We may

among you, not by constraint but willingly.'" thus shew that anciently bishops and presbyters were the same; but, by degrees, THAT THE PLANTS OF DISSENSION MIGHT BE ROOTED UP, all care was transferred to one. As, therefore, the presbyters know that, in accordance with the custom of the Church, they are subject to him who has been set over them, so the bishops should know that they are greater than the presbyters, rather by custom, than by the truth of an arrangement of the Lord." +

Jerome here explains himself in language which admits of no second interpretation; for all these proofs, adduced to shew that the Church was originally under presbyterial government, are of a later date than the First Epistle to the Corinthians. The Epistle to the Philippians contains internal evidence that it was dictated during Paul's first imprisonment at Rome; the Epistle to the Hebrews appeared after his liberation; and the First Epistle of Peter was written in the old age of the apostle of the circumcision. Nor is this even the full amount of his testimony to the antiquity of the presbyterian polity. On another occasion, after mentioning some of the texts which have been given, he goes on to make quotations from the Second and Third Epistles of John-which are generally dated towards the close of the first century §-and he declares

* 1 Pet. v. 1, 2.

It may suffice to give in the original only the conclusion of this long quotation. "Paulatim vero, ut dissensionum plantaria evellerentur, ad unum omnem solicitudinem esse delatam. Sicut ergo presbyteri sciunt se ex ecclesiæ consuetudine ei qui sibi præpositus fuerit esse subjectos; ita episcopi noverint se magis consuetudine quam dispositionis dominicæ veritate presbyteris esse majores.”—Comment. in Titum.

See Period I. sec. i. chap. 10. p. 157.

§ Thus Dr Burton says that "the Epistles of St John were composed in the latter part of Domitian's reign.”—Lectures, i. 382. Jerome was evidently of this opinion, for he says that, in his First Epistle, he refers to Cerinthus and Ebion, who appeared towards the close of the first century. "Jam tunc hæreticorum semina pullularent Cerinthi, Ebionis, et cæterorum qui negant Christum in carne venisse, quos et ipse in Epistola sua Antichristos vocat."Proleg. in Comment. super Matthæum.

that prelacy had not made its appearance when these letters were written. Having produced authorities from Paul and Peter, he exclaims-"Do the testimonies of such men seem small to you? Let the Evangelical Trumpet, the Son of Thunder, whom Jesus loved very much, who drank the streams of doctrine from the bosom of the Saviour, sound in your ears—The elder, unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth;'* and, in another epistle The elder to the very dear Caius, whom I love in the truth.' But what was done afterwards, when one was elected who was set over the rest, was for a cure of schism; lest every one, insisting upon his own will, should rend the Church of God."+

We have already seen§ that extant documents, written about the close of the first century and the middle of the second, bear similar testimony as to the original constitution of the Church. The "Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians" cannot be dated earlier than the termination of the reign of Domitian, for it refers to a recent persecution, || it describes the community to which it is addressed as "most ancient," it declares that others now occupied the places of those who had been ordained by the apostles, and it states that this second generation of ministers had been long in possession of their ecclesiastical charges. Candid writers, of almost all parties, acknowledge that this letter distinctly recognizes the existence of government by presbyters.* The evidence of the letter of Polycarp ++ is not

**

§ Period II. sec. iii. chap. 5. p. 500.

502.

Epist. ci. "Ad Evangelum." || Sec. 1.

The reader may find the quotations in the preceding chapter, pp. 501,

** Thus Milner says that "so far as one may judge by Clement's Epistle," the Church of Corinth, when the letter was written, had Church governors "only of two ranks," presbyters and deacons.-Hist. of the Church, cent. ii. chap. 1.

++ As the letter supplies no trace whatever of the existence of a bishop in the Church to which it is addressed, Pearson is sadly puzzled by its testimony, and gravely advances the supposition that the bishop of Philippi must

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less explicit. Jerome, therefore, did not speak without authority when he affirmed that prelacy was established after the days of the apostles, and as an antidote against schism.

The apostolic Church was comparatively free from divisions; and, whilst the inspired heralds of the gospel lived, it could not be said that "there were parties in religion." The heretics who appeared were never able to organize any formidable combinations; they were inconsiderable in point of numbers; and, though not wanting in activity, those to whom our Lord had personally entrusted the publication of His Word, were ready to oppose them, so that all their efforts were effectually checked or defeated. The most ancient writers acknowledge that, during the early part of the second century, the same state of things continued. According to Hegesippus, who outlived Polycarp about fifteen or twenty years,* the Church continued until the death of Simeon of Jerusalem, in A. D. 116,† "as a pure and uncorrupted virgin." "If there were any at all," says he, "who attempted to pervert the right standard of saving doctrine, they were yet skulking in dark retreats; but when the sacred company of the apostles had, in various ways, finished their career, AND THE GENERATION OF THOSE WHO HAD BEEN

