1. The Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour, during his visit of mercy to the world, chose from among his disciples twelve men, to be his especial agents in establishing his church. These men, in our translation of the New Testament, are denominated apostles. The grand commission which they received was, "Go ye into all the world, and preach my gospel to every creature."
2. The apostles commenced their noble enterprise on that memorable day of Pentecost, which next occurred after the ascension of their Master; and, in the city of his inveterate enemies, soon succeeded in establishing a church of several thousand members. The doctrines of Christianity soon spread to other cities and countries; and, before the close of that century, they were known and embraced, more or less, in every province of the Roman empire.
3. The apostles, however, were not the only agents engaged in spreading and maintaining the doctrines of Christianity; for, in every church, persons were found capable of taking the supervision of the rest, and of exercising the office of the ministry. These were ordained either by the apostles themselves, or by persons authorized by them to perform the ceremony.
4. After the Church had passed through a great variety of persecutions, during a period of nearly three centuries, the Christians became superior in numbers to the pagans in the Roman empire. In the early part of the fourth century, a free toleration in religious matters was declared by Constantine the Great, who took the Church under his especial protection.
5. The Christians of the first and second centuries usually worshipped God in private houses, or in the open air in retired places, chiefly on account of the persecutions to which they were often subjected. It was not until the third century, that they ventured to give greater publicity to their service, by building churches for general accommodation. When the Cross had obtained the ascendency, in the subsequent age, many of the heathen temples were appropriated to Christian purposes; and many splendid churches were erected, especially by Constantine and his successors.
6. In the middle ages, a great number of edifices were erected for the performance of divine worship, which, in loftiness and grandeur, had never been surpassed; and the greater part of these remain to the present day. Some of the most famous churches are, St. Peter's, at Rome; Notre Dame, at Paris; St. Stephen's, at Vienna; the church of Isaac, at St. Petersburg; the minsters at Strasburg and Cologne and St. Paul's, in London.
7. Up to the time of the great change in favor of Christianity, just mentioned, the whole Church had often acted together in matters of common interest, through the medium of general councils; and this practice continued for several centuries afterwards. But the variance and dissensions between the Pope of Rome, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, combined with some other causes, produced, about the close of the ninth century, a total separation of the two great divisions of the Church.
8. At the time of this schism, the whole Christian world had become subject to these two prelates. The part of the Church ruled by the Patriarch, was called the Eastern, or Greek Church; and that part which yielded obedience to the Pope, was denominated the Western, or Latin Church. Many attempts have been since made to reunite these two branches of the Church; but these endeavors have hitherto proved unsuccessful.
9. The conquest of the Roman empire, so often mentioned in the preceding pages, was particularly injurious to the Church, especially that part of it subject to the Roman pontiff; since it nearly extinguished the arts and sciences, and since the barbarous conquerors were received into the Church, before they had attained the proper moral qualifications. From these causes, chiefly, arose the conduct of the Church, in the middle ages, which has been so much censured by all enlightened men, and which has been often unjustly attributed to Christianity herself, rather than to the ignorance and barbarism of the times.
10. In the year 1517, while Leo X. occupied the papal chair, Martin Luther, of Saxony, commenced his well-known opposition to many practices and doctrines in the Church, which he conceived to be departures from the spirit of primitive Christianity. He was soon joined in his opposition by Philip Melancthon, Ulric Zuingle, and finally by John Calvin, as well as by many other distinguished divines of that century, in various parts of Europe.