THE ANCIENT CHURCH: ITS HISTORY, DOCTRINE, WORSHIP, AND CONSTITUTION, TRACED FOR THE FIRST THREE HUNDRED YEARS BY W. D. KILLEN, D.D., ་་ PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND PASTORAL THEOLOGY IN THE IRISH "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God." PSALM lxxxvii. 3. A NEW EDITION, CAREFULLY REVISED, WITH A PREFACE BY JOHN HALL, D.D., Minister Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York. VER LIBRARY NEW YORK: ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 900 BROADWAY, COR. 20TH STREET. PREFACE. Ir is not to be wondered at that in an age which busies itself about the beginnings of things, there should be given renewed attention to the early history of the Christian Church. They who deem religious life in a decaying state must find it difficult to reconcile with their view the amount of learning and of mental activity devoted to this department of knowledge. If the law of demand and supply works with the uniformity commonly ascribed to it, there never were so many persons as in our time keenly interested in the Genesis of the Christian Church. In England, in Germany, even in France, and in our own country, the foremost minds are occupied with questions regarding the institutions, the development, and the early struggles of a community now making itself felt in every part of the world where there is any intellectual life, or indeed any human activity. It is not surely presumptuous to hope that permanent good will come from so many minds being brought again into contact with the Son of God on earth, and with His apostles, at that crisis of human history when their words and their deeds were the germs of permanent and blessed institu tions. It is the special commendation of History, that it widens the field of our observation, and enables us to see how great principles—which, like great bodies, move slowly-work themselves out in congenial results. It would have been difficult, probably, to convince a well-to-do young Hebrew in the later years of Solomon's reign, when the precious metals were as stones in the street, when foreign fashions were ruling society in Jerusalem, that God-fearing was essential to prosperity, and that the religion of the fathers must be maintained in order to national dignity and prosperity. But it is only needful to glance over the history of Solomon's successor to see how soon evil seeds bring forth evil fruit, and how departure from God in (RECAP) MAR 31903 171460 (iii) volves the loss of the best social and national blessings. Just so it may sometimes seem to a hasty reader of the Epistles, as if little things attracted disproportionate attention from the apostles as for example, the eating of "things offered to idols "—but a moderate study of the early Church's history corrects the impression, and shows that a trifling trend in one generation may be a decided and irresistible movement in the next. A "false view" of a quarter of an inch at the muzzle of the gun will mean the striking of the shot many feet from the target. For many reasons it is desirable that those who forego any approach to an oligarchy in the Church, and who hold by a Government at once independent of the State, and in the line of popular civil self-government, should be acquainted with the annals of the early Church. The foregoing description does not by any means include Presbyterians only. The overwhelming majority of the Protestant Christians of the United States are agreed as to the parity of the clergy, and the seeming exception in the Methodist Episcopal Church is more apparent than real, for a bishop in that great and useful branch of the Church is not much different in form and power from the "superintendents" in whom Reformers in Scotland saw no peril, indeed, not essentially different from synodical missionaries working in concert with Boards and Presbyteries in the newer fields of the West.' Whatever may be guarded in name from the appearance of legislative or executive authority, in an "Association" among our Baptist and Congregational brethren, any Presbyterian admitted thereto by courtesy finds the substance of the action of his Presbytery reproduced, even as the New England deacon is the exact counterpart of an oldworld Presbyterian Elder. Perhaps it is not the mere hope of an eager partisan, that, as independent activity of mind makes itself felt throughout the country, the moral influence of the Association or the Presbytery will be found more and more important to the preservation of such denominational unity as renders close and comfortable organic co-operation possible. But whether this hope be realized or not, whether or not it be justifiable, every intelligent Presbyterian must be glad that in 1 The Wesleyan Methodists of England, after much discussion, have admitted others than ministers to the governing council of the denomination. PREFACE. the working of the churches, the lines of his church government are followed so closely by those who, like our Baptist brethren, hold so much in common with him of the great Evangelical system of truth. The author whose Ancient Church herewith goes to a second American edition, after a brief but remarkably useful pastoral life, was called to the Professorship of Church History in the Presbyterian College, Belfast, and a large proportion of the clergy of the Irish Presbyterian Church have caught the spirit of his Lectures on "Church History" and "Pastoral Theology." The associate of Dr. Wilson, a clear writer on Baptism, of Dr. Cooke, as earnest and evangelical as he was eloquent, and of Dr. Murphy, who still lives to do the work of a good teacher and an able commentator, and of others likeminded, he has helped to train a body of ministers inferior to none in Christendom, and to guide the counsels of a church which, under many forms of social repression and political disadvantage, has made Ulster a vivid exception to the unrest and the misery of the other three provinces of Ireland, and from which no mean element of American Presbyterianism has drawn its blood and its inspiration. Dr. Killen is a pronounced Presbyterian, but not from mere hereditary leaning; but, as the lawyers say, "for cause." It will be found, however, that the views here illustrated from the early centuries of our era are not now confined to scholars of his class. No more evangelical teacher ever preached and wrote in the pale of the English Church than Dr. Thomas Scott, whose Commentary combines in a high degree just interpretation with devout feeling and moderation of judgment. He did not hesitate, while a minister of the Anglican Establishment, to commit his Commentary to the truth, that among Ephesian and Philippian Christians in Paul's time, Presbyter and Bishop were names of the same church officer. Scott, indeed, was not recognized as a great scholar. Since the issue of Dr. Killen's first edition of this work, however, a marked change has taken place from a variety of causes, not among historians only, but among critics. The language of the earlier traditions and chronicles-formulated when diocesan Episcopacy had become as thoroughly established as the doctrines of Rome, and which gave to every believing man mentioned in |