to agree with Professor Harnack about these
   fragments: Expositor (1887), Jan.-June, pp. 20, 21, 106. Harnack's
   edition of the Sources has been translated into English by L. A.
   Wheatley under the title Sources of the Apostolic Canons (1895).

   [437] "If there are few men, and not twelve persons who are competent
   to vote at the election of a bishop, the neighbouring Churches should
   be written to, where any of them is a settled one, in order that three
   selected men may come thence and examine carefully if he is worthy."
   Sources of the Apostolic Canons, pp. 7, 8. (Here and elsewhere I quote
   from the English translation of Harnack's edition in the Texte und
   Untersuchungen, II. v.)

   [438] The word episkopos occurs in i. 4, 22; ii. 15, 19; and poimen in
   ii. 18.

   [439] The phrase is eklektoi treis andres. Various parallels may be
   found to the employment of three chosen men to conduct together work
   requiring tact and experience. The most obvious is the mission of the
   three men Claudius Ephebus, Valerius Bito and Fortunatus to Corinth
   from Rome (1 Clem. lxiii. 1). Harnack finds in the three men selected
   to assist the small congregation in the selection of a bishop the
   anticipation of the much later rule that the consecration of a bishop
   required the presence and co-operation of the three neighbouring
   bishops. He finds a middle point in the fact evidenced by the letter of
   Cornelius of Rome to Fabius of Antioch (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. VI., xliii.
   8, 9) that by the middle of the third century it was the custom that
   bishops were consecrated by three neighbouring bishops (Sources of the
   Apostolic Canons (1895), pp. 36 ff.). This afterwards became the law
   and is found in canons of many councils (the Council of Arles in its
   twentieth canon being the first). Hence comes the saying "All
   Christendom becomes presbyterian on a consecration day." It is evident
   from the continual repetition of the law that the Churches found it
   somewhat difficult to enforce their regulation.

   [440] The qualifications are divided into two classes those
   indispensable and those desirable. "That is if he has a good report
   among the heathen, if he is faultless, if a friend of the poor, if
   honourable--no drunkard no adulterer, not covetous nor a slanderer, nor
   partial or such like" (i. 10-15). These are the necessary
   qualifications. Then follow the desirable: "It is good if he is
   unmarried; if not then a man of one wife; educated, in a position to
   expound the scriptures; but if he is unlearned, then he must be gentle
   and filled with love to all, so that a bishop should never be as one
   accused of anything by the multitude " (i. 10-23); Sources of the
   Apostolic Canons, pp. 8-10.

   [441] "Hence the presbyters must be already advanced in life,
   abstaining becomingly from communication with women, willingly sharing
   with the brotherhood, not having regard to the person, companions in
   consecration with the bishop (summustas tou episkopou), and fighting on
   his side, collecting the congregation together, kindly disposed towards
   the pastor. The elders on the right should look after the bishops at
   the altar, in order that they may distribute the gifts and themselves
   receive the necessary contributions (hopos timesosi kai entimethosin,
   eis ho an dee). The elders on the left shall look after the
   congregation in order that it may be at rest and without disturbance,
   after that it has been first proved in all submission. But if one who
   is admonished should answer rudely; those at the altar should unite and
   condemn such an one to the punishment deserved by a general resolution,
   so that the others may be in awe, in order that they (the elders) look
   not at the person of any one, and that it may not spread as a cancer
   and be taken up by every one " (ii.).

   [442] The phrase is tropo tini apechomenous tes pros gunaikas
   suneleuseos.

   [443] The relation of the elders to the bishops is expressed by the
   word pronoesontai; this has been translated in the English version
   "shall assist," which cannot be right, for the same word is used to
   express the relation of the elders to the people, and it is evident
   that the power of discipline is meant (ii. 19, 23).

   [444] "They shall be approved in every service, with a good testimony
   from the congregation, husbands of one wife, educating their children,
   honourable, gentle, quiet, not murmuring, not double-tongued, not
   quickly angry, not looking on the person of the rich, also not
   oppressing the poor, also not given to much wine, intelligent,
   encouraging well to secret works, while they compel those among the
   brethren who have much to open their hands, also themselves generous,
   communicative, honoured with all honour and esteem and fear by the
   congregation, carefully giving heed to those who walk disorderly,
   warning the one, exhorting the other, threatening a third, but leaving
   the scoffers completely to themselves" (iv.). Sources of the Apostolic
   Canons, pp. 17-19.

   [445] "Three widows shall be appointed, two to persevere in prayer for
   all those who are in temptation, and for the reception of revelations
   where such are necessary; but one to assist the women visited with
   sickness. She must be ready for service, discreet, communicating what
   is necessary to the elders, not avaricious, not given to much love of
   wine, so that she may be sober and capable of performing the night
   services and other loving services if she will; for these are the chief
   good treasures of the. Lord" (v.), Sources of the Apostolic Canons, pp.
   19-21.

   [446] Compare Polycarp, Epistle to the Philippians, 4; in the Canons of
   Hippolytus (ix. 59) widows are to be highly honoured because of their
   copiosas orationes et infirmorum curam. In Apostolic Constitutions,
   iii. 12, 13, it is said: "For it becomes widows when they see that one
   of their fellow widows is clothed by any one or receives money or meat
   or drink or shoes, at the sight of the refreshment of their sister to
   say: Thou art blessed O God, who hast refreshed my fellow widow. Bless
   O Lord, and glorify him that has bestowed these things upon her, and
   let his good work ascend in truth unto Thee and remember him for good
   in the day of his visitation." Compare Apost. Constit. iii. 5, 7.

   [447] Apostolic Constitutions, ii. 57; cf. Sources of the Apostolic
   Canons, ii. 15: the same word sunathroizein being used in both as the
   technical term to summon to Church.

   [448] Apostolic Constitutions. iii. 19 orders the deacons and
   deaconesses: "Tell your Bishop of all those that are in affliction; for
   you ought to be like his soul and senses." Sources of the Apostolic
   Canons, v. 8, 9, directs the Widows to "communicate what is necessary
   to the presbyters or elders." In the Canons of Hippolytus, c. 5, the
   deacons are ordered to report to the bishop. Of. Riedel, Die
   Kirchenrechtsquellen des Patriarchate Alexandrien (1900), p. 203.

   [449] Apostolic Constitutions, ii. 25, 35, make it plain that the
   bishop was accountable to no one but God in his duty as almoner. The
   bishop is thus addressed: "Let him use those tenths and first fruits,
   which are given according to the command of God, as a man of God; as
   also let him dispense in a right manner the free-will offerings which
   are brought on account of the poor, to the orphans . . . as having that
   God for the examiner of his accounts who has committed the disposition
   to him" (ii. 25). And in the thirty-fifth section the people are
   enjoined: "Thou shalt not call the bishop to account nor watch his
   administration, how he does it, when or to whom, or where, or whether
   he does it well or ill or indifferently; for he has One who will call
   him to account, the Lord God."

   [450] To the Ephesians, 1.

   [451] To the Romans, 5.

   [452] The letters of Ignatius were generally known during the later
   Middle Ages in the form of seventeen epistles, of which fifteen were
   believed to come from the pen of Ignatius while two (one from the
   Virgin and another from a Mary of Cassobola) were addressed to
   Ignatius. Renascence criticism disposed of the claims of four of these
   letters. There remained thirteen, twelve from the pen of Ignatius and
   one (from Mary of Cassobola) addressed to him. This collection is now
   known as the Long Recension, and it was this collection which was the
   subject of fierce controversy in the end of the sixteenth and during
   the seventeenth century. At the basis of these attacks made on the
   genuineness of these letters lay two facts: that Eusebius knew of seven
   letters only and that these thirteen contained passages evidently
   unknown to Eusebius or to any of the ancients. The learned Englishman,
   Ussher, afterwards archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland,
   observed that the quotations made from Ignatius by some English writers
   from the thirteenth century onwards corresponded with those found in
   Eusebius, Theodoret, etc., and concluded that there must exist in
   England a manuscript which would represent the Ignatius known to the
   ancients. After a prolonged search two such manuscripts were brought to
   light, both of them in Latin. They contained seven letters but in a
   form shorter than the generally received letters. Ussher accepted six
   of these shorter letters as the genuine epistles of Ignatius (he
   refused to accept the letter to Polycarp). His book was published in
   1644. Soon afterwards (1646) Isaac Voss published six letters from a
   Greek MS.--his MS. did not give the Epistle to the Romans; and in 1689
   the full Greek text of the seven letters was published by Ruinart. It
   was generally admitted that, if any genuine letters of Ignatius had
   descended to the present time, they were these seven in the shorter
   form; but many critics still refuse to admit the genuineness of any of
   the letters. The controversy was raised again in 1845 by the
   publication of Cureton's Ancient Syriac Version of the Epistles of S.
   Ignatius to S. Polycarp, the Ephesians and the Romans. The author had
   found two Syriac MSS. in the library of the British Museum containing
   the three epistles mentioned in his title and in a still shorter form
   than those published by Ussher. He maintained that these three short
   letters were the genuine remains of Ignatius. He defended his position
   in a second work, Vindiciae Ignatianae (1846), and in his most complete
   treatise, Corpus Ignatianum (1849). His views at once attracted
   attention and were very largely adopted, though many distinguished
   scholars still defended the seven letters, while others refused to
   accept even Cureton's three in the brief form. This controversy was
   almost ended by Zahn, who, in his Ignatius von Antioch (1873), showed
   very successfully that Cureton's three Syriac letters were epitomes of
   the three in what were called the Short Recension. This opinion was
   supported by the late Dr. Lightfoot's elaborate work, Apostolic
   Fathers, part II., S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp (1885). The result of these
   two works has been that in Germany, France and England the seven
   letters, in the shorter form published by Ruinart in 1689, are
   generally accepted as the genuine remains of Ignatius. Many critics
   still refuse to accept the letters in any form as genuine, but their
   criticism is mainly of the subjective and unconvincing kind. The only
   writer whose book deserves serious consideration and who dissents from
   the conclusions of Zahn and Lightfoot is Bruston, who, in his Ignace
   d'Antioche (1897), refuses to admit the genuineness of the Epistle to
   the Romans and combines his critical opinions with the theory that
   Ignatius was not the Bishop of Antioch but a deacon in the Church
   there. Many scholars are of the opinion that the letters of Ignatius
   were known to Lucian and that he used his knowledge in writing his
   story De Morte Peregrini. They think that the imprisonment of
   Peregrinus, the visits paid to him by delegates from the Churches of
   Asia Minor, and the letters written by him to the Churches which were
   received with reverence, were all incidents suggested by the letters of
   Ignatius. The idea seems to me somewhat far-fetched; the points which
   Lucian seizes and makes use of may easily have been suggested by a
   general observation of usages common to early Christianity and need not
   be attached to any particular person however famous; but compare
   Lightfoot, S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp, i. pp. 331 ff.

   [453] To the Ephesians, 7.

   [454] Ibid. 19.

   [455] To the Ephesians, 4; To the Philadelphians, 1; To Polycarp, 1, 2;
   To the Romans, 4.

   [456] To the Ephesians, 9.

   [457] Ibid. 14.

   [458] Compare especially the Epistle to the Philadelphians, 7:--

   Choris tou episkopou meden poieite;

   Ten sarka humon hos naon Theou tereite;

   Ten henosin agapate;

   Tous merismous pheugete;

   Mimetai ginesthe Iesou Christou;

   Hos kai autos tou patros autou.
   Ignatius had evidently visited Philadelphia and had addressed the
   brethren there, and in his address he had felt the prophetic afflatus,
   had interrupted himself with a loud cry, and these sentences were part
   of what he had said. They are an example of the prophetic utterances.

   [459] As where he says:--"These men ye ought to shun as wild beasts for
   they are mad dogs, biting by stealth," To the Ephesians, 7.

   [460] To the Magnesians, 1.

   [461] To Polycarp, 2.

   [462] To the Ephesians, 6.

   [463] To the Magnesians, 6; To the Trallians, 2, 3; To the Smyrnaeans,
   8.

   [464] To the Smyrnaeans, 1:--"Truly nailed up in the flesh for our
   sakes under Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch . . . that He might
   set up a standard unto all ages through His resurrection, for His
   saints, whether among Jews or among Gentiles, in one body of His
   Church."

   [465] To the Magnesians, 7, 15:--"But let there be one prayer in
   common, one supplication, one mind (nous), one hope, in love and in joy
   unblamable which is in Jesus Christ. . . . Fare ye well in godly
   concord, and possess ye a stedfast spirit which is in Jesus Christ."

   [466] "Run in harmony with the mind of God" (Ephesians, 3); "In your
   concord and harmonious love Jesus Christ is sung; do ye, each and all
   of you, form yourselves into a chorus, that being harmonious in concord
   and taking the key-note of God ye may in union sing with one voice
   through Jesus Christ to our Father" (Ephesians, 4); cf. To the
   Magnesians, 1.

   [467] To the Ephesians, 5, 13, 20; To the Magnesians, 7.

   [468] To the Trallians, 3.

   [469] "Therefore do ye all study conformity to God, and pay reverence
   one to another" (Magnesians, 6). "Attempt not to think anything right
   for yourselves apart from others" (Magnesians, 7). "Be obedient to the
   bishop and to one another" (Magnesians, 13).

   [470] "Let there be nothing among you which shall have power to divide
   you, but be ye united with the bishop and with them that preside over
   you as an example and a lesson of incorruptibility" (Magnesians, 6).
   The office bearers in this sentence are called prokathemenoi, which may
   be compared with the proistamenoi of the Epistle to the Romans and to
   the Thessalonians.

   [471] He calls a church to polueutakton tes kata Theon agapes
   (Magnesians, 1).

   [472] "Give place to him (the bishop) as to one prudent in God; yet not
   to him, but to the Father of Jesus Christ, even to the Bishop of
   all. . . . For a man doth not so much deceive this bishop who is seen,
   as cheat the other Who is invisible" (Magnesians, 3).

   [473] To the Trallians, 5.

   [474] To the Philiadelphians, 7.

   [475] "The bishops established in the furthest parts of the world are
   in the counsels of Jesus Christ" (Ephesians, 3). "Every one whom the
   Master of the House sendeth to govern His own household we ought to
   receive, as Him that sent him. Clearly therefore we ought to regard the
   bishop as the Lord Himself" (Ephesians, 6). Those who "obey the bishop
   as Jesus Christ" live a life after Christ" (Trallians, 2). "It is good
   to know God and the bishop; he that honoureth the bishop is honoured of
   God; he that doeth anything without the knowledge of the bishop serveth
   the devil" (Smyrneans, 9). To obey the bishop is to obey "not him, but
   the Father of Jesus Christ, even the Bishop of all," while to practise
   hypocrisy towards the bishop is "not to deceive the visibly one, so
   much as to cheat the One who is invisible" (Magnesians, 3). "As many as
   are of God and of Jesus Christ, are with the bishop" (Philadelphians,
   3). Compare Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp, i.
   375 f.; Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians (1881), 6th ed.
   pp. 236, 237), for a complete list of passages. Almost equally strong
   language about obedience to elders or presbyters and deacons will be
   found on the same pages.

   [476] Clement, 1 Epistle xxxvii.

   [477] "But I have learned that certain persons passed through you from
   yonder, bringing evil doctrine" (Ephesians, 9); "It is better to keep
   silence and to be, than to talk and be not" (Ephesians, 15). "It is
   monstrous to talk of Jesus Christ and to practise Judaism. . . . I
   would have you be on guard betimes, that ye fall not into the snares of
   vain doctrines" (Magnesians, 10-11); compare the Epistle to the
   Trallians, 6-11, where the brethren are warned against Doketism; the
   Epistle to the Philadelphians, 6, where the warning is against Judaism;
   and the Epistle to the Smyrneans, 5-7, where the error is Doketism.

   [478] Compare Réville, Les Origines de l'Episcopat (1894), p. 497 f.

   [479] Lightfoot, S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp, i. 382.

   [480] The three-fold ministry developed much more slowly in Rome than
   in Asia Minor. Compare Lightfoot. Commentary on the Epistle to the
   Philippians (1881), 6th ed. p. 217 ff.; Réville, Les Origins de
   l'Episcopat (1894), p. 420 ff.

   [481] Epistle to the Philadelphians, 8.

   [482] In some form or other or in some stage of its growth. Lightfoot
   has drawn a distinction between chief over the presbyters and chief of
   the presbyters, and the second phrase, he says, suits very well the
   beginning of the Epistle of Polycarp:--"Polycarp and the presbyters
   that are with him." Then there is the form given in the Sources of the
   Apostolic Canons, cf. above pp. 183 f.

   [483] To the Magnesians, 2, 6, 13; To the Trallians, 7; To the
   Philadelphians, preface, 4, 7; To the Smyrnaeans, 8, 12; To Polycarp,
   6; To the Trallians, 2; To the Philadelphians, 10. Compare Réville, Les
   Origines de 1'Episcopat (1894), p. 496:--L'exaltation du pouvoir
   épiscopal qui se donne libre tours à travers les Épîtres d'Ignace fait
   trop souvent perdre de vue aux commenteurs cette intime association de
   1'autorité presbytérale et de 1'autorité épiscopale, qu'un examen plus
   attentif dégage très clairement."

   [484] To the Philadelphians, 8, 9. Compare Lightfoot, Apostolic
   Fathers, S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp (1885), i. 381, 382; ii. 274, 275.
   Zahn, Ignatii et Polycarpi Epistulae (1876), p. 79.

   [485] To the Philadelphians, 8. Compare Lightfoot, S. Ignatius, i. 380;
   ii. 269.

   [486] Obey the bishop:--Ephesians, 6; Trallians, 2; Smyrnaeans, 8, 9;
   Magnesians, 3, 4; Polycarp. 4, 6; Philadelphians, 7. Obey the
   elders:--Ephesians, 2, 20; Magnesians, 2, 7; Trallians, 13. Obey the
   deacons: Polycarp, 6,; Magnesians, 6; Trallians, 3; Philadelphians, 7;
   Smyrnaeans, 8.

   [487] To the Ephesians, 4.

   [488] "It is worthy of notice that though the form of government in
   these Asian Churches is in some sense monarchical, yet it is very far
   from being autocratic. We have already seen that in one passage the
   writer in the term council of the bishop' includes the bishop himself
   as well as his presbyters. This expression tells its own tale.
   Elsewhere submission is required to the presbyters as well as to the
   bishop. Nay sometimes the writer enjoins obedience to the deacons as
   well as to the bishop and to the presbyters. The presbytery' is a
   worthy spiritual coronal' (axioplokou pneumatikou stephanou) round the
   bishop (Magn. 13). It is the duty of every one, but especially of the
   presbyters to refresh the bishop unto the honour of the Father and of
   Jesus Christ and of the apostles' (Trall. 12). They stand in the same
   relation to him as the chords to the lyre' (Ephes. 4). If obedience is
   due to the bishop as to the grace of God, it is due to the presbytery
   as to the law of Jesus Christ (Magn. 2). If the bishop ocupies the
   place of God or of Jesus Christ, the presbyters are as the Apostles, as
   the council of God (Magn. 6; Trall. 2, 3; Smyr. 8). This last
   comparison alone would show how widely the idea of the episcopate
   differed from the later conception, when it had been formulated in the
   doctrine of the Apostolic succession. The presbyters, not the bishops,
   are here the successors of the apostles." Lightfoot, S. Ignatius, i.
   pp. 382, 383.

   [489] Lightfoot, S. Ignatius, i. 383; ii. 201, 202; Zahn, Ignatii
   Epistulae, p. 59 n.; and his Ignatius von Antioch, p. 308.

   [490] To the Smyrnaeans, 8.

   [491] To Polycarp, 5.

   [492] The presbuterion or court of elders, i.e. kirk-session, is
   mentioned frequently by Ignatius:--To the Ephesians, 2, 4, 20; To the
   Magnesians, 2, 13; To the Trallians, 2, 7, 13; To the Philadelphians,
   4, 7; To the Smyrnaeans, 8, 12. It is called the "council of God" in
   the Epistle to the Trallians, 3 (sunedrion theou).

   [493] "I did not think myself competent for this (writing more
   sharply), that being a convict I should order you as though I were an
   apostle" (To the Trallians, 3). Throughout the letters there are
   constant references to his impending martyrdom.

   [494] Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, 3.

   [495] To Polycarp, 4.

   [496] To Polycarp, 3, 5.

   [497] To Polycarp, 4; Ignatius evidently thought that Polycarp did not
   hold congregational meetings often enough:--"Let the meetings be held
   more frequently." It is interesting to notice that all the duties which
   Ignatius supposes to belong to the bishops in the Church at Smyrna are
   supposed by Polycarp to belong to the elders in the Church at Philippi;
   with the exception of presiding at public worship, which is not
   mentioned; Polycarp, Epistle to the Philippians. 6-12

   [498] To the Smyrnaeans, 3, for the bishop's duties with regard to the
   eucharist, baptism, and the love-feasts; To Polycarp, 5, with regard to
   marriage. Yet the advice to meet more frequently for the eucharistic
   service is given to the Ephesian community (Ephesians, 13).

   [499] To Polycarp, 2, 3, 5.

   [500] To the Ephesians, 7; To the Magnesians, 11; To the
   Philadelphians, 6; To the Smyrnaeans, 4.

   [501] To the Smyrnaeans, 11; To Polycarp, 7; To the Philadelphians, 10;
   To the Ephesians, 1, 2; To the Magnesians, 2, 6; To the Trallians, 1.

   [502] Justin, Apology, i. 67.

   [503] Didache, xiii. 1; 1 Tim. v. 9. The Pastoral Epistles perhaps
   teach us that the ministry have a share; cf. 1 Tim. v. 17, 18; 2 Tim.
   i. 4-7, but the seventh verse of the latter passage suggests that the
   share is not by way of stipend.

   [504] Tertullian, Apology, 39. Canons of Hippolytus, Canon xxxii.
   (Riedel) Kirchenrechtsquellen des Patriarchats Alexandrien, p. 221.

   [505] Texte und Untersuchungen, II. v. 13-15, or Sources of the
   Apostolic Canons, p. 13.

   [506] The Organization of the Early Churches (1881), p. 147.

   [507] A shepherd, Socrates, Eccles. Hist. i. 12; a weaver, Sozomen,
   Eccles. Hist. vii. 28; a shipbuilder, S. Gregorii Magni, Epistolae,
   xiii. 26; a lawyer, S. Gregorii Magni, Epistolae, x. 10. Compare
   Cyprian De Lapsis 6. Basil, Epistolae, 198. Compare Hatch, The
   Organization of the Early Christian Churches (1881), p. 148, who,
   besides giving the well-known individual instances quotes regulations
   from the Theodosian Code and from the Statuta Ecclesiae Antigua proving
   the general practice. The eighty-seventh of the Canons of Basil says
   that "none of the clergy are to engage in merchandise but that they are
   to learn a handicraft and live of the labour of their hands." Riedel,
   Die Kirchenrechtsquellen des Patriarchats Alexandrien (1900), p. 270.

   [508] Bull. de Corr. Hell. vii. 230 ff.

   [509] As for example the Rev. R. B. Rackham in Essays on Church Reform
   (1898), p. 30 ff.

   [510] Compare Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, pp. 370-1, where
   he says that Ignatius is not an historian describing facts but a
   preacher giving advice; and adds that he does not find in Ignatius
   proof that bishops were regarded as ex-officio supreme, that his
   language is quite consistent with the view that the respect actually
   paid to the bishop in each community depended on his individual
   character, and that his reiteration of the principle of the authority
   of the bishop, which came to him as a revelation, makes it evident that
   he did not find his ideal in actual existence. Compare also Sanday in
   the Expositor (1888, July-Dec.), p. 326.

   [511] Compare below, p. 248.

   [512] Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians (1881), 6th ed. p.
   206 ff.

   [513] The Church in the Roman Empire (1893), p. 367 ff.

   [514] In the Pastor of Hermas, the old lady who represents the Church
   and who has given Hermas a revelation orders him to make two books and
   give one to Clement and the other to Grapte, "and Clement will send his
   to the foreign countries, for commission has been given him to do so,
   and Grapte will admonish the widows and the orphans; but you (Hermas,
   who was a presbyter) will read the words in this city along with the
   elders who preside over the Church," Visiones, ii. 4.

   [515] Apology, i. 67.

   [516] Tertullian in his De Praescriptione Haereticorum, 41, speaking of
   the condition of the Gnostic or Marcionite Churches, says:--"itaque
   alius hodie episcopus, cras alius." Sohm (Kirchenrecht, i. 119 n.)
   takes this as a proof of the condition of things in the most primitive
   days. He infers that in the earlier times when there were several
   bishops in each community the one who presided at the Eucharist was the
   bishop for that day, and gave place to another on another day who thus
   became the bishop in his turn. It is doubtful whether we can infer
   anything about primitive usages from these references in Tertullian.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER VI.

  THE FALL OF THE PROPHETIC MINISTRY AND THE CONSERVATIVE REVOLT

   The prophetic ministry of the apostolic and immediately sub-apostolic
   times passed away in the course of the second century, and its
   overthrow was a much greater alteration of the organization of the
   churches than the institution of a three-fold ministry, important as
   that was. The difference may be seen from two extracts. "Every
   prophet," says the oldest ecclesiastical manual, "who speaketh in the
   Spirit, ye shall neither try nor judge; for every sin shall be
   forgiven, but that sin shall not be forgiven." [517] That comes from a
   time when the prophetic ministry was the great controlling power.
   "Wretched men," says Irenaeus, "who wish to be false prophets . . .
   holding aloof from the communion of the brethren"; and the test of
   being in communion with the brethren is "to obey the elders who are in
   the Church." [518] That comes from the end of our period.

   The change between the time when the prophet was not to be judged, but
   to be obeyed, and when disobedience to his commands was believed to be
   "an unpardonable sin"; and the time when the test of a true prophet was
   obedience to the office-bearers of the local church, whose superior he
   had once been, amounted to a revolution. It was so, and the overthrow
   of the supremacy of the prophetic ministry rent the Church in twain.

   It was inevitable. The more close and firm the organization of the
   local churches became the less room remained for the exercise of the
   prophetic ministry, which in the nature of things claimed at once
   freedom for itself and the power of ruling in some indefinite way over
   the churches which admitted its exercise among them. A careful
   examination of the scanty records of the second century reveals that
   the early prophetic ministry was active within the churches down till
   the Montanist revolt, and that in the churches which shared in that
   movement it was continued, and its place within the Church became
   accentuated. It is also possible to show in what way the office-bearers
   of the local churches could gradually come to take the place of the
   prophetic ministry, and how with the great body of Christians this
   could be done naturally and without any strong feeling that there was a
   real breach with the past.

   In St. Paul's summary of the gifts which the Spirit bestows, and which
   when manifested within a community of Christians make it a Church, it
   can be seen that all these gifts may be divided into two classes--those
   which enable their possessors to edify the brethren by speaking the
   word of God, and those which fit them for serving the community in many
   practical ways. Two of these practical gifts, "pilotings" (kuberneseis)
   and "aids" (antilepseis) foreshadow in the abstract the concrete
   offices of overseer and servant; and from them the office-bearers of
   the local churches derive their origin. The task of edifying by speech
   belonged primarily to the first class of gifted persons, and the work
   of edifying by wise counsels and all manner of brotherly services
   belonged to the two branches of the second class out of which the local
   office-bearers developed. Edification by the Word of God was the most
   important need of the churches; and if the "gifted" apostles, prophets
   and teachers failed any community their services had to be supplied
   somehow.

   The Didache shows us the transition stage, and explains how this need
   was supplied in an ordinary way when the extraordinary means failed.
   "Appoint, therefore, for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the
   Lord, men that are meek and are not covetous, upright and proved; for
   they also render you the service of the prophets and teachers.
   Therefore neglect them not, for they are your honoured ones, together
   with the prophets and teachers." These words in italics show us at once
   the point of junction between the prophetic and the local ministry, and
   indicate how the latter could fulfil the duties of the former. They
   also reveal the possibility of the abolition of the prophetic ministry
   as a permanent part of the organization (to use the word in its widest
   sense) of the local churches. When the wave of spiritual enthusiasm and
   illumination which came with the earliest proclamation of the Gospel
   had somewhat spent itself, there was need to supply through the
   ordinary office-bearers of the churches that exhortation and
   instruction which in the earliest times had been left to the
   inspiration of those gifted with the power of speaking the Word of God.
   Hence the Didache [519] counsels the community to select men for its
   office-bearers in the knowledge that they may be called upon to supply
   this need. But when once the local churches began to have their
   spiritual needs satisfied within their own circle and the bands of
   association grew stronger, it is easy to imagine that the power of the
   office-bearers grew strong enough to withstand the members of the
   prophetic ministry unless the prophets were content to take a secondary
   place. The very fact that the office-bearers could "render the service
   of the prophets and teachers" inevitably tended to place them, the
   permanent officials of the local churches, permanently in the position
   of the exhorters, instructors, and leaders of the public worship of the
   communities. Hence, while we can trace the presence and the power of
   the prophetic ministry during a great part of the second century, we
   can also see that complaints against false prophets became more and
   more common, and that there was a tendency to make the test of true
   prophecy subordination on the part of the prophets to the control of
   the permanent office-bearers of the churches. [520]

   We can see that the transition from the time when the prophets were
   supreme to the days when they were expected, if true prophets, to be
   subordinate to or at least deferential towards the office-bearers of
   the community, was the more easily effected when we remember that it is
   highly probable that some men among those chosen to lead the brethren
   by their gifts of governing had also the power of exhortation and
   instruction. This was probably the case from the earliest times. The
   proistamenoi of 1 Thessalonians v. 12, not only laboured among the
   brethren but "admonished"; and to "admonish" (nouthetein) seems to
   imply more than mere leading. Whatever be the date of the Pastoral
   Epistles, it is clear that by the time they were written, the functions
   of instruction and leadership were conjoined; and few critics, even
   among those who dispute the Pauline authorship, will be inclined to
   place them as late as Harnack does. [521] Then, as before remarked,
   those office-bearers who stand forth most clearly in these ancient
   times were almost all men who had the prophetic gift. We have already
   seen how the divine afflatus descended on Ignatius while he was
   preaching in Philadelphia, and made him cry forth words which the
   Spirit put in his mouth. The prophetic gift was to be found among the
   office-bearers of the local churches before the conflict of
   jurisdictions arose, and the office-bearers who possessed it had all
   the divine authority which was supposed to belong to the prophetic
   order.

   All these circumstances have to be taken into account in attempting to
   describe the great change in the ministry which the second century
   witnessed; and the last-mentioned is useful in enabling us to see how,
   while the overthrow of the prophetic ministry was sufficient to provoke
   a disruption of the Church, it could nevertheless be accepted by the
   great mass of the Christian people.

   We have no specific information in the documents of post-apostolic
   Christianity to tell us how and by what steps the great revolution was
   brought about; but the conditions and needs of the time enable us to
   put ourselves to some extent in the place of the men who carried out
   the change.

   Several distinct sets of circumstances require to be kept in mind.

   In the first place, the second century was a time of great fermentation
   in the world of intellectual paganism. In the east of Europe and among
   the Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor the old religions had lost almost
   all their real power. The same may be said of the people of Italy also,
   and especially of the more cultured classes of Rome. It is something
   pathetic to learn that the only one of the ancient Greek deities whose
   cult was still practised with something of the old reverence and
   fervour was Esculapius, the god of bodily health, and that he was
   called Soter, the Saviour, as if men had despaired of salvation of soul
   and could hope for no more than the health of the body. On the other
   hand, worships strange to Greek or Roman, coming from the far East,
   with painful initiations and purifications fur those who felt the power
   of sin or the fickleness of imperfection within them, and weird
   philosophies for the cultured, spread far and wide, counting their
   votaries by thousands and permeating all classes of society.

   Among them were systems of cosmical speculation and mystic theosophy,
   curiously similar to what we find in Hinduism, and possessing that
   strange power of absorbing and assimilating religious ideas foreign to
   themselves, which is still such a feature of Oriental speculation.
   Votaries of these theosophies were attracted towards the doctrines of
   Christianity, caught at the Christian conceptions of redemption and of
   the Person of Christ, and tried to find room for them among the medley
   of their fantastic beliefs. They set redemption within the circle of
   their thoughts about the inherent evil in matter, and the Person of
   Christ found its place among the doctrines of emanation. Christianity
   attracted them as it still attracts cultivated Hindus. The Brahma
   Somaj, the Prathana Somaj, the Arya Somaj, strange attempts to absorb
   some features of Christianity into Hinduism in the nineteenth century,
   had their parallels in some of the Gnostic speculations of the earlier
   centuries.

   Strange as it may seem to us, those weird speculations had an
   attraction for many cultivated persons who had embraced the Christian
   faith; for if the whole phenomenon of Gnosticism was, as it seems most
   likely to have been, a scheme of thought essentially pagan, trying to
   assimilate some leading Christian ideas, there were sides to the
   movement which show us men who were really Christians attempting to
   make use of these speculations as the metaphysical framework on which
   to stretch their Christian thoughts and to give them the shape of a
   rationalized theology. These metaphysics of "wonderland," where the
   categories of Aristotle and the ideas of Plato assumed bodily shapes,
   married and begot a fantastic progeny, filled the intellectual
   atmosphere of the times, and were the air which thinkers breathed. The
   Church was face to face with the danger of seeing its historical
   verities dissolve into the shadowy shapes of a meta-physical mythology.
   For when Gnosticism entered into the Christian societies, and claimed
   to be a philosophical Christianity, the very life of the Church was
   threatened. [522]

   Nor were these the only difficulties of intellectual speculation which
   the Church of the second century had to face. We are apt to think that
   the apparent contradiction between an Almighty Maker of all things and
   the miseries of life is the peculiar property of our own age. That is
   not so. Men felt keenly the contrasts which trouble modern minds. They
   lived in a civilization as intellectually trained as our own. How could
   the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Mercies and
   the God of all Love, inspire the Old Testament, where the Jews were
   ordered to exterminate their enemies and threaten and practise all
   kinds of cruelties? How can creation, groaning and travailing in pain,
   be the work of that God Who has manifested Himself in Jesus Christ?
   Nature is not merciful. It seems hard and pitiless. The mystery of pain
   broods over it and in it. History is full of battle and pestilence, of
   turmoil and misery.

   Among men who had ideas like these Marcion was a leader. His solution
   of the problem was that the God of the Old Testament and the Creator of
   the Universe were very like each other and very unlike the God and
   Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Being who had created scorpions
   and sent venimous creeping things into the world was not unlike the God
   Who had commanded the slaughter of the Amalekites and had inspired the
   imprecatory Psalms. An old world Count Tolstoy, Marcion said that
   Christ's Christianity had nothing to do with any part of the Old
   Testament, nor with much of the New. The New Testament had indeed come
   from Jesus Christ, but it had been sadly corrupted by the votaries of
   the God who created the Universe. He constructed a Canon of Scripture
   for himself and for his disciples, and into his Scriptures no portion
   of the Old Testament was admitted, and from them much of the New was
   excluded. He went back to the Pauline Epistles, the earliest literary
   creations of the Christian inspiration, to seek in them the purest
   records of the teaching of that Saviour, Who, unheralded, as he
   thought, by any partial anticipations, had come suddenly to reveal to
   the world the hitherto absolutely unknown God of Love and Mercy.
   Marcion was a man of deep and genuine religious character, of an
   intensely practical nature, and without any tendency to speculation. He
   stood forth in that age of mixed faiths, of eclectic paganism and
   Gnostic Christianity, as a teacher who had mastered a clear and
   definite, if narrow, creed. His sincerity, his piety, his energy and
   his wonderful powers of organization, created not merely bands of
   devoted followers, but a church which, according to the ideas of those
   who belonged to it, was a reformation and a purification of the
   existing Christianity. Within it asceticism was practised in a manner
   hitherto unknown within Christianity. No married persons could ever
   rise to be more than catechumens, and members were required to abstain
   from all sexual relations; rigid laws about meats and drinks were laid
   down and enforced; martyrdom was to be welcomed, not shunned, and the
   hatred of the great mass of their fellow-Christians was an additional
   burden to be endured. Wherever Christianity had spread the followers of
   Marcion appeared, formed themselves into separate churches, with the
   same ceremonies of worship, the same ecclesiastical organization, or
   one very similar, the same, if not greater, strictness of moral living,
   and an intenser joy in martyrdom. The dogmatic unity of the Church, if
   it ever had been truly and thoroughly one, was broken. Other bodies of
   Christians, with separate organizations, appeared standing between the
   Marcionite and the parent churches, and pagans could sneer at a divided
   Christianity and ask the Christians which God, they who preached His
   Unity, really worshipped? [523]

   Can we wonder then, that in face of these anxieties the leaders of the
   Christian churches felt the need for a closer fellowship and a firmer
   grasp of what they believed to be the verities of the faith? Irenaeus
   voiced the clamant need of the Church. His rallying cry is familiar
   enough. It is one which has arisen always in such crises. It was
   practically this; "Back to the Christ of history: back to the fixed
   verities of the Christian faith."

   But how was it possible to get back to these fixed verities of the
   Christian faith, and by a path that all could tread? All the more
   important writings of the New Testament were already recognized as
   Scripture in the West, but the prevailing attitude of mind was towards
   allegorising, and the Epistle of Barnabas shows how unhistorical this
   mystical interpretation could become. If Barnabas could find a text and
   proof for the Cross and for Baptism in Psalm i. 3, [524] the Gospels
   might be drawn upon for proofs as satisfactory for the Gnostic
   metaphysical mythology. Tertullian confesses as much, and naïvely
   remarks that he does not risk contradiction in saying that the
   Scriptures were "even arranged" by the will of God in such a manner as
   to furnish materials for heretics. [525] The bent of the philosophy of
   the day was to dissolve facts into theories, and the Platonists in
   their expositions of Homer had taught orthodox Christian and Gnostic
   alike their elusive methods of exegesis. Then, apart from the
   impossibility of using a sound exegesis which yielded a common method
   of interpretation, the question of what was the canon of the New
   Testament Scripture was one of the matters in dispute between the
   organized Christian Church and those believers in Christ who were
   outside its pale. Marcion had a canon of his own, as we have already
   seen; the various Gnostics had theirs, not always the same--for what we
   call the apocryphal Gospels and Acts were received by many. Nor could
   an appeal be made to any short common creed. There was none as yet
   common to all Christendom, although what lies at the basis of the
   Apostles' Creed was received throughout the Church and had become fixed
   in a form of words in the West. [526] Various Gnostics had their creeds
   differing from each other, and to them they appealed. [527] Disputes
   also existed about the true apostolic tradition whether Jesus had or
   had not entrusted His apostles with a secret doctrine in addition to
   what He openly taught, and whether that "secret teaching" had been
   communicated to any by the apostles, and if so to whom. [528]

   Amidst this medley of beliefs and assertions Irenaeus assured the
   faithful that it was easy to know what the simple and fixed verities of
   the Christian faith really were. They are everywhere the same. Ask
   Christians of the most different classes, whether cultured inhabitants
   of centres of civilization or nomade Scythians roaming over the steppes
   in waggons and unable to read or to write, and the answer will be
   everywhere the same. He describes what the answer will be, and gives a
   short string of sentences resembling the Apostles' Creed. [529] The
   Church, he says, though scattered throughout the world, preserves this
   creed, "as if it were some precious deposit in an excellent vessel"
   [530] Varieties of language do not interfere with the meaning of the
   truths of the faith; "the churches which have been planted in Germany
   do not believe nor hand down anything different, nor do those in Gaul,
   nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt." [531] He declares that the
   sentences which he gives as containing the simple verities of the
   Christian belief can be proved to be what he has said, because there
   are in the Christian Church successive generations of men who go back
   to the time of the apostles who were the companions of Jesus. His
   argument is always: I know a man who knew a man who knew an apostle.
   [532]

   There are in the various churches scattered throughout the world
   successions of men who have been taught generation by generation what
   the fixed verities of the Christian faith are. In some of these
   churches the successions go back to the times of the primitive apostles
   themselves, who taught the first generation of believers. If
   questionings arise, if speculations trouble, if plain men are
   bewildered by the gorgeous phantasy of Gnostic theosophy or by the
   sincere if narrow logic of Marcion, if the canon of New Testament
   Scripture is doubtful or if the original documents have been tampered
   with, if the allegorising exegesis makes the whole of Scripture of
   doubtful interpretation, there is a common-sense remedy for all these
   evils and one which has been constantly used. Apply to the men who are
   in the best position for knowing what the apostles really taught, what
   words they used, and what meaning they attached to these words. "If
   there arise a dispute about any ordinary question among us, should we
   not have recourse to the most ancient churches with whom the apostles
   held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and
   clear with regard to it it?" [533] This is no new means of arriving at
   the truth, he urges. It is what is constantly done. There are believers
   in Christ who cannot read, who cannot make use of any written documents
   which the apostles have left, but who "have salvation written in their
   hearts by the Spirit, without paper or ink," and who have received
   orally the ancient tradition, and have become very wise in doctrine,
   morals, and tenor of life. [534]

   Irenaeus proposed to give to this old and much used method of finding
   out what were the primary and fixed verities of the Christian faith the
   sanction of an ecclesiastical usage. Here we meet for the first time,
   outside the Roman Church, the thought of a succession from the apostles
   in the office-bearers of the local churches; but it is a very different
   thing from the "gigantic figment" of an Apostolic Succession which
   dominates the Anglican and is a law in the Roman Church of the present
   day. It is meant to be a simple and clear way to find out what the real
   faith of the Church is in a time of more than usual perplexity. This is
   evident from the application Irenaeus makes of his principle, and it is
   also clear from the manner in which Tertullian, who adopts the
   principle, illustrates the use to be made of it. "Run over the
   apostolic churches, in which the very chairs (cathedrae) of the
   apostles still guard their places (suis locis praesident), where their
   own unmutilated (authenticae) writings are read, uttering the voice and
   representing the face of each of them individually. Achaia is near you;
   you find Corinth. You are not far from Macedonia; you have Philippi;
   you have the Thessalonians. You are able to cross to Asia; you find
   Ephesus. You are close upon Italy: you have Rome." [535] In all these
   churches apostles once taught; to all these churches they sent epistles
   which are to this day read; their voices are still living there, and
   their very presence seems still to haunt them. From their days until
   now, such is the argument, men with the gifts of leadership and of
   wisdom had been office-bearers in these communities and in others
   founded, if not by apostles, by "apostolic men"; [536] each generation
   had been carefully trained in the apostolic doctrine by their
   predecessors, and they were able to judge what the simple verities of
   the Christian faith were. What Irenaeus proposes is that the
   office-bearers who are in the succession are to be made the judges of
   what wholesome Christian teaching is. It is the fact of an
   uninterrupted succession of responsible men that is the natural and
   historical guarantee that the doctrines once transmitted to the fathers
   have been retained in the memory of the sons. For some generations it
   is probable that individual men had presided at the head of the
   Christian communities, and Irenaeus might have simply spoken of a
   succession of bishops, but he does not; it is the whole body of elders
   and bishops that Irenaeus has in view. This can be seen only when all
   his allusions to the matter are read. They will be found in the
   footnote. [537]

   Tertullian, who is twenty years later than Irenaeus, always speaks of
   successions of bishops or chief pastors. [538] In both cases, however,
   the main thought is that there are in the various local churches actual
   successions of men who, because these successions go back to the actual
   times of the apostles, can be said to have known men who knew apostles
   or apostolic men, and who are therefore able to know what the apostles
   really meant to teach. With both writers the succession they speak of
   as a guarantee of the correctness of the Church's creed and as a pledge
   of her dogmatic unity, is an historical succession, and the conception
   is a matter of fact and not of dogma.

   Yet with both something is added to this purely historical conception
   of the succession. There is an addition, the thought somewhat
   indefinitely formulated that these men who are office-bearers in the
   succession have a charisma veritatis because of their official
   position. [539] The thought is not very strongly dwelt on by Irenaeus;
   but it is present in one or two passages quoted in the note below, and
   in the second it is plain that whatever use he makes of it with
   reference to office-bearers what he has in his mind is the "gift" which
   in earlier days was exclusively associated with the prophetic ministry.
   [540]

   It is evident that this new official task of guaranteeing the true
   apostolic teaching, which is laid upon the office-bearers in general,
   and on the pastors or bishops in particular, must have had a very
   restraining effect upon the prophetic ministry, and on the unlimited
   freedom of exhortation which characterized the churches in the first
   century and in many decades of the second century. The office-bearers
   who were in the succession were now made the judges of what ought to be
   taught to the people in exhortation and in instruction; and they were
   therefore set in the position of judging all who undertook the function
   which was the peculiar work of the prophetic ministry. Besides, it was
   suggested that the peculiar veritatis charisma, the "gift" which gave
   them their unique and distinguished position, belonged to the
   office-bearers of the churches as well as the "gift" of government. The
   indications are that the suggestion of Irenaeus had been acted on long
   before he placed it on record. Whenever it came to be the accepted rule
   in the Church the revolution became an accomplished fact; and the men
   who had been supreme (the prophets), and whom to disobey had been
   accounted an unpardonable sin, became the servants of the
   office-bearers whose superiors they once had been.

   The need for some authority to express the dogmatic unity of the
   Church, and the idea that this authority lay in the office-bearers of
   the churches, must have placed the prophetic ministry in an inferior
   position and tended to destroy it altogether. For though the position
   assigned to the heads of the churches meant practically that they were
   to be the judges of what the proper instruction was, and did not
   necessarily mean that they were in every case to take the instruction
   in their own hands, still that was bound to come out of the idea in the
   end. The office-bearers, and especially the bishops, would inevitably
   become the instructors as well as the judges of the instruction that
   was given.

   Another set of circumstances working for the downfall of the prophetic
   ministry. The Rescript of the Emperor Hadrian to Minucius Fundanus, who
   was Proconsul of Asia sometime about 124 A.D., was rightly regarded by
   the Christians as the beginning of an era of comparative toleration.
   [541] The character of the great Emperor, his curiosity, half cynical
   half hopeful, about all kinds of religious faiths, made them expect
   great things from him. Christian literature struck a bolder note. The
   writings of the apologists began to appear, who demanded on behalf of
   their brethren to be treated like their fellow-subjects, free to live,
   so long as they did not transgress against the laws of morality, under
   the shelter of the wide-spreading pax Romanorum. Christianity found a
   voice and demanded to be heard, pleading for the toleration which was
   granted to all other religions. The earliest of these writers was
   probably Quadratus. Aristides, Justin Martyr, Miltiades, Melito,
   Tatian, Athenagoras and others followed in succession. From our modern
   standpoint these documents are but feeble expositions of the Christian
   faith; Tertullian alone, with his lofty elevation of sentiment and his
   stern moral enthusiasm, seems to be an apologist for all time. But if
   these writings are looked upon, as they ought to be, in the light of
   pleas for some way of living quietly and peaceably under the imperial
   rule, [542] they are very interesting documents. They almost invariably
   take the same line of argument. Christianity, they say, can have no
   quarrel with good government; its morals are purer than those of
   paganism, and are therefore a better protection to the State;
   Christians cannot pray to the Emperor, but they always pray for him;
   they are and they mean to be loyal citizens of the great commonwealth
   to which they belong. It is strange to observe an undertone of
   admiration for the imperial rule under which they live, and a
   conviction that all would be well if the emperors could only learn what
   Christianity really is, [543] and to notice how they almost invariably
   distinguish the imperial ruler from those who persecute them. Tatian
   seems even to discern that there is a universal humane aim in the
   imperial rule, that it has proclaimed in some shadowy way the
   brotherhood of mankind, that there is a measure of resemblance between
   the empire and Christianity, and that the two ought to be allies and
   not foes. [544] They all look forward to a possible accommodation
   between the imperial government and the Christian societies. Tertullian
   indeed pleads that the Christian churches ought to be allowed to enrol
   themselves as associations for practising a lawful religion.