PRIVILEGED TO HEAR THEIR INSPIRED WISDOM HAD PASSED

AWAY, then at length the fraud of false teachers produced a confederacy of impious errors." The date of the

appearance have been dead when Polycarp wrote! "Vindicia Ignatianæ," pars ii. cap. 13. Rothe is equally perplexed by the Epistle of Clement. He says that "in the whole Epistle there is never any reference to a bishop of the Corinthian community," and he admits that, when the letter was written, "the Corinthian community had no bishop at all;" but, to support his favourite theory, he contends, like Pearson, that the bishop of Corinth must also have been dead! "Die Anfange der Christlichen Kirche," pp. 403, 404. Strange that the bishop of Corinth and the bishop of Philippi both happened to be dead at the only time that their existence would have been of any historical value, and that no reference is made either to them or their successors!

* See Euseb. iv. c. 11.

Euseb. iii. 32, and iv. 22.

Euseb. iii. 32. It was probably immediately after the election of Marcus,

of these parties is also established by the testimony of Celsus, who lived in the time of the Antonines, and who was one of the most formidable of the early antagonists of Christianity. This writer informs us that, though in the beginning the disciples were agreed in sentiment, they became, in his days, when "spread out into a multitude, divided and distracted, each aiming to give stability to his own faction."*

The statements of Hegesippus and Celsus are substantiated by a host of additional witnesses. Justin Martyr,† Irenæus, Clemens Alexandrinus, § Cyprian, || and others, all concur in representing the close of the reign of Hadrian, or the beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius, as the period when heresies burst forth, like a flood, upon the Church. The extant ecclesiastical writings of the succeeding century are occupied chiefly with their refutation. Νο wonder that the best champions of the faith were embarrassed and alarmed. They had hitherto been accustomed to boast that Christianity was the cement which could unite all mankind, and they had pointed triumphantly to its influence in bringing together the Jew and the Gentile, the Greek and the barbarian, the master and the slave, the learned and the illiterate. They had looked forward with high expectation to the days of its complete ascendency,

as bishop of Jerusalem, that Thebuthis became a heretic. See Euseb. iv. 22. About that time the sect of the Nazarenes originated.

* Origen, "Contra Celsum," iii. § 10, Opera, i. 453, 454. +"Dialogue with Trypho," Opera, p. 253.

+ "Contra Hæres." i. 27, § 1.

§ "Strom." p. 764.

|| Epist. lxxiv. Opera, p. 293. The ancient writers speak of all the early schismatics as heretics. Thus Novatian, though sound in the faith, is so described. Cyprian, Epist. lxxvi. p. 315. When, therefore, Jerome speaks of the early schismatics he obviously refers to the heretics. Irenæus says of them-" Scindunt et separant unitatem ecclesiæ."-Lib. iv. c. xxvi. § 2. In like manner Cyprian represents "heresies and schisms" as making their appearance after the apostolic age, and as inseparably connected. "Cum hæreses et schismata postmodum nata sint, dum conventicula sibi diversa constituunt."-De Unitate Eccles., Opera, p. 400.

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when, under its gentle sway, all nations would exhibit the spectacle of one great and happy brotherhood. How, then, must they have been chagrined by the rise and spread of heresies! They saw the Church itself converted into a great battle-field, and every man's hand turned against his fellow. In almost all the populous cities of the Empire, as if on a concerted signal, the errorists commenced their discussions. The Churches of Lyons,* of Rome, of Corinth, of Athens, of Ephesus, of Antioch, and of Alexandria, resounded with the din of theological controversy. Nor were the heresiarchs men whom their opponents could afford to despise. In point of genius and of literary resources, many of them were fully equal to the most accomplished of their adversaries. Their zeal was unwearied, and their tact most perplexing. Mixing up the popular elements of the current philosophy with a few of the facts and doctrines of the gospel, they produced a compound by which many were deceived. How did the friends of the Church proceed to grapple with these difficulties? They, no doubt, did their utmost to meet the errorists in argument, and to shew that their theories were miserable perversions of Christianity. But they did not confine themselves to the use of weapons drawn from their own heavenly armoury. Not a few presbyters were themselves tainted with the new opinions; some of them were even ringleaders of the heretics ;t and, in an evil hour, the dominant party resolved to change the constitution of the Church, and to try to put down disturbance by means of a new ecclesiastical organization. Believing, with many in modern times, that "parity breedeth confusion," and expecting, as Jerome has expressed it, "that the seeds of

* The existence of heresy in Gaul in the second century is established by the fact that Irenæus spent so much time in its refutation. Had he not been annoyed by it, he never would have thought of writing his treatise "Contra Hæreses."

+ Valentine himself seems to have been a presbyter. He at one time expected to be made bishop.