[42]. Luke xxii. Matt. xxvi. III Nephi xviii.
[43]. It will be remembered that the quorum of the twelve was perpetuated on the western hemisphere by filling up vacancies as fast as they occurred (IV Nephi: 14), but for how long a period is uncertain.
[44]. Acts xv: 1-30. Rev. i-iv.
[45]. During a greater part of this century (the second) all the churches continued to be, as at the first, independent of each other. * * * Each church was a kind of small republic, governing itself by its own laws, enacted or at least sanctioned by the people.—Ecclesiastical History, Mosheim Vol. I, book ii, cent. ii, part ii, ch. ii.
[46]. As might be expected, however, there was a peculiar respect paid to the churches founded by the apostles—the church at Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome. Those churches were appealed to in controversies on points of doctrine, "as most likely to know what the apostles taught," but the appeal had no other significance than that.
[47]. Clement, the third bishop of Rome, is my authority for the above statement. It appears that the Corinthians had deposed some of their bishops, and Clement in an epistle which he wrote to them said: "Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife over the name of the bishop's office. For this cause therefore, having received complete foreknowledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons [the bishops], and afterward they provided a continuance [i.e., gave instructions] that if these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their ministration. Those therefore who were appointed by other men of repute with the consent of the whole church, and have ministered unblamably * * * these men we consider to be unjustly thrust out of their ministration."—See also Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," vol. I, ch. xv.
[48]. Eccl. Hist. (Mosheim) vol. I, bk. i, cent. iii, part ii, ch. ii.
[49]. Dr. Mosheim in his Institutes of Ecclesiastical History states that next to the patriarchs were bishops called exarchs; but this his translator (Murdock) denies. Certain it is, however, that there were bishops who presided over several provinces, just as the civil exarchs did. These Mosheim may have considered as corresponding to the civil exarchs; while his translator insists that they were merely the "first metropolitans of the civil dioceses." The difference seems to be one of terms rather than of facts; but there is this to say in favor of the translator, that the bishops exercising jurisdiction over several provinces did not correspond to the number of civil exarchs. There was not an exarch bishop over each civil diocese, and perhaps this is the reason the learned translator objects to the term of ecclesiastical exarch.
[50]. In course of time the terms arch-bishop and metropolitan came to be used interchangeably.
[51]. Matt. xvi:19.