   But the more thoughtful and politic among the leaders of the Christian
   societies could not help seeing that if there was to be any
   accommodation with the empire there must be some change on the part of
   the Christian societies, and that Christians must to some extent change
   their habits of life if they were to mingle more freely with their
   fellow-men who were not Christians. In the earlier times Christianity
   was held to be a "mode of life," to use the expression of Tatian; [545]
   Christians were men and women who had little or nothing to do with this
   world; who were not to conform themselves to it in any way, and were
   not to mingle in its pursuits nor in its pleasures. They were little
   separate secluded societies, awaiting on the threshold the opening of
   the new heavens and the new earth. The earliest Christians were content
   with this, and asked for nothing more.

   The middle of the second century, however, witnessed a change which may
   be best indicated by saying that the Christian faith was attracting to
   it multitudes of people drawn from all classes and ranks in
   society--imperial officials, merchants, lawyers, men of culture and
   leisure. It was gathering round it men from the camp and from the
   court, men who were in the midst of the bustle of life and who meant to
   remain there. Tertullian might prove that no soldier could be a
   Christian, and collections of ecclesiastical canons of a still later
   date might corroborate him, [546] but he himself gives evidence that
   there must have been many Christians in the army. [547] He speaks of
   the way in which the Christians mingled with their pagan neighbours.
   "We sojourn with you in the world, abjuring neither forum, nor
   shambles, nor bath, nor booth nor workshop, nor inn, nor weekly market,
   nor any other place of commerce. We sail with you, we fight with you,
   and till the ground with you; and in like manner we unite with you in
   your traffickings." [548]

   A question of the utmost gravity faced the leaders of the Christian
   societies. Should all the new classes of converts be permitted to
   remain in their callings, and--for this was the question
   involved--should the Church accept the new condition of things, and
   begin to adapt itself to the forms and conditions of the world around
   it? Should it, as far as conscience permitted, respect the amenities of
   life, or should it remain what it had hitherto been--a communion of
   persons who hoped for nothing from existing society, and who lived
   altogether apart from it? Much could be said on both sides. On the one
   hand, it could be urged that Christianity had a world-wide mission, and
   that if it could lay hold on the organization of the empire and use it
   for the extension of the knowledge of its Lord, it was only taking the
   path which Providence had plainly marked out for its progress. On the
   other hand, many Christians discerned the temptations which lay in
   accepting this view of the Church's duty.

   In the end the leaders of the Christian societies seem to have
   spontaneously and gradually come to see that it was their duty to bring
   their followers into what accommodation was possible with the
   conditions of existing society. It was this feeling that rendered the
   writings of the apologists possible. The time of enthusiasm had passed
   away for the great majority of Christians. Unimpassioned conviction
   took the place of the earlier almost unrestrained passion of faith. One
   can scarcely fancy Ignatius of Antioch writing in the tone of cool
   argument which characterises the apologists.

   The change of moral and intellectual atmosphere did not suit the
   prophetic ministry, which had been the enthusiastic element from the
   beginning, and had become the element of asceticism. It was unavoidable
   that it should lose its old place and its ancient power. Pleasant
   things continued to be said about prophets, provided only they accepted
   a position under the office-bearers of the local churches. Curious
   regulations appear in some of the ancient canons, enjoining the people
   to respect their utterances. In the ancient Syrian collection known as
   the Testamentum Jesu Christi, for example, [549] those who despise
   prophecy are debarred from coming to the Holy Supper, but the prophets
   were no longer the superior ministry in the churches.

   There is also evidence leading us to believe that the prophetic
   ministry had been deteriorating. From the very beginning men had
   claimed to be included within its ranks who were not true prophets.
   Warnings against such persons are to be found within the New Testament
   writings, [550] and they occur, and with increasing strength, in
   writers of the second century. We have seen them in the Didache. [551]
   Justin Martyr cites their presence in the Church as a proof that
   Christianity is the true development of Judaism, because the Christians
   have among them false prophets as well as true ones like the ancient
   Israel. [552] Hermas has given expressive pictures of the true and the
   false prophets. [553] All this was a sign of the times.

   These various influences combined to help forward the revolution which
   excluded the prophetic ministry from its earlier position of supremacy
   and installed the local official ministry in the supreme place of rule.
   They worked slowly and surely during the second century, and especially
   during the first half of the period.

   But while this movement was going on, and its effects on the prophetic
   ministry were gradually manifesting themselves, protesting voices were
   raised. This movement fostered by the official ministry of the local
   churches was a departure, it seemed to many, from the traditions of the
   Church which they had in reverence; and it was accompanied by a
   relaxation of the stern rule of Christian life under which the earlier
   generations had lived and died. The prophetic ministry had always been
   considered as the direct gift of God to the Church. It was the ministry
   from above. It had been placed by St. Paul second only to the
   apostolate. Souls had been won from heathenism through its
   ministrations. The lives of believers had been braced by it to endure
   the hardships and persecutions which their Master had foretold them
   would fall upon them, and which they had been taught to regard as their
   blessed lot while this life lasted. They saw that with the neglect of
   the prophetic ministry there went hand in hand an attempt at conformity
   with the world and a relaxation of the more rigid rules of the
   Christian life. It was by no means the worst kind of Christians who
   called upon the Church to halt in this rapid approach to the usages of
   the world, in this relaxation of the severer maxims of the Christian
   life, in this neglect or undervaluing of the prophetic ministry, and in
   this exaltation of the office-bearers of the local churches. They grew
   increasingly alarmed and uneasy in the presence of the silent movement
   above described. It was taking from them some of their most precious
   possessions. They began to feel that there was no room for them in the
   Church which had hitherto sheltered them. All this was felt most
   strongly, as was to be expected, in the regions more remote from the
   great centres of public life, where the pressure of coming to some
   terms with the State was lighter. The standard of revolt was raised in
   the mountainous region of Phrygia--a land not thoroughly incorporated
   within the Roman administration. The movement was headed by a presbyter
   or elder, called Montanus, and became known as Montanism. It was
   natural that the crisis should emerge in these regions of Asia. No
   portion of the empire was so peopled by Christians. Christian prophecy
   had flourished in the neighbouring regions. The daughters of Philip had
   lived in the great city of Hierapolis. The Christian prophets Quadratus
   and Ammia had belonged to Philadelphia. [554] Attalus of Pergamos had
   been taught in visions. [555] Polycarp, the most distinguished
   Christian of the whole of Asia, was a prophet. Ignatius had exhibited
   his prophetic gifts in Philadelphia. [556] On the other hand, if the
   country had produced many Christian prophets, its churches had been the
   earliest to organize themselves under the three-fold ministry. The
   prophetic and the local ministries confronted each other there as they
   did nowhere else.

   This Phrygian movement was the centre and exaggeration of a
   wide-spreading revolt and separation from the great Church of the
   second and third centuries. It has been represented as an attempt at
   innovation on the old usages and habits of primitive Christianity. This
   is a mistaken view. At the same time if we confine our attention to the
   actions and claims of Montanus himself and the circle of Phrygia
   immediately surrounding him, there was much that was entirely new.
   Montanus' idea seems to have been that he had been commissioned by God
   to gather all true Christians into a community, which would be ready by
   its renunciation of all the claims that social life presented and by an
   absolute self-surrender to the requirements of the higher Christian
   life, to meet the Lord Who was about to come and inaugurate His
   millennial kingdom in the immediate future. He seems to have believed
   that the Church had reached its final term of existence in the world.
   He and his fellow prophets therefore represented the last stage of
   prophecy, and consequently possessed an inspiration such as none of
   their predecessors could lay claim to. They in their own persons and
   with their special prophetic gifts, were the literal fulfilment of the
   promise given by our Lord in the Gospel of St. John, that the Father
   and the Son would take up their abode in true believers, and that the
   Paraclete had come to abide with them. [557] Hence when they spoke
   under the influence of the divine afflatus it was not they, but the
   Spirit, that uttered the words. So entirely were the prophets separated
   from the Spirit, who made use of their organs of speech, that the
   oracles were uttered in the first person, [558] and the Spirit,
   speaking through the mouth of a woman, used the masculine forms of
   speech. [559] All this was new.

   On the other hand, if the Phrygian movement be connected; as it must
   be, with the strenuous action of Christians in Gaul, North Africa, and
   indeed throughout most parts of the empire, these novelties were toned
   down in such a way that very little that was new remained. We may
   mis-read the Montanist utterances which belong to its earliest period
   if we interpret them as Tertullian and others did; [560] but there is
   no misreading the feelings, thoughts and strivings of that great mass
   of Christians that welcomed the movement as something which encouraged
   them to resist that secularising of the Church which was being pressed
   forward by the heads of so many of the more powerful Christian
   communities.

   When Dr. Salmon [561] says that the bulk of what Tertullian taught as a
   Montanist he probably would equally have taught if Montanus had never
   lived, the statement, thoroughly correct, shows that Tertullian and the
   conservative Christians he represented saw in the Montanist movement
   something which was no innovation, but a strong assistance in
   preserving the old condition of the Church with its prophetic ministry,
   its rules for daily life, its separation from the world, and its
   expectation of the nearness of the coming of the Lord to found His
   millennial kingdom. The real question between these conservative
   Christians and the majority of their brethren was not about the
   government of the local churches. They all accepted the three-fold
   ministry, and both parties professed to accept and to honour prophecy.
   But the advanced party, which in the end triumphed, would subject the
   prophets to the official ministry; while the conservatives insisted
   that prophecy should be free as in the old days, and specially free to
   interfere with and rebuke the growing desire for conformity with the
   world and for coming to terms with the State. [562]

   A conservative reaction can scarcely avoid exaggerating the phases of
   Church life or organization for which it contends and perhaps suffers.
   This was probably true of the reaction in the second and in the
   beginning of the third centuries; but the conception that Montanism in
   the larger sense of the word (i.e. in the sense which includes
   Tertullian) was an innovation, and that the party in the Church which
   it attacked were carrying on the old line of Church life and usages, is
   untenable and in face of all the facts of history. The distinctive
   features of Montanism: its appreciation of the prophetic ministry, its
   conception of the Gospel as the new law, its refusal to entrust the
   office-bearers of the local churches with the restoration of those who
   had lapsed into grievous sins unless on the recommendation of a prophet
   speaking in the Spirit, and its views about the near approach of the
   millennial kingdom of the Lord, were all characteristic of the earlier
   Christianity.

   The question of prophecy may be taken as an example:

   It is true that after the separation between the Montanists and the
   "great" Church, Christian theologians vehemently opposed the Montanist
   theory of the nature of prophecy, and especially protested against the
   idea that true prophecy was ecstatic. But this was an afterthought for
   the purpose of discrediting the Montanist movement and claims. This can
   be shown by a comparison of the statements made about the prophecy
   which existed and was honoured within the Christian Church before the
   Montanist movement arose and while the earlier stages of the antagonism
   lasted. [563] The nature of the Christian prophecy remains the same
   down to the time of Irenaeus, whose descriptions are not different from
   those of Justin Martyr. Justin declares that prophetic gifts existed in
   the Church in his time. "For one receives the spirit of understanding,
   another of counsel, another of healing, another of strength, another of
   foreknowledge, another of teaching, and another of the fear of God."
   [564] "The prophetic gifts remain with us even to the present time,"
   [565] he says. They abide in fulfilment of the Old Testament promise
   quoted by St. Peter on the day of Pentecost. [566] Irenaeus declares
   that prophecy existed in the Church in his days. "For some (believers)
   do certainly cast out devils, so that those who have thus been cleansed
   from evil spirits do frequently both believe and join the Church.
   Others have knowledge of things to come; they see visions and utter
   prophetic expressions." [567] He goes on to say that these things come
   about not by performing incantations, but by praying to the Lord in a
   pure, sincere and straightforward spirit. Tertullian has given us a
   vivid picture of what this kind of prophecy was like. He says: [568]
   "We have now among us a sister whose lot it has been to be favoured
   with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences in the Spirit by
   ecstatic vision amidst the sacred rites on the Lord's Day in the
   Church. She converses with angels and even with the Lord. She both sees
   and hears mysterious communications (sacramenta). Some men's hearts she
   understands, and to them who are in need she distributes remedies.
   Whether it be in the reading of the Scriptures, or in the chanting of
   Psalms, or in the preaching of sermons, or in the offering up of
   prayers--in all these religious services matter and opportunity are
   afforded to her of seeing visions. . . . After the people are
   dismissed, at the conclusion of the sacred services she is in the
   regular habit of reporting to us whatever things she may have seen in
   vision--for all her communications are examined with the most
   scrupulous care that their truth may be probed."

   Besides, the theory of the nature of prophecy ascribed to the
   Montanists was the theory of the second century. Prophecy was described
   as ecstatic. It is difficult, perhaps, to understand exactly what was
   meant by the word. This, however, is clear, that it meant that what
   came from the prophet was something given him, and was not the result
   of his ordinary powers of intelligence; also that the prophet could not
   prophesy at will, but had to wait for the divine afflatus, which might
   come quite unexpectedly or in answer to prayer. If this be all that is
   meant by ecstasy it is plain that the Church of the second century
   believed that its prophecy was ecstatic. Hermas declares that in true
   prophecy the spirit "speaks only when God wishes it to speak," and that
   the "man filled with the Spirit of God speaks to the multitude as the
   Lord wishes." [569] The statements of Irenaeus about true prophecy are
   exactly the same: He says that the gift of prophecy comes from the
   grace of God alone, and "that only those on whom God sends His grace
   from above possess that divinely-bestowed power of prophesying."
   Prophets "speak where and when God pleases." [570] We have seen how the
   prophetic afflatus came upon Ignatius when preaching to the
   Philadelphians, and how he cried out, speaking things quite
   unpremeditated which he felt had been given him to speak. [571] It was
   afterwards maintained that the Montanist theory GI prophecy meant more
   than this, and the famous dictum of Montanus is continually quoted to
   mean more and to be repudiated. Montanus has said: "Behold the man is
   as a lyre, and I sweep over him as a plectrum. The man sleeps, and I
   wake. Behold it is the Lord who estranges the souls of men from
   themselves and gives them souls"; and the metaphor suggests that man is
   a merely passive instrument in the hands of God. [572]

   But even if we are to argue from a metaphor (always a dangerous kind of
   reasoning), it should be remembered that the same or similar metaphors
   were used to describe non-Montanist prophecy. Athenagoras speaks of the
   Spirit of God moving "the mouths of the prophets like musical
   instruments," and of the Spirit making use of the prophets as "a
   flute-player breathes into his flute." [573] The author of the
   Cohortatio ad Gentes uses the famous metaphor of Montanus and speaks of
   the "divine plectrum descending from heaven and using righteous men as
   an instrument like a harp or lyre," in order to reveal to men things
   divine and heavenly. [574] It is impossible to say that Montanist
   prophecy was a new thing, and that Montanism in exalting the prophetic
   ministry was not thoroughly conservative in its endeavour. [575]

   The same result is reached when we consider the Montanist discipline.
   The whole movement was a protest against that growing conformity with
   the world which the Church of the second century had felt constrained
   to attempt, under the leadership of the office-bearers of the local
   churches. Like all conservative reactions, it exaggerated the
   characteristics it had arisen to conserve, but that was the only great
   difference.

   It is probable that the movement in Phrygia had continued for some
   years before there was any break with the "great" Church: and after the
   separation did take place efforts were made to bring the leaders on
   both sides together again. The Martyrs of Lyons wrote urging peace, and
   the Roman Church had serious thoughts of interfering on the side of
   unity. [576] Such attempts would probably have been unsuccessful. The
   separation came; and in Phrgyia at least, the great proportion of the
   Christian people sided with the party of Montanus. It became the
   Kataphrygian Church (the Church-according-to-the-Phrygians), and
   continued so for long. When the Emperor Constantine recognized the
   Christian religion the Marcionite and Montanist Christians did not
   share in the peace of the Church. The persecutions against them were
   rather intensified. The Phrygian Montanists, however, were not
   overwhelmed; but according to Sozomen Montanists disappeared elsewhere.
   [577] Penal laws of increasing severity were enacted against them by
   Christian emperors. Their churches were confiscated; a rigorous search
   was made for their religious writings, which were destroyed when
   discovered; the ordination of their clergy was made a penal offence;
   the power of disposing of their property by will was denied them, and
   their nearest Catholic relatives were allowed to seize their
   possessions--and still they remained true to their church and to the
   prophetic ministry. [578] At last in the sixth century the Emperor
   Justinian resolved to stamp them out, and the historian Procopius tells
   us that in their despair the Montanists gathered themselves, with their
   wives and children, into their churches, and setting fire to the
   buildings perished in the flames [579] rather than submit to the
   bishops' Church which had urged the persecution through all these
   centuries, and had forbidden the members to have any communion with
   Montanists, even when confined in a common prison for a common faith.
   All this bitterness and all this bloodshed because some Christians
   would insist that the prophetic ministry should be kept in the position
   assigned to it by St. Paul, and should not be subject to the rule of
   the elders "who are in the Church--those who possess the succession
   from the apostles."

   The "Great Church," as it then began to be called, separated from her
   daughters, the Marcionite and the Montanist churches, went forth to her
   task of subduing the Roman world under the guidance of a three-fold
   ministry which ruled in every Christian community within the Empire. In
   its efforts to do its work thoroughly the organization of the great
   Empire, and especially its religious organization, became, as we shall
   afterwards see, a study growing in attractiveness and presenting points
   for imitation by the leaders of the society.

   In this changed organization of the second and third centuries the old
   prophetic ministry was completely abandoned, and the local or
   congregational ministry had now no superiors to interfere with them and
   to supersede them in exhortation, in the dispensing of the Holy Supper,
   and in prescribing how Christians ought to live in the fear of God. The
   revolt against the changes made had ended in the conservatives, zealous
   for that ministry which had come down from apostolic days, and which
   St. Paul had placed at the head of the gifts bestowed by God upon His
   people, being driven out of the Church, and in their forming separate
   societies. The ministry which remained is what represented the "helps"
   and "pilotings" which God had placed in the Church. It was the
   spontaneous creation of the individual local churches. The ministry
   "from above" had disappeared; but what remained was not the less divine
   because it had been the creation of the congregation, for it was based
   on the possession and the recognition of "gifts" of service and rule
   which God had bestowed according to His promise upon His worshipping
   people.

   Pictures of this ministry which ruled in the end of the second and in
   the earlier part of the third century, have been preserved for us in
   early ecclesiastical manuals. Perhaps the Canons of Hippolytus maybe
   most fitly selected to furnish them. [580] These canons are thoroughly
   representative. They were the work of a western ecclesiastic, and they
   form the basis of almost all the later ecclesiastical discipline of the
   Eastern Church. They are also especially interesting, because they
   contain the clearest description of Christian public worship which we
   have between the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians and the much
   later Apostolic Constitutions.

   The Christian society consisted of believers and their children; with a
   fringe of catechumens or candidates for baptism, and those who were
   still only inquirers into the truths of the Christian faith. The
   community was sharply divided into clergy and laity, [581] with a
   number of persons who stood between the two sections, and who were
   specially honoured for their services or character--the confessors, the
   widows (honoured for their abundant prayer and for their nursing the
   sick), [582] and celibates and virgins. The office-bearers included the
   pastor (now invariably called the bishop), elders, deacons, readers,
   and, perhaps, subdeacons. At the head of all stood the bishop, in whom
   the whole congregational life centred. He was chosen by the whole
   congregation, who assembled in church for the purpose. The people were
   taught to recognize that God was with them while they selected their
   pastor. When they had made their choice known and had clearly intimated
   the man whom they had elected, they were enjoined to say, "Oh God,
   strengthen him whom Thou hast prepared for us." [583]

   It was the rule, when the bishop was set apart to his office, that the
   neighbouring bishops should be present; but this was not essential. The
   congregation possessed within itself the power and authority to carry
   out the ordination of their chief office-bearer. When all things were
   ready, and the whole congregation had assembled in Church, one of the
   bishops or one of the elders of the congregation, was selected to
   perform the act of ordination, which consisted in laying his hands on
   the head of the bishop-elect and praying over him. [584] The beautiful
   prayer of consecration is given. [585] God was asked to fill the bishop
   with the Spirit possessed by the apostles who founded the churches
   everywhere; to bless him in permitting him to rule a blameless flock;
   to make him a pattern in all holy living; to make him powerful in
   prayer; to give him grace to declare the pardon of sins; and to make
   him able to break the chains in which the evil spirits held any of his
   flock. The prayer makes us see what the duties of the bishop were. He
   led the public devotions of his people; he presided over the exercise
   of discipline; he had the care of the poor and of the sick; he was to
   drive out the evil spirits who troubled the bodies and the souls of
   members of his flock. The congregation was a Church of Christ because
   they were endeavouring to live the life of new obedience to which their
   Lord had called them, and the man at their head, their representative,
   was expected to be the saintliest man among them. If he had not
   learning, the reader was there to read and expound the Scriptures; if
   he possessed few administrative gifts the elders and the deacons were
   beside him to aid him; but a man of prayer and of holy life he must
   be--there could be no substitute for that.

   Nothing is said about the election of elders, and it is impossible to
   say whether they were chosen by the people or nominated by the bishop
   or co-opted by the session. But we have two interesting bits of
   information which show from what classes of men the elders were often
   drawn. Martyrs and confessors were to be made elders. The martyr was
   one who, for the faith's sake, had stood before the civil tribunal and
   had been punished. He became an elder at once; "his confession was his
   ordination." If a man had made a confession before the court and had
   not suffered, he was to be made an elder by the bishop, and the same
   was to be done to a Christian slave who had confessed and had suffered.
   Only, the bishop in these two cases was to omit the petition for the
   bestowal of the Holy Spirit. [586] The other case is even more
   interesting. Those men who possess the "gift" of healing are to be
   ordained presbyters after careful investigation be made that the "gift"
   is really possessed and that the cures do really come from God. [587]
   The leaders of the churches seem to be anxious to enrol within the
   regular ministry of the congregation, and to prevent them overshadowing
   its authority, all who are possessed of "gifts," or whom Christ has
   honoured by permitting them to be witnesses for Him. The elder was
   ordained by the bishop, who used the same prayer of consecration which
   was employed in the ordination of bishops, substituting only the word
   presbyteratum for episcopatum, for according to the theory of the
   Canons the elder was the equal of the bishop in all things save a
   special seat in the church and the right to ordain elders and deacons.
   [588] The elder was therefore to be filled with the spirit of the
   apostles; to be an example to the flock; to be powerful in prayer; to
   care for the sick; to attend to discipline. The elders assisted the
   bishop in the conduct of public worship; they placed their hands on the
   offerings while the bishop prayed the prayer of thanksgiving; they
   stood on either side of the catechumens when they were baptized, and
   they introduced them into the congregation. [589] The visitation of the
   sick, the power to drive out by means of prayer the evil spirit which
   was believed to produce disease, the care of the young and the exercise
   of discipline, were the peculiar duties of the elders, as they appear
   in these Canons.

   The deacon, on the other hand, is the official who does the subordinate
   services. He is told to remember that he is the servant of God, the
   servant of the bishop and the servant of the elders. The deacons visit
   the congregation, report cases of sickness to the bishop and to the
   elders; they have special charge over the poor, especially of the
   "secret poor," widows, orphans and strangers. They undertake the
   instruction of the catechumens and report to the bishop when they are
   ripe for baptism. [590]

   Not much is said about the duties of the "widows" and the "virgins,"
   but they seem to look after the women and the girls as the deacons care
   for the men. The "widows" are the sick-nurses of the community, and are
   to be honoured for these loving services and for their prayers for the
   whole congregation.

   The picture of the Christian community presented in these Canons is
   that of a single congregation ruled by a pastor or bishop with his
   session of elders, who, theoretically of the same ecclesiastical rank
   as himself, are in practice his assistants. The laity are in the
   position of loving subordination which Ignatius contemplated and urged.
   The brotherhood of the members of the community is expressively shown
   in the way in which newly baptized catechumens, introduced formally by
   the elder, are greeted with the kiss of welcome and received with
   expressions of joy; [591] in the care for the sick and the poor; in the
   provisions for nursing suffering women by the "widows" and the
   "virgins"; and in the thought that it is the duty of the widows to pray
   for the whole congregation.

   The little society is thoroughly self-governing and independent. It
   contains within itself the power to perform all ecclesiastical acts
   from the selection and ordination of its bishop [592] to the expulsion
   of offenders; [593] but it nevertheless belongs to a wide society or
   larger brotherhood, and this is expressed in the usual but not
   essential practice of associating neighbouring bishops with its elders
   in the ordination of its bishop. [594]

   The acts of worship are described with greater detail in these Canons
   than in any earlier Christian document save the First Epistle of St.
   Paul to the Corinthians. St. Paul has given us more information about
   the meeting for Exhortation; these Canons tell us more about the
   meeting for Thanksgiving--indeed, they present us with the earliest
   complete description of this crowning act of Christian worship. As in
   apostolic times, we find two separate meetings for public worship--the
   meeting for Exhortation and the meeting for Thanksgiving--but the
   latter is no longer associated with a common meal. No forms of prayer
   are given for use at the former, but there is a set form of service
   prescribed for the latter. Both are held on the Lord's Day--the meeting
   for Exhortation early in the morning, and the Eucharistic service in
   the afternoon. [595]

   The exercises at the meeting for Exhortation were prayers, singing of
   psalms and hymns, reading portions of Scripture and exhortation in
   sermon and address. [596] No details are given us about the order of
   the service save that there was a prayer between the reading of each
   portion of the Scripture. The early freedom of worship no longer
   existed. The reading, prayers, and exhortation were all in the hands of
   the clergy. The people shared in the singing only. It was expected that
   they should join heartily in this part of the service, for one of the
   questions put to candidates for baptism was whether they had sung
   heartily in the service of praise. [597] This service was held not only
   on the Lord's Day, but on every day of the week. It was the daily
   worship of the great Christian family. The Canons order that the
   elders, deacons, readers and people are to come to church at cock-crow
   (quo tempore canit gallus), and to consecrate the day by a service of
   prayer, praise, and reading the Word. All the clergy, save the bishop,
   are strictly ordered to be present. Only sickness or absence on a
   journey are to be taken as excuses. The catechumens, [598] whose
   instructions in the faith by the deacons seems to have been given just
   before the service began, were required to be present, and had a
   special place assigned to them. If any members of the congregation were
   unable to be present at this morning worship they are enjoined to read
   the Scriptures at home, so that the first thing that the sun sees when
   it shines into their windows in the morning may be the long roll of
   Scripture unfolded on their knees. [599]

   The Eucharistic service is described at much greater length, and the
   details have to be collected from instructions scattered throughout the
   Canons. [600] It had three parts--an introductory service, the actual
   Holy Supper, and the receiving and distributing the thankofferings.
   Most of the details are clearly enough stated, but it is impossible to
   say with any certainty whether a sermon was part of the introductory
   service. It was so in the time of Justin Martyr, [601] and his account
   is so like an outline whose details can be filled in by what is
   directed in these Canons, that it is improbable that this very
   important portion of the service had fallen into disuse. It may be,
   however, that the sermon, which must have been given at the morning
   service on the Lord's Day, [602] was considered to suffice, and that
   the service described by Justin had been divided into two parts.

   The Eucharistic service, held in the evening or in the late afternoon,
   [603] began by the readers, placed at an elevated desk, reading
   portions of Scripture one after another, the readers taking turns and
   relieving each other. This went on for some time while the congregation
   were gradually assembling. [604] If there was a sermon by the bishop it
   would be delivered after the reading was over and all had taken their
   places. A prayer including confession of sins followed. The bishop
   stood behind a table, called the "Table of the Body and Blood of the
   Lord," the elders on his right hand and on his left. The elements,
   bread and wine, which had been furnished by intending communicants,
   were then brought in by the deacons, [605] and were placed on the Table
   before the bishop. The elders, deacons and readers were all dressed in
   white--the colour of festival times. [606] Then the bishop and the
   elders placed their hands on the bread and on the cup, and the bishop
   began the responsive prayers:--

   The bishop       The Lord be with you all.
   The congregation

                    And with Thy spirit.
   The bishop       Lift up your hearts.
   The congregation

                    We have, to the Lord.
   The bishop       Let us give thanks to the Lord.
   The congregation

                    Worthy and righteous. [607]

   The bishop then prayed over the elements (no form of prayer being
   given). [608] The bishop himself distributed. He stood by the "Table of
   the Body and Blood of the Lord." The people came one by one to the
   bishop, who first gave the Bread, saying, "This is the Body of the
   Lord," and then the Cup, saying, "This is the Blood of the Lord," and
   the people answered "Amen." [609] At the celebration at which the newly
   baptized communicants partook, the elders who stood beside the bishop
   had cups of milk and honey in their hands, and the communicants partook
   of these also from the hands of the elders to show that they had become
   as little children and fed on the food of infants; [610] but whether
   this ceremony accompanied every celebration of the Holy Supper is
   uncertain. The deacons who brought in the elements were required to
   sing a psalm as they entered, and the sound of the singing is compared
   to the tinkle of the bells on the robes of Aaron. [611]

   After the celebration the faithful, who all remained in the church,
   came forward to the "Table" and presented their offerings, the
   firstfruits. These consisted of all kinds of useful things--oil, wine,
   milk, honey, eatables of all kinds, the fruit of trees and the fruit of
   the ground (apples and cucumbers being specially mentioned), wool,
   cloth and money. They were all placed at or on the table. [612] The
   bishop prayed the prayer of thanksgiving over the gifts and the
   givers--a special thanksgiving being said over the oil, probably
   because it was so much used in ecclesiastical services. The bishop then
   pronounced the Benediction, and the people responded with the Doxology:
   Glory to Thee, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for ever and ever. [613]

   This did not end the service, however. The offerings had to be
   distributed before the going down of the sun. The poor, the widows and
   the orphans rose from their places, and came to the bishop, who
   distributed to them the offerings which had been received, and also the
   bread and wine which had remained after the Communion. [614] Portions
   were no doubt reserved for those in prison, for strangers who might
   arrive during the week, and for the sick who were unable to come to
   church. [615] The Canons forbid any of these offerings being reserved
   for the clergy, as was the custom in later times, and those of them who
   required assistance were reckoned among the poor. [616]

   It was the custom for one of the wealthier members of the congregation
   to give a supper on the evening of Sunday to the poor of the
   congregation. Members who had come from a distance, as Justin Martyr
   tells us they did, were doubtless included. [617] The bishop presided,
   and the clergy (one deacon at least) were present. The bishop prayed
   for the host and for the guests, and the prayer of thanksgiving which
   was said during the Communion service was repeated. When it became dark
   the deacon had the charge of lighting the lamps, but the supper came to
   an end before it got very dark. The president generally gave the guests
   a short address, which he delivered sitting, and which was "for their
   benefit and for his own." The people were told to eat their fill, but
   not to drink to excess; not to speak too much; not to shout; and above
   all not to bring disgrace on their host by indulging in mischievous
   gossip. [618]

   It is pleasant to learn that occasional suppers were given to the
   widows of the congregation. The poor bodies, who are elsewhere praised
   for their fasting, [619] seemed to have enjoyed a good supper, where
   they could eat and drink ad satietatem neque vero ad ebrietatem, and to
   have been inclined to prolong the feast as much as possible, for they
   need to be warned thrice over within four short sentences that they are
   to end their supper by the going down of the sun. [620] These suppers
   are called Agapae by Dr. Achelis. Dr. Riedel, on the other hand,
   refuses to translate the word in this way. [621] This is to be said,
   however, in justification of Dr. Achelis' translation that the
   entertainments have all a religious significance, that there seems to
   have been a symbolical breaking of bread at all of them, that one of
   them, which was a memorial feast in honour of a martyr, was preceded by
   the celebration of the Holy Supper, and that at all of them the prayer
   of thanksgiving which was included in the Eucharistic service was
   recited. [622] The Lord's Day supper, at any rate, has all the
   appearance of the older Agape, separated from the Holy Supper, and
   coming after it instead of preceding it.

   It is very interesting to observe that there is nothing in the Canons
   which implies that the Holy Supper has any special and unique
   sacrificial conceptions attached to it. Such ideas are markedly absent.
   The word altar occurs in the Canons; but in those portions which refer
   to the act of celebrating the Lord's Supper, the phrase used is "Table
   of the Body and Blood of the Lord." [623] The term offering is
   certainly used of the Bread and the Wine in the Holy Supper, but it is
   equally employed to denote the firstfruits given to the bishop by the
   people. [624] The term priest is never found in connexion with
   ordination or with the celebration of the Holy Supper. It occurs in two
   references only, and is used of the bishop when he is described as
   receiving the firstfruits and as exorcising the sick; and since both of
   these acts were performed by the pagan priesthood it is easy to
   conjecture why the word is applied to the bishop in these acts. [625]

   Reverence in all the actions of public worship is carefully inculcated.
   The Church is the house of God and the place of prayer with fear; women
   are not to come there in gaudy apparel, and they are not to laugh nor
   chatter there. A worthy matron was made an "inspectress," to see that
   the women and girls behaved themselves properly. [626] The clergy are
   to see that the communion elements are kept with care from all
   impurity, and specially that flies do not get into the wine of the
   sacrament. Great care is also to be taken that no drop of the wine nor
   crumb of bread falls to the ground while the elements are partaken of
   by the communicants. In short, the Canons contain many a little
   suggestion, familiar to all missionaries, for the purpose of teaching
   that reverence in worship which is almost always lacking in heathen
   religious rites.

   These early Christians were men of their generation, however. They
   believed that the air around them was full of evil spirits bent on
   their discomfiture, whose malignity had to be guarded against; [627]
   but while the traces of such superstitions appear, one cannot fail to
   see how the attempt is continually made to wean the Christians from
   pagan superstitions which they have brought over with them into
   Christianity. To take only one example, sick persons are prohibited
   from continuing beyond the hours of prayer in the Church or from
   sleeping there. [628] When it is remembered that sick folk were taken
   to the heathen temples in order that the dwelling in a sacred place
   might cure them, it is easy to see what the meaning of the prohibition
   is. One can perceive the doors by which pagan ideas might enter into
   Christian worship, but the sorry mixture of paganism and Christianity
   which was to follow Cyprian's conceptions of priesthood and sacrifice
   were still in the future.

   Such were the ordinary services, and such the organization of a
   Christian Church in the earlier decades of the third century, before
   accommodation to imperial points of view and imitation of pagan
   organization had invaded the Church of Christ.

   Perhaps a brief comparison of this organization of the ministry with
   modern types may bring it more distinctly before us. It had some
   relation with all modern types of ecclesiastical organization, and was
   identical with none.

   The organization had a certain resemblance to modern Congregationalism,
   for the vast majority of communities called churches were simply
   self-governing and independent congregations. The bishop was the pastor
   of the congregation, and in him, as in a modern congregationalist
   Church, all the ecclesiastical life centred. On the other hand, this
   does not apply to all these primitive churches; for the independent
   unity was the community large or small, and before the close of the
   second century the larger communities must have included several
   congregations, and all were served on the collegiate principle by the
   one bishop and his body of elders and deacons--the one pastor or bishop
   representing the unity of the community. These primitive independent
   churches all cherished the essential idea that they belonged to, and
   were portions of, a common visible Church--the Great Church it was
   called, to distinguish it from the Marcionite and Montanist Churches;
   but they had not yet discovered the way to express this idea of a
   visible catholicity in a definite political organization. We have the
   beginnings of the polity in the common though not universal custom that
   all the neighbouring bishops assisted at the ordination of a bishop.

   The organization had a much greater resemblance to what is commonly
   called the Presbyterian, and ought properly to be called the Conciliar,
   system of Church government. The points of agreement are very many.
   There is common to both the conception of the three-fold ministry of
   pastor or bishop, eider or presbyter, and deacon, and both have the
   theoretical equivalence of the offices of bishop and elder (save only a
   special seat in the Church and the right to ordain elders and deacons),
   while in practice the bishop or pastor is the real head of the whole of
   the ecclesiastical life. In both there is the idea that the unit of
   organization is the Christian community of the place, and the
   conception that the unity can be preserved by a collegiate
   administration. [629] Both have the thought that the whole
   congregational activity centres in the bishop or pastor, who is the
   leader in public worship and who celebrates the sacraments. Both
   believe strongly that each congregation is a portion of the visible
   Catholic Church, that catholicity can best be reduced to a polity by
   means of representative councils with gradually widening areas of
   control, and that the ordination of a bishop or pastor is to be
   performed by the pastors or bishops of the bounds as representatives of
   the Church Catholic. [630] The two great differences are: that the
   modern system of organization insists that the bishop or pastor cannot,
   of his own authority, delegate to a presbyter or to a deacon the right
   to celebrate the sacraments, and that the bishop or pastor of the early
   centuries had almost unlimited control over the ecclesiastical finances
   and property of the congregation. This characteristic of primitive
   Christian organization arose from the fact that at first the sole
   property was the firstfruits given to the bishop at the close of the
   Holy Supper and distributed afterwards by him, and it was strengthened
   when the churches were able to hold buildings and burial places by the
   Roman laws regulating the property of corporations. [631]

   The modern episcopal system, apart from the retention of the name
   "bishop," has fewest points of resemblance to what we find in the
   ancient ecclesiastical manuals we have been studying; but the germs of
   the mediaeval and modern episcopacy are there in the power which the
   primitive bishop possessed of delegating functions which were
   peculiarly his, such as baptizing and celebrating the Holy Communion,
   to his elders and even to his deacons.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [517] Didache, xi. 7.

   [518] Irenaeus, Contra Haereses, III. xi. 9 and IV. xxvi. 2.

   [519] "The peculiar value of the Didache consists in this, that it
   reveals to us the process in the moment of transition. It brings down
   the bird as it were upon the wing. The sentence italicized explains why
   the permanent officials of the Christian Churches did not possess at
   first all the functions which they possessed later. They did not
   possess them because the more prosaic duties which they themselves
   discharged were supplemented by that extraordinary wave of spiritual
   exaltation which swept over the whole primitive Church. In that age the
   wish of Moses was well-nigh fulfilled, that all the Lord's people were
   prophets.' The difficulty was not to incite to the attainment of such
   gifts, but to regulate and control them. One by one they became rarer,
   and disappeared. The apostolate was the first to go. Prophecy lasted
   until it was finally discredited by Montanism. The class of teachers
   survived still longer into the third century; indeed, it would hardly
   be wrong to regard the Catechetical School of Alexandria as a
   systematizing of this office, with learning and philosophy substituted
   for the primitive enthusiasm." Sanday, Expositor (1887, Jan.-June), p.
   17.

   [520] Perhaps the earliest trace of this is to be found in Clement, 1
   Epistle, xlviii. 5: "Let a man be faithful, let him be able to expound
   a deep saying, let him be wise in the discernment of words, let him be
   strenuous in deeds, let him be pure; so much the more ought he to be
   lowly in mind, in proportion as he seemeth to be greater; and he ought
   to seek the common advantage of all, and not his own."

   [521] If leadership implied instruction in the earliest times (1
   Thessalonians) the fact that in the Pastoral Epistles leadership
   involves instruction does not imply that these epistles are late.

   [522] Compare Hatch, The Organisation of the Early Churches (1881), pp.
   91, 92.

   [523] Compare especially Origen, Contra Celsum, v. 59-64.

   [524] "Again He saith in another prophet, The man who doeth these
   things shall be like a tree planted by the courses of waters, which
   shall yield its fruit in due season; and his leaf shall not fade, and
   all he doeth shall prosper. . . . Mark how He has described at once
   both the water and the cross. For these words imply, Blessed are they
   who, placing their trust in the cross, have gone down into the water;
   for, says He, they shall receive their reward in due time: then He
   declares, I will recompense them.'" Epistle of Barnabas, xi.

   [525] De Praescriptione Haereticorum, 39; cf. 19.

   [526] The Apostles' Creed in its earlier form, the old Roman Creed, can
   be traced as far back as 150 A.D.

   [527] We can reconstruct the creed of the Gnostic Apelles from
   Hippolytus (Refutation of all the Heresies, vii, 26); "We believe, That
   Christ descended from the Power above, from the Good, and that He is
   the Son of the Good; That He was not born of a Virgin and that when He
   did appear, He was not devoid of flesh; That He formed His Body by
   taking portions of it from the substance of the universe, i.e. hot and
   cold, moist and dry; That He received cosmical powers in the Body, and
   lived for the time He did in the world; That He was crucified by the
   Jews and died; That being raised again after three days He appeared to
   His disciples; That he showed them the prints of the nails and (the
   wound) in His side, being desirous of persuading them that He was no
   phantom, but was present in the flesh; That after He had shown them His
   Flesh He restored it to the earth; That after He had once more loosed
   the chains of His Body He gave back heat to what is hot, cold to what
   is cold, moisture to what is moist and dryness to what is dry; That in
   this condition he departed to the Good Father, leaving the Seed of Life
   in the world for those who through His disciples should believe in
   Him." Cf. Tertullian, Adversus Marcion, i. 1 (Marcion's regula fidei);
   De Praescriptione Haereticorum, 42; Irenaeus, Against Heresies. III.
   xi. 3.

   [528] The Pistis Sophia, the only complete Gnostic treatise which has
   descended to us, has a great deal to say about this secret teaching of
   our Lord and how it was given and transmitted and was the teaching
   which the author of the book accepted. The book has been translated
   into English by G. R. S. Mead (1896). Compare Irenaeus, Against
   Heresies, III, ii. 1.

   [529] Against Heresies, I. x. 1; cf. III. iv. 2.

   [530] III. xxiv. 1; elsewhere, "The apostles, like a rich man in a bank
   lodged in the hands (of the Church) most copiously all things
   pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw
   from her the water of life" (III. iv. 1).

   [531] Against Heresies, I. x. 2.

   [532] The sentence condenses his argument; but it is interesting to
   remember that he uses the words himself:--"I have heard from an aged
   elder who had heard it from those who had seen the apostles, and from
   those who had been their disciples" (IV. xxvii. 1).

   [533] Against Heresies, III. iv. 1.

   [534] Ibid. iv. 2.

   [535] Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum, xxxvi.

   [536] Ibid. xxxii.

   [537] When we refer them to that tradition which originates from the
   apostles and which is preserved by means of the successions of elders
   in the Churches," Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III. ii. 2. "It is
   therefore within the power of all, in every Church, who may wish to see
   the truths to contemplate the tradition of the apostles manifested
   throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those
   who, by the apostles, were instituted bishops in the Churches, and the
   succession of these men to our own times," III. iii. 1. Irenaeus then
   gives the succession of bishops in Rome, and proceeds: "In this order
   and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles
   and the preaching of the truth have come down to us," III. iii. 3.
   "Wherefore it is incumbent to obey the elders who are in the
   Church--those who, I have shown, possess the succession from the
   apostles; those who, together with the succession of the oversight
   (episcopate) have received the charisma of truth according to the good
   pleasure of the Father; but to hold in suspicion others who depart from
   the primitive succession and assemble themselves together in any place
   whatsoever," IV. xxvi. 2. "It behoves us to adhere to those, who, as I
   have already observed, do hold the doctrine of the apostles, and who,
   together with the order of the presbyterate (presbyterii ordine),
   display sound speech and blameless conduct for the confirmation and
   correction of others," IV. xxvi. 4. "Such elders does the Church
   nourish, of whom also the prophet says: I will give thy rulers in
   peace, and thy bishops in righteousness,' . . . where therefore the
   gifts of the Lord have been placed, there it behoves us to learn the
   truth--from those who possess that succession of the Church which is
   from the apostles," IV. xxvi. 5. "As I have heard from a certain elder,
   who had heard it from those who had seen the apostles and from those
   who had been their disciples," IV. xxvii. 1. "Then every word shall
   also seem consistent to him, if he for his part read the scriptures
   diligently in company with those who are the elders in the Church,
   among whom is the apostolic doctrine, as 1 have pointed out," IV.
   xxxii. 1. "Agnitio vera est apostolicorum doctrinae, et antiquus
   ecclesiae status in universo mundo et character corporis Christi
   secundum successiones episcoporum quibus illi eam, quae in unoquoque
   loco est, ecclesiam tradiderunt: quae pervenit usque ad nos
   custoditione sine fictione scripturarum tractatio plenissima, neque
   additamentum neque ablationem recipiens," IV. xxxiii. 8. Eusebius
   quotes Irenaeus (Ecclesiastical History, V. xx. 4) addressing a friend,
   Florinus, who had lapsed into Valentinianism, "These opinions, those
   elders who preceded us, and who were conversant with the apostles did
   not hand down to thee."

   [538] Tertullian, De Praescriptione Hacreticorum, 32, 36.

   [539] Against Heresies, IV. xxvi. 2:--"certum veritatis charisma." In
   IV. xxvi. 5, Irenaeus speaks of the "gifts" of God bestowed upon the
   Church in the apostles, prophets and teachers, i.e. the old prophetic
   ministry always believed to have been specially charismatic, and then
   adds, "where therefore the gifts of the Lord' have been placed, there
   it behoves us to learn the truth from those who possess that succession
   of the Church which is from the apostles"; and in the preface to Book
   III. he applies to the apostles, and presumably to those who are in the
   succession from them, the words of our Lord in addressing the Seventy,
   "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth
   Me and Him that sent Me" (Luke x. 16; cf. Matt. x. 40). At the same
   time it is very doubtful if the thought of an official charisma
   veritatis is definitely and distinctly before the minds of either
   Irenaeus or Tertullian in the sense of something which belongs to the
   office-bearers exclusively and as something coming to them from their
   office. Both writers were too strongly possessed with the idea that the
   whole Church is the sphere of the Spirit to limit the action of the
   Spirit of Truth to the office-bearers, and the idea that a charisma was
   something which was given to the individual and not to the office was
   powerfully felt not only in their time but much later. Irenaeus says
   expressly: "For in the Church,' it is said, God hath placed apostles,
   prophets and teachers,' and all the other means through which the
   Spirit works; of which all those are not partakers who do not join
   themselves to the Church, but defraud themselves of life through their
   perverse opinions and infamous behaviour. For where the Church is there
   is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is there is the
   Church and every kind of grace; but the Spirit is truth" (III. xxiv.
   1). The Spirit of Truth was in the whole Church and not confined to any
   class in it; and it is possible to argue that according to Irenaeus the
   special charisma of those in office was the advantage that their
   position in the succession gave them of knowing the truth transmitted.
   Both Irenaeus and Tertullian asserted that members within the Church
   might and did possess the "gift" of true prophecy (Irenaeus, Against
   Heresies, I. xiii. 4; II. xxxii. 4; xxxiii. 3; III. xi. 9; V. vi. 1),
   and Tertullian's so-called Montanist period is simply his recoil from
   where he perceived this theory of an official charisma veritatis was
   leading him (cf. specially his De Pudicitia). Even in Cyprian's days
   this idea of an official inspiration was not accepted without some
   misgivings; and although the bishops at his North African Councils in
   recording their votes gave their opinion and that of the Holy Spirit,
   the idea that the inspiration was after all personal is evidenced in
   the part which dreams and visions play (Epist. lvii. 5).

