Speaking further of this time in another chapter he says: “The pagan temples were pulled down or converted into Christian churches: the exercise of the old priesthood was proscribed and the idols destroyed; elegant structures for Christian worship were raised, and those already erected, enlarged and beautified; the episcopacy was increased and honored with great favors and enriched with vast endowments; the ritual received many additions; the habiliments of the clergy were pompous, and the whole of the Christian service at once exhibited a scene of worldly grandeur and external parade. What a mighty change! But a short time since, and Christianity was held in sovereign contempt: now she is a favorite at court, and the companion of princes. Alas! such is the change, that it scarcely affords ground for triumph. The kingdom of our God and his Christ is become a kingdom of this world, and the church of Jesus reduced to a mere worldly sanctuary. The glory is departed, the gold is become dim, and the fine gold is changed.
“Indeed prelatical pride had been rising very high for a century before this. The pastors had forgotten their Master's instruction. ‘Be ye not called Rabbi: for ye are brethren.’ Lord bishops and archbishops [pg 373] and all the spirit of such distinction had been long enough upon the advance to congratulate such an emperor as Constantine. The materials for a hierarchy having been prepared it was no difficult thing for a set of worldly-minded bishops, countenanced by a prince, to put them together. Under all these circumstances, real religion was not likely to be bettered by such a reverse in external affairs, and so the event proved. The ancient contest, which was for the faith once delivered unto the saints, declined apace, and a strife for worldly honor, fleshly gratification, and spiritual dominion substituted in its stead.”
Such was the true condition of things in the year 311. Surely there had been a change, the kingdom of God had become the kingdom of the world, the glory was gone, strivings for worldly honor, fleshly gratification, and spiritual dominion had taken the place of “striving for the faith once delivered to the saints.” What a change from the humble, self-denying, flesh crucifying days of Christ and the apostles. Truly we can say sometime before this the morning light had dimmed and died, and darkness intervened. The historian does not fix this date (311) as the beginning of the dark noonday. (The reader already begins to see, no doubt, why it was dark at the noontime.) He says in a preceding chapter, “About A.D. 264, a considerable stir was made by Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch. ‘Great was the falling off in this church since the renowned Ignatius. The principles of Paul [pg 374] were exceedingly loose, and his practise was correspondent.’ He rejected the divinity of the Son and substituted his own reason for the light of the Spirit. The way in which he lived fully proved that he was a man of the world.”
The historian proceeds to tell more of this bishop's wicked life. The Scriptural qualifications of a bishop are, blamelessness, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach; “not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity.” 1 Tim. 3:3, 4. The seventh verse adds: “Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without.” Such a bishop must be, in the very strictest sense, to be a light in the world. Here was a bishop, of perhaps the strongest Christian congregation in the world, almost everything to the contrary. How true the Savior's prophecy: “The moon shall not give her light, and the stars of heaven shall fall.” Paul, of Samosata, became so wicked he was deposed from his office and became a “fallen star.”
Sabine speaking of divisions and their causes says: “In this century the general church was rent in twain. This century also produced a train of other officers (beside bishops and deacons), such as subdeacons, who were all to the deacon what the presbyter was to the bishop; acolytes, persons to attend at service time [pg 375] on the ministers; ostiaries, doorkeepers; readers, men who were appointed to read the Scriptures in public; exorcists, officers of weak and superstitious appointment, whose business was to pretend to expel the devil from the candidate for baptism. All these encroachments and changes mark, strongly mark, a great decline in the spirit and power of primitive Christianity.”
All of these things, and many more similar ones, were occurring in the latter part of the third century.
In the year of our Lord 248 Cyprian was ordained a presbyter in the church at Carthage. Ten years later he laid down his life for Jesus. It is said of him that he “displayed a benevolent and pious mind and evinced much of the character of the Christian pastor in the affectionate solicitude with which he watched over his flock.” In epistle eleven he says: “It must be owned and confessed that the outrageous and heavy calamity which hath almost devoured our flock, and continues to devour it to this day, hath happened to us because of our sins, since we keep not the way of the Lord, nor observe his heavenly commands, which were designed to lead us to salvation. Christ our Lord fulfilled the will of the Father, but we neglect the will of Christ. Our principal study is to get money and estates; we follow after pride, we are at leisure for nothing but emulation and quarreling, and have neglected the simplicity of faith. We have renounced [pg 376] this world in words only, and not in deed. Every one studies to please himself and to displease others.”
This account of professed Christianity at this time by Cyprian is confirmed by the testimony of Eusebius, who was nearly contemporary with him. “Through too much liberty they grew negligent and slothful, envying and reproaching one another, waging, as it were, civil wars among themselves, bishops quarreling with bishops, and the people divided into parties. Hypocrisy and deceit were grown to the highest pitch of wickedness. They were become so insensible as not so much as to think of appeasing the divine anger; but like atheists they thought the world destitute of any providential government and care, and thus added one crime to another. The bishops themselves had thrown off all concern about religion, were perpetually contending with one another, and did nothing but quarrel with and threaten and envy and hate one another: they were full of ambition and tyrannically used their power.”—Eusebius' History, Book VIII, Chap. I, as quoted in Jones' Church History.
Ruter's Church History. (Third Century.)
“With the opinions, the Christian teachers had adopted the habits and manners of the philosophic school. They assumed the dress of the pompous sophist, and delivered the plain doctrines of the gospel with strained and studied eloquence.”