As has been stated, the only means we have of judging of the resistance made to the claims of the Bishop is from the extravagance of these demands, and the violence with which they are asserted. "Wherefore it becomes you to run together, according to the will of your Bishop, even as also ye do. For your renowned Presbyter, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the Bishop as the strings are to the harp." (Ignatius to the Eph., sec. 4.) "Let no man deceive himself: Except a man be within the altar he is deprived of the bread of life." (Ib., sec. 5.) "I exhort you, that you study to do all things in a divine concord, your Bishop presiding in the place of God," (Ignatius to Magnesians, sec. 6.) "It is therefore necessary that you do nothing without your Bishop, even as ye are wont. In like manner, let all reverence the Deacons as Jesus Christ, and the Bishops as the Father; without these there is no church. Wherefore guard yourselves against such persons: And that ye will do, if ye are not puffed up, but continue inseparable from Jesus Christ our God; and from your Bishop and from the commands of the Apostles. He that is within the altar is pure. But he that is without, is not pure. That is, he that doeth anything without the Bishop and the Presbyters and Deacons is not pure in conscience." (Ignatius to Trallians, secs. 2, 3, 7.) "But the Spirit spake, saying in this wise: Do nothing without the Bishop; But God forgives all that repent, if they return to the unity of God and to the council of the bishop" (Ignatius to Phil., sec. 8.) "See that ye all follow your Bishop as Jesus Christ the Father." (Ignatius to Smyrnæus, sec. 8.) "It is good to have due regard both to God and to the Bishop." (Ib., sec. 9.)
These passages prove, that there was a party in the church that was opposed to the order of Bishops, introduced by the Therapeutæ, and that party no doubt were the followers of Paul. To silence them, the Epistles of Paul and the writings of the fathers were filled with forgeries and alterations so extravagant and obvious that they have defeated the object in view.
It is hardly necessary to ask the question, where it was the Therapeutæ form of government, by Bishops, was first organized. Alexandria seems to have been the common mother of all that is new in religion. It is here where have sprung up, in all ages, those subtle questions which have led the minds of men from sense and reason to pursue mischievous phantoms. We infer from the writings of Eusebius, and from other sources, that the Therapeutæ Christians in Alexandria were numerous at an early date. The letter of Adrian from Alexandria, in A. D. 134, is the first notice we have of a church with a Bishop at its head. It was this letter that led the author of the "Decline and Fall," after a careful survey of the subject, with a penetration that nothing escaped, and an industry which left no ground unexplored, to conclude that the first regular Christian church government was instituted at Alexandria. If Christian churches are not indebted to the Therapeutæ for their form of church government, from what source do they derive it? Not From the Jews; not from Paul; not from the Apostles.
CHAPTER XIX.
Linus never Bishop of Rome.—Clement, third Bishop, and his
successors to the time of Anicetus, myths.—Chronology of
Eusebius exposed, also that of Irenæus.
At what time was Linus, said to be the successor of Peter, made Bishop of Rome? The last trace we have of him, he was with Paul, in Rome, in the fall of A. D. 65. After this we know nothing of him, except from vague and more than doubtful tradition. According to Irenaeus, it was when Peter and Paul were in Rome together, after they had laid the foundation of the church at that place. Paul went to Rome for the first time in A. D. 61, where he remained to the spring of A. D. 63. We have shown that during this time Peter was not there. Paul remained absent until the summer or fall of A. D. 65, and soon after his return was committed to prison. In A. D. 64, Peter was in Babylon, two thousand miles away. As Irenaeus is the founder of the story, and the only authority in subsequent ages, when it was that Linus was appointed over the church of Rome as the successor of Peter, it devolves on those who pretend to believe him to show when it was that Peter and Paul were together in Rome, laying the foundation of a church, or anything else. This can never be done; and if not, it destroys the first link in the Apostolic chain, and what is left is worthless.
The importance attached to Clement as the third Bishop of Rome will be a sufficient excuse for a critical examination, as to who he was, when he lived, and the position he occupied. The authority that Clement was Bishop of Rome is the same we have in any other case for links to keep up the Apostolic succession; for Irenaeus not only supplies an Apostle from whom to start, but also the intermediate links in the chain, to the time of authentic history. In this he finds great assistance in his ready invention of traditions, which we are required to believe without question, for fear of incurring the sin of unbelief, and subject ourselves to being called slippery eels, trying to evade the truth. The x following is his language: "The blessed Apostles, then, having founded and built up the church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the Apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed Apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the Apostles still echoing (in his ears), and their traditions before his eyes." (Irenæus, book iii. chap. 3, sec. 3.)
It may be affirmed with confidence, that we know nothing of the person who is called Clement, and made third Bishop in the Church of Rome. If he had held the office at the time it is claimed he did—the latter part of the first century—it would have been in the power of Irenaeus to give us a full account of him: when he took the office, and when he died; for if he had been a real character, there must have been persons living, at the time Irenaeus flourished, who had seen and known him, so that the historian had ample material to inform posterity of everything which related to the life of the third Bishop. But he gives no information—does not give a date—or the source from which he derives his authority, but has left the world to grope in darkness ever since. We have his word, and that is all.
It is impossible that a person should fill an office of importance in the church in Rome, at the end of the first century, without leaving some tangible evidence that he had once an existence; but Clement, like a shadow, passes over the earth, without a single mark of any kind to prove he ever lived. There is a dispute, as to when and how he died. Some say he was banished into the Crimea by Trajan, and there suffered martyrdom by drowning. Others that he died a peaceful death, A.D. 100. There is nothing known about him, and for that reason, everything which concerns him is variously stated. This could not be, had he been a real character in history. It is only fictions of the brain that elude you, when you attempt to grasp them.