   [540] This indefinite thought (for with Irenaeus it is indefinite) that
   in addition to the natural means of knowing the true Christian doctrine
   which comes from being in the regular succession of office-bearers in
   places where the apostles themselves taught, there is a charisma
   veritatis which is official, is the germ of the Romanist doctrine of
   tradition; and although the road may be long between the certum
   veritatis charisma and the utterance of Pope Pius IX., "Io sono la
   tradizione," the milestones may be marked. Some Anglicans make much of
   the thought that there is a charisma veritatis attached to the
   succession of office-bearers (they say bishops), and put a great deal
   more into it than Irenaeus ever intended; but it is somewhat dangerous
   for their own theories to do so. It is part of the conception of
   Irenaeus that the Church which has the surest claim to know what are
   the verities of the Christian faith is the Church in Rome, and he
   insists that every other Church ought to agree with the Christian
   society in the capital city. "It is a matter of necessity," he says,
   "that every Church should agree with this Church propter potiorem
   principalitatem" (III. iii. 2), and however the words propter
   principalitatem be translated the idea in the mind of Irenaeus is the
   simple historical one that the two greatest apostles both taught there
   and that their teaching had been remembered by means of the succession
   of office-bearers; place the dogmatic instead of the historical idea
   and you have papal infallibility.

   [541] On this Rescript of Hadrian's compare Ramsay, The Church in the
   Roman Empire (1893), pp. 320 ff.; Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers: S.
   Ignatius, S. Polycarp (1885), i. pp. 460-4; Mommsen, Der
   Religionsfrevel nach römischen Recht in the Histor. Zeitschrift, vol.
   lxiv. (xxviii.), pt. iii. iii. 389 ff.; Harnack, Die Chronologie der
   altchristlichen Literatur (1897), pp. 256, n. 6. These authors all
   believe in the genuineness of the Rescript. Keim and others reject it
   on very superficial grounds. The Rescript itself is to be found at the
   end of the First Apology of Justin Martyr.

   [542] "Grant us the same rights, we ask for nothing more, as those who
   persecute us," Athenagoras, Plea for the Christians, 3.

   [543] Athenagoras, Plea, etc., 37; Theophilus, To Autolycus, i. 11;
   Tertullian, Apology, 1; "If in this case alone you are ashamed or
   afraid to exercise your authority in making public inquiry with the
   carefulness which becomes justice."

   [544] The design of Christianity is to put an end to slavery and to
   "rescue us from a multiplicity of rulers and from ten thousand tyrants"
   (Address to the Greeks, xxix.); "there ought to be one common polity
   for all" (xxviii.).

   [545] Tatian, Address to the Greeks, xlii.

   [546] De corona militis; Canons of Hippolytus, can. xiv. (Riedel, Die
   Kirchenrechtsquellen des Patriarchats Alexandrien, p. 207).

   [547] Apology, 5:--"The letters of Marcus Aurelius, that most grave of
   Emperors, in which he bears his testimony that that Germanic drought
   was removed by the rains obtained through the prayers of the Christians
   who happened to be fighting under him."

   [548] Apology, 42.

   [549] Testamentum Jesu Christi, edited by Rahman (1899), p. 37. Among
   the proclamations made by the deacon before the Eucharistic service is:
   Si quis prophetas despicit, semet segreget. The Testament also
   says:--Si quis autem verba prophetica dicit, mercedem habebit, p. 79.

   [550] Matt. vii. 15; xxiv. 11, 24; Mark xiii. 22; Acts xiii. 6; 2 Peter
   ii. 1; 1 John iv. 1-3; Rev. ii. 2, 14, 15, 20.

   [551] Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 82; Irenaeus, Against
   Heresies, I. xiii. 3; III. xi. 9; Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. V. xvii. 1-4;
   Apostolic Constitutions, VII. xxxii.; VIII. ii.; Didache, xi. 1, 2, 8.

   [552] Dialogue with Trypho, lxxxii.:--"For the prophetical gift remains
   with us even to the present time. Hence you ought to understand that
   the gifts formerly among your nation have been transferred to us. And
   just as there were false prophets contemporaneous with your holy
   prophets, so there are many false teachers among us, of whom our Lord
   forewarned us to beware; so that in no respect are we deficient, since
   we know that He foreknew all that would happen to us after His
   resurrection from the dead and ascension to heaven. For He said that we
   would be put to death and hated for His Name sake; and that many false
   prophets and false Christs would appear in His name and deceive many;
   and so it has come about. For many have taught, too, and even yet are
   teaching those things which proceed from the unclean teaching of the
   devil and which are put into their hearts."

   [553] Hermas, Pastor, Mandata, xi:--"He showed me some men sitting on a
   seat, and one man sitting on a chair. And he says to me, Do you see the
   persons sitting on the seat?' I do,' I said. These,' he says, are the
   faithful, and he who sits on the chair is a false prophet, ruining the
   minds of the servants of God. It is the doubters, not the faithful, he
   ruins.' . . . How then, sir,' I say, will a man know which of them is
   the prophet, and which is the false prophet?' I will tell you,' he
   says, about both prophets, and then you can test the true and the false
   prophet according to my directions. Test the man who has the Spirit of
   God by his life. For he who has the Divine Spirit proceeding from
   above, is meek and peaceable and humble and refrains from all iniquity
   and the vain desire of this world and contents himself with fewer wants
   than those of other men, and when asked he makes no reply; nor does he
   speak privately, nor when a man wishes the Spirit to speak does the
   Holy Spirit speak, but it speaks only when God wishes it to speak.
   When, then, a man having the Divine Spirit comes into an assembly of
   righteous men who have faith in the Divine Spirit, and this assembly of
   men offers up prayer to God, then the angel of the prophetic Spirit,
   who is destined for him, fills the man; and the man being filled with
   the Holy Spirit, speaks to the multitude as the Lord wishes. Thus then
   the Spirit of Divinity becomes manifest. Whatever power therefore comes
   from the Spirit of Divinity belongs to the Lord. Hear then,' he says,
   in regard to the Spirit which is earthly and empty and foolish and
   powerless. First the man who seems to have the Spirit exalts himself,
   and wishes to have the first seat, and is bold and impudent and
   talkative, and lives in the midst of many luxuries and many other
   delusions, and takes reward for his prophecy; and if he does not
   receive rewards he does not prophesy. Can then the Divine Spirit take
   rewards and prophesy? It is not possible that the Spirit of God should
   do this, but prophets of this character are possessed of an earthly
   spirit. Then it never approaches an assembly of righteous men but shuns
   them. And it associates with doubters and the vain, and prophesies to
   them in a corner and deceives them, speaking to them, according to
   their desires, mere empty words. . . . This then is the mode of life of
   both the prophets. Try by his life and by la's deeds the man who says
   that he is inspired. But as for you, trust the Spirit which comes from
   God, and has power; but the spirit which is empty and earthly trust not
   at all, for there in no power in it; it comes from the devil.'"

   [554] Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, V. xvii. 3.

   [555] Ibid. V. iii. 2.

   [556] Epistle to the Philadelphians, 7.

   [557] Compare St. John's Gospel, xiv. 16-26; xv. 7-15. It ought to be
   remembered that the most strenuous opponents of the Montanists denied
   the authenticity and authority of the Gospel of St. John and also of
   the Apocalypse.

   [558] Compare the prophetic utterances as collected by Bonwetsch in his
   Geschichte des Montanismus, pp. 197 ff., Oracles 1, 3, 4, 5, 12, 18,
   21. It ought to be remembered however that this applies only to some of
   the utterances.

   [559] Compare oracle 11; it is from Epiphanius, Heresies, xlviii. 13.

   [560] Harnack, whose view of Montanism is very much his own, insists
   strongly upon this. Compare his History of Dogma, ii. 95 n. 2 (Engl.
   Trans.). On the other hand it must be remembered that the Montanist
   sayings recorded have all, save those which have come to us from
   Tertullian, been transmitted by their bitter enemies who may have
   exaggerated.

   [561] Dictionary of Christian Biography, iii. 943b.

   [562] Compare Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, p. 435.

   [563] For Montanism compare:--Ritschl, Die Entstehung der
   altkatholischen Kirche (1857), 2nd ed. pp. 462-554; Bonwetsch,
   Geschichte des Montanismus (1881); also article in the Zeitschrift für
   kirchliche Wissenschaft and kirchliches Leben (1884) on Die Prophetie
   im apostolischen and nachapostolischen Zeitalter; Renan, Les Crises du
   Catholicisme Naissant, Revue des Deux Mondes (1881), Febr. 15; also in
   his Marc Aurèle (1882), pp. 208 ff.; Voigt, Eine verscholl ne Urkunde
   des antimontanistischen Kampfes (1891); articles on Montanism in the
   Dictionary of Christian Biography by Salmon, in the Encyclopædia
   Britannica by Harnack, and in Herzog's Real-Encyclopædie by Möller;
   Harnack's Das Monchthum, seine Ideale and seine Geschichte (1886), 3rd
   ed.; and his History of Dogma (1896), ii. pp. 94-108 of the Engl.
   Transl. The monograph of Bonwetsch is the most complete. He has
   collected in an appendix (p. 197) all the recorded utterances of the
   Montanists, and an elaborate statement of all our sources of
   information appears on pp. 16-55.

   [564] Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 39.

   [565] Dialogue with Trypho, 82.

   [566] Ibid. 39, 82.

   [567] Irenaeus, Against Heresies, II. xxxii. 4, 5.

   [568] Tertullian, De Anima, 9.

   [569] Compare p. 234 n.

   [570] Irenaeus, Against Heresies, I. xiii. 4.

   [571] Epistle to the Philiadelphians, 7. Compare pp. 189 n., 129.

   [572] Bonwetsch, Geschichte des Montanismus, p. 197.

   [573] Plea for the Christians, 7, 9.

   [574] Pseudo-Justin, Cohortatio ad Gentes, 8.

   [575] It may be said that this second century theory of prophecy
   abandoned St. Paul's great principle that the spirits of the prophets
   are subject to the prophets, and perhaps that is so. But the point here
   is that the Church and Montanism had to begin with the same theory of
   prophecy.

   [576] Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. V. iii. 4; Tertullian, Adversus Praxean,
   1:--"For after the bishop of Rome had acknowledged the prophetic gifts
   of Montanus, Prisca and Maximilla, and, in consequence of the
   acknowledgment, had bestowed his peace on the Churches of Asia and
   Phrygia (i.e. had declared himself in communion with them), Praxeas, by
   importunately urging false accusations against the prophets themselves
   and their Churches and insisting on the authority of the bishop's
   predecessors in the see, compelled him to recall the pacific letter
   which he had issued, as well as from his purpose of acknowledging the
   said gifts."

   [577] Eccles. Hist. ii. 32; cf. vii. 12.

   [578] Imperial edicts of 398 A.D. and 415 A.D.

   [579] Procopius, Historia Arcana, 11.

   [580] Texte and Untersuchungen, VI. iv., Die aeltesten Quellen des
   orientalischen Kirchenrechts, erstes Buch, Die canones Hippolyti, Dr.
   Hans Achelis (1891). Riedel, Die Kirchenrechtsquellen des Patriarchats
   Alexandrien (1900), pp. 193-230:--Die Canones Hippolyti. Compare Funk,
   Die Apostolischen Constitutionen (1891), pp. 265-80; Wordsworth, The
   Ministry of Grace (1901), pp. 18-42; de Lagarde in Bunsen's Analecta
   Ante-Nicaena, ii. 37; Sohm, Kirchenrecht, i. 287 n. 20. Achelis gives
   in parallel columns extracts from Ludolf's Ethiopic Statutes, from the
   Coptic Heptateuch (a new translation made by Steindorf), and from the
   eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions.

   [581] The division of the congregation into clergy and laity and the
   common mode of making the difference apparent in daily ecclesiastical
   life were both borrowed from the usages of the civil society round
   them. The laity were called plebs and the clergy the ordo--the names
   applied to the commons and the senate of the Italian and provincial
   towns. As the members of the senate or the ordo had a special bench,
   called the consessus, in the basilica or court-house, so the clergy had
   special seats in church. "It is the authority of the Church," says
   Tertullian, "that makes the difference between the ordo and the
   plebs--this and the honour consecrated by the special bench of the
   ordo" (De Exhortatione Castitatis, 7).

   [582] "Viduis propter copiosas orationes, infirmiorum curam et frequens
   jejunium praecipuus honor tribuatur," Can. ix.

   [583] "Episcopus eligatur ex omni populo . . . dicat populus: nos
   eligimus eum. Deinde silentio facto in toto grege post exhomologesin
   omnes pro eo orent dicentes: O Deus, corrobora hunc, quem nobis
   preparasti," Can. ii.

   [584] "Deinde eligatur unus ex episcopis et presbyteris, qui manum
   capiti ejus imponat, et oret dicens," Can. ii.

   [585] "O Deus, Pater domini nostri Jesus Christi, Pater misericordiarum
   et Deus totius consolationis . . . . Respice super N., servum tuum,
   tribuens virtutem tuam et spiritum efficacem, quem tribuisti sanctis
   apostolis per dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, filium tuum unicum;
   illis, qui fundaverunt ecclesiam in omni loco ad honorem et gloriam
   nominis tui sancti. Quia tu cognovisti cor uniuscujusque, concede illi,
   ut ipse sine peccato videat populum tuum, ut mereatur pascere gregem
   tuum magnum sacrum. Effice etiam, ut mores ejus sint superiores omni
   populo sine ulla declinatione. Effice etiam, ut propter praestantiam
   illi ab omnibus invideatur, et accipe orationes ejus et oblationes
   ejus, quas tibi offeret die noctuque, et sint tibi odor suavis. Tribue
   etiam illi, O Domine, episcopatum et spiritum clementem et potestatem
   ad remittenda peccata; et tribue illi facultatem ad dissolvenda omnia
   vincula iniquitatis daemonum, et ad sanandos omnes morbos, et contere
   Satanam sub pedibus ejus velociter, per dominum nostrum Jesus Christum,
   per quem tibi gloria cum ipso et Spiritu Sancto in saecula saeculorum.
   Amen." Can. iii.

   [586] "Quando quis dignus est, qui stet coram tribunali et afficiatur
   poena propter Christum, postea autem indulgentia liber dimittitur,
   talis postea meretur gradum presbyteralem coram Deo, non secundum
   ordinationem quae fit ab episcopo. Immo, confessio est ordinatio ejus.
   Quodsi vero episcopus fit, ordinetur. Si quis oonfessione emissa
   tormentis laesus non est, dignus est presbyteratu; attamen ordinetur
   per episcopum. Si talis, cum servus alicujus esset, propter Christum
   cruciatus pertulit, talis similiter est presbyter gregi. Quamquam enim
   formam presbyteratus non acceperit, tamen spiritum presbyteratus
   adeptus est; episcopus igitur omittat orationis partem, quae ad
   spiritum sanctum pertinet," Can. vi.

   [587] "Si quis petitionem porrigit, quae ad ipsius ordinationem
   pertinet, quod dicit: Nactus sum charisma sanationis, non prius
   ordinetur, quam clareseat ea res. Imprimis inquirendum est, num
   sanationes, quae per eum fiunt, revera a Deo deriventur," Can. viii. We
   see in this an echo of the verse in the Epistle of James:--"Is any one
   among you sick? let him call for the elders of the Church; and let them
   pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the
   prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise
   him up; and if he have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him" (v.
   14, 15).

   [588] "Si autem ordinatur presbyter, omnia cum eo similiter agantur ac
   cum episcopo, nisi quod cathedrae non insideat. Etiam eadem oratio
   super eo oretur tota ut super episcopo, cum sola exceptione nominis
   episcopatus. Episcopus in omnibus rebus aequiparetur presbytero excepto
   nomine cathedrae et ordinatione, quia potestas ordinandi ipsi non
   tribuitur," Can. iv. It should be noted however that a martyr or one
   who has confessed the Lord and suffered for his confession and who ipso
   facto becomes an elder does not become a bishop unless by regular
   ordination; and the equality in theory is not one of fact.

   [589] Canon xix.

   [590] Canons v., xvii.

   [591] "Jam cum toto populo orant, qui eos osculentur gaudentes cum iis
   cum jubilatione," Can. xix.

   [592] Canon ii.

   [593] Canons i. xi.-xvi.

   [594] Canon ii.

   [595] It must have been in the afternoon: for although the rule was
   that the whole service must end before sundown, there was often an
   Agape or Supper afterwards and it had to be finished before darkness
   had come. Can. xxxii.

   [596] "Congregentur quotidie in ecclesia presbyteri et diaconi et
   anagnostai omnisque populus tempore gallicinii, vacentque orationi,
   psalmis, et lectioni scripturarum cum orationibus. . . . De Clero autem
   qui convenire negligunt, neque morbo neque itinere impediti,
   separentur," Can. xxi. "Porro autem tempore, quo canit gallus,
   instituendae sunt orationes in ecclesiis," Can. xxvii.

   [597] Catechumenus baptismo initiandus si ab iis, qui eum adducunt,
   bono testimonio commendatur, eum illo tempore, quo instruebatur,
   infirmos visitasse et debiles sustentasse seque ab omni perverso
   sermone custodisse, laudes cecinisse, numque oderit vanam gloriam, num
   contempscrit superbiam, sibique elegerit humilitatem," Can. xix.

   [598] "Quando vero doctor quotidianum pensum docendi terminavit, orent
   separati a christianis," Can. xvii.

   [599] "Quocunque die in ecclesia non orant, sumas scripturam, ut legas
   in ea. Sol conspiciat matutino tempore scripturam super genua tua,"
   Can. xxvii. 1.

   [600] The canons have been carefully analyzed and the information they
   convey on the services and organization brought together by Dr. Achelis
   in his admirable edition. I have made full use of his labour. In one
   rather important point, however, I fail to follow his arguments. He
   believes that the bishop alone was entitled to conduct the eucharistic
   service when it took place on a Sunday, and that the provisions for an
   elder or a deacon presiding refers only to week-day celebrations. The
   statements made in the Canons are not distinct and our conclusions are
   only inferences. The reasons for the delegation seem to me to be the
   necessary absence of the bishop and the necessary absence of the
   elders; and apply equally well to the Sunday as to other celebrations.
   It was natural that provision should be made where Christian
   congregations were scattered and far from each other.

   [601] Justin's order of service is:--Prolonged reading of the
   scriptures; sermon by the pastor or bishop, prayer, the Bread and Wine
   brought in. Apology, i. 67.

   [602] Compare Canon xii.

   [603] The whole service had to be over before sundown; and there was
   frequently a common meal late in the evening.

   [604] "Etiam anagnostai habebant festiva indumenta, et stent in loco
   lectionis et alter alterum excipiat, donec totus populus congregetur,"
   Can. xxxvii.

   [605] Canons iii. xix.

   [606] "Quotiescunque episcopus mysteriis frui vult, congregentur
   diaconi et presbyteri apud eum, induti vestiment is albis pulchioribus
   toto populo potissimum autem splendidis. Bona autem opera omnibus
   vestimentis praestant," Can. xxxvii.

   [607] Canon iii.

   [608] It is probable that this prayer was extempore; no form is
   prescribed in the Canons, and many forms for other parts of the service
   are given in the text; the prayer of consecration was extempore in the
   time of Justin Martyr (Apology, i. 67:--"The president offers prayers
   and thanksgivings according to his ability").

   [609] "Communicat populum stans ad mensam corporis et sanguinis Domini
   . . . Deinde porrigat illis episcopus de corpore Christi dicens: Hoc
   est corpus Christi; illi vero dicant: Amen; et ei, quibus ille calicem
   porrigit dicens: Hic est sanguis Christi, dicant: Amen," Can. xix.

   [610] Canon xix.:--"Et presbyteri portant alios calices lactis et
   mellis ut doceant eos, qui communicant, iterum eos natos esse ut
   parvuli, quia parvuli communicant lac et mel."

   [611] Canon xxix.:--"Et sint illis psalmi pro tintinabulis, quae erant
   in tunica Aaronis."

   [612] This offertory or collection in kind, which the records of the
   early centuries bring vividly before us, can be seen in village
   churches in India at present. The offerings there include many things
   not mentioned in the text. Great baskets are deposited in which the
   people place small parcels of all kind of grain, the produce of their
   fields, fruits, cooked food. eggs, flasks of oil and live poultry. I
   once saw a portion of the offertory running away with the beadle! It
   was a lively young sheep, and when the beadle tried to hold it, it
   pulled him round the corner of the church. Missionaries from Ceylon
   have assured me that the Christian matrons are accustomed to put aside
   every tenth handful of the rice or other things to be cooked and thus
   collect during the week what is given on Sunday. They say that when the
   people were heathen they did the same in order to present offerings to
   their priests; and they carry the practice over into Christianity. It
   was probably the same in heathen antiquity, and this is no doubt the
   reason why in the Canons the bishop is called "priest" in connexion
   with receiving these offerings and not in connexion with his presiding
   at the Holy Supper (Canon xxxvi.). The title "priest" (sacerdos) is
   given to the bishop alone and that only when he performs the two
   functions of exorcising the sick (Canon xxiv.), and of receiving and
   blessing the offerings (Canon xxxvi.); both actions done by the heathen
   priests with which the early converts from paganism were quite
   familiar.

   [613] Canon iii.

   [614] Canon xxxii.

   [615] Canon v., cf. also Justin, Apology, i. 65, 67.

   [616] Compare above, p. 201.

   [617] Apology, i. 67.

   [618] Canons xxxii.-xxxv.

   [619] Canons xxxii. ix.

   [620] "Si quis viduis coenam parare vult, curet, ut habeant coenam et
   ut dimittantur, antequam sol occidat. Si vero sunt multae, caveatur, ne
   fiat confusio neve impediantur, quominus ante vesperam dimittantur.
   Unicuique autem earum sufficiens cibus potusque. Sed abeant antequam
   nox advesperascat," Can. xxxv.

   [621] Compare Riedel, Die Kirchenrechtsquellen des Patriarchats
   Alenandrien (1900), p. 221 n. He thinks that they correspond with
   feasts which are still the custom among the Christians of the Levant,
   and quotes Wansleben:--"Ils ont encore la coûtume de faire des Agapes
   ou des repas de charité après les Bâtêmes, et les enterremens, pour
   tous ceux qui veulent s'y trouver; donnant à un chacun un plat de
   bouillie, avec un morceau de viande dedans, et du pain autant qu'il en
   peut manger; et ces repas se font ou dans 1'église même ou sur le toit
   de 1'église, qui est, selon la coûtume des Levantins, toujours plat, et
   capable de contenir un grand nombre d'hommes."

   [622] These memorial feasts were called Anamneseis; the custom of
   celebrating the birthday of an honoured martyr with a memorial feast
   was one of the usages of primitive Christianity which gave the early
   Christian societies a superficial resemblance to the pagan collegia;
   compare above p. 126.

   [623] Altar occurs in the Canon which tells the clergy to keep the
   vessels clean, etc. (Canon xxix.); mensa is used when the act of
   communicating is described (Canon xix.).

   [624] Canons xvii. xxxii. xix.

   [625] Canons xxxvi. xxiv.

   [626] "Mulier libera ne veniat veste variegata . . . neve crines
   demittat solutos, habeat potius capillos complexos in domo Dei, neve
   faciat cirros frontales in capite quando vult participare in mysteriis
   sacris (Canon xvii.). It is one of the marks of a good woman that if
   she excels male beings in knowledge she does not let any one see that
   she does!

   [627] The fear of demons appears most strongly in the exorcisms at
   baptism, in exorcising the bread at the feasts, and in the reason given
   why no drop of wine or crumb of bread was to be allowed to fall to the
   ground: the demons might get hold of it. Compare Canons xix. xxix.
   xxxiv.

   [628] Canon xxiv.

   [629] This characteristic has almost faded out of most English-speaking
   portions of the great Presbyterian Church, but it remains in the
   Dutch-speaking parts. The traces remaining in Scotland are the almost
   forgotten, but still existing, "General Kirk-Sessions" of the larger
   towns.

   [630] Dr. Sanday has said (Expositor, Jan.-June, 1887, p. 113) that in
   the earlier centuries "every town of any size had its bishop; and if
   there were several churches, they were served by the clergy whom the
   bishop kept about him: they were in fact like our (Church of England)
   present chapels of ease,' and the whole position of the bishop was very
   similar to that of the incumbent of the parish church in one of our
   smaller towns. The tendency at first, as Ignatius shows, was towards
   complete centralization: the whole serving of the paroikia was directly
   in the hands of the bishop. The parish system in the later sense, with
   an extended diocese, and a number of more or less independent clergy
   circling round the bishop, did not grow up until the 6th-9th centuries,
   when it took shape mainly in France under the Merovingian and
   Carolingian kings. In some respects the Nonconformist communities of
   our own time furnish a closer parallel to the primitive state of things
   than an Established Church can possibly do." This is all true so far as
   it goes; but it takes no account of the three-fold ministry. which is
   not exhibited in an English parish. The primitive three-fold ministry
   appears however as soon as the Border is crossed into Scotland or over
   into Holland.

   [631] Compare Ramsay,The Church in the Roman Empire, p. 431. Many
   illustrations of the legal principles and their effects on the tenure
   of Church property laid down by Professor Ramsay may be found not only
   within the Turkish Empire, but in the Tributary Indian States, such as
   the Nizam's Territories, where the Mohammedan law rules.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER VII.

  MINISTRY CHANGING TO PRIESTHOOD

   During the third century, it may be said during the middle third of
   that century, there are clear traces of a general change insinuating
   itself into men's minds and finding expression in language, in the way
   of thinking of the Church and of the relation of the ministry to the
   Church. This is commonly spoken of as the change of the ministry into a
   mediating priesthood, standing between the people and God. But this
   manner of regarding the whole silent movement gives a very inadequate
   and one-sided representation of the real meaning of the change, and of
   the conceptions which it embodied. The idea that the ministry is a
   priesthood was there, but the main thought was much more the power of
   the priest than his mediation. The power and the authority of the
   ministry and especially of the chiefs of the ministry over the
   Christian people was the central conception. It finds expression in
   Cyprian's repeated quotation of the Old Testament text: "And the man
   that doeth presumptuously, in not hearkening to the priest that
   standeth to minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge,
   even that man shall die; and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel.
   And all the people shall hear and fear, and do no more presumptuously."
   [632] It is this change and what it implies that concerns us now.

   It may be briefly expressed by saying that the two separate conceptions
   of local "Church" and of "Church universal" became more precise, and
   that precision of thought was given by new ideas about the relation in
   which the office-bearers stood to the community. The Church was defined
   by the ministry in a way that it had not been in earlier times.

   So far as the local "church" is concerned the Christian thought, which
   in earlier times had dwelt upon the picture of saints and brethren
   living together the Christian life, now dwelt upon the controlling
   power of those who governed. The Church, which was in earlier days a
   "brotherhood of saints," became a community over whom a bishop
   presided. It was defined, not so much by the manner of life led by its
   members, as by the government which ruled over them. The train of
   thought was reversed. It was no longer--people worshipping and some of
   them leading the common devotions, saints believing and some among them
   instructing and admonishing; it became--teachers who imparted and
   pupils who received, priests who interceded and sinners who were
   pardoned through the intercession, rulers who commanded and subjects
   who were bound to obey.

   The thought of the universal visible Church underwent an analogous
   transformation. It was no longer the wide brotherhood of all who
   professed the name of Jesus, and lived the life of new obedience
   demanded from His disciples. It became a federation of local churches,
   who believed in the same verities, the truth of which was guaranteed by
   legitimate rulers, and whose members yielded an implicit obedience to
   the bishop at the head of every local "church." It was the federation
   of churches which excluded heretics and rebels.

   In the earlier days the local Christian communities were companies of
   men and women who called themselves the brethren and the saints or holy
   persons, and these words expressed the relations in which they stood to
   each other and to the world around them. Fellowship as with brothers,
   and a fellowship united in holiness, were the main thoughts present to
   the minds of the earliest Christians when the word Church was used to
   denote either the individual community or the wide brotherhood of
   believers.

   The idea in the minds of Christians united together in a local
   community was that they were called upon to live a new and a holy life.
   They had marked out for themselves what was meant by this holy life,
   with its duties to be lovingly fulfilled and sins to be resolutely
   shunned; and this chart of the Christian life is to be found in manuals
   like the Didache with its two ways, all of which treat of the private
   as well as of the communal life. There was also a feeling throughout
   the churches that, while for the ordinary and lesser sins to which men
   are prone, there must be confession, sorrow, and certain external signs
   of sorrow, and while for others there was to be suspension for longer
   or shorter time from the Holy Supper, some sins were so very heinous
   that those who committed them had placed themselves outside the
   communion of the brethren so long as life lasted. No limits were placed
   on the forgiveness of God, but Christians believed that if any of their
   number fell into sins of more than ordinary gravity, no amount of
   penitence, however sincere, entitled the Church to permit these fallen
   brethren to return to the inner fellowship of the Christian
   brotherhood. Such sinners had to manifest a life-long repentance, and
   could never hope to be more than catechumens. Tertullian has given a
   list of these deadliest sins, but it is not likely that such lists were
   always the same, for there is no trace of any settled rule or theory.
   Only, each Christian community felt that it must keep itself pure and
   merit its title of "the saints." [633] Ordinarily those who were guilty
   of such heinous sins had to remain for life in the condition of
   catechumens, and could never hope to be re-admitted to the inner circle
   of believers. If, however, a brother, believed to have the prophetic
   gift, spoke on behalf of a penitent, and announced that it was the will
   of God that he should be pardoned, then, and then only, an exception
   was made. [634]

   All the Christian communities, although they felt that they belonged to
   one great Church, were not linked together by any distinctive polity,
   however indefinite. All the churches of Christ, Tertullian tells us,
   were one great Church, because they gave each other the salutation of
   peace, because they regarded each other as brethren, and because they
   practised the interchange of familiar hospitality. [635] That was what
   bound them together, and made them feel and be one; not any external
   polity, however slight. They maintained a close fellowship by means of
   intercommunication, by the interchange of letters and messengers, and
   by their hospitality towards all Christian travellers who passed their
   way. This constant intercourse no doubt led to a similarity in the
   rules for holy living and in modes of dealing with backsliders; but
   there was nothing of a common polity to unite them as the various parts
   of civil society are united within one state. No doubt the advice of
   one Church was frequently asked, and acted upon by another in matters
   of difficulty and in times of trial. We have an example of such a thing
   in the letter of the Roman Church to the Corinthian, which goes by the
   name of the First Epistle of Clement. No doubt such advice was received
   and attended to in proportion as the Church, offering its advice or
   appealed to for its counsel, had showed itself worthy of deference by
   its brotherly conduct and by its eminence. No Church in those early
   centuries showed such generosity to its poorer brethren as the Roman
   Church; besides it inhabited the world's capital; it was believed to
   inherit the traditions of the two greatest of the apostles--St. Paul
   and St. Peter. It held the position of the wise and generous elder
   brother in the brotherhood of churches, but there was no acknowledged
   ecclesiastical pre-eminence. [636]

   The situation, therefore, may be thus expressed: there were thousands
   of churches, most of them single congregations, which nevertheless were
   one Church, not because they had agreed in any formal way to become
   one, not because there was any polity linking them together in one
   great whole, but because they had the unmistakeable feeling that they
   belonged to one brotherhood:

   They lived in the immediate presence of eternity, on the threshold of
   the blessed and real life which awaited them, when the period of their
   probation in this world was ended; and every Christian community had
   the feeling that it was its business by a strict discipline to
   preserve, in the pure life of the members of the little brotherhood, a
   foreshadowing of the life which awaited them when the Father should
   call them home to Himself. Meanwhile they were in the presence of a
   hostile and evil world-power, which was under the dominion of sin, and
   which manifested itself to them in the persecuting pagan state. That
   was the first stage. Doctrine could scarcely be said to exist, and
   doctrinal divisions were therefore almost impossible. No doubt their
   teachers and leaders occasionally warned them against strange
   teachings, but these were limited to individuals or to small companies,
   and hardly impressed the imagination.

   When the Gnostic teachers gathered their followers into companies large
   enough to attract attention, and above all when Marcion, with his
   organizing genius, had established Marcionite Christian communities
   almost everywhere, the situation became changed. The Christians were
   now divided among themselves. The Christian brotherhood was set over
   against, not simply the pagan state, but also against false brethren
   who did not accept the traditions of the apostles nor the common simple
   verities of the faith. Christianity now implied more than a life lived
   in the presence of God and Christ; it meant a doctrine to be protected
   by a creed or a form, more or less fixed, of intellectual beliefs. The
   possession of a common form of creed in which the simple verities of
   the faith were stated could not fail to give the "great" Church
   accepting it something more of an outward polity, The succession of
   office-bearers in the churches was the guarantee for the correctness of
   the tradition suggested by Irenaeus, urged by Tertullian, and
   apparently accepted by all who were neither Gnostics nor Marcionites,
   nor any of the smaller separate bodies of Christians. Tertullian in the
   De Praescriptione, as may be seen in the quotation given in the note,
   [637] links the common tradition, its guarantee in the succession of
   office-bearers, the name of brethren, the salutation of peace, and the
   bond of hospitality all together, and there are, though in a very
   indefinite kind of way, the beginnings of a polity.

   Still the existence of the creed did not give the churches which
   accepted it an homogenous external polity in any thing like the modern
   sense. The creed was the law for the individual local church, and the
   local church was not joined to the other churches in a definite
   federation, still less in a corporate union. The old thought of St.
   Paul [638] --fellowship (koinonia)--still prevailed. The churches
   refused to have fellowship with professing Christians and with
   communities of professing Christians who did not accept the same
   verities that they did, and they had fellowship and intercommunion with
   societies who accepted these verities. The increased powers given to
   office-bearers, when they were made the guarantee of the orthodox
   faith, were powers to be exercised within the communities over which
   they presided, and did not give them any rule outside the local
   churches they governed, whether these were large or small. Still the
   fact that it was recognized that all Christians had a common set of
   convictions, which could be expressed in a more or less definite way in
   propositions, gave the whole brotherhood of churches something of a
   polity; and the thought that in times of doubt or difficulty guidance
   could be got from what Tertullian called "apostolic" churches, or
   churches where the original apostles had actually taught, [639] gave
   these churches and their office-bearers a certain pre-eminence which
   claimed and received the deference of all the rest.

   The separation and secession of the Montanists, in the wider meaning of
   the term, [640] still further altered and made more precise the
   conception of the Church. It must always be remembered that the
   Montanists were not driven out, but separated themselves from the main
   body of Christians. They claimed to represent the apostolic Church; and
   their claim was based quite as much on the persuasion that they had
   preserved the prophetic ministry in the position within the churches in
   which it had been placed by the apostles, as on their belief that they
   were preserving the character of the true church by their strictness of
   discipline. To the succession of office-bearers, descended from the
   secondary ministry of apostolic times, they opposed the succession of
   prophets representing the superior ministry of the apostolic days. The
   Montanist movement had this result that men who professed to live
   according to the commandments of Jesus, who adhered to the traditional
   teaching of the churches, who had the three-fold ministry, were
   nevertheless found outside. They had separated on the question of the
   power of the office-bearers at the head of the local churches; they had
   insisted that the time-honoured prophetic ministry should retain its
   old supremacy; they had especially declared that in the case of heinous
   sins it belonged to the prophetic ministry, and not to the bishops, to
   declare whether such sins could receive the churches' pardon. [641]
   Their opponents had joined issue with them on these two points. They
   asserted that a true prophet would submit himself to the "elders who
   were in the succession," and that, while the Montanist prophets had
   positively refused to admit of the church's pardon being extended to
   heinous sinners, [642] yet these sinners might be pardoned on
   confession and signs of sincere repentance. The great majority of the
   members of the churches had followed the office-bearers, and the
   Montanist movement had failed to arrest the course of the local
   ministry on the path they had chosen to pursue. It was only natural
   that an unsuccessful revolt would strengthen the position of the
   ministry which it had conspired against. All these things combined to
   place the office-bearers in a position of authority they had never
   before occupied, and to give peculiar powers to the bishops who were
   the chief office-bearers. The tendency was to think that the churches
   were summed up in their bishops, and these officials thus acquired a
   new position with reference to the whole Church.

   The most potent cause producing this change of sentiment with regard to
   the character of the ministry and its relation to the Church was the
   attempt to come to some accommodation with the world lying round the
   Christian communities in order to justify the plea that Christians were
   entitled to the toleration extended to all other religions. This
   consideration was always accompanied by the other that the Church
   wished to keep hold on crowds of adherents, who in the years of peace
   from persecution [643] were flocking to join it, and who could not be
   retained if the old hard conditions or, perhaps one ought to say, the
   earlier high standard of Christian life, were insisted upon. These two
   motives invariably acted together, and are to be found working in such
   churches as those of Rome and Corinth in the beginning of the third
   century. [644] The first practical consequence of these ideas was to
   alter the thought and conditions of penitence. In the earlier times, as
   has been said, when a Christian fell into such grievous sins as
   idolatry, murder, adultery, fornication and some others, he could never
   be received again into full communion, but had to remain in the
   position of a catechumen, permitted to wait in the ante-chamber but
   never admitted within the family abode until death was at hand.
   Gradually the practice was softened to the extent that, on due
   manifestation of sorrow, a second trial of the full Christian life was
   allowed, but a second fall was not to be forgiven. [645] In all
   probability this remained the general rule till the third decade of the
   third century, when Calixtus, the bishop of Rome, introduced a change
   which met with the fierce opposition of Tertullian and Hippolytus.
   [646] He, or rather the Roman Church of which he was the head, entered
   on a policy of relaxation. [647] It was asserted that the church,
   through its office-bearers, was entitled to proclaim God's pardon for
   any sins, however heinous, due signs of sorrow being accepted by the
   office-bearers as sufficient. [648] It was announced by an edict posted
   up in the church, that pardon would be bestowed on these terms for all
   sins of the flesh, and that penitents would be restored to Church
   communion. It appears to be almost certain that this innovation
   contained two things; the first being the general statement of the
   power of the Church exercised through its office-bearers to restore all
   persons to Church communion, no matter how heinous the sin had been
   into which they had fallen, and the second being the resolution on the
   part of the Roman Church to make use of this general power in respect
   to sins of the flesh. Of course there was no attempt to coerce other
   churches to follow the example of the Roman Church, and many churches
   did not. [649] Some North African churches kept to the old practice on
   to the time of Cyprian, [650] but it is undoubted that the Roman
   example was largely followed. The statements in Hippolytus and
   Tertullian seem to warrant the conclusion that this relaxation from the
   older sternness was made because without it large numbers of Christians
   could not be restrained from going back to heathenism. [651]

   There was no doubt a thoroughly evangelical element in this manifesto
   of the Roman Church. [652] It was based on the evangelical truth that
   God has commanded to his ministering servants to proclaim that He is
   not willing that any should perish, that His promises in Christ can be
   trusted in by the most heinous sinners and backsliders. But in all the
   circumstances of the times and of the case, it took a very
   unevangelical shape, and was worked out by Cyprian into the beginnings
   of the mediaeval doctrine of penance. In the shape it took it
   inevitably led the people to regard the office-bearers of the Church,
   and especially the bishops, as if they were in God's place, and it
   ascribed to the bishops the power of actually pardoning and not simply
   of proclaiming the pardon of God. [653] On the other hand, the Church
   lost her old idea that she was the company of the saints or the
   actively holy people; and the new feeling grew that the Church was the
   institution within which God had placed the means of acquiring
   holiness, and that these means were at the disposal of the bishops or
   the heads of the Christian communities, and could be reached only
   through them. Hence the office-bearers, and more especially the
   bishops--the men who had already been declared to be the guardians of
   the essential Christian verities--now came to be regarded also as the
   keepers or guardians of that peace of God which comes from the pardon
   of sin. They were the persons to whom it was necessary to go in order
   to know with certainty the truths of the Christian religion, and only
   through them could be acquired that saintly character which was
   desirable, but which was no longer a necessary condition of membership
   within the Christian Church. So the beginnings of a wide gulf were dug
   between the clergy and the laity, and the conception began to grow that
   the one duty of the laity in the presence of the clergy was that of
   simple obedience. Add to this the ever-present expectation that the day
   was approaching when the Church was to enter into an affiance with the
   hitherto persecuting state and to find a peaceful shelter under its
   protection; the growing conviction that the action of all the various
   Christian Churches ought to be as harmonious as possible, and that
   whatever step was taken by one ought to be taken by all; and the
   feeling that the Christian Churches ought to be divisions of a
   well-drilled army marching in step towards the earthly paradise of an
   affiance with, and therefore of a conquest over, the hitherto
   persecuting power, and it is possible to have some estimate of the
   changes which the conception of the Church and of the ministry were
   undergoing in the middle of this third century. At the same time it is
   easy to make too much of the power exercised by the bishops of the
   first half of the third century. The bishops of these days were not the
   great potentates that one is apt to imagine them to be from the
   language and phrases used by many modern historians. They, all of them,
   had to carry their people, and, above all, their elders or presbyters
   with them, in any change they suggested.

   Canons which belong to the early part of the third century, like the
   Canons of Hippolytus, may say little about the rights and much about
   the duties of the laity. They may concern themselves with the layman's
   duty to pray in private, to come to Church regularly, to offer the
   firstfruits, and may enjoin his wife to be careful to prepare the
   oblations. They may prohibit him from taking any part in public worship
   or from presiding even at an agape. They may appear to leave him no
   rights in the Church whatsoever save that of choosing his pastor. But
   we know that long after this few things were done in any local church
   without their being approved by a council of the whole people and
   clergy, plebs and ordo; and that this congregational meeting existed
   and exercised its powers from the days of St. Paul to those of Cyprian.
   The modern associations connected with the word "bishop" impose upon
   us, and the misleading phrase "monarchical bishop" adds to our
   illusions. The fact was that this "monarch" was in the vast majority of
   cases the pastor of a congregation of a few score of families, that no
   imperial legislation had as yet compelled the payment of tithes by law,
   nor had conferred a high social position upon any pastor or bishop who
   happened to be at the head of the Christian societies in cities which
   had been the provincial centres of the imperial cult. [654] When
   Christianity became the recognized religion of the Roman Empire; when
   imperial edicts confirmed ecclesiastical legislation; when imperial
   troops were employed to hunt down Marcionite, Montanist or Donatist
   nonconformists, the state of things became different. But until we get
   to the middle of the fourth century the Christian pastors were too
   dependent on their people to be great potentates and irresponsible
   rulers. It was the theory that was changing--that is the important
   thing to be remembered.

   This new theory of the position and authority of the office-bearers in
   the Christian churches was so novel, and so opposed to the old
   traditions of primitive Christianity, that an extra-ordinary sanction
   was needed to support it, and in the nature of things the sanction had
   to come down from the earliest days. It is here that the idea of an
   "Apostolic Succession," in the modern Roman and Anglican sense, first
   makes its appearance. It is a conception which had its origin in the
   brains of leaders of the Roman Church, and although it was adopted and
   defended by Cyprian, it has never ceased to be associated with Roman
   claims and to fit most naturally into Roman theories. To understand it
   one must remember, what is continually forgotten, that the great men
   who built up the Western Church were almost all trained Roman lawyers.
   Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, to say nothing of many of the most
   distinguished Roman bishops, were all men whose early training had been
   that of a Roman lawyer--a training which moulded and shaped all their
   thinking, whether theological or ecclesiastical. The framework of Roman
   law supported their thoughts about Christian organization and about
   Christian doctrines. They instinctively regarded all questions as a
   great Roman lawyer would. They had the lawyer's craving for regular
   precedents, for elaborate legal fictions to bridge time and connect the
   present with the past. They had the lawyer's idea that the primary duty
   laid upon them was to enforce obedience to authority, and especially to
   that authority which expressed itself in external institutions.
   Apostolic succession, in the dogmatic sense of that ambiguous term, is
   the legal fiction required by the legal mind to connect the growing
   conceptions of the authority of the clergy with the earlier days of
   Christianity. It served the Christian lawyer in much the same way that
   another curious legal fiction assisted the pagan civilian. The latter
   insisted that the government of the Emperors from Augustus to
   Diocletian was the prolongation of the old republican constitution; the
   former imagined that the rule of bishops was the prolongation through
   the generations of the inspired guidance of the original apostles who
   were the planters of the Church.

   A legal fiction has generally some historical basis to start from, The
   basis of the fiction in civil law was the fact that the emperors, while
   wielding almost absolute personal authority, did so in accordance with
   republican forms inasmuch as they were invested by the senate with
   almost all the offices which under the republic had been distributed
   among a number of persons. The fiction in ecclesiastical government had
   also its basis of fact. The apostles had founded many of the churches,
   and their first converts or others suitable had become the first
   office-bearers. There had been a succession of leaders, the
   characteristics of leadership, as has been explained, undergoing some
   striking changes in the course of the second century. All these
   successions of office-bearers could be traced back to the foundation of
   the churches in which they existed, and therefore to the missionaries,
   whether apostles or apostolic men, who had founded them. This was the
   historical thread on which, in the end, was strung the gigantic figment
   called apostolic succession--a strange compound of minimum of fact and
   maximum of theory.

   The beginnings of the theory are easily discernible, and have been
   already explained. Irenaeus seized upon the undoubted fact of
   successive generations of office-bearers going back to the apostolic
   founders of certain churches in order to find a guarantee for the true
   Christian doctrine. To make assurance doubly sure, he added a theory to
   his fact--this, namely, that these office-bearers who were in the
   succession had a charisma veritatis. According to the ideas of the time
   there was a minimum of fact in the added theory, for many of the
   pastors of these primitive churches were prophets and had the charisma.
   This made it easier to suppose that what belonged to some pastors
   personally was the property of all officially. The result was that
   Christian leaders had a short and easy method of dealing with Gnostics
   and others. [655] Moreover, when the leaders became the guardians of
   sound teaching they acquired additional magisterial powers within the
   communities over which they presided. But neither Irenaeus, nor
   Tertullian who adopted and extended his theory, ever claimed that the
   leaders of the churches who were in the succession stood in the same
   position to the churches of the end of the second and beginning of the
   third centuries as that held by the apostles in the middle of the
   first. If they believed that the apostles were the mediators between
   Jesus and the Church they were also firmly convinced that the Holy
   Spirit was imparted to the whole membership, and was not the peculiar
   possession of the leaders of the communities because they were in the
   succession from the apostles. The idea appeared earliest in the Roman
   Church. So far as I am aware, the earliest claim of this kind was made
   by Hippolytus in his struggle with Calixtus in Rome; and Calixtus, the
   head of one of the rival factions, was not slow to adopt the same
   arrogant position. The former made use of the idea of an apostolic
   succession to strengthen his position when he tried to show that his
   rival was a heretic; and the latter used it to warrant him in issuing
   decrees which relaxed the ancient discipline in the hope of attracting
   to his own congregation men who felt the rules of Christian living laid
   down by Hippolytus too hard for their weakness. These were the edifying
   surroundings from amidst which came the first full statement of the
   claim to apostolic succession. [656] The theory may be older in the
   Roman Church than this its first distinct statement. [657]

   From the time that this doctrine of apostolic succession comes into
   being in the West on to its full statement by Cyprian, its use is the
   same. It is appealed to as the ground for the assumption of powers of
   command on the part of the bishops or pastors. It is interesting to
   notice that while the idea of a succession is to be found in the East,
   it took an altogether different shape from the formal legal Roman
   dogma. There is no mention of an apostolic succession of chief pastors
   in the first six books of the Apostolic Constitutions. It does not
   appear in the definition or description of the Church which is given in
   the first book. [658] Yet the office of bishop or pastor is dwelt upon
   at length. He is always looked upon as the minister of a congregation,
   and frequently of a very small congregation, [659] but that does not
   prevent the authors heaping up phrases to describe his importance and
   the respect which is due to him from his people. [660] The elders, "the
   counsellors of the bishop"--his Kirk-Session--"sustain the place" of
   the apostles of the Lord. [661] The formal legal Roman mind needed a
   precedent, in the shape of this legal fiction, for the unwonted
   domination which the chief pastors were beginning to claim. The
   Oriental, accustomed to arbitrary government, did not feel that
   usurpation of power required to be cloaked under legal fictions. Yet in
   the East we find a trace of a succession. Clement of Alexandria
   conceives the number of the apostles continually recruited from age to
   age by the enrolment of men who have attained to a "gnostical
   perfection," [662] and who are, therefore, the true teachers of the
   Church, for the Christian Neo-Platonist of Alexandria was as familiar
   with the thought of a succession of inspired teachers, [663] as the
   minds of the Roman lawyers who built up the Church in the West were
   saturated with legal precedents and the need for the visible continuity
   of government even though a legal fiction had to be invented to show
   it. The great Alexandrian conceives the continuity of the Church to
   exist in the succession of Christian generations, and to be made
   evident by the appearance among them from time to time of saintly men
   of apostolic character who are known to God, and whose supreme
   importance in preserving the true character of Christianity will be
   revealed in the future. This he deems to be a much better guarantee
   than a succession of office-bearers, chosen and ordained by fallible
   men.

   Although the conception that the heads of the Christian churches were
   the successors of the apostles, in the sense that they possessed the
   gifts and the powers of the original apostles (now thought of as Twelve
   only), was really the creation of the Roman Church, it is intimately
   connected with Cyprian of Carthage, [664] who gave it definiteness as a
   dogmatic idea. This great ecclesiastical statesman, like Gregory I.,
   has left behind him a collection of letters which reveal the working of
   his mind, and enable us to see how his thoughts took sharper outline in
   a controversy which he had to maintain with his own office-bearers in
   Carthage, and how he aimed at and partly succeeded in giving the
   Christian Church a polity which enabled it to be one in practical
   activity as it was one in devotional conception.

   Thascius Cyprianus was the most eminent of the many distinguished
   converts whom Christianity was drawing from the learned and wealthy
   classes during the second third of the third century, during that long
   period of "peace" which preceded the outbreak of the Decian persecution
   in 250 A.D. He was a Roman whose ancestors had settled in Africa. Such
   men were called Roman Africans. They belonged to a race which had given
   the capital some of its most distinguished lawyers, and which furnished
   to the Church such men as Tertullian, Minutius Felix, Cyprian,
   Lactantius and Augustine. By training and profession he was a pleader,
   and therefore of the highest social standing. [665] His wealth was
   great; his house, with its "gilded ceilings" and "mosaics of costly
   marble," [666] and his gardens, were famous in the city of palaces. He
   became a Christian in middle life, drawn by the persuasion of the
   intellect as well as by the pleadings of the heart. We may see the path
   he trod towards conversion in his Treatise to Donatus and in the Book
   of Testimonies he wrote for a friend. After a brief space of time he
   probably became a deacon; he was certainly an elder when Donatus, the
   Bishop of Carthage, died. The Christians at Carthage resolved that the
   most distinguished Christian in the city, although two years had
   scarcely passed since his baptism, should be their bishop. His
   reluctance only increased their ardour. "A crowded brotherhood besieged
   the doors of his house, and throughout all the avenues of access an
   anxious love was circulating." [667] Cyprian yielded and was ordained,
   the bishop, the Papa, the spiritual Father of the Christian community
   in Carthage. We must forget many of the associations which the word
   "bishop" inevitably brings with it to understand his position. He was
   simply the chief pastor of the Christian congregation at Carthage and
   of its outlying mission districts. He had no diocese and never
   exercised diocesan rule. He had no cathedral, not even a church. His
   congregation met in the audience hall of a wealthy Carthaginian
   burgher. [668] It was the man who made the position he occupied one of
   such commanding importance as it soon attained to. [669]

   Eighteen months of quiet rule were vouchsafed him. During this period
   he had conciliated the few who had been opposed to the choice of so
   recently baptized a Christian for the important place of chief pastor.
   They became, says Pontius, his biographer, "his closest and most
   intimate friends." [670]

   Decius was one of those stern upright emperors who believed that
   Christianity was a source of menace to the empire, and that it had to
   be stamped out. His edict against it was published early in the year
   250 A.D. It had been expected by the heathen population of Carthage,
   and threats against the wealthy and well-known head of the Christian
   community were freely uttered by the mob. Cyprian, thinking less of his
   own safety than of the welfare of his people, believed it to be his
   duty to go into retirement, and a large part of his correspondence
   deals with the management of his congregation from his place of safety.
   We find three distinct questions of ecclesiastical organization raised
   and in the end settled-the right of men supposed to be specially
   possessed by the Spirit to interfere in the discipline of the local
   church, the seat of the one supreme authority in the local church, and
   the best means of giving a practical expression to the unity of the
   whole Church of Christ. The occasion which demanded solution of all
   three questions was the fact that many Christians had lapsed and were
   asking to be restored to the communion of the Church at Carthage. The
   ecclesiastical questions are so connected with the course of events
   that these last must be briefly noted.

   The persecution resolved upon by the Emperor Decius was begun in swift
   ruthless Roman fashion. It attacked the Christian Church everywhere
   simultaneously--in Rome, Egypt, Syria, Armenia, Spain, and North
   Africa. It aimed at breaking up the Christian communities by destroying
   their leaders and then coercing their followers. Cyprian speaks of
   bishops proscribed, imprisoned, banished, and slain. [671] Persecution
   had been almost unknown in Africa for thirty-eight years, during which
   time of "peace" the Christian communities had been growing rapidly in
   numbers and in influence; the results of its renewal seemed at first
   sight to be disastrous to the Christian faith. Multitudes relapsed into
   heathenism. [672] The larger half of the Christian community in
   Carthage and at least one presbyter had been unable to face the
   terrible risks in which the profession of Christianity had involved
   them. They relapsed. They appeared before the imperial commissioners,
   five of whom, called The Commissioners of the Sacrifices, were
   appointed to act along with the magistrates of the district. They made
   a declaration that they worshipped the gods and in the presence of the
   commissioners they took part in the pagan worship, either joining in a
   sacrifice, tasting the wine and eating of the sacrificial victim (the
   sacrificati) or throwing incense on the altar of the emperor (the
   thurificati). This done they received a certificate (libellus),
   certifying that they had done so. This was registered, and then a copy
   was posted up in the market place or forum. Some found a way of
   appearing to comply and yet of escaping from actual participation in
   the pagan rites. They bribed officials to give them certificates
   declaring that they had taken part in sacrifices which they had not
   done (the libellatici). [673] Thus poor Etecusa, [674] a Roman
   Christian, while she sadly and fearfully was climbing the ascent to the
   Capitol, where she had to make her declaration and take part in the
   sacrifices, found an official near the small temple to the Three Fates,
   who sold her a certificate and she went home again without sacrificing.
   Many sought safety in flight, hoping to find freedom from persecutions
   in cities where they were unknown.

   Those Christians who were of sterner stuff were imprisoned, awaiting
   torture and probably death. The torture was repeated over and over
   again. Even if it produced recantation a second torture was applied. If
   the confessor stood firm it might be applied time after time until the
   sufferer expired under it. Such men and women were called confessors
   before they had suffered, and martyrs after they had been done to
   death, or had suffered tortures without expiring. The martyrs and
   confessors were carefully tended while they were in prison by their
   fellow-Christians; and many of the lapsed, repenting of their weakness,
   thronged the prisons in Carthage and lavished all manner of attentions
   on the heroic confessors. These lapsed Christians, especially those of
   them who had purchased exemption from suffering by means of false
   certificates, were anxious to be reconciled with the Church, and
   besought the good offices of the confessors and martyrs to intercede on
   their behalf with the office-bearers, and beg them to restore them
   again to communion. The result was that many of the confessors, from
   the prison where they lay, gave letters (which were also called
   libelli) to the elders of the Church, the bishop being absent in
   hiding, asking that the bearers might be restored to the Church which
   they had abandoned in a moment of weakness. This Decian persecution
   differed from all preceding ones to this extent, that it had fallen on
   the whole Church of Christ, and was not confined to any one portion.
   The question of what was to be done in the case of lapsed members who
   wished to return to the faith they had abjured was one which was forced
   upon the whole Church everywhere and at the same time. [675] It was a
   question of discipline which had to be inevitably faced by every
   church.

   So far as our information goes, the leaders of the Roman Church were
   the first to see the importance and the urgency of the question. The
   Bishop Fabian had been one of the first martyrs; to meet and appoint a
   successor would have been to offer new victims to the persecuting
   government. The elders of the church took the burden of leadership on
   their own shoulders; they saw the universal situation and the need for
   an immediate understanding with sister churches about what it was
   possible to do at once. They put aside matters that could wait until
   their church had again its lawful head; but the one matter which
   pressed for an immediate decision was what ought to be done in the case
   of lapsed Christians who earnestly desired reconciliation with the
   Church, and who were on the point of death. They accordingly wrote to
   the elders in Carthage, advising them to follow a definite rule with
   regard to the lapsed who were repentant--that if any were taken with
   sickness, and repented of what they had done and desired communion, it
   should be granted to them. In the same letter these Roman elders speak
   not obscurely of Cyprian as the hireling shepherd who deserts his sheep
   when peril draws near. They in Rome and the elders in Carthage are both
   deprived of their chief; persecution makes all work difficult, but it
   must be done. This letter reached Cyprian, who treated it in a very
   lofty way, and sent it back to the writers with a few grimly sarcastic
   remarks; but it had a marked effect on him nevertheless. [676] It
   altered his attitude towards his own elders. Before he had read it he
   had sent a letter to his elders and deacons, in which he had said: "I
   beg you by your faith and your religion to discharge both your own
   office and mine, that there be nothing wanting either to discipline or
   diligence." [677] He left the whole work unreservedly in their
   hands--all his work as well as theirs. The two words used, disciplina
   and diligentia, are employed by Cyprian to denote the two great
   divisions of a bishop's work--the term disciplina including everything
   which belonged to the office of judging and punishing, and diligentia
   including all that belonged to his work as the head of the religious
   administration of the congregation, the care of the poor and such
   matters. In a letter following, however, he distinctly limited the work
   of his elders and deacons to the diligentia or to the religious
   administration. [678] "I exhort and command you, that those of you
   whose presence there is least suspicious and least perilous, should in
   my stead discharge my duty in respect of doing those things which are
   required for the religious administration." [679] In the same letter he
   refuses to answer a question sent him by four presbyters, which
   evidently concerned matters of discipline on the ground that in such
   matters he did nothing on his own private opinion without the advice of
   his elders, deacons, and people. [680] From this time onwards Cyprian
   shows himself more and more irritated with his elders. He wrote to the
   martyrs and the confessors complaining that some of his elders had
   admitted some of the lapsed to communion; [681] he wrote to his elders
   and deacons complaining that some of the elders, "remembering neither
   the Gospel nor their own place, and, moreover, considering neither the
   Lord's future judgment nor the bishop now placed over them, claim to
   themselves entire authority (a thing which was never done in anywise
   under our predecessors) with discredit and contempt of the bishop."
   Their fault was that the elders blamed had communicated with some of
   the lapsed, and offered and given them the eucharist, "disregarding the
   honour which the blessed martyrs, with the confessors, maintain for me,
   despising the law of the Lord, and that observance which the same
   martyrs and confessors order to be maintained." [682] He wrote to the
   people complaining of the action of the elders in almost the same
   terms, and promised that when he could return a meeting of bishops
   would be convened and that in the presence of the confessors, and with
   their opinion, the letters and wishes of the "blessed martyrs" with
   reference to the lapsed would be carefully considered. [683]

   We do not know whether Cyprian got any answer to these letters; but the
   probability is that he received none, and that people and clergy felt
   sore that the bishop would neither return and act himself nor allow his
   elders to do anything in the pressing question of the lapsed. He wrote
   again to the elders and deacons and for the first time suggested some
   immediate action. If any of the lapsed had a certificate from one of
   the martyrs and were in sore sickness they were to be allowed to
   communicate. [684] This letter brought an answer, which assured him
   that the elders and deacons had hitherto done their best to follow his
   instructions, and to restrain the people and especially the lapsed; and
   Cyprian reiterates the command that if any of the penitent lapsed had a
   certificate from one of the martyrs, and were at the point of death,
   they were to be received back into the communion of the Church. [685]

   Then comes a curious letter. [686] Cyprian, whose last dealings with
   Rome had been to send back the letter of advice which the Roman elders
   had addressed to their brethren at Carthage, now wrote to these Roman
   elders; justified to them his actions in Carthage; complained bitterly
   of the way in which the libellatici had pestered the martyrs for
   certificates; bemoaned the weakness of some of his clergy in admitting
   some of the lapsed to communion; and declared that he had followed the
   advice given in the letter from Rome which he had treated so scornfully
   when it reached him. His letter, however, contains one interesting
   fact. Cyprian says distinctly that although some of his presbyters had
   acted rashly in communicating with the lapsed, they had refrained as
   soon as he had remonstrated with them. [687] Rome, however, had not
   forgotten his earlier action, and he had to write four times ere he got
   an answer. When it came it was practically a repetition of what had
   been written to the elders of Carthage, at least so far as immediate
   action was concerned: If the lapsed are in severe sickness and are
   penitent, admit them to communion, whether they have certificates from
   martyrs or not. But as regards the larger, statesmanlike policy, which
   belonged to the immediate future, the Roman elders adopted the
   proposals laid before them by Cyprian, and by intercourse and
   correspondence they obtained the adhesion of many bishops in Sicily and
   in some parts of Italy. [688] Cyprian himself had meanwhile gained the
   adoption of his policy by a large number of bishops in Africa, with
   whom he had been in correspondence. [689]

   Having thus secured the support of the Roman elders and of so many
   bishops throughout the West for his conception of arriving at a common
   mode of dealing with the lapsed, Cyprian at once took measures to
   subdue all resistance in Carthage. He superseded his elders by a
   commission of five, three bishops and two elders, to whom he entrusted
   not merely the discipline, but also the relief of the deserving poor.
   They were to be his vicars. It was this action that produced the
   subsequent schism in the Church at Carthage, [690] a result scarcely to
   be wondered at. Why such an arbitrary step should have been taken it is
   difficult to say. Cyprian himself testifies that his clergy were at one
   with him; they had with his approval excommunicated Gaius of Didda, a
   presbyter who had insisted on communicating with the lapsed. However it
   is to be accounted for it remains a witness to what Cyprian believed to
   be the power of the chief pastor; and it also seems to imply that at
   this juncture Cyprian stood very much alone, separated in sympathy both
   from his clergy and his people.

   Such was the situation in Carthage immediately before Cyprian was able
   to return, and to hold the successive councils of African bishops which
   exhibited his ecclesiastical statesmanship. Through the whole course of
   these events one question thrusts itself into prominence--the
   possibility of the restoration to Church communion of Christians who
   had lapsed during the persecution, and who penitently begged to be
   allowed to return. Cyprian had one opinion on this matter and some of
   his elders had another.

   If the earlier usages of the Church be kept in mind, there was much to
   be said on both sides. Idolatry had always been considered one of the
   worst sins into which the baptized Christian could fall. It was one of
   those heinous sins against God which, it was believed, the Church could
   never pardon. No limits were set to the mercy of God; He might pardon
   and in the end receive; but the Church could only accept such repentant
   sinners as catechumens, who could never again approach the Lord's
   Table. On the other hand, it had been held that such sins could be
   pardoned in the Church if a revelation was received from God
   authorizing the restoration in any particular case. So long as the
   prophetic ministry lasted, it was believed that a prophet might receive
   such a revelation. [691] The opinion which silently spread through the
   Church that deadly sins might receive forgiveness once but not on a
   second lapse, can be traced back to a prophetic utterance. [692] It was
   also believed that, besides the prophets, the martyrs were the very men
   to whom it was likely that God would vouchsafe such a revelation of His
   mind and will. [693] They too had the right to speak the word of pardon
   which the office-bearers of the Church dared not do. To speak such
   pardons, then, was the prerogative of prophets and martyrs; [694] and
   it was theirs because the Spirit of God dwelt in them in larger measure
   than in any other Christians, whether office-bearers or not. Martyrs
   had used this prerogative of theirs in the past. The martyrs of Lyons
   had pronounced the pardon of the penitent lapsed around them; [695] and
   we can see from Tertullian, [696] how common a practice it was for men
   who, by reason of some great sin, were "outside the peace of the
   Church," to supplicate the martyrs to procure this peace for them.
   Hence the elders of Carthage might well plead that they were acting
   according to the ancient traditions of the Church when they were
   induced to give communion to those who came with the letters of the
   martyrs in their hands.

   On the other hand, Cyprian felt that the Decian persecution was a
   crisis which might make or mar the Church of God. The long rest from
   persecution had made conversion a comparatively easy thing, and the
   persecution, with the wholesale defections it had produced, had shown
   how bad these easy conversions had been for the stability of the
   Church. To make restoration an easy matter might do more harm to
   Christianity than the persecution itself. He was unwearied in urging,
   in his earliest letters, that lapsing into idolatry was a heinous sin
   against God, which must be bitterly repented in protracted sorrow.
   Hasty restoration was a profanity in his sight, and the demand for it
   did not seem to him to be a sign of the depth of sorrow that should
   exist. He knew that the churches had relaxed their former rigid
   attitude with regard to sins specially heinous; he had no word of
   disapproval for the practice; he believed that the churches had
   authority to forgive even the sin of idolatry--at least he must have
   come to believe that they had; [697] but with that strong view of
   authority which was his characteristic and with his ideas of orderly
   Church procedure, he was determined that the whole question of the
   lapsed ought to be gone into with the greatest deliberation. The
   dominant idea in his earliest epistles is that after the persecution
   had ceased the bishop, elders, deacons, confessors and people ought to
   meet together, and the question of the lapsed, their repentance and
   their pardon be deliberately dealt with. [698] The scene suggested by
   his words is what we know was the mode of discipline in the Roman
   Church after Calixtus' proclamation that the office-bearers at Rome
   were prepared to grant pardon for sins of the flesh on due signs of
   sorrow. Tertullian's description of the scene, although a caricature by
   a bitter opponent, conveys a not unfair impression of what must have
   frequently taken place. [699] Cyprian's later declaration that he meant
   to ask the assistance of bishops in the determination of so grave a
   matter is not incompatible with his earlier promises. [700]

   Suddenly he was brought face to face with a question of authority. To
   the grave Roman lawyer who had become a Christian bishop, the question
   of authority was the question of questions. Another authority suddenly
   confronted him within his own congregation. He could afford to be
   sarcastic in a dignified manner when the elders of the Church of Rome
   compared him to a hireling shepherd and then proceeded to give advice
   to his own office-bearers. That was from without; but this was from
   within; and had moreover some sanction from ancient usage. He felt
   bound to resist, and he did with all his powers.

   Thus this struggle successfully maintained by Cyprian against the right
   of the martyrs or confessors to pronounce pardon of one who had lapsed,
   may be looked upon as the last stage of the long contest waged by the
   office-bearers of the local churches against the ancient supremacy of
   the prophetic ministry. His success established the complete supremacy
   of the local office-bearers; it was never again questioned. Carthage
   had therefore a peculiar place in the development of the idea of the
   centre of authority in the Church of Christ in addition to the
   prominence given to it by the genius of its bishop. The martyrs and
   confessors do not seem to have contested the supremacy of the bishop or
   office-bearers anywhere else. At Rome, [701] at Alexandria and at
   Corinth, they all supported the ordinary ecclesiastical authorities.
   [702] In Carthage alone the confessors and martyrs strove to exert
   their power against that of the bishop, and found some of the
   office-bearers ready, at first at least, to accept their decisions as
   the commands of God.

   Felicissimus could say: "God speaks through His martyrs as He spoke in
   the old days through His prophets, and where God speaks there is His
   Church"; and the lapsed could send letters to Cyprian written in the
   name of the Church, because they were written by martyrs; while Cyprian
   could reply: "God speaks through the bishop as he formerly spoke
   through His apostles, and the Church is founded on the bishops, and
   every act of the Church is controlled by these same rulers." [703] Thus
   the two authorities faced each other in Carthage--at first within the
   one community--then, when the tension became too strong, in two
   separate congregations, in one of which Felicissimus and the five
   elders represented the old idea of authoritative divine utterance in
   the midst of the congregation; while in the other Cyprian insisted on
   the new thought, first proclaimed by Hippolytus and Calixtus in their
   mutual quarrels, that the bishops speak the divine decisions as the
   apostles had done. [704]

   Cyprian took this position from the first:--No one can be received back
   into the communion of the Church until penance has been performed,
   confession made, and the hands of the bishop and clergy are laid upon
   their heads. This cannot be done in the absence of the bishop, and
   therefore there can be no restitution of the lapsed until the "peace"
   comes and the bishop is able to return. But he was too great a man to
   be a doctrinaire theorist. When he found the strength of the martyrs'
   position in Carthage, when his humanity was touched with the thought of
   really penitent lapsed dying without the reconciliation they longed
   for, he permitted his elders to communicate with those invalids who had
   martyrs' certificates, although he could not be present himself to
   receive them formally, [705] and by nominating a distinguished martyr
   to be one of his commission of five, he managed to show the people that
   the whole strength of the martyrs was not on the side opposed to him.
   [706] Never from beginning to end did he acknowledge an authority in
   the local church superior or even equal to that of the bishop. He went
   the length of superseding his elders, the ancient counsellors of the
   bishop, when he thought that the influence of the martyrs over them was
   likely to weaken his. He was the despot, generally a benevolent despot,
   of the local church. His position might be due to his people, but he
   never imagined that his authority came from them; it came from God
   directly. That was his idea from first to last. The old theory that the
   bishop did not differ from the elders save in having a special seat of
   honour in the Church and in having the power to ordain, was not his. He
   was a Roman lawyer, and the analogies of imperial government were
   always before him. The governors of the imperial provinces, large or
   small, were nominated by the emperor and were responsible to him alone.
   It was their duty to govern for the benefit of the people over whom
   they were set, to take counsel with them and their leaders on the
   affairs of the province, but they were responsible to the emperor alone
   from whom their authority came. The Church had begun to copy the
   imperial organization in many things, as we shall see hereafter, and
   the analogy of the imperial government was never absent from the
   thoughts of the leaders during the second half of the third century.
   The bishops were the dispensatores Dei et Christi, as the governors
   were the deputies of the emperor. They were in God's place, set there
   by His authority, and responsible to Him alone. If their authority was
   recognized then they might take their people and their subordinate
   office-bearers into their confidence and into their counsels, but if it
   was in any way questioned, then they were alone with God against all
   gainsayers. [707]

   According to Cyprian's idea, the bishop entered upon the rights and
   duties of his office through ordination, which was the indispensable
   gate to all office in the Church. [708] His selection was commonly the
   act of the people, but neighbouring bishops might select him and
   present him to his people, whose assent must always be obtained before
   installation. [709] Whatever the mode of selection and of consecration,
   Cyprian saw in these acts the hand of God. It was God and God alone who
   made bishops, while it was the bishops who made the subordinate
   office-bearers. [710] His reason for his strong and reiterated
   assertions that bishops were made by God appears to have been that the
   appointment of a bishop, who is, "for the time, judge in Christ's
   stead," is such an important thing, that God who cares even for
   sparrows, must control the selection of bishops. [711]

   Once appointed, the bishop possessed the "sublime power of governing
   the Church," and was responsible to God alone for his deeds. [712] He
   was the autocrat within his own Church, and every act and office
   culminated in his person, just as the emperor absorbed in one man all
   the legal powers which under the earlier republican government had been
   distributed among several officials.

   The bishop had entire charge of the discipline of the congregation. It
   was his care to see that the brethren kept the divine precepts. It was
   his duty to instruct the people about what the discipline of the Church
   required, and to promote their growth in holiness. [713] To this end
   God might vouchsafe to grant him visions which he was bound to
   communicate to his people for their edification. [714] In all this the
   elders and deacons might assist, but always under the control of the
   bishop. [715] To him and to him alone belonged the right of "binding
   and loosing"--a right which had been given, he maintained, to St.
   Peter, and then to the other apostles, and which now belonged to the
   bishops who were for each generation what the apostles had been for the
   first. [716] No restoration of sinners was possible until the bishop
   had heard their confessions, until he had approved of their signs of
   sorrow, or until he, along with the presbyters and deacons, had placed
   his hands on their head in token of forgiveness. [717] He could
   institute new laws of discipline, but always in accordance with the
   Scriptural rules, and more suitably after consultation with other
   bishops. [718] To him belonged the power to prescribe the signs of
   sorrow, and to say what were sufficient in the way of prayers and of
   good works such as almsgiving. [719]

   He was also the head of the whole religious administration
   (diligentia). He was the almoner of the poor and the paymaster of the
   subordinate clergy. [720] For Cyprian seems to have been the first to
   make payments to the clergy, a first charge on the tenths and free-will
   offerings of the congregation. [721] He could give or withhold the
   monthly payments; and this of itself, when the elders and deacons were
   dependent on the Church for their livelihood, sufficed to make the
   bishop an autocrat over the clergy.

   The bishop was, therefore, according to Cyprian, the overseer of the
   brotherhood, the provost of the people, the pastor of the flock and the
   governor of the Church, and all these terms expressed the relations in
   which he, as supreme ruler, stood towards them. But he was more. He was
   also the representative of Christ and the priest of God. [722]

   According to Cyprian the bishop was the representative (antistes) of
   Christ in the community over which he ruled, and therefore he had the
   authority over that single congregation or church which our Lord
   possessed over the universal Church. He was the lord or viceroy over
   that portion of God's heritage. But Christ had this position of
   authority over His people because He represented His people in the
   presence of God; because He was their High Priest; because He had
   offered for them His own Body and Blood. The bishop, therefore, as the
   representative of Christ, is the priest of God, [723] who in the
   Eucharist offers to God the "Lord's Passion," and "truly discharges the
   office of Christ" when he imitates that which Christ did. "He offers a
   true and perfect sacrifice in the Church to God the Father, when he
   proceeds to offer it according to what he sees Christ Himself to have
   offered." The bishop brings the people into actual communion with
   Christ in the Eucharist, and they are united to Him in drinking the
   wine which is His Blood; whilst to God the Father is again presented
   the offering once made to Him by Christ. The bishop was also the
   representative of Christ because he received those who were introduced
   into the Church by baptism. [724] He was believed to bestow the Holy
   Spirit upon them in baptism and in the laying-on-of-hands. "They who
   are baptized in the Church," says Cyprian, "are brought to the
   praepositi of the Church, and by our prayers and by the imposition of
   hands obtain the Holy Spirit." [725] Thus the Church is built up around
   him. He creates it in baptism; he brings the members into continual
   contact with their Lord in the Eucharist, now become a sacrifice in
   which the communicants, as in pagan rites, were united to the deity by
   partaking of the flesh of the victim and drinking the wine of the
   libation. So that, to quote Cyprian: "they are the Church who are a
   people united to the priest and the flock which adheres to their pastor
   . . . the bishop is in the Church, and the Church is in the bishop."
   [726] Above all, the bishop is the representative of Christ because he
   is the judge to whom belongs the power of punishing or remitting sins.
   This idea is continually before Cyprian. "They only who are set over
   the Church . . . can remit sins." [727] He quotes again and again Deut.
   xvii. 12: "The man that doeth presumptuously in not hearkening unto the
   priest that standeth to minister there before the Lord thy God, or to
   the judge, that man shall die." [728] He discourses on the sin of
   Israel in refusing obedience to the Priest Samuel. [729] It is the
   authority of the priest that he has always in view.

   But while the thought of implicit obedience to the bishop is foremost
   in his mind, the sacerdotal conception was not absent. He conceived
   that the bishops were a special priest-hood and had a special sacrifice
   to offer. This was a new thought in the Church of Christ. It was really
   introduced by Cyprian, and it requires a little explanation.

   In Christianity we find from the beginning the thoughts of priest and
   of sacrifice. The two conceptions always go together, and whatever
   meaning is attached to the one determines that of the other. The idea
   of a sacrifice offered in the Christian congregation was continually
   present, and from the beginning it was intimately connected with the
   Eucharist. But the thoughts suggested by the words were always
   evangelical. It was believed that all Christians were priests before
   God, and that all had to do the priestly work of sacrificing. The
   sacrifices of the Church, the bloodless sacrifices predicted by the
   prophet Malachi, [730] were the prayers, the praises, and the worship
   of the believers. The Holy Supper, which was the supreme part of the
   Christian worship, was a sacrifice because it was an act of worship,
   and because it combined, as no other act did, the prayers of all the
   worshippers and the gifts or oblations of bread and wine which were
   given by the worshippers and were used partly in the Holy Supper and
   partly to distribute among the poor. The idea of the priesthood of all
   believers was firmly rooted in the thoughts of the early Christians,
   even although the constant use of the Old Testament naturally led them
   from a very early period to draw some comparisons between the leaders
   of their public devotions and the priests and Levites of the Jewish
   Church. [731] When they began to explain to themselves and to others
   what the sacraments of baptism and the Holy Supper were, it was almost
   inevitable that thoughts connected with those portions of pagan worship
   most nearly related to sacraments should come into their minds. Hence
   the pagan mysteries formed the outline of the picture which presented
   itself to their imaginations when they tried to describe what the
   sacraments meant. [732] This inevitable habit could not fail to bring
   many superstitious conceptions round the sacraments, and many such did
   connect themselves with them. Notwithstanding this, the evangelical
   thought that the sacrifices of the New Covenant are the worship of the
   people, and that the priesthood is the whole worshipping congregation
   was always the ruling idea. The sacrifice in the Holy Supper was a
   sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving, and the sacrificial act was the
   prayers and the thanksgivings of the worshippers. Apologists [733]
   defended the lack of material sacrifices in the Christian religion, and
   Justin Martyr could say that "prayers and giving of thanks
   (eucharistia), when offered by worthy men, are the only perfect and
   well-pleasing sacrifices to God." [734]

   But if the whole people were the priests, and if the main thought in
   priesthood was authority and supremacy in judging in all matters of
   rule and discipline, then the people, the congregation, were the rulers
   in the last resort. But this primitive conception did not suit the
   ideas which Cyprian, the Roman lawyer, had about the special
   omnipotence of the bishop, the representative of Christ in Heaven, as
   the local governor was of the Emperor in Rome. His thought was that the
   bishop was the priest, and that the people were not priests but those
   whom the priest introduced into the presence of God. The whole
   conception of Christian thought began to change, and the change dates
   from Cyprian and his influence.

   The changes made by Cyprian in the early Christian ideas of sacrifice
   and priest can be best seen by comparing his language with that of
   Tertullian, his "master" in theology. In Tertullian we have the old
   ideas that the prayers of the Christian, public and private, are his
   sacrifices, and that all Christians are priests because they can offer
   sacrifices of prayer and thanks-giving well-pleasing to God. He calls
   the Holy Supper a sacrifice--which it is, a sacrifice of prayer and
   thanksgiving--but he never thinks of it as a sacrifice of a distinct
   and special kind to be carefully discriminated from the prayers of the
   people. On the other hand, Cyprian is very careful to distinguish
   between prayer and the Holy Supper in the sense that he never calls the
   one a sacrifice, while he invariably gives that name to the other. He
   never thinks of all the worshippers sacrificing; on the contrary, he is
   careful to distinguish between what the people and what the priests do
   in the sacrament--the people offer oblations, but the priest offers a
   sacrifice. There is, according to his idea, a specific sacrifice
   offered by a specific (not simply a ministering) priesthood in the Holy
   Supper. The sacrifice which is offered, is, as we have seen, the
   "Passion of the Lord, the Blood of Christ," the "Divine Victim." He was
   the first to suggest, for his language goes no further than suggestion,
   that the Holy Supper is a repetition of the agony and death of our Lord
   on the Cross--a thought never present to the mind of an earlier
   generation. The ministry has become, in his eyes, or is becoming, a
   mediating priesthood with power to offer for the people the great
   sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

   His thought of priesthood also leads him to externalize, if the
   expression may be allowed, the whole thought of sorrow and repentance.
   In early times if Christians fell into sin, they were required to
   confess their sins publicly and to exhibit manifest signs of sorrow.
   These signs were not always stereotyped:--prayers accompanied by tears
   and groanings, fasting and giving the food thus saved to the poor,
   setting free a slave or slaves, abundant almsgiving. The penitents were
   required to perform some open act of self-denial to show that their
   sorrow was a real thing. Of course the tendency was to connect these
   signs of sorrow directly with the pardon which followed, and even
   Tertullian was accustomed to speak of such signs of sorrow as something
   well-pleasing to God, in the sense that God accepted them as
   meritorious and forgave on their account. Cyprian was the first to lay
   hold on this familiar practice of penitence, and use it as a means to
   establish the power of the bishop. His thought seems to have been that
   some special "good works" were needed to secure the pardon of God for
   sins committed after baptism, [735] and that the good works must
   commend themselves to the bishop, who was the "priest of God" and the
   "representative of our Lord"--for with Cyprian priest and bishop are
   synonymous terms.

   Thus the earlier idea of a Christian ministry was changed into the
   conception of a mediating priesthood. Behind the change of thought was
   the new conception of the authority of the clergy over the laity and of
   the bishop over all. In respect of their historical origin the ideas of
   the omnipotence of the bishop, of a succession from the apostles, and
   of a special and mediating priesthood, all hang together, and what made
   for the one made for the others. No sooner had they found entrance into
   the Christian Church than they were followed by a large influx of other
   allied ideas taken over from the paganism which lay around them.

   This thought of apostolic succession which is to be found in Cyprian
   was very different from what is seen both in Irenaeus and in
   Tertullian. It was not a succession from the apostles but a succession
   of apostles. The historical matter-of-fact succession disappeared, and
   the conception became a creation of dogmatic imagination. The thought
   of succession from the apostles, in a line of office-bearers creating a
   vital connexion between the generations as they passed, was scarcely in
   Cyprian's mind. Unless memory fails me, Cyprian only once alludes to
   it: "All chief rulers who by vicarious ordination succeed to the
   apostles." [736] For Cyprian's thought is that the bishops do really
   represent, not the apostles, but Christ. As the apostles were the
   representatives of Christ to the first generation and received from Him
   power to forgive sins, so each succeeding generation possesses
   representatives of Christ, who have the same power to forgive sins.
   Hence the thought on which he lays so much stress, that bishops are
   directly appointed by God and not by man; the want of any deeper idea
   of ordination than a mere installation or orderly appointment to
   office; the belief that the gifts which bishops possess of government
   and power to forgive sins are more personal than official--all combine
   to make his conception that bishops are apostles endued with the very
   same powers that the twelve possessed directly from Jesus, something
   very different from what is commonly meant by apostolic succession in
   modern Christendom. He founds the divine appointment of bishops on the
   argument that since God cares even for sparrows much more must He
   directly control a matter of such importance as the appointments of
   bishops! [737] He holds that bishops who are guilty of any heinous sin
   are ipso facto bishops no longer, and that their congregations ought to
   separate themselves from them and acknowledge neither their office nor
   their authority. [738] The bishops in North Africa arrived at their
   decisions in the case of the lapsed "by the suggestion of the Holy
   Spirit and the admonition of the Lord, conveyed by many and manifest
   visions"--an inspiration which was personal and not official. [739] All
   these things give a certain uniqueness to Cyprian's theory of apostolic
   succession which is often forgotten. But whatever his theory was, his
   conviction remained, that the bishop was the autocrat over his
   congregation, and that where he was, there was the Church.

   The real statesmanship of Cyprian was shown, not so much in his
   conception, theoretical and practical, of the episcopal office, as in
   his making use of the opportunity of the widespread crisis provoked by
   the question of the lapsed to sketch a polity which would give the
   thought of one universal Church of Christ a visible and tangible shape.
   His idea was not a new one. The conceptions of statesmen seldom are
   novelties. Councils had been held on ecclesiastical matters before
   Cyprian's days. They were first held in Asia Minor in the times of the
   early Montanist movement, and had become somewhat common in Greece as
   early as the days of Tertullian. [740] They were called to deliberate
   and settle not only the deeper questions of faith, but the
   ecclesiastical usages to be observed by the churches represented. The
   habit of holding these deliberative assemblies which did in some
   measure represent the churches of a district or province was
   widespread, and enabled churches lying within convenient distance from
   each other to become a confederation, having the same ecclesiastical
   usages and rules of Christian life.

   What Cyprian did was to seize upon what he believed to be the
   principles underlying this practice and formulate them in such a way as
   to make visible and tangible the unity of the Catholic Church which was
   universally held to exist. The thought of the visible unity of the
   Church of Christ was as old as Christianity. St. Paul had dwelt on it
   in his epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians. Cyprian
   repeated it in his famous passage, felicitously rendered by Dr. Benson:
   "There is one Church which outspreads itself into a multitude (of
   churches), wider and wider in ever increasing fruitfulness, just as the
   sun has many rays but only one light, and a tree many branches yet only
   one heart, based in the clinging root; and, while many rills flow from
   one fountain-head, although a multiplicity of waters is seen streaming
   away in diverse directions from the bounty of its abundant overflow,
   yet unity is preserved in the head-spring." [741] That was the old old
   thought. Cyprian's statesmanship was seen in the method he formulated
   for making this ideal unity something which could take visible shape in
   a polity which would produce an harmonious activity throughout all the
   parts. His practical thought was, that as each bishop sums up in
   himself the church over which he presides, the whole Church of Christ
   practically exists in the whole of the bishops, and the harmonious
   action of the whole Church can be expressed through the common action
   and agreement of all the bishops. This did not mean to him that every
   bishop was to think in the same way, or to pursue the same policy, or
   that there might not be very grave differences on very important,
   almost fundamental, matters; but it did mean that if they differed they
   were to agree to differ, and perhaps this last thought was the most
   important one practically. It is easy to be in accord when there are no
   differences to separate. Cyprian's thought was that there could be and
   ought to be agreement amidst differences. He preserved intact the
   independence of every bishop. The man who stood forth as the eloquent
   spokesman of the unity of the one Church of Christ was the champion of
   the independence of the most insignificant bishop whose congregation
   might be the church of a hamlet. He was as magnanimous in his own
   conduct as in his thought. In the two great controversies in which he
   was engaged he showed himself able to subordinate his own feelings and
   cherished opinions to the wishes of others. The African bishops did not
   adopt Cyprian's scheme for receiving back the repentant lapsed; they
   were much more lenient than he would have been if his opinion had
   prevailed. [742] He felt strongly and spoke warmly on the question of
   the baptism of heretics, and carried his African colleagues with him;
   but when the majority of the Church was plainly against him he
   respected the decision, however he might dislike it. The case of
   Therapius shows how far he was prepared to go in respecting the
   independence of a colleague. [743] He insisted again and again that one
   bishop cannot judge another, and that no one can judge a bishop but
   God, so strongly does he vindicate the independence of bishops and by
   implication of the churches over which they rule. [744] The unanimity
   which he pleaded for among bishops was not one to be produced by force
   but by brotherly persuasion, it being always understood that Holy
   Scripture and the apostolic tradition were their guides. [745]

   If we may judge from some scattered allusions it is possible to see how
   Cyprian conceived that his scheme might work so as to produce a harmony
   not merely of bishops but of the whole Christian community throughout
   the world. If anything requiring deliberation arose, the first care of
   the bishop was to consult his elders and deacons, the deacons being the
   "eyes and ears of the bishop," to let him know what the people thought.
   If there was any doubt about the opinion of the people then the
   question might be referred to a congregational meeting [746] and
   deliberated upon by bishop, elders, deacons and people. [747] Cyprian
   always shows the strongest desire to carry the people along with him.
   [748] It is not certain whether their opinions were taken in any formal
   way at the councils held under the presidency of Cyprian at Carthage,
   but the Christian people of Carthage were always present at the
   councils. [749] These meetings can hardly be called "representative,"
   as Dr. Benson calls them. An autocrat may do his best to consult the
   people and to carry them along with him. Yet he can scarcely be called
   their representative.

   In fact Cyprian's conception of the bishop as the direct
   representative, not of his congregation, but of Christ, endued with
   powers coming directly from God and in no sense from the Christian
   people, was precisely the reason why his conception of a polity to
   embody the whole Church has never proved a workable theory; and soon
   after Cyprian's time it fell before another and very different
   conception with which Cyprian had no sympathy, and yet to which his own
   led when his thought of the autocracy of the bishop was applied to a
   wider field. We can see how his theory failed himself at his sorest
   need. He desired to carry his office-bearers with him. His first idea
   was to consult with the office-bearers, as was evidently the custom.
   When he began to doubt whether they would support him he turned to the
   laity. When he began to doubt whether the laity did not support the
   presbyters rather than himself, he not obscurely threatened them with
   the decisions of the neighbouring bishops; [750] and in the end the
   consultation was not with his elders and deacons, and not with his
   people, but with the neighbouring bishops, in what was called the first
   council of Carthage, where the people of Carthage were undoubtedly
   present, though probably only as overawed assistants.

   Another conception of how the universal and visible Church could make
   its ideal universality apparent to the eyes of men had been introduced
   before Cyprian's days; it confronted himself during the second great
   controversy which he had to wage, and it triumphed in the West after
   his death. More than one bishop of Rome had put forward the idea that
   the unity of the Christian Church could only be made truly visible when
   all the Christian churches grouped themselves round the bishop who sat,
   it was said, in the chair of St. Peter, and whose congregation had its
   abode in the capital of the civilized world. [751] They justified this
   claim ecclesiastically by quoting our Lord's words to St. Peter,
   recorded in Matt. xvi., but its practical strength lay in the fact that
   they presided over the church in the city of Rome. So strong was
   Cyprian's influence in the centuries after his death that Roman
   Catholic canonists felt the need of quoting him as the supporter of
   their claims for the primacy of the Roman See, and accordingly they
   have interpolated his De Unitate Ecclesiae in a manner almost beyond
   belief. [752] Cyprian was the determined opponent of this theory of a
   primacy in Rome, and constituted himself, as has been said, the
   champion of the ecclesiastical parity of all bishops, however
   insignificant their positions might be, nor would he allow any
   distinction to be drawn between churches founded by actual apostles and
   those which had come into being in later times. [753] He did concede a
   certain pre-eminence to Rome, partly on ecclesiastical grounds, and
   partly because of the greatness of the city. [754] But he held that all
   bishops had equal ecclesiastical rights, and that the unity of the
   Church found expression in a united episcopate and not in the primacy
   of an episcopus episcoporum.

   At the same time it was almost inevitable that Cyprian's idea that the
   local church was constituted in the local bishop to such an extent that
   without obedience to him men could not belong to the Church at all,
   should lead to the conception that a united episcopate could only be
   truly united if all the bishops owed obedience to one bishop of
   bishops. A one-man theory of the local church could hardly fail to
   suggest or to support a one-man theory of the Church universal. The
   theory that the bishop owed his power, not to the influence of the
   Spirit of God working in and through the Christian community, but to
   something either given by God directly or transmitted in such a way as
   to be independent of the spiritual life of the membership and above it,
   could scarcely fail to suggest a transmission of unique prerogatives to
   the bishop who was supposed to occupy the chair of St. Peter. Men who
   insist on an episcopal gift of grace, "specific, exclusive, efficient,"
   coming from a source higher than the Holy Spirit working in and through
   the membership of the Church, may protest against the thought that
   their theories lead to the conception of a "bishop of bishops," but the
   unsparing logic of history sweeps their protests aside.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [632] Deut. xvii. 12, 13; Cyprian, Epist. iii. 1 (lxiv.); iv. 4 (lxi.);
   xliii. 7 (xxxix.); lix. 4 (liv.); lxvi. 3 (lxviii.).

   [633] Compare Tertullian, Against Marcion, iv. 9. The Canons of Basil,
   though very much later than the period now described, retain ideas
   which may enable us to conceive the attitude of the early Christian
   society. They declare that a murderer must be excluded from the society
   for twenty years; a homicide for ten years, which are to be spent in
   the following way--two years in mourning, three years admitted to the
   meeting for exhortation, and five years admitted among the faithful but
   not allowed to come forward and partake of the Holy Communion. For one
   who has been baptized and has lapsed from the faith, the penitence must
   be life long, and the penitent is to be allowed to communicate only
   when he is on his deathbed. Compare Riedel's Kirchenrechtsquellen des
   Patriarchats der Alexandrien (1900), pp. 243, 244. The sins named by
   Tertullian are:--Idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery, fornication,
   false-witness and fraud.

   [634] Hermas, Mandata, iv. 3; Visiones, iii. 7; Tertullian, De
   Pudicitia, 21.

   [635] Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum, 20:--"They then (the
   apostles) in like manner founded Churches in every city, from which all
   the other Churches, one after another, derived the tradition of the
   faith and the seeds of doctrine, and are every day deriving them, that
   they may become Churches. Indeed it is on this account only that they
   will be able to account themselves apostolic, as being the offspring of
   apostolic Churches. . . . Therefore the Churches, although they are so
   many and so great, comprise but the one primitive Church founded by the
   apostles from which they all spring. In this way all are primitive, and
   all are apostolic, whilst they are all proved to be one, in unity, by
   their salutation of peace (communicatio pacis), and title of
   brotherhood, and bond of hospitality (contesseratio
   hospitalitatis)--rights which no other rule directs than the one
   tradition of the self-same mystery."

   [636] Clement, 1 Epist. v. 4-6; Ignatius, Epistle to the Romans,
   preface; Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. II. xxv. 8; IV. xxiii. 10; V. xxiii.,
   xxiv.; VII. v. 2; Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III. i. iii.; Tertullian,
   De Praescript. 24; Scorpiace, 15; Against Marcion, IV. 5.

   [637] See above, p. 268.

   [638] Compare above, p. 24.

   [639] Compare Tertullian, De Praescriptione, xx., xxxii. and especially
   xxxvi.

   [640] That is the Montanism which included men like Tertullian. Compare
   above p. 238.

   [641] Tertullian, De Pudicitia, 21:--"The power of loosing and binding
   committed to Peter had nothing to do with the capital sins of
   believers; and if the Lord had given him a precept that he must grant
   pardon to a brother sinning against him even seventy times seven-fold,
   of course He would have commanded him to bind'--that is to
   retain--nothing subsequently, unless perchance such sins as one may
   have committed against the Lord and not against a brother. For the
   forgiveness of sins committed in the case of a man is a prejudgment
   against the remission of sins against God. What now about the
   Church--your psychic Church? For in accordance with the person of
   Peter, it is to spiritual men that this power will correspondingly
   appertain, either to an apostle or else to a prophet. For the Church
   itself is, properly and principally the Spirit Himself. . . . And
   accordingly the Church,' it is true, will forgive sins; but the Church
   of the Spirit, by a spiritual man; not the Church which consists of a
   number of bishops. For the right and arbitrament is the Lord's, not the
   servant's; God's Himself and not the priest's." Tertullian's argument
   is that the power was given to Peter because he was inspired of the
   Father to confess Christ. He was a spiritual man. Cf. Döllinger,
   Hippolytus and Callistus (Eng. Trans.), pp. 116 f.

   [642] Tertullian tells us (De Pudicitia, 21), that the new prophecy,
   speaking in the name of the Spirit had said "The church has the power
   to forgive sins; but I will not do it lest they commit others."

   [643] That is in the years between the persecution under Severus and
   that under Decius.

   [644] Earlier in the Corinthian Church, if we are to believe Eusebius.
   Compare his Hist. Eccl. IV. xxiii. 6.

   [645] This statement appears to be borne out by what Tertullian says in
   his tract on Repentance:--"In the vestibule God has stationed
   repentance the second to open to such as knock; but now once for all,
   because now for a second time; but never more, for the last time it had
   been in vain" (7).

   [646] Tertullian's attack is to be found in his work on Modesty (De
   Pudicitia), and Hippolytus' in his work against Heresies
   (Philosophumena), ix. 6, 7. It has been commonly said that the bishop
   of Rome attacked by Tertullian was Zephyrinus; compare Langen,
   Geschichte der röm. Kirche, i. 217 ff., and Döllinger, Hippolytus and
   Callistus (1876), Eng. Trans., p. 117; but see Harnack, Herzog's
   Real-Encyclopaedie, x. 656, and in the Zeitschrift für
   Kirchengeschichte (1876-77), p. 582.

   [647] There is no doubt that as Döllinger says (Hippolytus and
   Callistus (Eng. Trans.), p. 117) the power of a bishop in the beginning
   of the third century was anything but absolute, being limited by both
   the elders and the laity. "No one who knows the life of the Church at
   that time will believe that Callistus introduced a practice previously
   unknown in Rome against the will of his presbytery (session)."

   [648] Calixtus openly claimed this power to pardon, because he was the
   successor of St. Peter, to whom Christ had given power to remit sins
   (Tertullian, De Pudicitia, 21).

   [649] As late as the beginning of the fourth century the Spanish Church
   insisted on visiting certain sins with perpetual excommunication, while
   the council of Ancyra held about the same time in the east set a
   limited penalty on the very sins for which the council of Elvira had
   decreed a perpetual excommunication--so impossible is it to make
   general statements about ecclesiastical usages in the early centuries.

   [650] Cyprian, Epistle, lv. 21 (li.).

   [651] Compare Tertullian's phrases in the De Pudicitia:--"A profitable
   fickleness . . ."; "easier to err with the majority" (1); his statement
   of sins for which it is proper to provide repentance (7), etc. Compare
   Hippolytus on Heresies, ix. 7. Although the account of Hippolytus must
   be taken with some caution as the statements of a bitter opponent, yet
   it seems clear that Calixtus expected to detach many from the churches
   of his opponents in Rome by this policy of relaxation from the old
   strictness; and that his policy was successful. There must have been
   four or five different bodies of Christians in Rome at this time, each
   esteeming itself to be the Church of Christ.

   [652] An interesting parallel might be drawn between the evangelical
   root in the sixteenth-century doctrine of indulgence and the
   evangelical basis of this manifesto. Compare my Luther, p. 62.

   [653] The proclamation of Calixtus, as quoted by Tertullian, was: I
   remit to such as have discharged repentance, the sins of adultery and
   fornication (De Pudiatia, 1)

   [654] Compare below, p. 352 ff.

   [655] Compare above, p. 224 ff.

   [656] "But none will refute these (heretics), save the Holy Spirit
   bequeathed unto the Church, which the apostles having in the first
   instance received, have transmitted to those who rightly believed. But
   we, as being their successors, and as participators in this grace,
   high-priesthood, and office of teaching, as well as being reputed
   guardians of the Church, will not be found deficient in vigilance, or
   disposed to suppress correct doctrine," Refutation of all Heresies
   (Philosophumena), I., proemium. Hippolytus attacks Calixtus in IX. vi.
   vii. He says of his discipline:--"For he is in the habit of attending
   the congregation of any one else, who is called a Christian; should a
   man commit any transgression, the sin, they say, is not reckoned to
   him, provided only he hurries off to the school of Calixtus," IX. vii.
   Calixtus is the bishop of Rome whom Tertullian attacks in his De
   Pudicitia, and whose proclamation he quotes:--"I remit, to such as have
   discharged repentance, the sins of adultery and fornication" (1).

   [657] Harnack, whose careful chronological investigations have led him
   to believe that the Roman list of bishops or pastors may be trusted
   from Anicetus (about 155 A.D.) or from Soter (about 166), while no
   Oriental list can be trusted before the third century, regards this as
   an indication that the theory of apostolic succession in its beginnings
   at least had become established in Rome at a comparatively early date.
   Compare Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur, pp. 144-230; and
   his History of Dogma, Eng. Trans. (1894-99). ii. 70 n.

   [658] Apostolic Constitutions, I. i.

   [659] Ibid. II. i.

   [660] The bishop is told to sustain the character of God among men, "as
   being set over all men, over priests, kings, rulers, fathers, children,
   teachers, and in general over all who are subject" to him; Apostolic
   Constitutions, II. xi.; "It is thy privilege (O bishop), to govern
   those under thee, but not to be governed by them" (II. xiv.); the laic
   is to "honour him, love him, reverence him as his lord, as his master,
   as the high-priest of God, as a teacher of piety; for he that heareth
   him heareth Christ; and he that rejecteth him rejecteth Christ" (II.
   xx.); "the bishop, he is the minister of the word, the keeper of
   knowledge, the mediator between God and you in the several parts of
   your divine worship; he is your ruler and governor; he is your king and
   potentate; he is, next after God, your earthly god, who has a right to
   be honoured by you" (II. xxvi.); and so on in Oriental luxuriance of
   phrases. It is not that there was no sense of the continuity of office
   in the East:--"It is also thy duty, O, bishop, to have before thine
   eyes the examples of those who have gone before, and to apply them
   skilfully to the cases of those who want words of severity or of
   consolation" (II. xxii.).

   [661] "Let also a double portion (of the firstfruits) be set apart for
   the elders, as for such as labour continually in the word and doctrine,
   upon the account of the apostles of our Lord, whose place they sustain,
   as the counsellors of the bishop and the crown of the Church (II.
   xxviii.).

   [662] Speaking of those who attain to "gnostical perfection," Clement
   says (Stromata, VI. xiii.):--"Luminous already, and like the sun
   shining in the exercise of beneficence, he speeds by righteous
   knowledge through the love of God to the sacred abode, like as the
   apostles. . . . Those then also, who have exercised themselves in the
   Lord's commandments, and lived perfectly and gnostically according to
   the Gospel may be now enrolled in the chosen body of the apostles. Such
   an one is in reality an elder of the Church, and a true deacon of the
   will of God if he do and teach what is the Lord's; not as being chosen
   by men, nor regarded as righteous because a presbyter, but enrolled in
   the eldership because righteous. And although here upon earth he be not
   honoured with the chief seat, he will sit down on the four-and-twenty
   thrones, judging the people, as St. John says in the Apocalypse. For in
   truth the covenant of salvation, reaching down to us from the
   foundation of the world, through different generations and times, is
   one, though conceived as different in respect of gifts."

   [663] The Neo-Platonists believed that the true philosophy was
   preserved to the world through a succession of divinely inspired
   teachers.

   [664] The best edition of Cyprian's works is that of J. Hartel
   (1868-71) in the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum,
   where the letters are to be found in the second volume. The numbering
   of the letters in this edition is the same as in the Oxford edition of
   1682; Migne's edition has a different numbering. In our quotations
   Migne's numbering is given in brackets. A very suggestive account of
   Cyprian's work in constructing the polity of the Church is given by
   Albrecht Ritschl in his Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche, 2nd
   ed. (1857), pp. 555-73. Otto Ritschl, his son, has written Cyprian von
   Karthago and die Verfassung der Kirche (1885)--a careful and elaborate
   work. Other monographs on Cyprian are:--Rettberg, Thascius Caecilius
   Cyprianus, Bischof von Carthago, dargestellt nach seinen Leben und
   Wirken (1831). Fechtrup (Roman Catholic), Der Heilige Cyprian; sein
   Leben und seine Lehre (1878). Pearson's Annales Cyprianici are
   valuable; they are published in Fell's (Oxford) edition of Cyprian's
   works (1682), and have been republished in Pearson's Minor Theological
   Works (1884). The latest book on Cyprian is from the pen of Dr. Benson,
   the late archbishop of Canterbury, who was the author of the article on
   Cyprian in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. The book is entitled
   Cyprian, his Life, his Times, his Work (1897). From one point of view
   it is impossible to praise this book too highly; but it has very grave
   defects. It displays fine scholarship, unwearied research, and an
   historical imagination which enables the author to reconstruct the
   secular society of the times when Cyprian lived. The framing is
   excellent; but the portrait framed is scarcely so good. The author
   exhibits to us a pious, suave, courteous, far-seeing ecclesiastical
   statesman, whose letters and speeches were seasoned with a sarcastic
   humour; but the real Cyprian had other characteristics which are either
   hidden out of sight or relegated to an obscure background. We see
   nothing whatever of the prophet whom the Spirit inspired in dreams and
   visions when moments of difficulty in life or in ecclesiastical policy
   arose, and whose dread of demons changed spiritual sacraments into
   magical rites; little of the canonist who measured the deep promptings
   of the heart's repentance by stereotyped expressions, and paved the way
   for the degradation of sorrow into the mechanism of penance; little of
   the fiery Roman African who launched envenomed phrases at
   ecclesiastical opponents; and nothing of the ruthless Roman lawyer who
   condemned a Christian martyr, who had survived the tortures which had
   covered her poor body with blood, to eternal perdition (for this he
   thought he could do as a successor of the apostles), when she crossed
   the path of his ecclesiastical policy. Then a curious colour blindness
   or perhaps an amiable propensity to see all things ecclesiastical
   through the coloured glass of the modern institutions of the communion
   over which he so worthily presided, prevents the author from seeing the
   ecclesiastical situation which existed in the middle of the third
   century. Dr. Benson had evidently great difficulty in stating an
   opponent's argument fairly, and seldom succeeds in doing so. He had no
   acquaintance with the organization of any branch of the Protestant
   Church save his own, and yet makes continual allusion to other
   organizations. We have such phrases as "Presbyterian Teutonism" (this
   is applied to the greatest living authority in early Church history;
   Dr. Harnack of Berlin); "heavy pages," "laborious pages" (phrases which
   mean that an opinion Dr. Benson does not like is supported by a
   plentiful supply of quotations from Cyprian's writings), "Calvinism"
   (used at random, for Calvinists agree with Cyprian and Augustine on the
   matter discussed); and many others of the same kind. They are useful to
   warn the unwary reader of the bias in the book.

   [665] "Far from any shade of unreality resting on them, the teachers of
   oratory were courted leaders in society. The publicity in life, the
   majesty of national audiences, the familiarity of the cultivated
   classes with the teaching of the schools, required the orator to be not
   only perfect in the graces of life, but to be versed in ethical
   science; to be armed with solid arguments as well as to be facile of
   invention; not less convincing than attractive; in short to be a wit
   and a student, a politician and an eclectic philosopher. At the age of
   nearly thirty Cicero was still placing himself under the tuition of the
   Rhodian Molon. Augustine's fourth book on Christian doctrine shews us
   that five centuries and a changed religion did not abate the value
   placed on technical perfection. No statesman's name had for generations
   commanded such reverence as was paid in Cyprian's times to the life and
   memory of Timesitheus the Rhetorician, whose daughter the young African
   Emperor had espoused, and whose honour and universal cultivation had
   for a brief interval restored purity to the Court, dignity to the
   senate, and discipline to the camps of Rome"; Benson, Cyprian, his
   Life, his Times, his Work, pp. 2, 3.

   [666] Cyprian, Ad Donatum, 15:--"Auro distincta aquearia of pretiosi
   marmoris crustis vestita domicilia."

   [667] Pontius, Life and Passion of Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr, 5.

   [668] Benson, Cyprian, his Life, his Times, his Work, p. 41 and note.

   [669] It may be useful to give the principal dates known proximately
   about Cyprian. He was baptized probably in the spring of 246 A.D.;
   became a member of the Session of Carthage in 247 A.D.; and was
   consecrated bishop some time after June in 248 A.D. It is not quite
   certain that he was a deacon; the evidence lies in the phrase used by
   his biographer Pontius, who was a deacon:--"Erat sane illi etiam de
   nobis contubernium viri justi et laudabilis memoriae Caeciliani" (Life,
   4); and in the sentence in sect. 3:--"quis enim non omnes honoris
   gradus crederet tali mente credente." The outbreak of the Decian
   persecution being imminent, Cyprian retired from Carthage to his
   unknown hiding-place in January 250 A.D.; the persecution began in
   April of the same year. It raged fiercely until November, and was then
   relaxed; but it was not considered safe for Cyprian to return. He came
   back to Carthage in 251 A.D., some time after Easter. Then followed a
   series of councils at Carthage where the African bishops met under the
   presidency of Cyprian;--the first in April 251 A.D.; the second in May
   252 A.D., the third in September 253 A.D., the fourth in the autumn of
   254 A.D., the fifth in 255, and the sixth and seventh in 256; in 257
   Cyprian was banished to Curubis; he returned to Carthage in 258 and was
   martyred there in September 258.

   [670] It is commonly said and has been repeated by Dr. Benson that the
   five presbyters who were at variance with Cyprian in the question of
   the influence of confessors and martyrs on the discipline of the Church
   were among those persons who disliked his elevation to the episcopate
   and that they continued to bear a grudge against him. This idea seems
   to me to have no basis in fact. Dr. Benson adduces as his only proof
   the sentence: "retaining that ancient venom against my episcopate, that
   is against your suffrage and God's judgment, they renew their old
   attack upon me" (Ep. xliii. 1 [xxxix.]); but the "ancient venom" and
   "old attack" it is clear from section three and other epistles, was
   their first siding with the confessors against Cyprian's judgment not
   to accept the certificates of the confessors; while the word "suffrage"
   means here as elsewhere that Cyprian held that all his acts as bishop
   were to be justified by the fact that he had been validly called to
   office. There is no trace of any difficulties between Cyprian and his
   presbyters until the dispute about what was due to the wishes of the
   martyrs and the confessors in the matter of the lapsed.

   [671] Cyprian, Epist. lxvi. 7 (lxviii.).

   [672] Cyprian, De Lapsis, 8.

   [673] Two of these libelli were actually discovered in 1893 and 1894,
   brought from Egypt among bundles of papyri dug out of Egyptian sands.
   They show us how thorough this persecution of Decius was, how
   systematically arranged, how minute in its searching out
   Christians--little villages being included and the women peasants as
   well as the men interrogated. The first runs:--"To the Commissioners of
   sacrifices of the village of Alexander's Island from Aurelius Diogenes
   (son of) Satabus. About 72. Scar on right eyebrow. I was both constant
   in ever sacrificing to the gods and now in your presence according to
   the commands I sacrificed and drank and tasted of the victims, and I
   beseech you to attach your signature. May you ever prosper. I Aurelius
   Diogenes have presented this." (Then follow the signatures of the
   magistrate and witness. "I Aurelius     saw him sacrificing. I
   Mys(thes, son of) . . . non have signed. (First) year of the Emperor
   Caesar Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius, Pius Felix Augustus. 2nd
   day of Ephiphi." The second, in every way similar, bears the name of
   Aurelius Syrus, his brother Pasbeius, and Demetria and Serapias their
   wives. They were unable to write and the scribe Isidorus appended his
   name. The signatures of the magistrates have been torn off.

   [674] Etecusa belonged to a Carthaginian family which had suffered
   much. Her grandmother Celerina had been martyred in an earlier
   persecution; so had her uncles, the son and son-in-law of Celerina,
   both in the army. Her brother Celerinus was a noted confessor, who had
   come forth alive out of the severest tortures without denying his
   faith. Her sister Candida had faltered and had sacrificed. We see the
   confessor, the sacrificata and the libellatica, in one family. The two
   sisters were overwhelmed with remorse and endeavoured to make atonement
   for their fall by waiting on the arrivals of travellers at Rome and at
   Portus, and when they found any Christian refugees from Carthage they
   took them home, hid them, and tended them. They had no less than
   sixty-five of these refugees in their house at Rome. Compare Cyprian,
   Epistles, xxi. (xx.), and xxxi. 3 (xxxiii.).

   [675] Cyprian, Epistle, xix. 2 (xiii.).

   [676] Harnack and Ritschl think that Crumentius carried this letter to
   the office-bearers in Carthage for whom it was certainly intended, and
   that they manifested their loyalty to Cyprian by making Crumentius take
   it on to their bishop. Benson asserts that the elders in Carthage never
   saw the letter; that it was put into Cyprian's hands and that he sent
   it back to Rome without permitting it to reach its destination. Benson
   may be right. Cyprian suppressed a more important letter on a more
   important occasion and he might have suppressed this one also. The
   archbishop justifies the one suppression by calling Cyprian a
   "benevolent despot"; and the other by praising his sense of humour!
   Otto Ritschl, Cyprian von Karthago (1835), p. 9; Benson, Cyprian, his
   Life, his Times, his Work (1897), p. 149. It does not matter which view
   is the correct one; the important thing is the effect of the letter on
   the mind of Cyprian, not its effect on the elders of Carthage.

   [677] Cyprian, Epist. v. 1 (iv.); compare Epist. xx. 1 (xiv.).

   [678] Dr. Benson rather vehemently declares that there is no change of
   attitude in Cyprian's two letters. He gives an abstract of Ritschl's
   arguments and says that his "abstract will be as just as he can make
   it"; and yet he omits entirely the strongest argument Ritschl has
   adduced! Compare Benson, Cyprian, etc. pp. 148-50; Otto Ritschi,
   Cyprian von Karthago, pp. 9-13. 216, 217.

   [679] Cyprian's Epist. xiv. 2 (v.).

   [680] Epist. xiv. 4 (v.).

   [681] Epist. xv. 1 (x.).

   [682] Epist. xvi. 1, 3 (ix.).

   [683] Epist. xvii. 2, 3 (xi.).

   [684] Epist. xviii. (xii.).

   [685] Epist. xix. 1, 2 (xiii.).

   [686] Epist. xx. (xiv.).

   [687] Epist. xx. 2 (xiv.).

   [688] Epist. xxx. 5, 8 (xxx.); xliii. 3 (xxxix.).

   [689] Epist. xxv. (xix.); xxvi. (xvii.).

   [690] Epist. xl. 1 (xxxvii.); xlii. (xxxviii.).

   [691] Tertullian, De Pudicitia, 21.

   [692] Hermas, Pastor, Mandata, iv.

   [693] The Holy Spirit had entered the prison along with them,
   Tertullian declared (Ad Martyras, 1). It was the constant belief that
   the Lord had taken up His abode in His martyr, speaking in him and
   suffering with him; compare the collection of evidence in Sohm,
   Kirchenrecht, i. 32 n. 9.

   [694] Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. V. xviii. 7.

   [695] Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. V. ii. 5, 6:--"They loosed all, they
   bound none. . . . They did not arrogate any superiority over the
   lapsed; but in those things wherein they themselves abounded, in this
   they supplied those that were deficient, exercising the compassion of
   mothers, and pouring forth prayers to the Father on their account." Cf.
   Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. xlii. 5.

   [696] Tertullian, Ad Martyras, 1:--" You know that some not able to
   find this peace in the Church, have been used to seek it from the
   imprisoned martyrs." In his tract De Pudicitia he denounces the
   practice in the case of those who had been guilty of sins of the flesh
   (22). The martyr, he says, is no sooner in prison than sinners beset
   and gain access to him; "instantly prayers echo round him; instantly
   pools of tears of all the polluted surround him; nor are any more
   diligent in purchasing entrance into prison than those who have lost
   the Church."

   [697] In his Testimonies (iii. 28), Cyprian says distinctly that
   "remission cannot be granted in the Church to him who has sinned
   against God"; but he does not say whether this "sin against God" is
   idolatry or not.

   [698] Epistles, xi. 8 (vii.); xiv. 4 (v.); xv. 1 (x.); xvi. 4 (ix.).

   [699] De Pudicitia, 13:--"You introduce into the Church the penitent
   adulterer for the purpose of melting the brotherhood by his
   supplications. You lead him into the midst clad in sackcloth, covered
   with ashes, a compound of disgrace and horror. He prostrates himself
   before the widows, before the elders, suing for the tears of all; he
   seizes the edges of their garments, he clasps their knees, he kisses
   the prints of their feet. Meanwhile you harangue the people and excite
   their pity for the sad lot of the penitent. Good pastor, blessed father
   that you are, you describe the coming back of your goat in recounting
   the parable of the lost sheep. And in case your ewe lamb may take
   another leap out of the fold--as if that were not lawful for the future
   which was not really lawful in the past--you fill all the rest of the
   flock with apprehension at the very moment of granting indulgence."

   [700] Epistle, xvii. 3 (xi.).

   [701] Cyprian, Epistle, xxxi. 6, 7 (xxv.).

   [702] Compare the account given by Eusebius of the way in which
   Dionysius of Corinth persuaded his people to admit the lapsed there to
   communion (Hist. Eccles. VI. xlii. 5, 6);--"But these same martyrs, who
   are now sitting with Christ and are the sharers of His kingdom, and the
   partners in His judgment, and who are now judging with Him, received
   those of the brethren that fell away and had been convicted of
   sacrificing, and when they saw their conversion and repentance, and
   having proved them as sincere, they received them and assembled with
   them. They also communicated with them in prayer and at their feasts.
   What then, brethren, do ye advise concerning these? What should we do?
   Let us join in our sentiments with them, and let us observe their
   judgment and their charity; and let us kindly receive those who were
   treated with such compassion by them. Or should we rather pronounce
   their judgment unjust, and set ourselves up as judges of their
   opinions, and thus grieve the spirit of mildness, and overturn
   established order?"

   [703] Compare the whole of Epistle xxxiii. (xxvi.).

   [704] Otto Ritschl seems to think that Cyprian, if he did not during
   the course of the Decian persecution alter his conception of what the
   Church was, held it in a more rudimentary form before the persecution
   arose, and that it took shape during his experiences while the
   persecution lasted. He is therefore of opinion that he sees these more
   rudimentary ideas in the letter lxiii. (lxii.), which he accordingly
   places at the head of the list. The argument from the expressions in
   the letter does not appear to be very conclusive. Cyprian is there
   speaking of the cup in the Holy Supper. He says that the water in the
   mixed chalice represents the baptized people and the wine is the symbol
   of Christ; and that when the cup is given the Church becomes united
   with Christ. He calls the Church which is thus united to Christ in
   communicating "the people established in the Church faithfully and
   firmly persevering in what they have believed." He is not speaking
   about what makes a Church, but about how the people who are in the
   Church are united to Christ in partaking of the cup in the communion.
   It is true that Cyprian tells us that the Church is in episcopo et
   clero et in omnibus stantibus constituta; but this definition does not
   prevent him asserting in the previous sentence that the Church is
   founded on the bishops (Epist. xxxiii. 1 (xxvi.). Cyprian held from the
   beginning that the bishop is the keystone of the arch; without him
   nothing remains but a heap of ruins. At the same time, his theory grew
   more and more distinct as he had to accept consequences which followed
   from his premises in the discussions which the controversies about the
   lapsed evoked. Compare Ritschl, Cyprian, etc. pp. 86 f. and 241;
   Benson, Cyprian, pp. 39, 186 f.

   [705] Epistle, xviii. (xii.); xx. 3 (xiv.); lvii. 1 (liii.). Cyprian,
   like his master, Tertullian, evidently thought that it ought to
   "suffice to the martyr to have purged his own sins; it is part of
   ingratitude or of pride to lavish upon others what one has obtained at
   a high price. Who has redeemed another's death by his own, but the Son
   of God alone?" He also knew that beneath the noble constancy which
   endured tortures there was a nervous excitement on the part of some at
   least which was leading them to practise unnatural tests of
   continence--tests which should never have been used, which might prove
   dangerous and which in some cases did prove dangerous in the end.
   Compare Epistles, xi. 1 (vii.); xiii. 5 (vi.); De Unitate Ecclesiae,
   20.

   [706] Epistles, xl. (xxxiv.); xli. (xxxvii.); xxiii. (xxxviii.).

   [707] Epistles, iii. (lxiv.); lxviii. (lxvi.).

   [708] Epist. lxix. 3 (lxxv.):--"Habere namque aut tenere ecclesiam
   nullo modo potest qui ordinatus in ecclesia non est."

   [709] Cyprian describes the appointment of a bishop thrice--the one
   being his own, the others that of a bishop in Spain and of Cornelius of
   Rome. Of his own he says:--"When a bishop is appointed into the place
   of one deceased, when he is chosen in time of peace by the suffrage of
   an entire people, when he is protected by God in persecution,
   faithfully linked with his colleagues, approved to his people by now
   four years' experience in his episcopate; observant of discipline in
   time of peace; in time of persecution, proscribed with the name of his
   episcopate applied and attached to him; so often asked for in the
   circus, for the lions' in the amphitheatre; honoured with the testimony
   of the divine condescension," Epist. lix. 6 (liv.). "You must
   diligently observe and keep the practice delivered from divine
   tradition and apostolic observance, which is also maintained among us
   and almost throughout the provinces; that for the proper celebration of
   ordinations all the bishops of the same province should assemble with
   that congregation for which a prelate is ordained; and the bishop
   should be chosen in the presence of the people, who have most fully
   known the life of each one and have looked into the doings of each one
   as respects his habitual conduct. And this also, we see, was done by
   you in the ordination of our colleague Sabinus; so that by the suffrage
   of the whole brotherhood, and by the sentence of the bishops who had
   assembled in their presence, and who had written letters to you
   concerning him, the episcopate was conferred upon him," Epist. lxvii. 5
   (lxvii.). "Cornelius was made bishop by the judgment of God and of His
   Christ, by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by the suffrage of
   the people who were there present, and by the assembly of ancient
   priests and good men," Epist. lv. 8 (li.); see also lix. 5 (liv.);
   lxvii. 4 (lxvii.). Compare Hatch, art. Ordination in the Dictionary of
   Christian Antiquities, p. 1518b. The mode of appointing the bishop or
   pastor in the third century as described in Cyprian's letters was
   essentially the same as the mode of appointing the pastor or bishop in
   Presbyterian Churches at the present time.

   [710] Epist. iii. 3 (lxiv.); xlviii. 4 (xliv.); lv. 8 (li.); lix. 4, 5
   (liv.); lxvi. 1, 9 (lxviii.).

   [711] "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them does
   not fall to the ground without the will of your Father.' When He says
   that not even the least things are done without God's will, does anyone
   think that the highest and greatest things are done in God's Church
   without God's knowledge or permission, and that priests--that is. His
   stewards--are not ordained by His decree?" Epist. lix. 5 (liv.); lxvi.
   1 (lxviii.).

   [712] Epist. lix. 2 (liv.); lv. (li.).

   [713] Epist. iv. 2 (lxi.); xiv. 2 (v.); cf. xv. 2 (x.); xvi. 3 (ix.).

   [714] Epist. xi. 3-7 (vii.).

   [715] Epist. xv. 1 (x.); xvii. 2 (xi).; xviii. (xii.); xix. (xiii.),
   etc.

   [716] Epist. lxviii. 7 (lxxii.).

   [717] Epist. xvi. 2 (ix.); xviii. (xiii.); xx. 3 (xiv.); lvii. 1
   (liii.).

   [718] Epist. xx. 3 (xiv.):--disponere singula vel reformare. Cf. lxiii.
   10, 11 (lxii.):--"ab evangelicis autem praeceptis omnino recedendum
   ease . . . cum ergo neque ipse apostolus neque angelus de caelo
   adnuntiare possit aliter aut docere praeterquam quod semel Christus
   docuit et apostoli ejus adnuntiaverunt."

   [719] Epist. xvi. 2 (ix.):--"They who truly repenting might satisfy God
       with their prayers and works." Epist. lv. 22 (li.) mentions
   alms-giving and fasting. De Opere et Eleemosynis, 1:--"ut sordes
   postmodum quascumque contrahimus eleemosynis abluamus."

   [720] Epist. vii. (xxxv.); xiv. 2 (v.); lxii. (lix.); xli. 2
   (xxxvii):--"ut cum ecclesia matre remanerent et stipendia ejus episcopo
   dispensante perciperent"; xxxiv. 4 (xxvii. 3):--"interea se a divisione
   mensurna tantum contineant non quasi a ministerio ecclesiastico privati
   esse videantur."

   [721] Compare Achelis, Die Canones Hippolyti (Texte und Untersuchungen,
   VI. iv. 193 n.).

   [722] Epist. lxvi. 5 (lxviii.); "Ecce jam sex annis nec fraternitas
   habuerit episcopum, nec plebs praepositum, nec grex pastorem, nec
   ecclesia gubernatorem, nec Christus antistitem, nec Deus sacerdotem."
   Praepositus generally signified a military commander in the later times
   of the Republic; it was afterwards used of a magistrate; the military
   association of command was probably in Cyprian's mind. It is the word
   from which comes the French prévôt and the Scotch provost. In early
   mediaeval Latin it means the chief magistrate of a town--burg-graf,
   comes urbis.

   [723] Cyprian's views about the bishop as priest of God and about the
   sacrifice in the Eucharist are most clearly expressed in Epistle lxiii.
   (lxii.). He says that in the Eucharist the bishop does "that which
   Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, the founder and teacher of this
   sacrifice did and taught" (1); he calls the Holy Supper the sacrament
   of the sacrifice of the Lord; (4), and "the sacrifice of God the Father
   and of Christ " (9); he says that in the Eucharist we ought to "do in
   remembrance of the Lord the same thing which the Lord also did" (10);
   "that priest truly discharges the office of Christ, who imitates what
   Christ did, and he offers a true and full sacrifice in the Church of
   God the Father when he proceeds to offer it according to what he sees
   Christ Himself offered" (14); "the Lord's passion is the sacrifice
   which we offer" (17). The Eucharist is the dominica hostia (De Unitate
   Ecclesiae, 17). Cyprian's ideas about Christian priests and sacrifices,
   occupying as they do the borderland between the purer and more
   primitive ideas and the conceptions of the fourth and fifth centuries
   which were corrupted by so many pagan associations, deserve a much more
   elaborate treatment than can be given here.

   [724] Tertullian tells us that it was the bishop who baptized in his De
   Baptismo, 17:--"The summus sacerdos, who is the bishop, has the right
   of giving it (baptism); and in the next place, the elders and deacons,
   yet not without the bishop's authority on account of the honour of the
   Church." This is also Cyprian's idea; compare Epistles, lxxiii. 7
   (lxxii.); lxxv. 7 (lxxiv. ).

   [725] Epist. lxxiii. 9 (lxxii.).

   [726] Epist. lxvi. 8 (lxviii.).

   [727] Epist. lxxiii. 7 (lxxii.).

   [728] Epist. iii. 1 (lxiv.); iv. 4 (lxi.); xliii. 7 (xxxix.); lix. 4
   (liv.); lxvi. 3 (lxii.).

   [729] Epist. iii. 1 (lxiv.), where the rebellion of Korah, Dathan and
   Abiram is also quoted to point the same moral.

   [730] Malachi i. 11; iii. 3, 4.

   [731] Clement, 1 Ep. xl. 5; Didache, xiii. 3.

   [732] This is seen earlier than Tertullian but it appears most clearly
   in his writings. In De Baptismo, 5 he says:--"Well, but nations who are
   strangers to all understanding of spiritual powers ascribe to their
   idols the imbuing of waters with the self-same efficacy; but they cheat
   themselves with waters which are widowed. For washing is the channel
   through which they are initiated into some sacred rites of some
   notorious Isis or Mithras; the gods themselves they likewise honour by
   washings. Moreover by carrying water around, and sprinkling it, they
   everywhere ceremonially purify country-houses, habitations, temples and
   whole cities. They are certainly baptized at the Apollinarian and at
   the Eleusinian games; and they presume that regeneration and the
   remission of penalties due for their perjuries is the effect of that.
   Among the ancients, whoever had defiled himself with murder, was
   accustomed to go in search of purifying waters." In the De
   Praescriptione Haereticorum, 40, he says:--"The devil . . . by the
   mystic rites of his idols vies even with the essential things of the
   sacrament of God. He, too, baptizes some, even his own believers and
   faithful followers; he promises the putting away (expositionem) of sins
   by a laver; and if I do not forget, Mithras there sets his marks on the
   foreheads of his soldiers, celebrates the oblation of bread, introduces
   an image of the resurrection. and under the sword wreathes the crown.
   What shall we say to insisting on the chief priest being the husband of
   one wife; and he (the devil) has virgins who live under the profession
   of chastity."

   [733] Compare Athenagoras, Apology (Plea), 13; Minucius Felix, Apology,
   22.

   [734] Justin, Dialogue, 117; compare Apology, i. 13, 65-7; Dialogue,
   28, 29, 116-8.

   [735] In his De Opere et Eleemosynis, Cyprian declares that sins will
   come after baptism and that God has provided a remedy for us "so that
   by almsgiving we may wash away whatever foulness we subsequently
   contract" (1); "The remedies for propitiating God are given in the
   words of God Himself. . . . He shows that our prayers and fastings are
   of less avail unless they are aided by almsgiving" (5); he quotes the
   case of the raising of Tabitha to show how "effectual were the merits
   of mercy" (6). The same ideas occur in the De Lapsis, and are to be
   found throughout the Epistles.

   [736] Epist. lxvi. 4 (lxviii.). Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia
   uses a similar phrase:--"Therefore the power of remitting sins was
   given to the apostles, and to the Churches which, they, sent by Christ,
   established, and to the bishops who succeeded them by vicarious
   ordination," Epist. lxxv. 16 (lxxiv. ). And Clarus of Mascula, in
   delivering his opinion at the seventh council meeting at Carthage under
   the presidency of Cyprian, declared that bishops "have succeeded them
   (the apostles), governing the Lord's Church with the same powers,"
   Sententiae episcoporum, 79. Hatch remarks that it is not necessary to
   take this phrase, nor the term successio nor the corresponding Greek
   which occurs in Eusebius, diadoche, in any other sense than the
   ordinary one, viz. to express the fact that one officer was appointed
   in another's place, as governor succeeded governor in the Roman
   provinces. (The Organization of the Early Christian Church [1881], p.
   105 and note.) Dr. Benson (p. 183) in his résumé of the De Unitate
   (§ 10) makes Cyprian say that the essential characteristic of the
   episcopal prerogative is that it is a given, that is a transmitted
   power. Cyprian undoubtedly held that it was a power given; but to say
   that given means transmitted is a very palpable case of begging the
   question. A comparison of passages plainly shows that Cyprian believed
   that the power was given directly and not by transmission; of course
   Cyprian presupposes regular ordination (ordinationis lex), but he also
   presupposes the plebis sulfragium , which may be a means of
   transmission as secure as the imposition of hands. The power with
   Cyprian is always a direct gift.

   [737] This statement is not a mere pious reflection; it is repeated
   twice, with all solemnity, when vindicating the bishop's power to
   forgive sins and to condemn, and when insisting on the dignity of the
   episcopal office; compare Epistles lix. 5 (liv.); lxvi. 1 (lxviii.).

   [738] Compare the letters about the Spanish bishops Basilides and
   Martial (Epistle lxvii. (lxvii.); and about Fortunatianus, bishop of
   Assurae in Africa, who had lapsed as a sacrificatus (Epistle lxv.
   (lxiii.). Cyprian says: "A people obedient to God's precepts, and
   fearing God, ought to separate themselves from a sinful praepositus,
   and not to associate themselves with the sacrifices of a sacrilegious
   priest, especially since they themselves have the power either of
   choosing worthy priests or of rejecting unworthy ones," lxvii. 3.

   [739] Epistle lvii. 5 (liii.). Cyprian frequently had visions and
   believed them to be communications by the Holy Spirit; compare Epistles
   lxvi, 10 (lxviii.); xi. 3, 4 (vii.); he was a prophet in the old sense
   of the word. He also recognized the prophetic gift in others as well as
   bishops; compare Epistle xvi. 4 (ix.); xxxix. 1 (xxxiii.), but only in
   those subordinate to the bishop.

   [740] Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. V. xvi. 10; Tertullian, On Fasting, 13.

   [741] Cyprian, De Unitate Ecclesiae, 5; compare Benson, Cyprian, p.
   182.

   [742] Compare Benson, Cyprian, pp. 156, 157.

   [743] Epistle lxiv. 1 (lviii.); Therapius had admitted to communion a
   presbyter who had lapsed on much more lenient terms than the council of
   African bishops had agreed upon.

   [744] Sententiae Episcoporum, preface:--"Every bishop has his own right
   of judgment according to the allowance of his liberty and power, and
   can be no more judged by another than he himself can judge another. But
   let us all wait for the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the
   only one that has the power both of preferring us in the government of
   his Church and of judging us in our conduct there." Compare Epistles
   lv. 2, 4 (li.); lix. 14, 17 (liv.); lxxiii. 26 (lxxii.); lvii. 5
   (liii.); lxiii. 3 (lxxi.); lxix. 17 (lxxv.).

   [745] Epistle lv. 6 (li.); lxxiv. 10 (lxxiii.).

   [746] Epistle xiv. 4 (v.).

   [747] Epistle xv. 1 (x.).

   [748] Albrecht Ritschl thinks that Cyprian, like many another autocrat,
   destroyed the aristocracy of the elders and deacons by persuading the
   people that the monarch's interests and theirs were identical;
   Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche (1857), p. 558.

   [749] Dr. Benson calls Cyprian's councils "representative" assemblies,
   and is of opinion that they included "a not silent laity"; compare
   Cyprian, pp. 191, 430 ff. The presence of the laity at the councils
   which discussed the question of the lapsed is shown in Epistles xvi. 4
   (ix.); xvii. 1 (xi.); xix. 2 (xiii); xxx. 5 (xxx.); xxxi. 6 (xxv.);
   xliii. 7 (xxxix.); lv. 6 (li.); lix. 15 (liv.); lxiv. 1 (lviii.). On
   the other hand the most natural construction of the following passages
   gives the idea that none but bishops deliberated and voted:--xliv.
   (xl.); xlv. 2, 4 (xli.); lix. 13 (liv.); lxiv. 1 (lviii.); lxx. 1
   (lxix.); lxvii. 1; lxxiii. 1 (1xxii.); lxxii. 1 (lxxi.).

   [750] Epistles xv. 1 (x.); xliii. 7 (xxxix.).

   [751] Victor did so in the days of the Easter controversy and was
   denounced for so doing by Irenaeus (Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. V. xxiii.,
   xxiv.); Calixtus evidently made the same claims and was attacked with
   bitter sarcasm by Tertullian in his De Pudicitia; Stephen did so in the
   controversy about the baptism by heretics, and the assumption of the
   bishop of Rome to force his opinion on the rest of the Church is no
   doubt alluded to by the phrases Episcopus episcoporum and tyrannico
   terrore found in the preface to the opinions of the African bishops.

   [752] The extraordinary history of the interpolations is told by Dr.
   Benson on pp. 200-21 in his Cyprian, his Life, his Times, his Work; and
   in Hartel, S. Thasci Caecili Cypriani Opera Omnia, pp. lii. ff.

   [753] Compare Epistle lxxi. 3, where the reference to novellis et
   posteris indicates that Stephen had claimed a primacy over ecclesias
   novellas et posteras. Dr. Benson has given a very full analysis of the
   passages in which Cyprian refers to the Roman See; compare his Cyprian,
   pp. 193-99. It is worth noticing that Firmilian of Cesarea in
   Cappadocia concedes less to Rome than Cyprian does. He scoffs at
   Stephen's claim to hold the Successio Petri (Epistle lxxv. 17 (lxxiv.);
   but then he holds that the power to forgive sins was given to churches
   as well as to bishops, which is not Cyprian's position (lxxv. 16
   [lxxiv.]); "Therefore the power of remitting sins was given to the
   apostles, and to the churches which they, sent by Christ, established
   and to bishops who succeeded them by vicarious ordination." Otto
   Ritschl has carefully analysed Cyprian's letters in the dispute with
   Stephen of Rome in which a good deal of strong language was exchanged
   between the two bishops; compare Cyprian von Karthago, pp. 110-41.

   [754] Epistle lii. 2 (xlviii.):--pro magnitudine sua debeat Carthaginem
   Roma praecedere.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER VIII

  THE ROMAN STATE RELIGION AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH

   The Decian persecution, instead of stamping out Christianity,
   strengthened it. When it was over the Christian churches, pruned of
   their weaker members, felt stronger than ever, and pressed forward more
   earnestly in the path of organization and consolidation. The grouping
   of churches round definite centres became more conspicuous, the
   gradations of rank among bishops began to assume a more distinct form,
   a large number of bishops began to be more than simple pastors of
   congregations, and the lower classes of office-bearers were multiplied.
   The "great" Church, in short, assumed more than before the appearance
   of an organized whole.

   The apostle Paul had taught his mission churches the secret of mutual
   support which might come from building up groups of churches arranged
   according to the provinces of the Roman Empire; and two churches, in
   the two chief centres of the Empire, Rome and Alexandria, early
   manifested a genius for attracting within their respective spheres of
   influence the weaker churches around them. Both were eminently fitted
   to be the protectors and guides of their fellow Christian communities.
   They both occupied commanding positions; they were wealthy and could
   assist poorer churches; and they were generally models of Christian
   generosity to their weaker brethren. The early pre-eminence of
   Alexandria and of Rome can be accounted for in the most natural ways.
   When the local church came to be almost identified with the personality
   of its chief pastor, the pre-eminence of the church was merged in the
   wide influence--almost rule--of its bishop. Perhaps the chief pastor of
   the Church in Alexandria was the first to stand forth as the undoubted
   leader of the great majority of Christians and of all the confederated
   churches of the vast and wealthy province of Egypt and the surrounding
   lands. In the fourth century and in the beginning of the fifth
   Athanasius and his successors wielded a personal power and were called
   Popes, long before the bishop of Rome had attained equal influence in
   the West. But if the growth of the influence of Rome was slower
   everything combined to make it surer, more lasting, and of much wider
   extent. The Church in Rome belonged to the capital of the civilized
   world. The Roman Empire, down to the time of Diocletian, was, in legal
   fiction at any rate, the rule of a town-council over the world, and
   this naturally suggested the commanding influence of a single
   kirk-session over all the other churches. This suggestion, never wholly
   realized, loomed before the Roman Church from a very early time; but
   its partial realization was much later than our period. What presents
   itself from the middle of the third century onwards to the time of
   Constantine is the increasing tendency in the churches to form groups
   more or less compact round central churches occupying commanding
   positions in the Empire, and the churches of Rome and Alexandria are
   distinguished examples of such great centres of groups of churches.

   The instrument in effecting this grouping was the council or synod.
   Nothing could be more natural than that the leaders of Christian
   churches should meet to talk over the affairs of the communities under
   their charge, and the earliest known instance of this was the journey
   of Polycarp to visit Anicetus at Rome in 154 A.D. [755] This, however,
   could scarcely be called the beginning of councils. They, i.e., the
   councils, are frequently traced back to the meeting at Jerusalem, when
   the apostles, the elders, and the whole Church assembled to consider
   the question of receiving into "fellowship" the uncircumcised Gentile
   converts of Paul and Barnabas. But since, so far as we know, more than
   one hundred years elapsed without the example of the Church in
   Jerusalem being imitated, it can scarcely be urged that this meeting
   was regarded as the precedent which was followed. Most historians see
   the real beginnings of the councils in meetings "of the faithful," held
   frequently and in many places in Asia Minor, when the difficulties
   created by the Montanist movement (160-180 A.D.) demanded consultation;
   and the anticipations of councils may be found in that frequent
   intercourse by means of letters and special messengers which was such a
   marked feature of the early life of the Christian communities.

   It is not easy to know what these earliest councils were like or who
   formed their members. They were most probably informal meetings of the
   pastors, elders, deacons and people, and it is likely that all present
   were permitted to take part in the conference and have a voice in its
   decisions. The prevailing troubles were talked over and the best way of
   meeting them. Whatever resolutions were come to had no legal force, but
   they naturally led to common action within the communities represented.
   Eusebius gives a graphic account of these earliest gatherings. An elder
   who had strong views on the Montanist movement found himself in Ancyra
   where Montanist sympathizers abounded, and where some active partisans
   had exerted considerable influence on the people. He and a fellow-elder
   had conferences with the people in the church, which lasted for days.
   The whole question was debated with earnestness in presence of the
   people, who were intensely interested in the matter. At length, after
   long discussions, the Montanist champions were driven away and their
   sympathizers silenced: The elders of Ancyra begged the visitor to write
   down his arguments for their use in case the question should be brought
   up again. It is added that the faithful in many places had frequent
   conferences which doubtless resembled those at Ancyra. [756] The
   technical words used, "brother-hood," "faithful," imply that all
   Christians, lay and clerical, took part in the discussion and
   settlement of the matter discussed. Such were these earliest synods.

   We next hear of them in the Easter controversy (about 190 A.D.).
   Eusebius, writing more than a hundred years later, calls them "Synods
   and Conferences of bishops," but when he quotes contemporary evidence,
   such as that of Irenaeus, the technical terms used mean that the
   opinion of the whole Christian "brotherhood" was expressed. Letters
   were written in the name of the paroikiai and of the brethren of Gaul;
   [757] and "brethren" or the "brotherhood" is the word which even in
   Cyprian denoted the laity, [758] while paroikia in these early days
   "was neither a parish nor a diocese, but the community of Christians
   living within a city or a district, regarded in relation to the
   non-Christian population which surrounded it." [759]

   Tertullian, writing about 210 A.D., speaks as if it were a common
   practice to hold councils regularly throughout Greece, and praises the
   double advantage that accrued from such meetings--the handling of the
   deeper questions of Christian life for the common benefit and the
   bringing vividly before the minds of the people the fact of the
   universality of Christianity. [760] Afterwards synods were held in
   Africa, the earliest recorded being about 220 A.D., [761] and gradually
   they spread over the Christian world.

   These synods or councils were the means whereby the grouping of local
   churches, great and. small, around great centres, was effected. They
   formed such a very important part of the organization of the Church in
   the third and fourth centuries that it is important to understand what
   they were and what they became. Dr. Rudolf Sohm, [762] whose life-work
   has been the study of ecclesiastical law and whose acquaintance with
   its manifestations in the early centuries is excelled by none, has
   collected and pieced together all the information that can be gathered
   from the allusions of earliest Christian literature to this subject,
   and has worked out something like the following theory of the origin
   and primitive meaning of the synod. Briefly stated, it is that a synod,
   in the second and third centuries, was, to begin with, a means whereby
   a congregation or local church received in any time of perplexity or
   anxiety the aid of the Church universal represented by esteemed
   Christians not belonging to the congregation. He combines, and rightly
   combines, the accounts of such synods as are mentioned above with the
   accounts transmitted about the way in which the pastors or bishops were
   chosen and appointed to their congregations or local churches, for it
   is plain that one of the uses of a synod in the third century was seen
   in the choice and appointment of the bishop over his flock.

   So far as ecclesiastical regulations go, the need which a small and
   weak congregation had for assistance from without was first recognized
   when it was made a regulation that a Christian community of less than
   twelve families, which was required to organize itself under a bishop,
   was to seek the help of the nearest "well-established" churches. The
   weak congregation was ordered to ask for the assistance of three
   selected men, and with them, as assessors, the choice and appointment
   of the bishop was to be made. These three men associated with the
   congregation formed a synod of the earliest and simplest type. The
   regulation dates from the middle of the second century. [763]

   When this central thought has once been grasped illustrations are
   abundant. In the conference at Jerusalem about the admission of
   uncircumcised converts into the Christian Church, a conference in which
   delegates from Antioch sought the advice of a "well-established"
   Church, the congregational meeting of the Jerusalem Church appointed
   delegates to carry down its advice to the congregation or local church
   at Antioch and to assist the brethren there in coming to a proper
   decision upon so important a matter. The real synod was held at
   Antioch, [764] and its members were the delegates from Jerusalem and
   the community at Antioch. At the close of the first century
   disturbances arose in the Church at Corinth, and the Roman Church, a
   well-established Church, which may or may not have been appealed to,
   sent a letter of advice and along with it three men selected because of
   their age, repute and experience. [765] These, with the congregation at
   Corinth, formed a synod at Corinth of the primitive type, and no doubt
   helped the community there out of their difficulties. So with the early
   synods in Asia Minor. In the perplexity caused by the Montanist
   movement the congregation at Ancyra sought the aid of Zoticus Otrenus
   and others; [766] they, together with the members of the congregation
   at Ancyra, formed the council there and doubtless aided in the other
   councils which they wrote about to Avircius Marcellus. Judas and Silas,
   the deputies from Jerusalem to Antioch, were prophets; [767] the Roman
   deputies who went to Corinth, Claudius Ephebus, Valerius Bito and
   Fortunatus, do not seem to have been office-bearers; Zoticus Otrenus
   and his fellows were elders. There is no mention of bishops with regard
   to any of these earliest councils, but it is easily conceivable that
   when "well-established" churches were asked to send delegates, "select
   men," to advise and assist, no men could be more suitable than were the
   bishops of the churches appealed to, and that bishops always formed a
   portion, if not the whole, of the advising deputies or assessors. The
   point to be observed however is that in the earliest councils or
   synods, whether assembled for the purpose of the appointment of a
   pastor or bishop or for the purpose of giving counsel in times of
   trouble or anxiety, the main part of the synod is the congregational
   meeting of the church to which the delegates come. It is also
   pre-supposed in the earliest times that "well-established"
   congregations did not need the assistance of a synod in the appointment
   of their chief pastor, and that everything from selection to ordination
   could be done within the congregation.

   When the third century was reached it soon became the custom, though we
   do not find any ecclesiastical regulation on the subject until much
   later, [768] that the choice and ordination of the chief pastor was
   performed through a synod in all local churches, whether
   "well-established" or not, and that the neighbouring bishops were
   called in to be assessors to assist the congregational meeting. The
   desire to make the unity of the whole Church visibly manifest doubtless
   inspired the demand that a synod, i.e., at least three bishops or
   pastors from the neighbouring churches should assist at the selection
   of the chief pastor in a vacant congregation and confirm the choice of
   the people by their ordination. Still through the whole of the third
   century the primitive idea prevailed that the congregational meeting
   was an integral part of the synod. In the case of a vacant pastorate
   the new pastor was chosen both by the neighbouring bishops and by the
   Christian people with the elders at their head, and, even when the
   selection came to be mainly in the hands of the assembled bishops, the
   assent of the people was always necessary. The ordination, which, in
   the course of the third century, was placed exclusively in the hands of
   the assembled bishops, was the sign of the visible unity of the Church,
   extending far beyond the bounds of the local church, and made the
   ordained pastor not only the minister of the Church over which he was
   ordained, but also a minister of the Church universal. [769]

   Synods assembled for other purposes than the selection and ordination
   of chief pastors exhibit the same fact that the congregational meeting
   was an integral part of the synod. Thus in Carthage, Cyprian insisted
   that the neighbouring bishops were to be asked to assist at the
   determination of what was to be done in the case of the lapsed, because
   it was a matter which concerned "not a few, nor of one church," or it
   could have been decided in the congregational meeting, "nor of one
   province, but of the whole world." [770] It had to be settled by the
   presence of the African bishops at Carthage and by correspondence with
   Rome. But in any case the presence of the congregation of Carthage was
   presupposed, and the African bishops were an addition for the time
   being to the ordinary meeting of the elders and the brotherhood. [771]

   The same thought is seen working at Rome. The Roman elders (there being
   no bishop) dealing with the same question of the lapsed, called to
   their aid some of the bishops who were near them and within reach, and
   some whom, placed afar off, the heat of persecution had driven from
   their congregations. [772] When the conduct of Novatian was causing
   great anxiety, Cornelius, the bishop, called together his elders and
   invited five bishops to assist them in their deliberations. When they
   had settled what was to be done they called together a great meeting of
   the congregation, and there the decisive resolution was brought forward
   and accepted. [773] So with other Roman synods on the same questions;
   the elders, deacons and the congregation at Rome were always present,
   and the whole meeting was one of the Roman congregation with several
   (once sixty) bishops added to assist them in their deliberations. [774]
   The same conception of the synod existed in the East. The celebrated
   synod held at Bostra in Arabia (244 A.D.) at which a large number of
   bishops were present, and where Origen held a distinguished place is a
   case in point. The question was the orthodoxy of the pastor of Bostra,
   Beryllus by name. The discussions, in the course of which Beryllus
   renounced his errors, took place epi tes paroikias, [775] from which we
   may conclude that the synod included the congregational meeting, for
   paroichia always means in early ecclesiastical usage the brotherhood or
   congregation, and not parish or diocese in the modern sense of these
   terms. Indications of the same usage are to be found in the account of
   the celebrated synods held at Antioch about Paul of Samosata, the
   pastor of the church there. A great number of bishops, elders and
   deacons were present, and took part in the discussions which must have
   included the congregational meeting, as the bishop was deposed, and
   Domnus was ordained in his place at the last Synod. Here we have the
   interesting fact that the chief discussion was between Malchion, one of
   the elders of the Church at Antioch, and his bishop, and that the
   assembled bishops who came from a distance took the side of the elder
   against his pastor. The whole aspect of the matter presents the
   appearance of a congregational meeting enlarged by the presence of a
   number of bishops from without; the theological differences between the
   pastor and the elder, which had no doubt been frequently discussed
   before a smaller audience, were brought before the assembled bishops
   and congregation. Malchion, who led the charge against his pastor,
   signed the decisions of the synod along with others. [776]

   Dr. Sohm completes his theory by these additional suggestions. He holds
   that the power of a synod was always proportional to the power of the
   local meeting it incorporated. If the bishops came to the assistance of
   the body of elders in a church, their decision had only the force of a
   regulation issued by a session of elders. It had to be submitted to the
   congregational meeting before it became authoritative. If, on the other
   hand, the meeting of bishops incorporated a congregational meeting,
   then its decisions were authoritative at once, for the final decision
   always lay with the congregational meeting. [777] He also believes that
   any synod, even if only the minimum of three bishops was present with
   the congregation, was believed to represent and ideally was the whole
   Catholic Church of Christ, [778] taking into its embrace the
   congregation or local church which required aid, and that in
   consequence its decisions were believed to express the utterances of
   the Spirit of God promised to the Church of Christ.

   We may accept or reject Dr. Sohm's interesting theory, It appears to me
   to be too ideal to be an exact representation of all the facts of the
   case. But it seems to be made plain from the evidence he marshals, that
   there was a close connexion between the congregational meeting and the
   synods which played such an important part in the federation of the
   churches in the third and following centuries. The congregational
   meeting was the primitive type of the later synod. These congregational
   meetings had taken an important place in the churches from the
   beginning. [779] We have seen how they formed the centre and source of
   authority in the apostolic period; how they had the supreme power in
   their hands in the churches to which Ignatius sent his letters, and how
   even Cyprian deferred to them. [780] They were the authority in the
   churches in their primitive democratic stage.

   If left to itself the democratic genius of Christianity might have
   evolved an organization which, starting from the unit of the
   congregational meeting, and rising through a series of synods with
   widening areas of jurisdiction, might have culminated in a really
   representative oecumenical council or synod which would have given a
   visible unity of organization to the whole Christian Church, and at the
   same time would have preserved its primitive democratic organization.

   Cyprian's unscriptural and non-primitive conception of the pastor or
   bishop as an autocrat, claiming a personal obedience so entire that any
   act of disobedience was to be punished by spiritual death or expulsion
   from the Church, contradicted the democratic ideal which the
   congregational meeting embodied. His principle that the bishop was an
   autocrat deriving his power from God directly by a species of divine
   right which owed nothing to the power of the Spirit working in and
   through the Christian people, might be based on a misapplication of Old
   Testament texts and on an intrusion of the Old Testament priesthood
   into the New Testament Church, but in reality it was the introduction
   into the Christian Church of the Roman ideas of authority and imperial
   rule. These early centuries were times of imperial government, and
   democratic rule, save within limited areas and subject to autocratic
   checks, was a thing unknown. It is true that the Roman method of
   government admitted a great deal of local self-government of various
   kinds, but these popular assemblies had strictly limited spheres of
   action and had no control over the imperial officers who practically
   ruled the provinces in the name of the emperor or of the senate. [781]
   Cyprian's conception of the autocracy of the bishop accorded so well
   with the atmosphere of imperialist rule in which the Church of the
   third century lived that it could scarcely avoid being largely adopted.
   In spite of Cyprian's own limitation of the autocratic idea to the
   office of bishop it suggested another form of organization beginning
   with the bishop, rising through metropolitans, etc., to an episcopus
   episcoporum, who in that age could be none other than the bishop of the
   Church in the capital of the empire. No sooner had Cyprian's conception
   of the autocracy of the bishop of the local church been accepted than
   the path was clearly marked for an ascending scale of autocrats up to
   the bishop of Rome, and the appellation of Pontifex Maximus
   sarcastically employed by Tertullian became the legitimate title of the
   head of the Church in the capital city.

   Thus there were two ideals of organization within the Christian
   churches. On the one hand, an autocratic organization which starting
   with the bishop as the autocrat of the individual Christian community
   ascended through metropolitans to the Pope; and, on the other, that
   which, starting from the congregational meeting, ascended through
   provincial councils of varying importance to an oecumenical council of
   the whole Church. These two ideals, mutually antagonistic as they were,
   subsisted side by side within the Christian Church in the end of the
   third and continued to do so in the succeeding six or seven centuries.
   Neither was powerful enough to overcome the other. The imperialist
   conception proved the stronger in the West, as was natural, and the
   other was the more powerful in the East, but neither in the East nor in
   the West was the one able to vanquish the other.

   In the end of the third century and onwards councils or synods became a
   regular part of the organization of the whole Church, and they became
   more and more meetings of bishops only, at which presbyters and deacons
   with the people of the church of the town where the council met were
   present but almost entirely as spectators. It was natural that these
   councils should meet in the provincial capitals, for the roads and the
   imperial postal system by which travellers could journey all converged
   towards those towns which were the seats of the Roman provincial
   administration. Conferences require chairmen, and various usages
   obtained with reference to the natural chairman. Frequently the oldest
   bishop was made the president of the assembly, and this continued to be
   the practice for a long time in many parts of the empire. But gradually
   it became the custom to place in the chair the head of the Christian
   community of the town in which the council met. The bishops of these
   towns then began to be called metropolitans, but the title was for a
   long time merely one of courtesy only, and did not carry with it any
   ecclesiastical rank with specific authority attached to it. In the
   fourth century these metropolitans were entrusted with the right to
   call the provincial councils and even with some superintendence over
   the election and ordination of the bishops of the province. Of course
   the man made the office, and metropolitans who had great personal gifts
   and force of character insensibly gave their churches and their
   successors an influence which lasted. In this growth of the
   metropolitan organization we can detect a disposition to be guided by
   the civil organization of the empire. [782]

   The second third of the third century also witnessed changes in the
   organization of the individual local churches. The tendency was for the
   bishop to become more than the pastor of a single congregation. It
   worked both in country districts and in towns. Perhaps one of the chief
   causes of this was that it had become the custom to require from the
   chief pastors the devotion of their whole time to their ecclesiastical
   duties, and this implied that the Church had to provide the means of
   livelihood at least for the bishops.

   We have already seen that whenever a small group of Christians found
   themselves together, even when they were fewer than twelve families,
   they were ordered to constitute themselves into a Christian Church with
   an organization of bishop, elders, deacons, reader and "widows." [783]
   The smallest Christian community was in this way an independent church.
   But this was possible only so long as the bishop did not depend for his
   living on a stipend coming from the congregation. A paid pastorate
   altered matters. The alteration took two forms, both of which can be
   seen working among churches in the mission field.

   A very common modern form is to appoint one man the pastor of several
   village churches among which he itinerates, while one or more elders
   and deacons are stationed in the little Christian village communities
   to watch over the spiritual interests of the people. Inscriptions seem
   to prove that this form existed in the uplands of Batanea among the
   small and scattered villages there, and it probably existed in other
   places. [784]

   When a small group of villagers had been won to Christianity through
   the evangelizing work of a congregation in the neighbouring town, there
   was often a great unwillingness to sever the connexion between them and
   the mother Church. We learn from Justin Martyr [785] that the
   Christians came in from the country to attend the services of the town
   congregation. It was always held that a bishop could delegate his
   special function pertaining to public worship to his elders or even to
   his deacons. This principle could easily be applied to the outlying
   mission districts of a congregation, and the little mission
   congregations became filials or daughters of the town congregation, and
   were served by the subordinate office-bearers of the mother Church.
   Thus the bishop became the pastor in several congregations and
   multiplied himself through his elders who became his delegates in the
   pastoral office. In doing this the Church followed civil procedure, for
   rural authorities under Roman rule were frequently placed under the
   nearest municipality. But we have abundant evidence that for many a
   century multitudes of the small rural congregations remained
   independent churches, under bishops who were often enough uneducated
   peasants. [786]

   The same principle worked in towns also, and perhaps more strongly
   there. The bishop was held to be the head of the Christian community in
   one place, whatever its size might be. He was the pastor; he baptized;
   he presided at the Holy Supper; he admitted catechumens to the full
   communion of the brotherhood. By the middle of the third century the
   work, in most large towns, was more than one man could overtake. Take
   the case of Rome. We have no record of the number of the Christian
   community, but we know that at the close of the Decian persecution,
   i.e., a little after the middle of the third century, the number of
   widows, sick and poor cared for by the Church was more than fifteen
   hundred, and that the bishop had to assist him forty-six elders,
   fourteen deacons and sub-deacons, with ninety-two men in what are
   called minor orders--acolytes, exorcists, readers, and door-keepers.
   [787] At the close of the century and during the Diocletian persecution
   there were over forty Christian basilicas, or separate Christian
   congregations in Rome itself. [788] In Alexandria the number of
   Christians could not have been much fewer. It is evident that one man
   could not fulfil the pastoral duties for such a multitude; At first the
   idea of the unity of the pastorate was strictly preserved. For example,
   it was for long the custom in Rome that the bishop consecrated the
   communion elements in one church, and that the consecrated elements
   were carried to the other congregations whether they met in churches or
   in private houses, to be distributed to the communicants by the elders
   there in charge. [789] The bishop was the one pastor in every
   congregation; the elders and the deacons belonged to the whole local
   Christian community; they served all the congregations and were not
   attached to any one; the organization was collegiate as we see it
   existing at present in the Dutch Presbyterian Church: All communities,
   however, were not so conservative as that of Rome. In Alexandria, for
   example, while the Christians who lived in the outlying suburbs were at
   first reckoned to be members of the bishop's congregation and had no
   separate constitution for the churches in which they met, this was
   found to be inconvenient. Special presbyters were set over the outlying
   congregations, and thus something like a parish system under the bishop
   was begun. But the original pastoral status of the bishop was always
   preserved by one portion of the pastoral duties being invariably
   retained in his hands--the admission of the catechumens to the full
   communion of the Church. This is still retained in the modem episcopal
   system, and the fact that the bishops alone are entitled to receive the
   young communicants at confirmation--for confirmation is simply the
   reception of young communicants--remains to witness to the original
   simple pastoral functions of the primitive bishops.

   The middle of the third century also was the time when the ministry
   became much more complicated so far as its subordinate officials were
   concerned. Sub-deacons, exorcists, readers, acolytes, doorkeepers, and
   even grave-diggers, were added to that body of men who were called the
   clergy.

   Before the close of the third century the associated churches, grouped
   now around recognized centres, had developed a somewhat elaborate
   organization both in their relations to each other and in the
   arrangement of the ministry within the individual local churches.
   Ecclesiastical archaeologists are disposed to recognize the influence
   of the political organization of the Roman Empire in much of this
   elaboration. [790] This is a perfectly natural explanation and there is
   abundant evidence to confirm it. Yet it may be that there was something
   more specific on which the leaders of the Christian churches had their
   eyes fixed. If it should ever become possible for the associated
   churches to come to terms with the empire, as was done in the fourth
   century, there was an organization which the Christian Church would
   necessarily displace. This was the great provincial organization for
   providing for the due exercise of the official religion of the empire.
   No account of the Church and its ministry during the early centuries
   can avoid some reference to that great Pagan State Church (if the term
   may be used), as it existed towards the close of the third century when
   the associated Christian churches were rapidly approaching the
   attainment of their end, and were about to give their religion to the
   Roman Empire.

   The subject is a difficult one. Information has to be sought for in
   inscriptions on tombs, on public buildings, on coins and in fast fading
   frescoes on the walls of houses in Pompeii. It is full of details which
   are only partially known, and yet enough has been preserved to enable
   us to learn something about it as a whole. [791]

   It is the universal testimony of historians that religion had lost most
   of its power during the later years of the Republic. The temples were
   in ruins and the practices of religion were generally neglected. When
   the wars which followed the death of Julius Caesar had given the young
   Octavius the heritage of his mighty uncle, and that master of
   statecraft set himself to the task of restoring an empire exhausted by
   long years of civil war, he recognized that a people without a
   religious faith is in a state of hopeless decadence. One of his
   earliest tasks was to attempt to revive the ancient religious rites of
   the Roman people, and contemporary records tell what patience and
   wealth he lavished on the work. His political needs mingled largely in
   this successful attempt to revive the religious instincts of his
   subjects. He felt the need for some common sentiment to bind together
   the provinces and peoples of his unwieldy Empire. A state which
   acknowledged no limits of race and of nationality required something
   more than the will of the emperor and the dread of his legions to unite
   it into a harmonious whole. He saw that religion might be the moral
   cement he sought, but the religion needed to be as universal as the
   empire. To select one of the myriad cults which a manifold paganism
   presented would have availed him nothing. He turned instinctively to
   that outburst of popular devotion which had proclaimed his uncle a god
   in his lifetime, and which, after his death, had demanded that the
   mighty Julius should be proclaimed as a god with temples reared in his
   honour, sacrifices offered, and a special priesthood instituted to the
   new divinity. [792] Out of this popular deification of Julius Caesar
   there came, fostered by the guiding hand of Octavius, now called
   Augustus, a universal worship of the Emperor of Rome which took a
   three-fold shape. In almost every part of the empire, Rome alone
   excepted, the Emperor Augustus was worshipped as a god during his
   lifetime; there was the institution of the Divi, where the dead
   emperors and some near relations of the imperial house, wives, fathers,
   uncles and brothers were, by solemn decree of the senate, elevated to
   the rank of gods of the state and were voted temples, priests, and
   sacrifices; lastly there was the worship of Rome and Augustus, and
   Augustus in this instance was not so much the name of a particular man
   as the title of the supreme ruler--a title which itself implied that
   the prince was something more than man. [793]

   The worship of the emperor during his lifetime was never part of the
   state religion of the Roman Empire, but it was a cult largely
   practised. Private persons, societies, even communities without
   sanction from the government built temples, consecrated chapels and
   instituted priesthoods in honour of Augustus while he was alive. [794]
   This was not always done openly; it was some time veiled by affecting
   to recognize the living emperor as embodied in one of the ancient gods.
   Thus the ministri Mercurii Maiae in Pompeii became first the ministri
   Augusti Mercurii Maiae, and then simply the ministri Augusti, and Livia
   was honoured as Ceres, Vesta and Rhea. But this worship of the living
   rulers was never part of the state religion.

   The state religion was, to begin with, the worship of the Divus Julius
   along with that of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Apollo, Vesta and Mars
   Ultor, in Rome; the worship of Rome and Divus Julius for Roman citizens
   in the provinces, and the worship of Rome and Augustus for provincials.

   The beginning of this new state religion for the provinces was perhaps
   the decree of Augustus of date 29 B.C., when, in reply to memorials
   from the communities of Bithynia and of Asia, he issued an order that
   the provincials were to worship Rome and Augustus, and the Roman
   inhabitants of these provinces Rome and the Divus Julius. [795] The new
   cult of Rome and Augustus in Spain dates from 26 B.C.; this worship
   became the state religion in Roman Gaul from 12 B.C., and it was
   organized in Roman Africa on the same lines as in Gaul. Thus for the
   earlier portion of the reign of the first emperor the state religion in
   the provinces for all but Roman citizens was the worship of Rome and
   Augustus. [796]

   It is a question whether this worship of Rome and Augustus did not
   remain the permanent legal form which the imperial cult took in the
   provinces. Authorities differ and the evidence is not clear enough to
   admit of a decided answer. [797] Upon the whole the balance of evidence
   seems to be that even during the lifetime of the first emperor the
   official religion became the worship of Augustus simply (Rome being
   left out) and Augustus [798] being taken to mean, not the person of the
   emperor but the symbol of the deification of the Roman state
   personified in its ruler. After the death of the first emperor a new
   development took place. Augustus, who during his lifetime had never
   allowed himself to be called Divus, but only Filius Divi Julii, was by
   solemn decree of the senate on September, 17, 14 A.D. (he had died at
   Nola on the 19th of August preceding) awarded divine honours, and took
   rank among the superior gods of Rome. [799] He was the first of a long
   line of Divi Imperatores, and the state religion assumed the form it
   continued to maintain in strict legal conception till the time of
   Diocletian and practically till the conversion of Constantine and the
   changes which followed that important event.

   So far as Rome itself was concerned these Divi Imperatores, i.e., the
   series of emperors who were consecrated after death [800] by decree of
   the senate, along with the Genius [801] of the reigning emperor, took
   their place among the greater gods of Rome, equal if not superior to
   them. They formed a compact group of new divinities. Their names
   appeared in the official oath. In republican days officials had been
   sworn in by a solemn oath to Jupiter Optimus Maximus and to the Penates
   of Rome; the oath was now changed (to take an example from the time of
   Domitian) to Per Jovem et divom Augustum et divom Claudium et divom
   Vespasianum Augustum et divom Titum Augustum et genium imperatoris
   caesaris Domitiani Augusti deosque Penates. Their names appeared among
   those of the deities to whom the great sin-offering made by the Arval
   Brethren was offered. At the installation of Nero the Arvales offered
   to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, to Juno, to Minerva, to Felicitas and
   "genio ipsius (Nero), Divo Augusto, Divae Augustae (Livia), Divo
   Claudio."

   In the provinces, where the gods of the people were not the Roman
   deities, these Divi Imperatores were the gods of the state and, along
   with the Genius of the reigning emperor, were the divinities which were
   everywhere worshipped. In the eastern provinces, where the people had
   been habituated to the worship of the reigning sovereign, the cult of
   the Divi seems to have been inextricably mixed with the worship of the
   reigning emperor; but in the west the two seem to have been clearly
   distinguishable, and the worship of the Divi was looked upon as the
   state religion (as it was legally everywhere), and it was left to
   private persons and to cities to worship the emperor while yet living.

   Christianity has so impregnated European thought that most modern
   historians, until within recent years, were inclined to regard all this
   worship of the rulers of the Roman Empire as merely a form of slavish
   adulation. We forget that when polytheism is the religious atmosphere
   in which thought lives, there is no such gulf between man and God as
   Christianity has made us know. If this worship of the Divi Imperatores
   be tested by any standard that can be applied to a polytheistic
   religion, it will be found to be as real a religion as any one of the
   multitudinous cults that paganism has produced. The household shrines
   of Pompeii attest how deeply it entered into the private life of the
   Italian people. There gathered round it the worship of the old heroes
   of the fatherland, the all-pervading ancestor-worship, the feelings of
   awe, reverence and thanksgiving which came from the contemplation of a
   mighty and for the most part beneficent power.

   It had long been the custom in the East to worship the head of the
   state, and this worship had been adopted by the Greeks as soon as they
   became an Asiatic power. Long before Augustus laid the foundation of
   his new state religion it had been fore-shadowed in Greece and in Asia
   Minor. [802] The worship of the genius of Rome personified in the Divi
   Imperatores and in the Genius of the reigning emperor, took root almost
   at once and spread amazingly. The worship of the personal reigning
   sovereign needed to be restrained rather than encouraged. Everywhere we
   find that the desire of the people to adopt the new cult went in
   advance of the attempts to spread and sustain it. All over the empire
   from centre to remote circumference this imperial cult was received
   with enthusiasm. It did not displace the ordinary religions in which
   the peoples had seen brought up. There was no need for that in
   polytheism. It was added to the religions with which they were
   familiar, and this everywhere. Thus it became the one universal
   religion for the whole empire and took its place as the ruling cult,
   the religion of the great Roman state. Subjects were free to practise
   any religion which wa national; but no one, without being liable to
   charge of treason, might neglect to pay religious homage to the Genius
   of the emperor and to the Divi Imperatores.

   Only Jews and Christians refused to bend before the new divinities. It
   was this imperial state religion which confronted Christian confessors
   everywhere; refusal to sacrifice to the emperor (either the living
   ruler in the East, or the Divi and the Genius in the West) was the
   supreme test to which Christians were subjected, and which produced
   martyrdoms; Pergamos, the centre of the imperial cult for its district,
   is called in the Apocalypse the place "where Satan's throne is."

   This imperial cult required priests to preside over the worship
   rendered to the imperial divinities. Its great officials were curiously
   interwoven with many of the ancient priestly colleges at Rome. It gave
   rise to special colleges of sacred men who belonged exclusively to the
   new cult, and it had priests of its own all over the empire. The
   priests of the imperial cult in Rome would demand a special description
   applying only to themselves, but for our immediate purpose the
   organization in the capital may be neglected. What concerns our present
   enquiry is the position and rank of the priests of the cult in the
   provinces. It should also be remembered that the organization of this
   special priesthood differed somewhat in the East from what it was in
   the West; and this difference may be very generally described by saying
   that in the West the worship of the Divi Imperatores was such a new
   thing that it required a new priesthood, while in the East the new
   imperial cult seems to have been largely engrafted upon the worship of
   the local divinities, which necessarily implied a great variety of
   organization which space does not permit us to describe.

   These explanations premised, it may be said that a network of imperial
   priesthoods was spread over the whole Roman Empire throughout all its
   provinces and in all its chief municipalities; and that amidst the
   myriad cults which the paganism of the times produced, there was this
   one great pagan state religion in which all shared and to which all
   gave honour, and whose priesthood stood conspicuously forward as the
   guardians of the worship of the imperial divinities.

   This priesthood was of two kinds--the priests who were the
   representatives of the state religion for a whole province, and the
   priests who were at the head of the religious administration for the
   municipalities. The priests of the imperial cult for the provinces were
   great personages. They were directly responsible to the emperor alone
   who, as Pontifex Maximus, was the supreme religious as well as the
   supreme civil head of the empire. It is difficult to say whether they
   occupied an hierarchical position of authority over the priests at the
   head of the imperial cult in the municipalities during the first two
   and a half centuries. The probability seems to be that they may have
   done so in the West from the beginning, but not in the East. From the
   last quarter of the third century, however, when a great reorganization
   was introduced, the priests who superintended the imperial worship in
   every province were made the overseers of all the priests of the cult
   within the province, and not only so, but they had the oversight of the
   priests of every pagan cult whatsoever who were within the province.
   There was thus from the be-ginning a pagan hierarchy with its Pontifex
   Maximus in Rome, its metropolitans at the head of every province, and
   the municipal flamens at the head of the organization in the
   municipalities; and from the last quarter of the third century these
   pagan metropolitans had the strict supervision everywhere of the whole
   religious administration within their provinces.

   These pagan priests of the imperial cult who presided over the
   provinces were functionaries of very high rank. They were chosen from
   among the wealthiest and most illustrious of the provincials, and were
   men who for the most part had held high office in the civil sphere.
   Great privileges were accorded to them. They presided over the
   provincial assemblies which the imperial government had created in
   every province. They had the right of audience of the emperors when
   they went to Rome on the business of the province. They wore a
   distinctive dress--a robe with a band of purple; they were preceded by
   lictors; they had special seats at all public spectacles. They claimed
   to rank next in precedence to the civil head of the province, who
   directly represented the emperor.

   The cult in the municipalities was more varied, but the priest at its
   head had a very honourable position. He was a man who had usually
   filled the highest municipal offices, and he was ex officio a member of
   the municipal council. Everywhere in province and in municipality the
   office carried with it high civil rank and rights of precedence.

   This was the religion and these were the priests that the Christian
   Church, or rather the associated churches, had to supplant ere it could
   come to terms with the state and become the acknowledged religion of
   the empire. Christianity could not become the religion of the empire
   until this great state religion had been overthrown and its priests
   abolished or their offices secularized. The question arises--Did the
   churches seek to adapt themselves to the form and organization of this
   great imperial religious system in such a way that when the hour of
   Christian triumph came the Christian leaders could at once step into
   the position of those who held the leading places in it and who formed
   that great pagan hierarchy?

   The answer seems to be that in two marked particulars at least the
   Christian churches did copy the great pagan hierarchy. They did so in
   the distinction introduced into the ranks of bishops by the institution
   of metropolitans and grades of bishops, and they did so also in the
   multiplication of the lower orders of clergy on the model of the
   organization of the state temple service.

   M. Desjardins, the learned author of the Geographie Historique et
   Administrative de la Gaule Romaine, [803] has investigated carefully
   the geographical organization of the imperial cult for ancient France,
   and has compared it with the Christian ecclesiastical administration
   which succeeded it after the conversion of Constantine. The result he
   has come to is, that the pagan organization was everywhere the
   forerunner of the Christian. His conclusion is that, almost without
   exception, every city which had a flamen to superintend the worship of
   Rome and Augustus or of the Genius of the reigning emperor and of the
   Divi Imperatores, became the seat of a Christian bishopric when
   diocesan episcopacy emerged--and the diocesan system began in Gaul--and
   every city which had a provincial priest of the imperial cult became
   the seat of a metropolitan archbishop. The Christian hierarchy,
   modelled on the earlier pagan hierarchy, stepped into its place. When
   the Bishop of Rome claimed to be the Pontifex Maximus and to rule the
   Christian metropolitans, and when the metropolitans claimed rights over
   the bishops of their provinces, and when these claims were largely
   acceded to, then the pagan hierarchy of the imperial pagan worship was
   christened and became the framework of the visible unity of the Church
   of Christ.

   The same result appears when the other principle of association--that
   of councils--is investigated. M. Paul Monceaux, in his thesis De
   Communi Asiae Provinciae, [804] has shown how the councils of the
   Church established themselves in the cities where the old assemblies of
   pagan times had met under the presidenoy of the provincial priests of
   the imperial cult, and how these Christian councils had frequently the
   same number of members as attended the pagan assemblies. The
   organization of the imperial cult or the Roman pagan state religion was
   copied, to be supplanted, by the Christian churches.

   The investigations which have led to these results have not been
   prosecuted with regard to every province of the empire and there is
   still room for a great deal of archaeological research but where the
   subject has been examined the results show the close resemblance
   between the pagan and the succeeding Christian organization. The Abbé
   Beurlier, whose monograph Le Culte Impérial is the most detailed
   account of the subject yet published, appreciates the force of the
   arguments of MM. Desjardins and Monceaux, but explains that this close
   correspondence did not necessarily imply that the Christian Church
   copied the organization of the state religion of pagan Rome. He thinks
   that the leaders of the Christian churches followed so closely in the
   footsteps of the pagan religious administration because the Christian
   Church found it necessary to cover the same ground, and took advantage
   of the same imperial administration and its land divisions. [805] He
   admits that the organization of the imperial state religion did not
   exactly follow the civil administration; that some provinces had no
   provincial priest, and that others had more than one; and that the
   organization of the Christian Church followed these deviations. But he
   is of opinion that all this can be explained by natural causes common
   to the needs of both organizations. "The geographical reasons which had
   grouped together cities to render a common worship to Augustus, and
   which had led them to establish the centre of the cult sometimes in the
   capital of the province, sometimes at a point where several provinces
   met, or, as in Asia, in a certain number of cities rivalling each other
   in size, acted in the same way in grouping together the bishops of the
   small towns of the province, and consequently in gradually increasing
   the jurisdiction of the bishop in the principal centres."

   There are, however, coincidences which the distribution of population
   and the geographical utility of centres will not fully account for. The
   Christian bishops--the metropolitans and their urban bishops--had
   assigned to them under the Christian emperors who followed Constantine
   the same powers to investigate contraventions of religious arrangements
   which in the pagan lays belonged to the provincial and municipal
   priests of the imperial cult. Nor will it explain how Christian bishops
   of important centres demanded and obtained from Christian emperors the
   same places of civil precedence which belonged to the provincial
   priests of the Divi Imperatores. The fact that the chief ecclesiastic
   in England has to this day precedence of every one save princes of the
   blood comes down through long generations, a legacy from the state
   paganism of the old Roman empire. "The conquering Christian Church," as
   Mommsen says, "took its hierarchic weapons from the arsenal of the
   enemy." [806]

   The modelling of the Church on the organization of the imperial cult
   grew more intimate as the decades passed, and the resemblance between
   them stronger when the recognition of the Christian religion by the
   state gave the leaders of the Church more opportunities. The pagan
   title of Pontifex Maximus, applied in scorn by Tertullian [807] in the
   beginning of the third century to an overweening Bishop of Rome, was
   appropriated by the Christian bishop of the capital and still remains,
   and with it the implied claim to be the ruler over the whole religious
   administration of the empire. The vestments of the clergy, unknown in
   these early centuries--dalmatic, chasuble, stole and maniple--were all
   taken over by the Christian clergy from the Roman magistracy; [808] the
   word Bull, to denote a papal rescript, was borrowed from the old
   imperial administration--but these things take us far beyond our
   period.

   The imitation of the pagan priesthood was also seen within our period
   in the multiplication of subordinate ecclesiastical offices. The second
   half of the third and the fourth century witnessed an increase in the
   lower orders of the clergy, both in the East and in the West. The
   organizing genius of the Roman Church led the way. The institution of
   these minor orders, as they were called, can almost be dated. They
   began about the year 236 A.D. So far as the West is concerned, the
   minor orders seem to have reached their completion by the beginning of
   the fourth century, if not a little earlier. [809] We find included in
   the clergy, besides the bishops, elders and deacons, subdeacons,
   readers, exorcists, acolytes, door-keepers and grave-diggers. The
   subdeacons are evidently developed from the deacons. The readers and
   the exorcists represent the old prophetic ministry. [810] The acolytes
   and the door-keepers were added to the clergy in imitation of the
   officials in the state temples during the days of paganism.

   The service of priests in the state temples was so arranged that there
   was a higher and a lower priesthood, and that the members of the latter
   were looked upon as the personal attend-ants of the former. The one was
   set apart for the performance of the sacrifices and other holy
   mysteries, the others were their servants who performed the menial
   parts of the services. At first they were slaves; afterwards they were
   usually freed-men; these servant priests could never rise to be priests
   of the higher class. They had different names, all of which conveyed
   their menial position; they were the body-servants, the messengers, the
   robe-keepers, etc., of the higher priests. Besides these servants of
   the sacred persons, there were servants of the holy places or temples.
   There was always a keeper (aedituus), and he had various servants under
   him, whose duty it was to open, shut and clean the sacred place; to
   show strangers its curiosities; to allow those persons who had
   permission to offer prayers and present offerings according to the
   rules of the temple, and to refuse admission to all others. All these
   attendants of the lower class--whether servants of the higher priests
   or servants of the sacred place--were included in the temple ministry,
   and had in consequence their definite share in the temple offerings.
   [811]

   The acolytes and the door-keepers (ostiarii, puloroi) correspond to
   these two classes of the lower priesthood in the pagan state temples.
   The acolyte (akolouthos) was originally an attendant, a scholar, a
   follower; or more definitely the boy or man-servant who followed his
   master when the latter went out of his house. They were the servants of
   the Christian priests doing all manner of services for them, carrying
   their messages or letters, [812] and in general acting like the
   calatores of the state temples. The door-keepers or ostiarii had the
   same duties in the Christian churches that the aeditui had in the state
   temples. "He had to look after the opening and the shutting of the
   doors to watch over the coming in and out of the faithful, to refuse
   entrance to suspicious persons, and, from the date of the more strict
   separation between the missa catechumenorum and the missa fidelium, to
   close the doors, after the dismissal of the catechumens, against those
   doing penance and against unbelievers. He first became necessary when
   there were special church buildings, and when they, like temples,
   together with the ceremonial of divine service, had come to be
   considered as holy, that is since about 225 A.D." [813] The significant
   thing is not that the Christian churches should have given servants to
   their bishops and elders or attendants to their buildings for public
   worship, but that these officials should be classed among the clergy.
   It is this that was taken over from the pagan state religion.

   The Church, however, did not copy its pagan models slavishly. It broke
   the pagan rule that the higher ministry was to be reserved for men of a
   certain rank, and that there was a social gulf between the acting and
   the serving priesthood. It made those lower orders the recruiting
   ground for the higher, and in this way constructed a ladder by which
   deserving men could climb from the lowest to the highest ranks of
   service within the Church of Christ.

   Thus the ministry of the Church of the fourth century had become so
   closely fashioned after the organization of the imperial state religion
   that when the time of the Church's triumph came, which it did early in
   the century, very little change of previous state arrangements was
   needed to instal the new religion in the place of the old. The
   influences of religion on the state, and the support given by the state
   to religious rulers and teachers, acted through an administration
   which, so far as external organization was concerned, was surprisingly
   like the one that had gone before--only now the cisterns stored and the
   conduits distributed a wholesome water. The gradations in the
   hierarchy, the times and places of its synods, the additions to its
   lower ministry, were all borrowed from the methods of the old imperial
   paganism.

   This need not be a matter of reproach. The Church and its leaders had a
   lofty aim before them in all these changes; and the evangelical life
   could be and was sustained under this complicated ministry. The Church
   acquired an external polity which gave it not merely such a sense of
   unity as it had not previously possessed, but also endowed it with the
   power of acting as one great organization in its work of Christianizing
   the Roman Empire and the cultivated paganism which died hard. The
   Church undoubtedly lost its old democratic ideals; the laity counted
   for little and the clergy for much; but the times were becoming less
   and less democratic, and the principles of democratic government were
   scarcely understood unless when applied within very small areas. In the
   centuries which came long afterwards it can be seen how this
   centralized government helped to preserve the Church in the dissolution
   of the empire in the West in those times which are called "The
   Wandering of the Nations." On the other hand, there were evils. The
   spirit of compromise with paganism, which this imitation even of the
   externals of a pagan religious administration could scarcely fail to
   produce, did lead to much corruption both in the beliefs and in the
   life of the Christian Church. These need not be here dwelt upon. The
   evangelical life in the Church was strong enough to enable her to
   conquer for the Christian faith, not merely persecuting Rome, but the
   barbarian nations which overthrew the western portion of the empire.
   That only need be remembered now.

   It is enough to say that the chief seeds of evil which lay in this new
   organization of the Church which had assumed a definite form by the
   beginning of the fourth century, were the two pagan ideas introduced
   mainly by Cyprian of Carthage: (1) that of a special priesthood, in the
   sense that a man (the bishop) could, by reason of the power ascribed to
   him of forgiving sin, and, flowing from that, the right claimed for him
   of exacting implicit obedience, stand practically in the place of God
   towards his fellow-men; and (2) that of a sacrifice in the Eucharist,
   unique in kind, propitiatory, differing essentially from all other acts
   of worship that imply self-surrender to God and from all services of
   self-denying love, and possessing an efficacy independent of the faith
   and the piety of the worshippers. It was these thoughts, not the
   organization which enclosed them, which were to breed evil more
   abundantly as the centuries passed.

   A study at first hand of the contemporary evidence belonging to the
   first three centuries--and this has been accumulating wonderfully
   during the last quarter of a century--reveals the important fact that
   changes were being continually made. Almost every ancient document as
   it unexpectedly appears, rescued from nooks in eastern convent
   libraries, dug out of Egyptian sands, unrolled from bundles of
   forgotten parchments, tells us something new about the organization of
   the early churches. The unvarying lesson they teach is, that there was
   anything but a monotonous uniformity in the ecclesiastic& organization
   of the churches of the early centuries. They all speak of changes,
   experiments, inventions in administration made by men who were alive to
   the needs of their times and who were unfettered by the notion that
   there is only one form of government possible to the Church of Christ
   and essential to its very existence as a Church. The changes made from
   half-century to half-century, and in different parts of the Church
   contemporaneously, are all multiplied proofs that it belongs to the
   Church to create, to modify, to change its ministry from age to age in
   order to make it as effective an instrument as possible for
   evangelising the world. They teach, in short, that it is the Church
   that makes the ministry and not the ministry that makes the Church.

   The close of the third century is the limit of our period; it saw the
   last stage in the growth of the Church before it became absorbed within
   the administration of the Roman empire.

   But the use of the word Church is very misleading. There was no one
   all-embracing institution, visible to the eye, which could be called
   the Church of Christ. What did exist was thousands of churches, more or
   less independent, associated in groups according to the divisions of
   the empire. The real bond of association was the willingness of the
   leaders of the individual Christian communities to consent to
   federation, for the terms of communion were never exactly settled. The
   federation was constantly liable to be dissolved. When the party in
   Rome which favoured a stricter dealing with the lapsed formed a second
   and rival congregation and placed Novatian at the head of it as bishop,
   he and not Cornelius was in communion with many of the Eastern bishops
   and their churches. It was only the magnanimity of Cyprian which
   prevented the breaking up of the federation on the question of the
   re-baptism of heretics. Hundreds of the associated churches broke away
   from the confederation in what was commonly called the Donatist schism.
   Church is therefore scarcely the, word to use; associated churches is
   the really accurate phrase.

   It should also be remembered that according to the view of Cyprian
   every bishop occupied a thoroughly independent position, and could
   accept or reject the conditions of federation and decline to be bound
   by the action of the associated churches. Examples of such bishops are
   to be met with very late. [814] But besides such sporadic cases, there
   were rival associations of churches outside what historians
   misleadingly call the Catholic Church of Christ. In some parts of the
   empire they were more numerous than the Catholics, and everywhere they
   were, to say the least of it, as sincere and as whole-hearted
   Christians. Marcionites, Montanists, and many others, lived, worked and
   taught, following the precepts of Jesus in the way they understood
   them, and suffered for Christ in times of persecution as faithfully as
   those who called them heretics and schismatics. The state of matters
   was much liker what exists in a modern divided Christendom than many
   would have us believe.

   It is very doubtful whether the great body of associated churches would
   of itself have been able to overcome these non-conformists of the early
   centuries and stand forward as the one Christian Church, including all
   or all but a very few Christian communities. That this state of things
   did actually come to pass was due to the constraints and persecutions
   of the imperial government, which never tolerated these Christians, and
   whose persecution was almost continuous after the Council of Nicea till
   the dissolution of the empire. It was the State which first gave a
   thoroughly visible unity to the associated churches. The imperial unity
   was the forerunner of the Papal. The State supported the associated
   churches by all the means in its power. It recognized the decisions of
   their councils and enforced them with civil pains and penalties; it
   also recognized the sentences of deposition and excommunication passed
   on members of the clergy or laity belonging to any one of the
   associated churches and followed them with civil disabilities. [815] It
   did its best to destroy all Christianity outside of the associated
   churches, and largely succeeded. The rigour of the state persecution
   directed against Christian nonconformists in the fourth and fifth
   centuries has not received the attention due to it. The State
   confiscated their churches and ecclesiastical property (sometimes their
   private property also); it prohibited under penalty of proscription and
   death their meeting for public worship; it took from these
   nonconformist Christians the right to inherit or bequeath property by
   will; it banished their clergy; finally, it made raids upon them by its
   soldiery and sometimes butchered whole communities, as was the case
   with the Montanists in Phrygia and with the Donatists in Africa. [816]
   And this glaringly un-Christian mode of creating and vindicating the
   visible unity of the Catholic Church of Christ was vigorously
   encouraged by the leaders of the associated churches who had the
   recognition and support of the State. [817]

   Safe within the fold of the State, they could speak of themselves as
   the one Catholic Church of Christ outside of which there was no
   salvation; they could apply to their own circle of churches all the
   metaphors and promises of Old Testament prophecy and all the sublime
   descriptions of the Epistle to the Ephesians, while their
   fellow-Christians who were outside state protection were being
   exterminated. Such strange methods do men think it right to use when
   they try in their haste to make clear to the coarser human vision the
   wondrous divine thought of the visible unity of the Church of Christ!
     __________________________________________________________________

   [755] Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. V. xxiv. 16.

   [756] Compare Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. V. xvi. 4, 10; xix. 2.

   [757] Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. V. xxiii. 2; xix. 2.

   [758] Cyprian, Epistles, xvi. 2 (ix.); xviii. 1, 2 (xii.); xx. 2
   (xiv.); xlvi. 2 (xliii. ).

   [759] Hatch, The Organization of the Early Christian Churches (1881),
   p. 190.

   [760] Tertullian, De Jejunio, 13:--"Aguntur praeterea per Graecias illa
   certis in locis concilia ex universis ecclesiis per quae et altiora
   quaeque in commune tractantur, et ipsa repraesentatio totius nominis
   christiani magna veneratione celebratur."

   [761] The synod at which Agrippinus presided and which declared that
   baptism administered by heretics was void; compare Cyprian, Epistles,
   lxxi. 4 (lxx.); lxxiii. 3 (lxxii.).

   [762] Sohm, Kirchenrecht, i. 247-343.

   [763] Texte und Untersuchungen, II. v. 7. 8; found in English in The
   Sources of the Apostolic Canons (1895), p. 8.

   [764] Acts xv. 27, 30-34.

   [765] Clement, 1 Epistle, lxv. 1.

   [766] Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. V. xvi.

   [767] Acts xv. 32.

   [768] The earliest appearance of this usage as a fixed ecclesiastical
   law is to be found in the twentieth canon of the council of Arles (314
   A.D.):--"De his qui usurpant sibi, quod soli debeant episcopos
   ordinare, placuit ut nullus hoc sibi praesumat nisi assumptis secum
   aliis septem episcopis. Si tamen non potuerit septem, infra tres non
   audeat ordinare." This twentieth canon of Arles reappeared in the
   fourth canon of Nicea (325 A.D.), then almost continually (Council of
   Laodicea, canon 13; Council of Antioch, canon 19; Council of Toledo
   [4th] canon 19) until the regulation became incorporated in canon law.
   It appears in the Apostolic Constitutions, iii. 20.

   [769] It is impossible to avoid seeing how the mode of appointment and
   ordination of the chief pastor now practised in the great Presbyterian
   Church in its many branches corresponds both in essentials and even in
   some unessentials with the mode in use in the third century as that is
   described in the letters of Cyprian and in the canons of Hippolytus. It
   is to be premised that the bishop of the third century was in
   ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the chief pastor of a single
   congregation and in the hundredth was at the head of a collegiate
   Church such as we see in the Dutch and in some German branches of the
   Presbyterian Church; and that bishop and pastor are interchangeable
   terms (Cyprian, Epist. lxvi. 5; compare also Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. VII.
   xxviii. 1, where certain bishops are called "pastors of the communities
   in Pontus"). We have the following picture common to both. When the
   office of chief pastor becomes vacant there is a natural anxiety among
   the people and especially among the elders to secure a good successor.
   They correspond with neighbouring ministers (Cyprian, Epist. lxvii. 5;
   lv. 8) and receive testimonies in favour of one or of another. When
   they are ready for an appointment, the ministers of the bounds (the
   bishops of the province) meet formally in the presence of the elders
   and of the people of the church (the brotherhood, Cyprian calls them,
   lxvii. 5); an examination is made of the state of feeling in the
   congregation, of the unanimity of choice ("the suffrage of the whole
   brotherhood," Cyprian, lxvii. 5; lix. 6), and objections are called
   for, if there be any, against the life or doctrine of the person
   nominated (Cyprian, lxvii. 5); then follows the solemn ordination in
   presence of the assembled congregation. He who has been chosen kneels
   before the president or moderator who places his hands on his head; all
   the ministers present join with the president in laying their hands on
   the head of the bishop or pastor-elect; the president prays over him
   the prayer of consecration in which God, Who gave the Holy Spirit in
   the early times to His apostles, prophets, pastors and teachers, is
   asked to bestow the same Spirit on the pastor-elect, who is named in
   the prayer (Directory for the Ordination of Ministers, sec. 8; Canons
   of Hippolytus, iii. 11-19). In both cases the presence of the ministers
   of the bounds (bishops of the province) implies that the act done
   within the individual congregation is an act of the Catholic Church and
   that the chief pastor in the local church is also a minister of the
   universal Church of Christ.

   [770] Cyprian, Epistle xix. 2 (xiii.).

   [771] Compare the phrases--"secundum arbitrium vestrum et omnium
   nostrum commune consilium," Epist. xliii. 7 (xxxix.); "Cum episcopis,
   presbyteris, diaconis, confessoribus pariter ac stantibus laicis,"
   Epist. lv. 5 (li.); and so on in many passages. But compare above, p.
   316 n.

   [772] Cyprian, Epistle xxx. 8 (xxx.).

   [773] Cyprian, Epistle xlix. 2 (xlv.).

   [774] Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. VI. xliii. 2.

   [775] Ibid. VI. xxxiii. 3.

   [776] The Synods held about Paul of Samosata are described in Eusebius
   Hist. Eccles. VII. xxvii.-xxx. ). The case is a curious one. Complaints
   against his orthodoxy, and many other things, seem to have been brought
   forward by members of his congregation, or at least by a section of
   them headed by Malchion, one of the elders and the head of a high
   school in Antioch. It was an instance of an orthodox elder and a
   portion of the congregation accusing their pastor of heresy. These men
   called to their aid a number of bishops. These bishops assembled at
   Antioch, apparently in Paul's church, and Paul presided at the
   meetings. At the first synod no conclusion was come to; so at the
   second; at the third, Paul was deposed and Domnus was ordained in his
   place (probably in 268 A.D.). At this third synod the chief discussion
   was between Paul and his elder, Malchion; their speeches were taken
   down in shorthand, and copies were in existence in the sixth century.
   The result of the decision of the synod was a division in the
   congregation at Antioch, the larger portion evidently siding with their
   pastor Paul, who retained possession of the Church buildings and of all
   the property. It is more than likely that political feeling lay behind
   this prosecution. The Romans, under the Emperor Aurelian, wished to
   gain posession of Antioch, which then belonged to Queen Zenobia. There
   was a Roman party in Antioch; and Paul was a resolute partizan of
   Zenobia. Six years later, when the queen was conquered by Aurelian, and
   Antioch came within the Roman Empire, the Church property was taken
   from Paul and given to the portion of the congregation which had
   opposed him. As all Christians were still outlaws in the eyes of Roman
   law, it is scarcely probable that this decision followed from the
   supposed heresy of Paul. It is more easy to believe that it was meant
   to be a punishment dealt to the anti-Roman faction. Compare Harnack,
   History of Dogma, Eng. Trans., iii. 38 f.

   [777] Cyprian, Epistle xlix. 2 (x1v).

   [778] Tertullian, De Jejunio, 13.

   [779] Compare above, p. 54 ff.

   [780] Compare above, p. 200 f.

   [781] Marquardt, Roemische Staatstverwaltung, i. pp. 503-16, gives the
   details known about the provincial assemblies under the Imperial
   Government; their powers (507-9); the provinces where they existed
   (509-16) and the powers of the imperial officials (517 ff.). A good
   deal of information on the subject is also to be found in Mommsen, The
   Provinces of the Roman Empire.

   [782] Compare Hatch, The Organization of the Early Christian Churches
   (1881), pp. 169, 170; also articles on Metropolitan, Primate, and
   Patriarchate in the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities.

   [783] Texte und Untersuchungen, II. v. pp. 7-24; The Sources of the
   Apostolic Canons, pp. 7-27.

   [784] Hatch, Organization of the Early Christian Churches, 194.

   [785] Justin Martyr, Apology, i. 67:--"On the day called Sunday, all
   who live in the cities or in the country gather together to one place."

   [786] Eusebius, Hist Eccles. VI. xliii. 8.

   [787] Compare the letter of Cornelius, bishop of Rome, to Fabius,
   bishop of Antioch, in Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. VI. xliii. 11.

   [788] Optatus of Milevis, De Schismate Donatistarum, ii. 4 (Vienna ed.
   [1893]; p. 39).

   [789] This custom existed in the time of Innocent the First (450 A.D.)
   and is described by him in a letter he wrote to Decentius, bishop of
   Eugubium in Umbria; compare the fifth section. The custom preserved the
   conjunction of ideas strongly insisted upon by Cyprian between the one
   sacrament and the one bishop.

   [790] This has been done with great erudition and much original
   investigation by the late Dr. Hatch. The results of his work are to be
   found in his Bampton Lectures, The Organization of the Early Christian
   Churches (1881), and in many of his articles in the Dictionary of
   Christian Antiquities on Orders, Ordination, Primate, Patriarchate.

   [791] Among the more important books and articles on the subject of the
   imperial cult the following may be named. They all discuss the subject
   as a whole or describe some important parts. G. Boissier, La Religion
   Romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins (1878), 2 vols.; Otto Hirschfeld, Zur
   Geschichte des römischen Kaisercultus in the Sitzungsberichte d. k. pr.
   Akademie d. Wissensch., Berlin (1888), pp. 833 ff.; also his I
   Sacerdozi municipali nell' Africa in the Annali dell' Instituto di
   correspondenza archaeologica for 1866, pp. 22-77; V. Dury, Formation
   d'une Religion officielle dans l'Empire Romaine in the Comptes rendus
   of the Academie des sciences morales et politiques, vol. xiv. (1880),
   pp. 328 ff.; E. Desjardins, Le Culte des Divi et le Culte de Rome et
   d'Auguste in the Revue de Philologie, vol. iii. (1879). pp. 33 ff. R.
   Mowat, La Domus divina et les Divi in the Bull. epigr. de la Gaule,
   vol. v. (1885), pp. 221 ff., 308 ff., and vi. (1886), pp. 31 ff., 137
   ff., 272 ff.; P. Giraud, Les Assemblées provinciales sous l'Empire
   Romaine (1890); Lebegue, L'Inscription de Para Narbonensis in the Revue
   Archéologique (1892), vol. xliii. new series, pp. 76-86, 176-84; M.
   Krascheninnikoff, in the Philologus (1894), vol. liii. (new series,
   vol. vii.), pp. 147 ff.; E. Beurlier, Le Culte Impériale, son histoire
   et son organisation depuis Auguste jusqu' à Justinien (1891) (by far
   the most complete treatise on the subject). Handbuch der roemischen
   Alterthümer by Mommsen and Marquardt; Roemische Staatsverwaltung by
   Marquardt, 2nd ed. i. 197 f.; iii. 71 ff., 463 ff.; Roemisches
   Staatsrecht by Mommsen, ii. 752 ff.; G. Wissowa, Religion and Kultus
   der Roemer (1902), pp. 71 ff., 82 f., 284 ff., 488 ff. (this gives the
   most succinct account); Beaudouin, Le Culte des Empereurs (1891). A
   very full account of the literature on the subject will be found in
   Roscher's Lexikon, ii. 901 ff. by Drexler. I have quoted only the books
   known to me personally. A number of references to the cult of the
   emperors will be found in Ramsay's The Church in the Roman Empire
   (1893), pp. 133, 191, 250, 275, 249, 304, 323 n., 324, 333, 336 n.,
   354, 373, 396, 398, 465 f., and in Mau's Pompeii, its Life and Art
   (1899), pp. 14, 61, 89 f., 98, 100, 103 f., 106 f., 111 f., 122 ff.,
   264 ff.

   [792] Julius Caesar was added to the gods of Rome by a decree of the
   senate and people in 42 B.C.:--Genio Deivi Iuli, parentis patriae, quem
   senatus populusque Romanus in deorum numerum rettulit; cf. Mommsen,
   Staatsrecht, ii. 733. His temple or aedes Divi Julii in Foro was
   consecrated in 29 B.C., and a special flamen was appointed for the
   service of the new divinity. But Julius Caesar was never reckoned as
   the first of the Divi Imperatores; they began with Augustus.

   [793] "Imperator cum Augusti nomen accepit, tanquam praesenti et
   corporali Deo, fidelis est praestanda devotio." Mommsen says that the
   word augustus, like the Greek sebastos, had always a religious
   colouring (worshipful); that it implied power so great as to be
   revered; that the title was not shared by any one during the life-time
   of the Emperor; that Tiberius refused at first to accept it; and that
   it was at last imposed upon him by a special decree of the senate
   (Staatsrecht, ii. 812).

   [794] "Cultores Augusti, qui per omnes domos in modum collegiorum
   habebantur," Tacitus, Annals, i. 73.

   [795] Compare Dio Cassius, li. 20; Tacitus, Annals, iv. 37; Suetonius,
   Augustus, 52.

   [796] Roma was never a goddess for the Roman people. The beginnings of
   the deification of the city of Rome came from the East and were
   originally symbolic of the trust placed in the Roman State by cities
   and provinces in the East which had entered into treaties with the
   great western power and had experienced its protection. The earliest
   instance known is that of Smyrna, which in 195 B.C. built a temple to
   Roma the protecting deity of the city; the cult spread rapidly; even in
   Athens there was a temple to Dea Roma. In the East it was also the
   custom to associate as a divinity along with the city great Roman
   generals whose successes in arms had benefited the towns which created
   them objects of worship. Augustus had such precedents for Rome and
   Augustus as the earlier Rome and Flaminius. (Plutarch, Flaminus, 16.)

   [797] Beaudouin (Le Culte des Empereurs) insists that from first to
   last the official religion, recognized in legal documents as the State
   religion in the provinces, was not that of the Divi Imperatores but
   always that of Rome and Augustus. This is scarcely probable; still
   before coming to an accurate conclusion the inscriptions found in every
   province would need to be gone over and analysed province by province;
   this has been done so far as I know for two provinces only--that of
   Narbonne by M. Beaudouin himself and that of Africa by Prof. Otto
   Hirschfeld.

   [798] Suetonius says distinctly:--"Templa quamvis sciret etiam
   proconsulibus decerni solere; in nulla tamen provincia nisi communi suo
   Romaeque nomine recepit" (Augustus, 52). Yet the evidence from
   inscriptions would leave us to infer that the cult of Augustus was
   instituted in many provinces without any mention of Roma.

   [799] "D.XV. (Kal. Oct.) nefastus prior Iudi in circo feriae ex
   senatus-consulto quod eo die divo Augusto honores caelestes a senatu
   decreti; Sex. Appuleio, Sex. Pompeio cos."

   [800] Some emperors were never consecrated Divi; of the eleven emperors
   from Augustus to Nerva only four--Augustus, Claudius, Vespasian and
   Titus--were deified, but after Nerva the consecration of the emperor
   after death became the rule which had very few exceptions. On the other
   hand as the years passed the consecration of members of the imperial
   family, which was common in the early years of the empire, almost
   ceased. Livia was made Augusta on the death of her husband Augustus and
   Diva after her own death. Neither Caligula nor Nero was deified, but
   Drusilla, the sister of Caligula, and Claudia and Poppea the daughter
   and wife of Nero became Divae. The daughter of Titus, the father,
   sister, wife of Trajan, the wife and mother-in-law of Hadrian and the
   wives of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius were consecrated.

   [801] To worship the genius of the emperor was not to worship the
   living man; the genius of a man was his spiritual and divine part; the
   genius of anything was its ideal reality which lasted while the
   external form changed. When the Republic became a monarchy the genius
   of the emperor naturally took the place of the genius of the Roman
   people.

   [802] Otto Hirschfeld, founding on this, declares that the Imperial
   cult was neither a development of Roman customs and institutions nor an
   original creation in the new world of imperialism; it was appropriated
   entirely from the oriental Greeks. This it seems to me is only
   partially true. The worship of the ancient kings, Picus, Faunus, etc.,
   was thoroughly Roman; and there was but a step between it and the
   worship of the Divi Imperatores. The worship of ancestors was
   thoroughly Roman; and it was a stepping stone to the worship of the
   deceased pater patriae. In India at present many a government official
   whose rule has been beneficial in a remarkable degree is worshipped as
   a god.

   [803] Dejardins, Geographie Historique et Administrative de la Gaule
   Romaine, iii. 417, 418.

   [804] Monceaux, De Communi Asiae Provinciae, pp. 117 ff.

   [805] Beurlier, Le Culte Impérial, pp. 304-307.

   [806] Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire (1886), i. 349.

   [807] Tertullian, De Pudicitia, 1.

   [808] Bock, Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters
   (1859); Marriott, Vestiarium Christianum (1868); also, but not so
   exact, Stanley's Christian Institutions (1881), pp. 148 ff.

   [809] The final form which the new organization of the congregation
   took, says Harnack, "was characterized by four moments:--(1) by the
   quality of the sacrificing priesthood, who now took the position of
   higher clergy, and were settled in it by a solemn consecration; (2) by
   a comprehensive adoption of the complicated forms of the heathen
   worship, of the temple service, and of the priesthood, as well as by
   the development of the idea of a magical power and real efficacy of
   sacred actions; (3) by the strict and perfect carrying out of the
   clerical organization in the sense that everything, however old, of
   dignities, claims and rights should be excluded, or at any rate made
   over and subordinated to this organization; and (4) by the dying out,
   that is by the extermination, of the last remains of the charismata,
   which under the new ideas were dangerous, seldom appearing. and often
   compromising and discrediting as far as they rose above the ranks of
   harmless." Sources of the Apostolic Canons (1895, Eng. Trans.), p. 83.

   [810] Compare Harnack's masterly constructive bit of historical
   criticism, his essay on The Origin of the Readership and of the other
   Minor Orders, appended to Sources of the Apostolic Canons, pp. 54 ff.

   [811] Compare what Marquardt says about the state temples and their
   attendants and about the state priests in his Staatsverwaltung, Pt. ii.
   (Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer, Mommsen and Marquardt, VI.).

   [812] Acolytes are mentioned as carrying letters in Cyprian's Epistles
   frequently:--xlv. 4 (xli.); xlix. 3 (xlv.); lii. 1 (xlvi.); lix. 1, 9
   (liv.); lxxviii. 1 (lxxviii.); lxxix. The point is, of course, not that
   Christian bishops should have persons to carry their letters, but that
   these acolytes acting as the servants of the bishops should be reckoned
   among the clergy.

   [813] Harnack, Sources of the Apostolic Canons, p. 88.

   [814] Compare article Autocephaloi in the Dictionary of Christian
   Antiquities, and Hatch, The Organization of the Early Christian
   Churches (1881), p. 180.

   [815] Compare the evidence collected from the imperial codes by Dr.
   Hatch in his Organization of the Early Christian Churches, p. 176 n.

   [816] Procopius, Historia Arcana, 11.

   [817] Compare letter of Ambrose written to the Emperor Theodosius, in
   the name of the Council of Aquileia demanding the suppression by force
   of non-conformist ordinations and meetings for public worship: Ambrose,
   Opera, Epist I. x. (Migne's Patr. Lat. cvi. p. 940).
     __________________________________________________________________

APPENDIX

  Sketch of the History of Modern Controversy About the Office-bearers in the
  Primitive Christian Churches

   The history of modern discussions about the nature of the government
   and the office-bearers in the earliest Christian Churches begins with
   Dr. Lightfoot's Essay on the Christian Ministry, published in 1868, in
   his Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians. This essay has been
   recently republished, but unfortunately the valuable dissertation on
   the terms bishop and presbyter has not been appended to the republished
   essay.

   In his dissertation on the words bishop and presbyter, Dr. Lightfoot
   begins by examining the previous history of the words.

   Episcopus in classical Greek was used to denote the Athenian
   commissioners appointed to take over and regulate a new territorial
   acquisition, the inspectors appointed by Indian kings, the commissioner
   appointed by Mithridates to settle the affairs of Ephesus, magistrates
   who regulated the sales of provisions, certain officers in Rhodes whose
   occupation is unknown, and perhaps the officials of a club or
   confraternity. In the Septuagint the word was used to mean inspectors
   or taskmasters, captains or presidents, the commissioners appointed by
   king Antiochus when he resolved to destroy the Jewish religion. From
   this survey Dr. Lightfoot argued that the primary meaning in the word
   was inspection, and that it contained two subsidiary thoughts,
   responsibility to a superior power, and the introduction of a new order
   of things.

   Presbyter or elder, both name and office, was distinctly Jewish, Dr.
   Lightfoot thought. It was a common practice certainly to call the
   governing body the aged (senate, gerousia, aldermen), but all through
   Jewish history there are elders; these elders were mainly civil
   officials, but the synagogues of the Dispersion had religious elders
   belonging to them. It was not unnatural, therefore, that when the
   Christian synagogue took its place by the side of the Jewish; a similar
   organization should be carried over from the old dispensation into the
   new.

   These two names, episcopus, with its Greek, and elder, with its Jewish
   history, mean in the primitive Christian Church absolutely the same
   thing; this can be proved from Scriptural and patristic evidence. The
   "elders" of Ephesus were also "bishops" (Acts xx. 17, 28), and the
   identity of the names is shown in 1 Peter v. 1, 2; in 1 Tim. iii. 1-7
   and v. 17-19; and in Tit. i. 5-7. The same identity is observed in the
   First Epistle of Clement (42, 44). With the beginning of the second
   century a new phraseology began and the words took their modern
   significations; by the close of that century the original meanings seem
   to have been forgotten. But in the fourth century, when the fathers of
   the Church began to examine the records of the primitive times, they
   perceived the original meanings, and Jerome, Chrysostom, Pelagius,
   Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret all recognized the original
   identity of episcopus and presbyter.

   The question then arises, how it came to pass that in the end of the
   second century everywhere the original college of presbyters or bishops
   had given place to a different organization, in which we find one
   president called generally the bishop, and frequently the pastor, and
   under him a college of elders or presbyters and a band of deacons? This
   is the question which Dr. Lightfoot set himself to answer in his essay
   on the Christian Ministry. He first collects his facts, which are
   these. That the change from a Church government where the rulers were a
   college of presbyter-bishops to the type in which there is one
   president with a college of presbyters under him is first apparent in
   Asia Minor. We get the information from Ignatius, who was himself at
   the head of the Church in Antioch, and who gives us the name of two
   other presidents in that region--Polycarp at Smyrna and Onesimus at
   Ephesus. The change came later in Macedonia and Greece; for the Church
   at Philippi was ruled by a college of presbyter-bishops during the time
   of Polycarp. Corinth had the new constitution before 170, and from some
   various considerations we may fix the date of the introduction of the
   new organization into Greece about the time of Hadrian. The same date
   may be assigned to the new organization of the churches in Crete. The
   early history of a single presidency in the Roman Church presents a
   perplexing problem. Neither Clement nor Ignatius allow us to see the
   presidency of one man in the early Roman Church, and the evidence to be
   gathered from Hermas is too uncertain to be relied upon. There are
   lists of so-called bishops of Rome from St. Peter and Linus, but these
   belong at the earliest to the end of the second century; and the names
   they give may only be those of men known to strangers to be prominent
   in the Church of the Capital. We know absolutely nothing of the Church
   in Africa before the time of Tertullian, but the institution of the
   single ruler was established in strength in his time. In Alexandria
   there is evidence to show that up to the middle of the third century
   the bishop was not only nominated but apparently ordained by the twelve
   presbyters out of their own number. In Gaul the earliest bishop
   recorded was Pothinus, the immediate predecessor of Irenaeus. It is to
   be observed, however, that it is scarcely reasonable to suppose that
   the three-fold ministry only began to exist when we can prove that a
   "bishop" is actually mentioned, for there are many things which witness
   that the three-fold ministry was not regarded as a novelty at the close
   of the second century.

   Having stated his facts, Dr. Lightfoot proceeded to construct a theory
   of the origin of this three-fold ministry, or, to put it otherwise, to
   give an explanation how the two-fold ministry of the primitive Church
   became a three-fold ministry in the third century.

   He notes the gradual and uneven development of the three-fold order. He
   accepts the statements of Jerome, "that one presbyter was elected that
   he might be placed over the rest as a remedy against schism, and that
   each man might not, draw to himself and thus break up the Church of
   Christ." The dissensions between Jew and Gentile, the disputes
   occasioned by the Gnostic teachers, the necessity for preserving a
   united front in times of trial and persecution, were the causes for the
   gradual change which gave a single and permanent head to the college of
   presbyter-bishops which had ruled the Christian communities in the
   earliest times.

   This statement, facts and theory, was generally accepted by all save
   certain Anglicans, who were too much in love with a theory to care to
   look closely at historical facts. It may be said to have represented
   the ideas of competent scholars in England and in Germany until the
   late Dr. Hatch published his celebrated Bampton Lectures in 1881.

   Dr. Hatch was one of the most original and erudite students of early
   Church History that England has produced. These lectures and his
   articles in the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, were the result of
   extensive reading, with the view of constructing a scientific history
   of the beginnings of Canon law--a work which the author's premature
   death prevented him from accomplishing.

   Dr. Hatch set himself to investigate the origins of ecclesiastical
   organization from a comparative review of the political, social and
   religious assemblies and confraternities in society contemporary with
   the beginnings of Christianity. He was not the first to do this. Renan
   had directed attention to the confraternities of pagan times and
   instituted a parallel between them and the organization of the early
   Christian societies. Heinrici had carried on the same kind of
   investigation in two learned articles published in the Zeitschrift für
   wissenschaftliche Theologie, in 1876-7, and in his Commentary on the
   First Epistle to the Corinthians, published in 1879. But Dr. Hatch
   brought to the work a wealth of material more abundant than had been
   collected by any of his predecessors, and grouped it in a much more
   skilful way. His idea was that the term episcopus came into the
   Christian Church from the heathen confraternities, and was used for the
   leaders in the Gentile, as the term presbyter was used in the Jewish,
   Christian societies. If the Gentile Christian churches are to be alone
   considered, Dr. Hatch thought that the presbyters whom we find in them
   had an origin quite spontaneous and independent of the example of the
   Jewish communities. He derived the Christian presbyters from the common
   practice of a council of elderly men which superintended most of the
   confraternities which abounded in the early centuries of our era.

   Dr. Hatch seems to have thought that the office as well as the name
   episcopus was distinct from that of presbyter from the beginning, but
   he did not make this opinion very emphatic. His idea was that the
   episcopus filled an administrative and financial office, and its duties
   in both respects came from the position of the episcopus as the leader
   of the worship, and therefore the receiver of the "gifts" of the
   people, who gave them after the service to the officiating minister, by
   whom they were distributed to those to whom they were due. Dr. Hatch
   thus disputed the identity of presbyter and episcopus, at least in
   Gentile Christian societies. He agreed with Dr. Lightfoot, however, in
   declaring that all the Christian churches were originally governed by a
   plurality of office-bearers, none of whom had a pre-eminence over his
   fellows. In attempting to account for the fact that in course of time
   we find this government by a plurality of office-bearers of equal rank
   superseded by a three-fold ministry, in which the local Church was
   governed by one episcopus, a college of presbyters and several deacons,
   Dr. Hatch followed Dr. Lightfoot's argument. He adduced the general
   tendency in all societies to have a president at their head, and the
   natural tendency when once a single president had been appointed for
   power to grow in his hands; the specific tendency in the Christian
   societies of the second century to believe that the coming of the Lord
   was at hand, and the consequent endeavour to represent each society as
   having at its head one who would represent the Lord until He came; and
   lastly the need felt in times of danger, whether from persecution or
   from speculation, to have one head who could be obeyed by all. He
   declared that his explanation of the change was exactly that made by
   Jerome.

   Dr. Hatch's Lectures, at once original and erudite, attracted a great
   deal of attention both in this country and abroad. They were the object
   of some grossly unfair and almost virulent attacks on the part of High
   Church Anglicans, and these attacks continue. In Germany the Lectures
   made a very great impression, all the more so that the distinguished
   Church historian, Dr. Adolf Harnack, then a professor at Giessen, now
   at Berlin, was so struck with the book that he translated it into
   German and published it with elaborate notes of his own. With this
   translation modern German critical research into the organization of
   the primitive Church may be said to have begun.

   While Dr. Hatch had denied Dr. Lightfoot's starting point, the identity
   of episcopi and presbyters, he had done so mainly by insisting on a
   difference in origin and perhaps in work; but he had not made very
   clear the real relation between the episcopus and the presbyter, nor
   had he explained why it was that when the three-fold ministry emerged
   the superior officer was called episcopus and not presbyter. Dr.
   Harnack, in his "analecta" to his translation set himself to supply
   these defects. He insisted in a much more thoroughgoing way than Dr.
   Hatch that the two offices of episcopus and presbyter were distinct in
   their origin, and represented two distinct types of organization which
   could never throughout their whole history be completely identified.
   The former, along with the deacons, were administrative officers, and
   had mainly to do with the distribution and reception of the offerings
   of the worshippers, and through these with the worship of the
   congregation, while the presbyters were from the first and always men
   who had charge of the discipline and morals of their fellow Christians.
   In his "analecta," Dr. Harnack attempts to trace this clear distinction
   down through sub-apostolic literature. This translation was published
   in 1883. In the same year appeared the Didache, issued by Bishop
   Bryennios--a venerable relic from primitive times, which shed a light
   on many things hitherto obscure in primitive Christianity. The
   appearance of the Didache was the occasion of a very thorough-going
   resifting of the earliest literature bearing on the organization and
   worship of the primitive Church. As a result of this we have now the
   completed hypothesis of Dr. Harnack about the beginnings and growth of
   the Christian organization, which is as follows. While we have traces
   of at least four separate roots of organization in the primitive
   Church, which may be called the "religious," the "patriarchal," the
   "administrative" and the "aristocratic," it may be said that a
   completely organized congregation possessed at the end of the apostolic
   age: (1) "prophets and teachers," who were awakened and taught by the
   Spirit, and who spoke the "Word of God"; (2) a circle of "presbyters"
   or "elders," select old men, but perhaps not yet elected "old men," who
   in all emergencies which affected the congregation could guide them,
   and whose special duty it was to watch over the life and behaviour of
   the members of the community, and who therefore comforted, admonished
   and punished; they also formed the court of .arbiters before whom all
   cases of dispute between members of the Christian society were brought
   and judged; (3) the administrative officers--"episcopi" and deacons who
   possessed the "gifts" of government and public service, and who had to
   act especially in public worship and in the care of the poor; the
   "episcopi" were also members of the circle of "presbyters." But besides
   these there were also in the congregations many varied "gifts" (1 Cor.
   xii.); and each individual "gift" or talent which was useful to edify,
   in the widest sense of the word, the members of the society, was
   considered a "gift" of the Spirit; but only those who possessed in
   peculiar measure the "gift" of speaking the "Word of God," the
   apostles, prophets and teachers, held a special rank in the
   congregation. That was the first stage in the organization.

   The second stage arose during the second century, when the basis of
   organization was thoroughly altered and the alteration was mainly due
   to the gradual dying out of the "charismatic" element. It shows three
   elements. (1) The "prophets and teachers" either gradually died out or
   probably the calling led to so many abuses that these men lost their
   original pre-eminence, and their places were taken by the "episcopi."
   (2) The worship and other things made it more and more necessary for
   one man to be at the head of the administration--the "episcopi"
   coalesced into one "episcopus" or "pastor." (3) The college of
   "presbyters" lost much of its earlier standing and became more an
   advising college supporting the "episcopus" or "pastor." Thus the
   organization became a three-fold order of ministry--"episcopus" or
   "pastor," presbyters or "elders," and deacons--and these officials
   formed a consecrated body of men set over the laity. This change came
   with varying degrees of rapidity in the various parts of the empire,
   and we find transitional forms. One of the most important parts of the
   change was that the duty of edifying the people by sermon and hortatory
   address passed for the most part to the "episcopus" or "pastor," and in
   a lesser degree to the "elders"; but on into the third century there
   were, surrounding the "pastor," laymen who not merely edified the
   congregation by exhortations, but who instructed it in the faith. Such
   gifted individuals, along with members who bore eminent testimony to
   the faith in peculiar holiness of life or in suffering, such as the
   confessors, virgins and widows, held a place of special honour within
   the congregation alongside of the clergy.

   The first half of the third century saw the final form of organization
   adopted, and it is characterized by attributing a sacerdotal character
   to the clergy, who had this character fixed upon them by a solemn
   service, by a comprehensive adoption of the complicated forms of
   heathen worship, of the temple service, and of the priesthood, with a
   corresponding idea of the magical power of priestly actions, by
   strictly and thoroughly including within the clerical order everything
   of ancient dignity and rule, and by the complete extinction of the old
   "charismatic" gifts of edification, or their relegation to a very
   subordinate place.

   These views of Dr. Harnack will be found stated at length with his
   proofs in his second volume of the Didache, in his Sources of the
   Apostolic Canons (Texte und Untersuchungen, II. i. ii. v.), and in an
   article contributed to the Expositor, 1887, January-June, p. 321. In
   the same number, on pp. 1 and 97, will be found two articles by Dr.
   Sanday summarizing and criticising Dr. Harnack's positions.

   Dr. Harnack's theory was at once adopted by many distinguished students
   of early Church History in Germany, such as Weizsäcker and Sohm, and
   has been assented to by many Americans, such as Dr. Allen in his
   Christian Institutions (1898); but it has also met with a good deal of
   opposition. The hypothesis is marked by all Dr. Harnack's originality
   of view, and is illustrated by a wealth of references which perhaps he
   alone could give. It fascinated me at first, and it was only after
   reading and re-reading the evidence that I was obliged to come to the
   conclusion that it was untenable. Its leading opponents are Seyerlen
   (Zeitschrift für praktische Theologie, 1887, pp. 97 ff. 201 ff., 297
   ff.), Loening, Loofs and lastly Schmiedel.

   Dr. Loening (Die Gemeindeverfassung des Urchristenthums, 1889) is
   Professor of Law in the University of Halle, and the author of a
   valuable work on Church Law. He has a lawyer's demand for exact
   evidence and a lawyer's love of precedents. He holds that there was
   little or no organization in the Christian communities during strictly
   apostolic times. [818] What we find are little societies of Christians
   meeting and worshipping together in house churches; we see no traces of
   office-bearers in the proper sense of the word; we have various terms
   applied to men because of the work they do, but no word of office. In
   the last genuine Epistle of St. Paul, that written to the Philippians,
   we meet for the first time with real office-bearers who are called
   "bishops and deacons." This epistle and these names must be the
   starting point of investigation into the origins of primitive Christian
   organization. After a rapid criticism of the statements of Dr. Hatch
   and Professor Harnack, he comes to the conclusion that no real proof
   has been brought forward to enable us to explain these names from the
   titles of the officials of heathen confraternities; as little have they
   any connexion with the organization of the synagogue. We can learn
   nothing about "bishops and deacons" save from the ordinary uses of the
   Greek words and their special use in Christian literature. It would
   almost seem, thinks Dr. Loening, that the Apostle Paul used these
   special words to show that the organization of the Christian societies
   founded by him had no connection with Judaism on the one hand, nor with
   heathenism on the other. When we examine patristic and sub-apostolic
   literature there is a much closer connexion between the function of
   teaching and these office-bearers than Harnack allows; indeed, Dr.
   Loening is inclined to question Dr. Harnack's opinion that the "bishops
   and deacons" of the Didache were the officials who had specially to do
   with the worship as distinct from the instruction. He finds that the
   Poimenes of the Epistle to the Ephesians, the Hegoumenoi of the Epistle
   to the Hebrews, and the Episcopi of the Didache, meant the same kind of
   officials, and that there was a close union between teaching and
   oversight in the last quarter of the first century. But what of the
   "presbyters"? Dr. Loening asserts strongly that the "presbyters" in the
   Gentile Christian communities had no connexion whatever with officials
   in Greek city life, social or political. The name comes from Judaism;
   but the Christian presbyters have nothing in common with the Jewish
   presbyters but the name. Although he does not accept the Acts of the
   Apostles as a testimony for the organization of the churches in the
   earliest days of Christianity, yet it is a trustworthy witness for the
   organization which prevailed in the beginning of the second century.
   That book, the First Epistle of St. Peter, and the Apocalypse, all show
   that there were "presbyters" in the Gentile Christian communities in
   Palestine, in Syria, and in Asia Minor, and that that office had been
   established in these parts for some time. Where did it come from? From
   Judaism, says Dr. Loening; and his proof is that it, he thinks, brought
   with it "ordination," which was a distinctly Jewish institution. He
   finds this in the Pastoral Epistles, and further declares that in these
   epistles we see the Jewish term "presbyter" and the Gentile term
   "bishop" applied to one and the same set of office-bearers. Thus Dr.
   Loening arrives at the conclusion of the identity of "presbyter" and
   "episcopus," with which Dr. Lightfoot started. But he has a difficulty
   to encounter from his rejection of the authority of the Acts of the
   Apostles, and from his placing the Pastoral Epistles at such a late
   date. Dr. Harnack had said, standing on the same critical ground as Dr.
   Loening, that if the Gentile Christian organization had taken elders
   from the Jewish, these officials would surely have appeared earlier
   than the last years of the first century, which is the earliest date
   which the critical theories about certain New Testament writings
   permit. Dr. Loening gets round this objection by supposing, on the
   authority, or at least on what he calls the authority, of Hegesippus,
   that there was no organization at all in Jewish Christian communities
   until after the death of James, and that the Jewish Christian Church
   was first thoroughly detached from Judaism and furnished with an
   organization of its own when Symeon became its head. His refusal to
   accept the trustworthiness of the Acts of the Apostles, and his full
   credence of all the gossip of Hegesippus, justifies Loofs' sarcasm that
   Loening is an ideal "modern critic," because the only sources of
   information that are not to be accepted uncritically are the canonical
   Scriptures. Coming to the question of how the single president of a
   Church emerged from the college of "presbyter-bishops," Dr. Loening has
   a theory which is all his own. The thick veil which covers the change
   from the two-fold to the three-fold order of the ministry can be
   lifted, he thinks, by the aid of the Epistles of Ignatius. With these
   to guide us we can gather that while in Rome and Macedonia there was
   still a collegiate constitution, there was in Antioch and Asia Minor a
   three-fold ministry; but the "bishop" was not considered a successor of
   the apostles but a representative of Jesus Christ and of God. The
   change did not come from the colleges of "presbyter-bishops" taking to
   themselves a permanent president, for there is no evidence of any such
   movement, nor did it follow any analogy of heathen gilds or civic
   constitutions, for no such analogies present themselves. It came from
   an imitation of the position of Symeon at the head of the
   Jewish-Christian community at Pella. Symeon, of the natural family line
   of our Lord, was the representative of Jesus; and Ignatius got the
   "ecclesiastical precedent" required there, and that is why he considers
   the "bishop" or permanent president of the college of "
   presbyter-bishops" the successor of the Lord. Ignatius seized on this
   idea, and his enthusiastic support of it made the conception widely
   known. Besides, it was useful in the circumstances of the second
   century, and so the practice spread throughout the Church. Only the
   main thought of Ignatius--that the permanent president represented
   Christ--was departed from, and the "bishop" was looked upon as the
   successor of the apostles. Then came Cyprian with his sacerdotal ideas,
   and the simple president changed into the hierarchical bishop through
   the idea of an ordination which gave a "charismatic" character to an
   office held for life.

   The theory of Professor Loofs of Halle is given in an elaborate article
   published in the Studien und Kritiken for 1890 (pp. 619-658). Professor
   Loofs is the most distinguished of the younger Church historians of
   Germany, and is an eminently sane and scientific worker and thinker.

   Professor Loofs agrees with all our authorities that there was in
   apostolic and in sub-apostolic times a "charismatic ministry" of
   "apostles, prophets and teachers," and that they were in no sense the
   office-bearers in local Churches; but he thinks that some authorities
   have drawn too hard and fast a line between the two classes of
   ministry. As to the office-bearers in local Churches, the controversy
   concerns these points : Whence comes the name "episcopus," and what
   were the original functions of the men so called? What was the origin
   of the "presbyteri," and what was their relation to the "episcopi"? At
   what time did the guidance of the community fall into the hands of one
   episcopus, and how did it come about? These questions exhaust the
   points in dispute.

   He has not much belief in the relation of the name "episcopus" to the
   officials of heathen confraternities or to civil officials; the
   references given by Dr. Hatch and Dr. Harnack do not prove their
   contention. He does not think that the word is a direct term of
   distinct office in the New Testament writings any more than poimen
   (pastor) or hegoumenos; in the address to the Epistle to the
   Philippians episcopi are merely those members of the brethren who take
   an active oversight, and diakoni are those who render active
   assistance. When we get beyond the New Testament writings and come to
   the Didache, the episcopi are undoubtedly the officials of the
   congregation who preside over the public worship, but the question is
   whether they did this and nothing else, and whether this was their
   original work. He thinks that they were more than merely the presiding
   officers at public worship and what that included, for they are
   continually called poimenes, and "to shepherd" surely means more than
   to preside at worship and distribute the offerings. And he is of
   opinion that originally they were simply prohistamenoi, and gradually
   became the presidents of the public worship. It is difficult to say
   whether they taught, but 1 Thess. v. 12 seems to imply that teaching
   was from the first associated with leading the congregation.

   Then as to the "presbyters"--excluding for the sake of argument the
   Acts of the Apostles, the Apocalypse and the Epistle of James--the
   first fairly debatable places where they are mentioned are in the First
   Epistle of St. Peter and the First Epistle of Clement. The presbyters
   or elders mentioned in these epistles are undoubtedly office-bearers;
   and it is impossible to prove that the "presbyters" in the Gentile
   Christian Churches were not the same as in, and taken from, the Jewish
   Christian Churches, unless it can be shown that the office they held in
   the one was different from what they held in the other, or that there
   was a period when there were no "presbyters" in the Gentile Churches,
   and to prove this more is needed than the argument of silence from St.
   Paul's epistles. If "presbyters" were in Gentile Christian Churches
   then they were exactly the same as "episcopi"; and "presbyter" is the
   name of the office, while "episcopus" tells us that this official
   exercised the function of "oversight." This can be proved without
   reference to the presence of the word "presbyter" in writings disputed
   on critical grounds. The testimony of Jerome is not to be set aside
   lightly; it is unquestionable that Clement calls "episcopi"
   "presbyters"; even if the word "episkopountes " be rejected in 1 Peter
   v. 2, "presbyters" are called "pastors" in that epistle, and "pastor"
   is a common equivalent for "episcopus"; the "presbyters" of Ephesus are
   called "episcopi" (Acts xx. 17, 28), and this evidence is quite
   independent of the date or historicity of the book; and there is
   finally the witness of Tertullian (Apol. 39) and of Irenaeus. All this
   is much stronger evidence for the identity of the words than anything
   that Hatch or Harnack has brought forward against the conception. But
   this does not settle the question whether the "presbyter" and the
   "episcopus" were identical from the first, or when the term "presbyter"
   came into the Christian organization. All the probabilities are that it
   came from the Jewish Church; Christianity came out of Judaism, and that
   gives an antecedent probability. This does not mean that they got the
   word from Palestine; Jewish synagogues abounded all throughout the
   Roman Empire, and converts must have come from them into the Christian
   Churches. But there is no need to suppose that all Christian
   congregations got hold of the word in the same way; some may have got
   it from others, and some may have taken the idea and the function from
   the civil and social organizations around them; we need not suppose any
   monotonous uniformity of derivation. At all events, the word and the
   function were within the Christian congregations, and if St. Paul says
   nothing about "presbyters," he recognizes "prohistamenoi," who were
   much the same. But of course it is quite unnecessary to suppose that
   the organization of Christian congregations took from the very first
   the form it afterwards assumed in apostolic and post-apostolic times.
   There is a growth which takes time. It is much more credible to believe
   that the terms "presbyteri," "prohistamenoi" and "episcopi" all mean
   the same thing than to accept any of the more recent reconstructions.
   Thus it will be seen that Professor Loofs reaches exactly the same
   position as Dr. Lightfoot. In all that has been said, it is presupposed
   that there was at the head of each local Church a number of
   "presbyter-bishops," and the next question is, How did the three-fold
   ministry arise? Dr. Loofs answers that we really do not know. We are in
   absolute ignorance about two things which might give us light on the
   question if we could learn something about them--the relation of the
   "House Churches" to the body of Christians in the town to which they
   belonged, and what provision was made for the instruction of candidates
   for baptism, and by whom this instruction was given. But while we can
   give no certain answer to the question, something can be said both
   negatively and positively. We can say negatively that the change from
   the one to the other did not come by any sudden alteration which gave
   rise to contentions; there is no word of such contention in the whole
   round of primitive Christian literature; the change came naturally, so
   naturally as to make it seem that there was no change. We can say
   positively that there is great likelihood that the channel of the
   change was the relation of the officials to the conduct of public
   worship, and more especially in their relation to the Eucharist. What
   happened there while a college of "presbyter-bishops" was at the head
   of the congregation we do not know; but it is manifest that there could
   not be a collegiate superintendence of the Lord's Supper. Did the
   "presbyter-bishops" take it in turn to officiate, or was one of their
   number appointed to undertake this service usually? We do not know. But
   it did become the duty of one man to superintend the ad-ministration of
   the Eucharist; we see this in Justin Martyr; and the man whom Justin
   calls the proestos is plainly the forerunner of the single episcopus.
   This, however, is not all that is needed to account for the change
   which did come about; and probably something has yet to be done in the
   line of following up Harnack's idea that the single president was
   supposed to inherit the spiritual gifts of the charismatic ministry.
   Once, however, the single bishop became the rule, the growth and the
   importance of the higher order can easily be traced.

   The theory of Professor Schmiedel on the origin and growth of the
   ministry in the primitive Christian congregations is to be found in the
   article on Ministry in the Encyclopaedia Biblica. It is easily
   accessible. I have recently described and criticised it in an article
   contributed to the first number of the Hibbert Journal. It may be
   sufficient to say that the whole of the recent discussions in Germany
   on the origin of the Christian Ministry are condensed in the article.

   The article Church, contributed by the Rev. S. C. Gayford to Hastings'
   Bible Dictionary, is one of exceptional interest. It is a very
   exhaustive account of the Churches of the New Testament, based on a
   searching analysis of the documents of the New Testament. Unfortunately
   the author confines himself almost exclusively to the canonical
   writings. The article is marked by two things which are treated in a
   fresh clear way--a description of the gradual growth of organization to
   be seen within the Churches during apostolic times, and a clear account
   of the prophetic ministry. The article is in every way worthy of
   attention and of study.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [818] Dr. Loening belongs to that school of New Testament critics who
   are furthest removed from the traditional ideas about the date and
   authorship of the New Testament writings. He does not believe that we
   can accept the account given in the Acts of the Apostles as trustworthy
   history for apostolic times. Therefore while he accepts the account of
   the election and setting apart of the Seven, he refuses to admit that
   Paul and Barnabas saw "presbyters" appointed in the Churches founded
   during their first mission journey, and to accept the fact of the
   existence of "presbyters" in the primitive Christian Church in
   Jerusalem. He holds that Rom. xvi. 3-15 is not part of the Epistle to
   the Romans, but a letter to the Church at Ephesus, and to be taken as
   evidence for the organization of the Churches in further Asia and in
   Greece. He does not believe in the Pauline origin of the Epistle to the
   Ephesians or of the Pastoral Epistles. He dates the former at 70-90
   A.D. and the latter at sometime during the first quarter of the second
   century; while he relegates the date of the Acts of the Apostles to the
   beginning of the second century. He makes up for this incredulity by
   accepting with unquestioning faith the gossip of Hegesippus and such
   writers.
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

   Genesis

   [1]17:13

   Numbers

   [2]10:2-3

   Deuteronomy

   [3]13:3   [4]17:12   [5]17:12-13

   Psalms

   [6]1:3   [7]51:15-17   [8]74:2

   Isaiah

   [9]3:5   [10]13:20   [11]13:22   [12]61:1

   Jeremiah

   [13]23:21-32

   Joel

   [14]2:28-29

   Amos

   [15]9:11

   Malachi

   [16]1:11   [17]3:3-4

   Matthew

   [18]4:11   [19]5:13-14   [20]7:15   [21]7:15   [22]8:15   [23]10:10
   [24]10:10   [25]10:40   [26]10:40   [27]10:40-42   [28]10:41
   [29]10:41   [30]10:41   [31]10:41   [32]11:2-5   [33]13:55
   [34]15:24   [35]16:13-19   [36]16:14   [37]16:17   [38]16:17-19
   [39]16:18   [40]16:18   [41]16:18   [42]16:22-23   [43]18:5
   [44]18:5   [45]18:15-20   [46]18:17   [47]20:26   [48]20:28
   [49]22:4   [50]23:2-3   [51]23:8-10   [52]23:11   [53]23:13
   [54]23:34   [55]23:34   [56]24:11   [57]24:11   [58]24:11   [59]24:24
   [60]25:44   [61]25:44   [62]26:26-28   [63]27:55

   Mark

   [64]1:13   [65]1:14-34   [66]1:31   [67]1:39   [68]3:13-16   [69]6:3
   [70]6:8   [71]6:15   [72]8:28   [73]9:35   [74]9:37   [75]9:37
   [76]10:43   [77]10:45   [78]13:22   [79]13:22   [80]14:22-24
   [81]15:41

   Luke

   [82]4:18   [83]4:21   [84]4:39   [85]4:41   [86]6:13   [87]8:3
   [88]9:2   [89]9:3   [90]9:8   [91]9:10   [92]9:48   [93]9:48
   [94]10:16   [95]10:16   [96]10:40   [97]11:49   [98]11:49
   [99]12:31-33   [100]12:37   [101]13:26   [102]14:15   [103]19:44
   [104]22:26   [105]22:26-27   [106]22:30   [107]22:31   [108]24:33
   [109]24:48

   John

   [110]3:26   [111]12:2   [112]12:26   [113]12:26   [114]14:16-26
   [115]15:7-15   [116]20:21   [117]20:21-23   [118]20:22-23

   Acts

   [119]1:17   [120]1:21   [121]1:21-23   [122]1:22   [123]1:23
   [124]1:23-26   [125]1:25   [126]2:16   [127]2:46   [128]2:46
   [129]5:11   [130]6:1   [131]6:1-2   [132]6:1-7   [133]6:1-7
   [134]6:2   [135]6:2   [136]6:2   [137]6:3   [138]6:3   [139]6:3
   [140]6:4   [141]6:5   [142]8:1   [143]8:3   [144]8:5   [145]8:14-27
   [146]8:40   [147]9:2   [148]9:10   [149]9:31   [150]10:46
   [151]11:1-4   [152]11:22   [153]11:22   [154]11:22-23   [155]11:26
   [156]11:27   [157]11:27   [158]11:28   [159]11:28   [160]11:29
   [161]11:30   [162]11:30   [163]11:30   [164]11:30   [165]12:1
   [166]12:5   [167]12:12   [168]12:17   [169]12:17   [170]12:17
   [171]12:25   [172]12:25   [173]13:1   [174]13:1   [175]13:1
   [176]13:1   [177]13:1-2   [178]13:1-3   [179]13:2   [180]13:2-3
   [181]13:6   [182]14:4   [183]14:14   [184]14:23   [185]14:23
   [186]14:23   [187]14:23   [188]14:23   [189]14:23   [190]14:27
   [191]15:2   [192]15:4   [193]15:4   [194]15:6   [195]15:12
   [196]15:13   [197]15:16   [198]15:22   [199]15:22   [200]15:22
   [201]15:22-29   [202]15:27   [203]15:30-34   [204]15:32   [205]15:32
   [206]15:32   [207]15:41   [208]16:1-4   [209]16:4   [210]16:5
   [211]18:2   [212]18:8   [213]18:22   [214]18:26   [215]19:8
   [216]19:9   [217]19:9-10   [218]19:10   [219]19:22   [220]19:41
   [221]20:7   [222]20:17   [223]20:17   [224]20:17   [225]20:17
   [226]20:17   [227]20:17   [228]20:17   [229]20:24   [230]20:28
   [231]20:28   [232]20:28   [233]20:28   [234]20:28   [235]21:8
   [236]21:8   [237]21:9   [238]21:9-10   [239]21:10   [240]21:10
   [241]21:18   [242]21:18   [243]21:18   [244]21:19   [245]22:4
   [246]22:21   [247]22:25-28   [248]24:14   [249]24:14   [250]24:17
   [251]26:17   [252]27:33-35

   Romans

   [253]1:7   [254]3:29   [255]6:3-8   [256]6:17   [257]8:15
   [258]11:13   [259]11:17   [260]12:1   [261]12:1   [262]12:3-16
   [263]12:6   [264]12:6   [265]12:6-7   [266]12:6-8   [267]12:6-8
   [268]12:6-8   [269]12:7   [270]12:7   [271]12:7   [272]12:8
   [273]12:8   [274]13:4   [275]15:8   [276]15:16   [277]15:20
   [278]15:25   [279]15:31   [280]16:1   [281]16:1   [282]16:1-3
   [283]16:2   [284]16:3-5   [285]16:3-15   [286]16:3-15   [287]16:4
   [288]16:5   [289]16:5   [290]16:6   [291]16:7   [292]16:10
   [293]16:10   [294]16:11   [295]16:11   [296]16:12   [297]16:14
   [298]16:14   [299]16:15   [300]16:15   [301]16:16   [302]16:16
   [303]16:21-23   [304]16:23   [305]16:23   [306]16:23   [307]16:23

   1 Corinthians

   [308]1:1   [309]1:2   [310]1:2   [311]1:11   [312]1:12-13   [313]1:14
   [314]1:14   [315]1:26   [316]2:6   [317]2:7   [318]2:14   [319]2:15
   [320]3:1   [321]3:3-9   [322]3:5   [323]4:9   [324]4:9   [325]4:14
   [326]4:16   [327]4:16-17   [328]4:17   [329]4:17   [330]4:18-21
   [331]5:1-8   [332]5:1-8   [333]5:1-13   [334]5:3   [335]5:3-5
   [336]6:1   [337]6:4   [338]6:5   [339]6:5   [340]6:5   [341]6:9
   [342]6:16   [343]7:1   [344]7:1-10:33   [345]7:6   [346]7:6
   [347]7:6   [348]7:7   [349]7:10   [350]7:10   [351]7:10   [352]7:12
   [353]7:17   [354]7:18   [355]7:25   [356]7:25   [357]7:25   [358]7:25
   [359]7:31   [360]7:40   [361]7:40   [362]8:10   [363]9:1   [364]9:1
   [365]9:1   [366]9:2   [367]9:2   [368]9:2   [369]9:5   [370]9:5
   [371]9:5-6   [372]9:8-13   [373]9:13-14   [374]9:14   [375]9:24-27
   [376]10:1-4   [377]10:14-22   [378]10:15   [379]10:15   [380]10:32
   [381]10:32   [382]10:32   [383]11:1   [384]11:2   [385]11:2
   [386]11:13   [387]11:13   [388]11:16   [389]11:16   [390]11:18
   [391]11:18   [392]11:20   [393]11:21   [394]11:22   [395]11:22
   [396]11:22   [397]11:23   [398]11:23   [399]11:30-32   [400]12:1
   [401]12:1   [402]12:1-31   [403]12:1-31   [404]12:1-31   [405]12:3
   [406]12:3   [407]12:3   [408]12:4   [409]12:4   [410]12:4
   [411]12:4-11   [412]12:5   [413]12:8   [414]12:9   [415]12:10
   [416]12:10   [417]12:10   [418]12:13   [419]12:27   [420]12:28
   [421]12:28   [422]12:28   [423]12:28   [424]12:28   [425]12:28
   [426]12:28   [427]12:28   [428]12:28   [429]12:28-31   [430]13:1-13
   [431]13:2   [432]14:1   [433]14:1-40   [434]14:2   [435]14:2
   [436]14:2   [437]14:2   [438]14:4   [439]14:4   [440]14:5   [441]14:5
   [442]14:6   [443]14:7-8   [444]14:10-11   [445]14:12   [446]14:13
   [447]14:14   [448]14:14   [449]14:16   [450]14:16   [451]14:19
   [452]14:19   [453]14:20-33   [454]14:21   [455]14:23   [456]14:23
   [457]14:25   [458]14:25   [459]14:26   [460]14:26   [461]14:26
   [462]14:26   [463]14:27-28   [464]14:29-33   [465]14:29-33
   [466]14:30   [467]14:30   [468]14:31   [469]14:32   [470]14:32
   [471]14:33   [472]14:33   [473]14:33   [474]14:34   [475]14:34
   [476]14:34   [477]14:35   [478]14:35   [479]14:36   [480]14:37
   [481]14:37   [482]14:37   [483]14:39   [484]14:39   [485]14:40
   [486]15:1   [487]15:1-3   [488]15:5-8   [489]15:7   [490]15:8
   [491]15:9   [492]15:9   [493]15:10   [494]15:10   [495]15:32
   [496]15:51   [497]16:1   [498]16:1   [499]16:1   [500]16:1-2
   [501]16:10   [502]16:15   [503]16:15   [504]16:15   [505]16:15-16
   [506]16:16   [507]16:19   [508]16:19   [509]16:19   [510]16:19
   [511]16:19   [512]16:19   [513]16:19

   2 Corinthians

   [514]1:1   [515]1:1   [516]1:1   [517]1:1   [518]1:24   [519]2:5
   [520]2:5-8   [521]2:6   [522]2:6   [523]2:6-9   [524]2:9   [525]3:1
   [526]3:1   [527]3:1-2   [528]3:1-3   [529]3:1-3   [530]3:3   [531]3:6
   [532]3:7   [533]3:8   [534]3:12   [535]4:1   [536]5:16   [537]5:18
   [538]6:3   [539]6:16   [540]6:18   [541]7:5   [542]8:1   [543]8:4
   [544]8:9   [545]8:11   [546]8:15   [547]8:19   [548]8:19   [549]8:19
   [550]8:19   [551]8:20   [552]8:23   [553]8:23-24   [554]9:1
   [555]9:9   [556]9:12   [557]9:13   [558]10:1   [559]10:1   [560]10:1
   [561]10:5   [562]11:5   [563]11:6   [564]11:8   [565]11:8-9
   [566]11:13   [567]11:13   [568]11:21   [569]11:22   [570]11:23
   [571]11:23-27   [572]11:28   [573]12:1   [574]12:1-4   [575]12:1-5
   [576]12:1-5   [577]12:10   [578]12:11   [579]12:12   [580]12:12
   [581]12:13   [582]12:18   [583]13:2-3   [584]13:5-6

   Galatians

   [585]1:1   [586]1:2   [587]1:2   [588]1:7-8   [589]1:13   [590]1:13
   [591]1:13   [592]1:15-17   [593]1:19   [594]1:19   [595]1:22
   [596]1:22   [597]2:1   [598]2:3   [599]2:7-8   [600]2:7-9   [601]2:9
   [602]2:9   [603]2:9   [604]2:9   [605]2:12   [606]3:3-5
   [607]3:26-28   [608]3:27   [609]3:28   [610]4:6   [611]4:11
   [612]4:13   [613]4:14   [614]4:19   [615]6:1   [616]6:1   [617]6:1
   [618]6:6   [619]6:6   [620]6:6   [621]6:16

   Ephesians

   [622]1:1   [623]1:22   [624]2:20   [625]3:7   [626]3:10   [627]3:21
   [628]4:4-6   [629]4:4-13   [630]4:11   [631]4:11   [632]4:11
   [633]4:12   [634]4:15-16   [635]4:16   [636]5:23   [637]5:23-25
   [638]5:27   [639]5:29   [640]5:32   [641]6:21

   Philippians

   [642]1:1   [643]1:1   [644]1:1   [645]2:17   [646]2:17   [647]2:25
   [648]3:6   [649]3:17   [650]4:10   [651]4:15   [652]4:18
   [653]4:21-22

   Colossians

   [654]1:1   [655]1:1-2   [656]1:2   [657]1:7   [658]1:18   [659]1:18
   [660]1:23   [661]1:24   [662]1:25   [663]3:14   [664]4:7   [665]4:15
   [666]4:15   [667]4:15   [668]4:16   [669]4:16   [670]4:17

   1 Thessalonians

   [671]1:1   [672]1:1   [673]1:1   [674]1:6   [675]2:6   [676]2:14
   [677]2:14   [678]3:2   [679]3:2   [680]4:1   [681]4:9-11   [682]4:10
   [683]5:12   [684]5:12   [685]5:12   [686]5:12   [687]5:12   [688]5:12
   [689]5:13   [690]5:13   [691]5:14   [692]5:14   [693]5:14   [694]5:20
   [695]5:20   [696]5:21   [697]5:21

   2 Thessalonians

   [698]1:1   [699]1:4   [700]2:15

   1 Timothy

   [701]1:12   [702]1:18   [703]2:7   [704]2:11   [705]2:12   [706]3:1
   [707]3:1   [708]3:1-7   [709]3:1-7   [710]3:1-9   [711]3:1-13
   [712]3:2-7   [713]3:5   [714]3:5   [715]3:5   [716]3:7   [717]3:8
   [718]3:8   [719]3:8-9   [720]3:8-10   [721]3:8-13   [722]3:8-13
   [723]3:10   [724]3:12   [725]3:12   [726]3:13   [727]3:13   [728]3:15
   [729]3:15   [730]4:6   [731]4:14   [732]4:14   [733]5:9   [734]5:16
   [735]5:17   [736]5:17   [737]5:17-18   [738]5:17-19   [739]5:17-19
   [740]5:17-20   [741]5:17-20   [742]5:19-20   [743]5:22   [744]6:16
   [745]6:17-19   [746]6:17-21   [747]6:20-21

   2 Timothy

   [748]1:4-7   [749]1:6   [750]1:11   [751]1:18   [752]2:2   [753]2:12
   [754]4:5   [755]4:5   [756]4:5

   Titus

   [757]1:4   [758]1:5   [759]1:5-7   [760]1:5-7   [761]1:7   [762]1:7-9
   [763]1:7-9   [764]3:10

   Philemon

   [765]1:2   [766]1:2   [767]1:2   [768]1:13

   Hebrews

   [769]1:14   [770]6:10   [771]6:10   [772]13:7   [773]13:7   [774]13:7
   [775]13:15   [776]13:16

   James

   [777]2:2   [778]3:1   [779]5:14   [780]5:14-15

   1 Peter

   [781]1:1   [782]1:12   [783]2:5   [784]2:9   [785]2:12   [786]2:17
   [787]2:17   [788]2:25   [789]4:9-11   [790]4:10   [791]4:10-11
   [792]5:1   [793]5:1   [794]5:1-2   [795]5:1-2   [796]5:1-2   [797]5:2
   [798]5:2

   2 Peter

   [799]2:1

   1 John

   [800]4:1   [801]4:1   [802]4:1-3   [803]4:1-3   [804]4:1-3
   [805]4:20

   3 John

   [806]1:6   [807]1:9-10

   Revelation

   [808]1:4   [809]1:11   [810]1:20   [811]2:1   [812]2:1-29   [813]2:2
   [814]2:2   [815]2:2   [816]2:7   [817]2:11   [818]2:14   [819]2:14-15
   [820]2:15   [821]2:17   [822]2:19   [823]2:20   [824]2:20   [825]2:20
   [826]2:29   [827]3:1-22   [828]3:6   [829]3:7   [830]3:13   [831]3:20
   [832]3:22   [833]4:4   [834]4:10   [835]5:1-14   [836]5:5-6
   [837]5:8   [838]5:9-13   [839]6:1-17   [840]11:17   [841]11:18
   [842]15:3   [843]16:6   [844]18:20   [845]21:9   [846]22:9
   [847]22:16
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Greek Words and Phrases

     * ohi kalos proestotes presbuteroi diples times axiousthosan, malista
       hoi kopiontes en logo kai didaskalia: [848]1
     * Didache ton dodeka Apostolon: [849]1
     * Thusiai pneumatikai: [850]1
     * Kai angelikon dunameon ephistamenon tois athroismasi ton
       pisteuonton kai autou tou kuriou kai soteros hemon dunameos ede de
       kai pneumaton hagion, oimai de, hoti kai prokekoimemenon; saphes
       de, hoti kai en to bio perionton, ei kai to pos ouk eucheres
       eipein.: [851]1
     * Mimetai ginesthe Iesou Christou; : [852]1
     * Mnemoneuete ton hegoumenon humon, hoitines elalesan humin ton logon
       tou Theou: [853]1
     * Sunagoge Markioniston komes Lebaeon tou Kuriou kai Soteros Iesou
       Christou: [854]1
     * Time: [855]1
     * Tous merismous pheugete; : [856]1
     * Ten sarka humon hos naon Theou tereite; : [857]1
     * Ten henosin agapate; : [858]1
     * Choris tou episkopou meden poieite; : [859]1
     * apo'stoloi: [860]1
     * autois, a'n tinon kratete kekra'tentai.: [861]1
     * ge'ne glosson: [862]1
     * gerousiarches: [863]1
     * gerousia: [864]1
     * gnome: [865]1
     * graphe: [866]1
     * gunaikos andra: [867]1
     * gene glosson: [868]1
     * di9akonia: [869]1
     * diadoche: [870]1
     * diakonein: [871]1
     * diakonein : [872]1
     * diakonein trapezais: [873]1
     * diakonia: [874]1 [875]2 [876]3
     * diakonia kai apostole: [877]1
     * diakri'seis pneuma'ton: [878]1
     * dida'skaloi: [879]1
     * didaskalia: [880]1
     * didache: [881]1
     * didaskaloi: [882]1
     * diakonos: [883]1
     * diakrisis: [884]1
     * duna'meis: [885]1
     * energe'mata duna'meon: [886]1
     * ermenei'a glosson: [887]1
     * epi tes paroikias: [888]1
     * episkopoi: [889]1
     * eis diakonian tois hagiois: [890]1
     * ei'te diakonian, en te diakonia: [891]1
     * euangelistai: [892]1
     * thiasarches: [893]1
     * thusiasterion: [894]1
     * thusiasterion Theou: [895]1 [896]2
     * thusia zosa: [897]1
     * thiasos: [898]1
     * katastesomen: [899]1
     * kata ten analogian tes pisteos: [900]1
     * kai tou?to eipo`n enephu'sesen kai` le'gei autois, La'bete Pneuma
       Hagion an tinon aphete ta`s amarti'as, aphientai (apheontai: [901]1
     * kekopiaka: [902]1
     * klontes te kat' oikon a'rton: [903]1
     * koinonia: [904]1 [905]2 [906]3
     * kopiontes, nouthetountes: [907]1
     * kuberneseis: [908]1 [909]2 [910]3 [911]4 [912]5 [913]6 [914]7
       [915]8
     * lalountes ton logon tou Theou: [916]1
     * leitourgia: [917]1
     * lo'gos gno'seos: [918]1
     * lo'gos sophi'as: [919]1
     * logos gnoseos: [920]1
     * logos sophias: [921]1
     * mathetai: [922]1 [923]2
     * metoikoi: [924]1
     * metoikos: [925]1
     * neoteroi: [926]1
     * nouthetein: [927]1
     * nous: [928]1
     * hoi kopiontes en humin: [929]1
     * hoi tes hodou ontes: [930]1
     * hoitines eisin episemoi en tois apostolois: [931]1
     * oikos: [932]1
     * paroikia: [933]1
     * paroikiai: [934]1
     * pi'stis: [935]1
     * plethra: [936]1
     * pneumatikoi: [937]1
     * pneumatikos: [938]1 [939]2
     * poimainein: [940]1
     * poimanate to en humin poimnion tou Theou: [941]1
     * poimenas kai didaskaloi: [942]1
     * poimenes: [943]1
     * poimenes, episkopoi, presbuteroi, diakonoi: [944]1
     * poimen: [945]1 [946]2
     * poimnion: [947]1
     * presbuterion: [948]1
     * presbuteroi: [949]1 [950]2 [951]3 [952]4 [953]5 [954]6 [955]7
       [956]8
     * presbuteroi . . . poimanate . . . episkopountes: [957]1
     * presbuteros: [958]1 [959]2 [960]3 [961]4 [962]5
     * presbutai: [963]1 [964]2
     * proestos: [965]1 [966]2 [967]3 [968]4 [969]5
     * proegoumenoi: [970]1
     * proegoumenos: [971]1
     * prokathemenoi: [972]1
     * pronoeisthai: [973]1
     * pronoesontai: [974]1
     * prostates: [975]1 [976]2
     * prostatis, prostates: [977]1
     * prophetei'a: [978]1
     * propheteia: [979]1
     * prophetai: [980]1 [981]2
     * proistamenoi: [982]1 [983]2 [984]3 [985]4 [986]5 [987]6 [988]7
       [989]8 [990]9 [991]10
     * proistamenos: [992]1
     * proton pseudos: [993]1 [994]2
     * puloroi: [995]1
     * pistis: [996]1
     * pasa he adelphotes: [997]1
     * pasa he adolphotes: [998]1
     * sebastos: [999]1
     * sebomenoi: [1000]1
     * sungnome: [1001]1
     * summustas tou episkopou: [1002]1
     * sunagoge: [1003]1 [1004]2
     * sunathroizein: [1005]1
     * sunedrion theou: [1006]1
     * schole Turannou: [1007]1
     * tetimemenoi: [1008]1 [1009]2
     * time: [1010]1
     * tous de apoluthentas hegesasthai ton ekklesion, hosan de marturas
       homou kai apo genous ontas tou Kuriou: [1011]1
     * tous presboterous: [1012]1
     * tropo tini apechomenous tes pros gunaikas suneleuseos: [1013]1
     * tas aparchas auton: [1014]1
     * tade legei ho hagios, ho alethinos, ho echon ten klein Dabid, ho
       anoigon kai oudeis kleisei, kai kleion kai oudeis anoigei: [1015]1
     * ten logiken latreian humon: [1016]1
     * to polueutakton tes kata Theon agapes: [1017]1
     * to terma tes duseos: [1018]1
     * ton episkopon: [1019]1
     * ton episkopon Surias: [1020]1
     * tupos didaches: [1021]1
     * ton huperlian apostolon: [1022]1
     * chari'smata iama'ton: [1023]1
     * chari'smata iama?ton: [1024]1
     * charismata: [1025]1
     * cheirotonesantes: [1026]1
     * cheirotonesantes de autois presbuterous kat' ekklesian.: [1027]1
     * adelphotes: [1028]1
     * adolphotes: [1029]1
     * akolouthos: [1030]1
     * antilepseis: [1031]1 [1032]2 [1033]3 [1034]4 [1035]5 [1036]6
       [1037]7 [1038]8
     * aner dedokimasmenos: [1039]1
     * axioplokou pneumatikou stephanou: [1040]1
     * apostoloi: [1041]1
     * apostoloi memarturemenoi: [1042]1
     * archisunagogos: [1043]1 [1044]2 [1045]3
     * archontes: [1046]1
     * ekklesia: [1047]1 [1048]2 [1049]3
     * eklektoi treis andres: [1050]1
     * ekopiasa: [1051]1
     * energemata kai charismata kai diakoniai onomaton diaphorai monai,
       epei pragmata ta auta: [1052]1
     * episkopein: [1053]1
     * episkopountes: [1054]1
     * episkope: [1055]1 [1056]2
     * episkope: [1057]1 [1058]2 [1059]3 [1060]4
     * episkeptesthe allelous kai antilambanesthe allelon: [1061]1
     * episkopous: [1062]1
     * episkopon: [1063]1
     * epitage: [1064]1
     * episkopoi: [1065]1 [1066]2
     * episkopoi . . . episkopesantes hagnos: [1067]1
     * episkopos: [1068]1 [1069]2 [1070]3 [1071]4 [1072]5 [1073]6 [1074]7
       [1075]8 [1076]9 [1077]10 [1078]11
     * epispokos: [1079]1
     * ergon: [1080]1
     * he epitimia au'te he hupo ton pleionon: [1081]1
     * hegoumenoi: [1082]1 [1083]2 [1084]3
     * hegoumenoi, episkopoi, presbuteroi: [1085]1
     * hegoumenos: [1086]1 [1087]2
     * hierapostoloi: [1088]1
     * hina: [1089]1
     * ho diakonon: [1090]1
     * ho metadidous: [1091]1
     * ho proistamenos: [1092]1
     * ho eleon: [1093]1
     * onoma episkopes, leitourgia episkopes, dora episkopes: [1094]1
     * hopos timesosi kai entimethosin, eis ho an dee: [1095]1
     * hoti kleiete ten basileian ton ouranon emprosthen ton aithropon:
       [1096]1
     * humeis de este soma Christou: [1097]1
     * humeis hoi pneumatikoi katartizete ton toiouton: [1098]1
     * huperetes: [1099]1
     * Hos kai autos tou patros autou.: [1100]1
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Latin Words and Phrases

     * . . . Haec propterea, ut ostenderemus, apud veteres eosdem fuisse
       presbyteros, quos et episcopos; paulatim vero ut dissensionum
       plantaria evellerentur, ad unum omnem sollicitudinem esse delatam.
       Sicut ergo presbyteri sciunt, se ex ecclesiae consuetudine ei, qui
       sibi praepositus fuerit, esse subjectos; ita episcopi noverint se
       magis consuetudine, quam dispositionis dominicae veritate,
       presbyteris esse majores, et in commune debere ecclesiam regere.:
       [1101]1
     * Ad Filemonem una, et ad Titum una, et ad Timotheum duas, pro
       affecto et dilectione in honore tamen ecclesiae catholice in
       ordinatione ecclesiastice descepline sanctificatae sunt.: [1102]1
     * Agnitio vera est apostolicorum doctrinae, et antiquus ecclesiae
       status in universo mundo et character corporis Christi secundum
       successiones episcoporum quibus illi eam, quae in unoquoque loco
       est, ecclesiam tradiderunt: quae pervenit usque ad nos custoditione
       sine fictione scripturarum tractatio plenissima, neque additamentum
       neque ablationem recipiens: [1103]1
     * Aguntur praeterea per Graecias illa certis in locis concilia ex
       universis ecclesiis per quae et altiora quaeque in commune: [1104]1
     * Altar: [1105]1
     * Auro distincta aquearia of pretiosi marmoris crustis vestita
       domicilia.: [1106]1
     * Catechumenus baptismo initiandus si ab iis, qui eum adducunt, bono
       testimonio commendatur, eum illo tempore, quo instruebatur,
       infirmos visitasse et debiles sustentasse seque ab omni perverso
       sermone custodisse, laudes cecinisse: [1107]1
     * Collegia si qua fuerint illicita, mandatis et constitutionibus et
       senatusconsultis dissolvuntur; sed permittitur eis, cum
       dissolvuntur, pecunias communes si quas habent dividere pecuniamque
       inter se partiri: [1108]1
     * Communicat populum stans ad mensam corporis et sanguinis Domini
       . . . Deinde porrigat illis episcopus de corpore Christi dicens:
       Hoc est corpus Christi; illi vero dicant: Amen; et ei, quibus ille
       calicem porrigit dicens: Hic est sanguis Christi, dicant: Amen:
       [1109]1
     * Congregentur quotidie in ecclesia presbyteri et diaconi et
       anagnostai omnisque populus tempore gallicinii, vacentque orationi,
       psalmis, et lectioni scripturarum cum orationibus. . . . De Clero
       autem qui convenire negligunt, neque morbo neque itinere impediti,
       separentur: [1110]1
     * Cultores Augusti, qui per omnes domos in modum collegiorum
       habebantur: [1111]1
     * Cum episcopis, presbyteris, diaconis, confessoribus pariter ac
       stantibus laicis: [1112]1
     * Cuncta collegia, praeter antiquitus constituta, distraxit.: [1113]1
     * D.XV. (Kal. Oct.) nefastus prior Iudi in circo feriae ex
       senatus-consulto quod eo die divo Augusto honores caelestes a
       senatu decreti; Sex. Appuleio, Sex. Pompeio cos.: [1114]1
     * De his qui usurpant sibi, quod soli debeant episcopos ordinare,
       placuit ut nullus hoc sibi praesumat nisi assumptis secum aliis
       septem: [1115]1
     * Deinde eligatur unus ex episcopis et presbyteris, qui manum capiti
       ejus imponat, et oret dicens: [1116]1
     * Diva: [1117]1
     * Divae: [1118]1
     * Divi: [1119]1 [1120]2 [1121]3 [1122]4 [1123]5
     * Divi Imperatores: [1124]1 [1125]2 [1126]3 [1127]4 [1128]5 [1129]6
       [1130]7 [1131]8 [1132]9 [1133]10 [1134]11 [1135]12
     * Divus: [1136]1
     * Domnus: [1137]1
     * Ecce jam sex annis nec fraternitas: [1138]1
     * Edant bibantque ad satietatem, neque vero ad ebrietatem; sed in
       divina praesentia cum laude Dei: [1139]1
     * Episcopi: [1140]1
     * Episcopus eligatur ex omni populo . . . dicat populus: nos eligimus
       eum. Deinde silentio facto in toto grege post exhomologesin omnes
       pro eo orent dicentes: O Deus, corrobora hunc, quem nobis
       preparasti: [1141]1
     * Episcopus episcoporum: [1142]1
     * Erat sane illi etiam de nobis: [1143]1
     * Este potius . . . Christianus, pecuniam tuam adsidente Christo
       spectantibus angelis et martyris praesentibus super mensam
       dominicam sparge.: [1144]1
     * Et presbyteri portant alios calices lactis et mellis ut doceant
       eos, qui communicant, iterum eos natos esse ut parvuli, quia
       parvuli communicant lac et mel.: [1145]1
     * Et sint illis psalmi pro tintinabulis, quae erant in tunica
       Aaronis.: [1146]1
     * Etiam anagnostai habebant festiva indumenta: [1147]1
     * Filius Divi Julii: [1148]1
     * Genio Deivi Iuli, parentis patriae, quem senatus populusque Romanus
       in deorum numerum rettulit: [1149]1
     * Genius: [1150]1 [1151]2 [1152]3
     * Habere namque aut tenere ecclesiam nullo modo potest qui ordinatus
       in ecclesia non est.: [1153]1
     * Idem est ergo presbyter, qui episcopus; et antequam diaboli
       instinctu studia in religione fierent, et diceretur in populis: ego
       sum Pauli, ego Apollo, ego autem Cephae, communi presbyterorum
       consilio ecclesiae gubernabantur. Postquam vero unusquisque eos,
       quos baptizaverat, suos putabat esse, non Christi; in toto orbe
       decretum est, ut unus de presbyteris electus superponeretur
       caeteris, ad quem omnis ecclesiae cura pertineret, et schismatum
       semina tollerentur. Putat aliquis non scripturarum, sed nostram
       esse sententiam, episcopum et presbyterum unum esse, et aliud
       aetatis, aliud ease nomen officii; relegat apostoli ad Philippenses
       verba, dicentis: [1154]1
     * Imperator cum Augusti nomen accepit, tanquam praesenti et corporali
       Deo, fidelis est praestanda devotio.: [1155]1
     * Jam cum toto populo orant, qui eos osculentur gaudentes cum iis cum
       jubilatione: [1156]1
     * Luce clarius est, duo in clero ordines tum temporis (i.e. in the
       time of the apostles) fuisse, episcopos (= presbyteros) et
       diaconos: [1157]1
     * Mulier libera ne veniat veste variegata . . . neve crines demittat
       solutos, habeat potius capillos complexos in domo Dei, neve faciat
       cirros frontales in capite quando vult participare in mysteriis
       sacris: [1158]1
     * Nam servis, respublica et quasi civitas, domus est: [1159]1
     * Nam sicuti Deus solus de se idoneus est testis in suo sermone; ita
       etiam non ante fidem reperiet sermo in hominum cordibus, quam
       interiore Spiritus testimonio obsignetur: [1160]1
     * Ne multi inter vos sint doctores: [1161]1
     * Ne quis multum loquatur neve clamet, ne forte vos irrideant, neve
       sint scandalo hominibus, ita ut in contumeliam vertatur qui vos
       invitavit, cum appareat, vos a bono ordine aberrare: [1162]1
     * O Deus, Pater domini nostri Jesus Christi, Pater misericordiarum et
       Deus totius consolationis . . . . Respice super N., servum tuum,
       tribuens virtutem tuam et spiritum efficacem, quem tribuisti
       sanctis apostolis per dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, filium tuum
       unicum; illis, qui fundaverunt ecclesiam in omni loco ad honorem et
       gloriam nominis tui sancti. Quia tu cognovisti cor uniuscujusque,
       concede illi, ut ipse sine peccato videat populum tuum, ut mereatur
       pascere gregem tuum magnum sacrum. Effice etiam, ut mores ejus sint
       superiores omni populo sine ulla declinatione. Effice etiam, ut
       propter praestantiam illi ab omnibus invideatur, et accipe
       orationes ejus et oblationes ejus, quas tibi offeret die noctuque,
       et sint tibi odor suavis. Tribue etiam illi, O Domine, episcopatum
       et spiritum clementem et potestatem ad remittenda peccata; et
       tribue illi facultatem ad dissolvenda omnia vincula iniquitatis
       daemonum, et ad sanandos omnes morbos, et contere Satanam sub
       pedibus ejus velociter, per dominum nostrum Jesus Christum, per
       quem tibi gloria cum ipso et Spiritu Sancto in saecula saeculorum.
       Amen.: [1163]1
     * Per Jovem et divom Augustum et divom Claudium et divom Vespasianum
       Augustum et divom Titum Augustum et genium imperatoris caesaris
       Domitiani Augusti deosque Penates: [1164]1
     * Pontifex Maximus: [1165]1 [1166]2 [1167]3 [1168]4 [1169]5
     * Porro autem tempore, quo canit gallus, instituendae sunt orationes
       in ecclesiis: [1170]1
     * Praepositus: [1171]1
     * Psalmos recitent, antequam recedant: [1172]1
     * Quando quis dignus est, qui stet coram tribunali et afficiatur
       poena propter Christum, postea autem indulgentia liber dimittitur,
       talis postea meretur gradum presbyteralem coram Deo, non secundum
       ordinationem quae fit ab episcopo. Immo, confessio est ordinatio
       ejus. Quodsi vero episcopus fit, ordinetur. Si quis oonfessione
       emissa tormentis laesus non est, dignus est presbyteratu; attamen
       ordinetur per episcopum. Si talis, cum servus alicujus esset,
       propter Christum cruciatus pertulit, talis similiter est presbyter
       gregi. Quamquam enim formam presbyteratus non acceperit, tamen
       spiritum presbyteratus adeptus est; episcopus igitur omittat
       orationis partem, quae ad spiritum sanctum pertinet: [1173]1
     * Quando vero doctor quotidianum pensum docendi terminavit, orent
       separati a christianis: [1174]1
     * Qui pseudapostoli nisi adulteri evangelizatores: [1175]1
     * Quocunque die in ecclesia non orant, sumas scripturam, ut legas in
       ea. Sol conspiciat matutino tempore scripturam super genua tua:
       [1176]1
     * Quotiescunque episcopus mysteriis frui vult, congregentur diaconi
       et presbyteri apud eum, induti vestiment is albis pulchioribus toto
       populo potissimum autem splendidis. Bona autem opera omnibus
       vestimentis praestant: [1177]1
     * Si autem ordinatur presbyter, omnia cum eo similiter agantur ac cum
       episcopo, nisi quod cathedrae non insideat. Etiam eadem oratio
       super eo oretur tota ut super episcopo, cum sola exceptione nominis
       episcopatus. Episcopus in omnibus rebus aequiparetur presbytero
       excepto nomine cathedrae et ordinatione, quia potestas ordinandi
       ipsi non tribuitur: [1178]1
     * Si quis autem verba prophetica dicit, mercedem habebit: [1179]1
     * Si quis petitionem porrigit, quae ad ipsius ordinationem pertinet,
       quod dicit: Nactus sum charisma sanationis, non prius ordinetur,
       quam clareseat ea res. Imprimis inquirendum est, num sanationes,
       quae per eum fiunt, revera a Deo deriventur: [1180]1
     * Si quis prophetas despicit, semet segreget.: [1181]1
     * Si quis viduis coenam parare vult, curet, ut habeant coenam et ut
       dimittantur, antequam sol occidat: [1182]1
     * Successio Petri: [1183]1
     * Templa quamvis sciret etiam proconsulibus decerni solere; in nulla
       tamen provincia nisi communi suo Romaeque nomine recepit: [1184]1
     * Ut hanc fidem consequamur, institutum est ministerium docendi
       Evangelii: [1185]1
     * Viduis propter copiosas orationes, infirmiorum curam et frequens
       jejunium praecipuus honor tribuatur: [1186]1
     * ab evangelicis autem praeceptis omnino recedendum ease . . . cum
       ergo neque ipse apostolus neque angelus de caelo adnuntiare possit
       aliter aut docere praeterquam quod semel Christus docuit et
       apostoli ejus adnuntiaverunt.: [1187]1
     * ad satietatem neque vero ad ebrietatem: [1188]1
     * aeditui: [1189]1
     * aedituus: [1190]1
     * afflatus: [1191]1 [1192]2 [1193]3 [1194]4 [1195]5 [1196]6
     * album: [1197]1
     * altar: [1198]1
     * antistes: [1199]1
     * aram enim Dei mundam proponi oportet: [1200]1
     * augustus: [1201]1
     * authenticae: [1202]1
     * calatores: [1203]1
     * carmen Christo quasi Deo dicere secum invicem: [1204]1
     * cathedrae: [1205]1
     * certum veritatis charisma: [1206]1
     * certum veritatis charisma.: [1207]1
     * charisma: [1208]1
     * charisma veritatis: [1209]1 [1210]2 [1211]3 [1212]4 [1213]5 [1214]6
     * charismata: [1215]1
     * collegia: [1216]1
     * collegia tenuiorum: [1217]1 [1218]2
     * collegium: [1219]1 [1220]2 [1221]3
     * collegium quod est in domu Sergiae Paulinae: [1222]1
     * comes urbis: [1223]1
     * comitia: [1224]1
     * communicatio pacis: [1225]1
     * communicatio pacis, et appellatio fraternitatis et contesseratio
       hospitalitatis: [1226]1
     * confessor: [1227]1
     * consessus: [1228]1
     * contesseratio hospitalitatis: [1229]1 [1230]2
     * copiosas orationes et infirmorum curam: [1231]1
     * decretum: [1232]1
     * decuriones: [1233]1
     * diakoni: [1234]1
     * dies natalis: [1235]1
     * diligentia: [1236]1 [1237]2 [1238]3 [1239]4
     * disciplina: [1240]1 [1241]2
     * dispensatores Dei et Christi: [1242]1
     * disponere singula vel reformare: [1243]1
     * documenta: [1244]1
     * dominica hostia: [1245]1
     * ecclesias novellas et posteras: [1246]1
     * episcopatum: [1247]1
     * episcopi: [1248]1 [1249]2 [1250]3 [1251]4 [1252]5 [1253]6 [1254]7
       [1255]8 [1256]9 [1257]10 [1258]11 [1259]12
     * episcopo et clero et in omnibus stantibus constituta: [1260]1
     * episcopus: [1261]1 [1262]2 [1263]3 [1264]4 [1265]5 [1266]6 [1267]7
       [1268]8 [1269]9 [1270]10 [1271]11 [1272]12 [1273]13 [1274]14
       [1275]15 [1276]16 [1277]17 [1278]18 [1279]19 [1280]20 [1281]21
       [1282]22 [1283]23 [1284]24 [1285]25 [1286]26 [1287]27 [1288]28
       [1289]29 [1290]30
     * episcopus episcoporum: [1291]1 [1292]2
     * eucharistia: [1293]1
     * ex officio: [1294]1
     * expositionem: [1295]1
     * flamen: [1296]1 [1297]2
     * flamens: [1298]1
     * genio ipsius (Nero), Divo Augusto, Divae Augustae (Livia), Divo
       Claudio.: [1299]1
     * institutio divina: [1300]1
     * interea se a divisione mensurna tantum contineant: [1301]1
     * ipso facto: [1302]1 [1303]2
     * itaque alius hodie episcopus, cras alius.: [1304]1
     * libellatica: [1305]1
     * libellatici: [1306]1 [1307]2
     * libellaticus: [1308]1
     * libelli: [1309]1 [1310]2
     * libellus: [1311]1
     * mensa: [1312]1
     * ministri Augusti: [1313]1
     * ministri Augusti Mercurii Maiae: [1314]1
     * ministri Mercurii Maiae: [1315]1
     * missa catechumenorum: [1316]1
     * missa fidelium: [1317]1
     * novellis et posteris: [1318]1
     * omnis fraternitas: [1319]1
     * ordinationis lex: [1320]1
     * ordo: [1321]1 [1322]2 [1323]3 [1324]4 [1325]5
     * ostiarii: [1326]1 [1327]2
     * pastor: [1328]1 [1329]2 [1330]3 [1331]4 [1332]5 [1333]6 [1334]7
       [1335]8
     * pater patriae: [1336]1
     * patronus: [1337]1
     * pax Romanorum: [1338]1
     * placuit si quis quid queri aut referre volet, in conventu referat,
       ut quieti et hilares diebus solemnis epulemur.: [1339]1
     * plebis sulfragium: [1340]1
     * plebs: [1341]1 [1342]2
     * praepositi: [1343]1
     * praepositus: [1344]1
     * presbyter: [1345]1 [1346]2 [1347]3 [1348]4 [1349]5 [1350]6 [1351]7
       [1352]8 [1353]9 [1354]10 [1355]11 [1356]12 [1357]13
     * presbyteratum: [1358]1
     * presbyteri: [1359]1 [1360]2
     * presbyterii ordine: [1361]1
     * presbyterium: [1362]1
     * primus inter pares: [1363]1
     * pro magnitudine sua debeat Carthaginem Roma praecedere: [1364]1
     * propter potiorem principalitatem: [1365]1
     * propter principalitatem: [1366]1
     * quis enim non omnes honoris gradus crederet tali mente credente:
       [1367]1
     * quo tempore canit gallus: [1368]1
     * religio licita: [1369]1 [1370]2 [1371]3
     * sacerdos: [1372]1
     * sacramenta: [1373]1
     * sacrificata: [1374]1
     * sacrificati: [1375]1
     * sacrificatus: [1376]1
     * scholae: [1377]1
     * secundum arbitrium vestrum et omnium nostrum commune consilium:
       [1378]1
     * stips menstrua: [1379]1
     * successio: [1380]1
     * suis locis praesident: [1381]1
     * summus sacerdos: [1382]1
     * thurificati: [1383]1
     * tyrannico terrore: [1384]1
     * universa fraternitas: [1385]1
     * ut cum ecclesia matre remanerent et stipendia ejus episcopo
       dispensante perciperent: [1386]1
     * ut sordes postmodum quascumque contrahimus eleemosynis abluamus:
       [1387]1
     * veritatis charisma: [1388]1
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of French Words and Phrases

     * Ils ont encore la coûtume de faire des Agapes ou des repas de
       charité après les Bâtêmes, et les enterremens, pour tous ceux qui
       veulent s'y trouver; donnant à un chacun un plat de bouillie, avec
       un morceau de viande dedans, et du pain autant qu'il en peut
       manger; et ces repas se font ou dans 1'église même ou sur le toit
       de 1'église, qui est, selon la coûtume des Levantins, toujours
       plat, et capable de contenir un grand nombre d'hommes.: [1389]1
     * L'exaltation du pouvoir épiscopal qui se donne libre tours à
       travers les Épîtres d'Ignace fait trop souvent perdre de vue aux
       commenteurs cette intime association de 1'autorité presbytérale et
       de 1'autorité épiscopale, qu'un examen plus attentif dégage très
       clairement.: [1390]1
     * Tous ceux qui ont 1'experience de la parole en publique ne
       savent-ils pas que le ton n'est plus le même quand on parle à une
       assemblée que lorsqu'on s'addreese à une peraonne en particulier:
       [1391]1
     * prévôt: [1392]1
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Pages of the Print Edition

   [1393]vii  [1394]viii  [1395]ix  [1396]x  [1397]xi  [1398]xii
   [1399]xiii  [1400]xiv  [1401]xv  [1402]3  [1403]4  [1404]5  [1405]6
   [1406]7  [1407]8  [1408]9  [1409]10  [1410]11  [1411]12  [1412]13
   [1413]14  [1414]15  [1415]16  [1416]17  [1417]18  [1418]19  [1419]20
   [1420]21  [1421]22  [1422]23  [1423]24  [1424]25  [1425]26  [1426]27
   [1427]28  [1428]29  [1429]30  [1430]31  [1431]32  [1432]33  [1433]34
   [1434]35  [1435]36  [1436]37  [1437]41  [1438]42  [1439]43  [1440]44
   [1441]45  [1442]46  [1443]47  [1444]48  [1445]49  [1446]50  [1447]51
   [1448]52  [1449]53  [1450]54  [1451]55  [1452]56  [1453]57  [1454]58
   [1455]59  [1456]60  [1457]61  [1458]62  [1459]63  [1460]64  [1461]65
   [1462]66  [1463]69  [1464]70  [1465]71  [1466]72  [1467]73  [1468]74
   [1469]75  [1470]76  [1471]77  [1472]78  [1473]79  [1474]80  [1475]81
   [1476]82  [1477]83  [1478]84  [1479]85  [1480]86  [1481]87  [1482]88
   [1483]89  [1484]90  [1485]91  [1486]92  [1487]93  [1488]94  [1489]95
   [1490]96  [1491]97  [1492]98  [1493]99  [1494]100  [1495]101
   [1496]102  [1497]103  [1498]104  [1499]105  [1500]106  [1501]107
   [1502]108  [1503]109  [1504]113  [1505]114  [1506]115  [1507]116
   [1508]117  [1509]118  [1510]119  [1511]120  [1512]121  [1513]122
   [1514]123  [1515]124  [1516]125  [1517]126  [1518]127  [1519]128
   [1520]129  [1521]130  [1522]131  [1523]132  [1524]133  [1525]134
   [1526]135  [1527]136  [1528]137  [1529]138  [1530]139  [1531]140
   [1532]141  [1533]142  [1534]143  [1535]144  [1536]145  [1537]146
   [1538]147  [1539]148  [1540]149  [1541]150  [1542]151  [1543]152
   [1544]153  [1545]154  [1546]155  [1547]156  [1548]157  [1549]158
   [1550]159  [1551]160  [1552]161  [1553]162  [1554]163  [1555]164
   [1556]165  [1557]166  [1558]170  [1559]171  [1560]172  [1561]173
   [1562]174  [1563]175  [1564]176  [1565]177  [1566]178  [1567]179
   [1568]180  [1569]181  [1570]182  [1571]183  [1572]184  [1573]185
   [1574]186  [1575]187  [1576]188  [1577]189  [1578]190  [1579]191
   [1580]192  [1581]193  [1582]194  [1583]195  [1584]196  [1585]197
   [1586]198  [1587]199  [1588]200  [1589]201  [1590]202  [1591]203
   [1592]204  [1593]205  [1594]206  [1595]207  [1596]208  [1597]209
   [1598]210  [1599]169  [1600]214  [1601]215  [1602]216  [1603]217
   [1604]218  [1605]219  [1606]220  [1607]221  [1608]222  [1609]224
   [1610]225  [1611]226  [1612]227  [1613]228  [1614]229  [1615]230
   [1616]231  [1617]232  [1618]233  [1619]234  [1620]235  [1621]236
   [1622]237  [1623]238  [1624]239  [1625]240  [1626]241  [1627]242
   [1628]243  [1629]244  [1630]245  [1631]246  [1632]247  [1633]248
   [1634]249  [1635]250  [1636]251  [1637]252  [1638]253  [1639]254
   [1640]255  [1641]256  [1642]257  [1643]258  [1644]259  [1645]260
   [1646]261  [1647]265  [1648]266  [1649]267  [1650]268  [1651]269
   [1652]270  [1653]271  [1654]272  [1655]273  [1656]274  [1657]275
   [1658]276  [1659]277  [1660]278  [1661]279  [1662]280  [1663]281
   [1664]282  [1665]283  [1666]284  [1667]285  [1668]286  [1669]287
   [1670]288  [1671]289  [1672]290  [1673]291  [1674]292  [1675]293
   [1676]294  [1677]295  [1678]296  [1679]297  [1680]298  [1681]299
   [1682]300  [1683]301  [1684]302  [1685]303  [1686]304  [1687]305
   [1688]306  [1689]307  [1690]308  [1691]309  [1692]310  [1693]311
   [1694]312  [1695]313  [1696]314  [1697]315  [1698]316  [1699]317
   [1700]318  [1701]319  [1702]323  [1703]324  [1704]325  [1705]326
   [1706]327  [1707]328  [1708]329  [1709]330  [1710]331  [1711]332
   [1712]333  [1713]334  [1714]335  [1715]336  [1716]337  [1717]338
   [1718]339  [1719]340  [1720]341  [1721]342  [1722]343  [1723]344
   [1724]345  [1725]346  [1726]347  [1727]348  [1728]349  [1729]350
   [1730]351  [1731]352  [1732]353  [1733]354  [1734]355  [1735]356
   [1736]357  [1737]358  [1738]359  [1739]360  [1740]361  [1741]362
   [1742]363  [1743]364  [1744]365  [1745]366  [1746]367  [1747]368
   [1748]369  [1749]370  [1750]371  [1751]372  [1752]373  [1753]374
   [1754]375  [1755]376  [1756]377  [1757]378
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

References

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