The Church, the Falling Away, and the Restoration

by J. W. Shepherd

The changes which produced this condition are strikingly expressed by Lyman Coleman. He says:

1. In the college of equal and co-ordinate presbyters, some one would naturally act as moderator or presiding officer; age, talent, influence, or ordination by the apostles, might give one an accidental superiority over his fellows, and appropriate to him the standing office of president of the presbytery. To this office the title of bishop was assigned; and with the office and the title began to be associated the authority of a distinct order. Jerome alleges that the standing office and authority of a bishop were a necessary expedient to still the cravings and strife for preferment which by the instigation of Satan, arose in process of time among the presbyters. Whatever may have been the cause, a distinction began to be made, in the course of the second century, between bishops and presbyters, which finally resulted, in the century following, in the establishment of the episcopal prerogatives.

2. Without reference to the causes which occasioned the distinction between the clergy and the laity, this is worthy of notice as another important change in the constitution of the Church, which gradually arose in connection with the rise of episcopal power. In opposition to the idea of universal priesthood, the people now became a distinct and inferior order. They and the clergy begin to feel the force of conflicting interests and claims, the distinction widens fast, and influence, authority and power centralize in the bishop, the head of the clerical order.

3. The clergy claim for themselves the prerogatives, relations and authority of the Jewish priesthood. Such claims, advanced in the third century by Cyprian, were a great departure from the original spirit and model of the Church derived from Christ and the apostles. It was falling back from the New to the Old Testament, and substituting the outward for the inward spirit. It presented the priesthood again as a mediating office between man and his God. It sought to invest the propitiating priest with awful sanctity, as the appointed medium by which grace is imparted to man. Hence the necessity of episcopal ordination, the apostolical succession, and the grace of the ordinances administered by consecrated hands. The clergy, by this assumption, were made independent of the people; their commission and office were from God; and, as a Mosaic priesthood, they soon began to claim an independent sovereignty over the laity. “God makes the priests” was the darling maxim of Cyprian, perpetually recurring in identical and varied phraseology. No change, perhaps, in the whole history of the changing forms of church government can be specified more destructive to the primitive constitution of the Church, or more disastrous to its spiritual interests. “This entire perversion of the original view of the Christian Church,” says Neander, “was itself the origin of the whole system of the Roman Catholic religion—the germ from which sprang the popery of the Dark Ages.”

4. Few and simple were the offices instituted in the Church by the apostles; but after the rise of episcopacy, ecclesiastical offices were multiplied with great rapidity. They arose, as may appear in the progress of this work, from different causes and at different times; many were the necessary results of changes in the Church and in society; but, generally, they will be found to have, as their ultimate effect and end, the aggrandizement of the episcopate. They are an integral, if not an essential, part of the ceremonial, the pomp and power of an outward religion, that carnal perversion of the true idea of the Christian Church, and the legitimate consequence of beginning in the spirit and seeking to be made perfect in the flesh. (Ancient Christianity Exemplified, pages 97-99.)

This testimony is confirmed by Neander, who says:

The changes which the constitution of the Christian Church underwent during this period related especially to the following particulars: (1) The distinction of bishops from presbyters, and the gradual development of the monarchico-episcopal church government; (2) The distinction of the clergy from the laity, and the formation of a sacerdotal caste, as opposed to the evangelical idea of the priesthood; (3) The multiplication of church offices. (Church History, Vol. I, page 259.)

Since it has been shown that episcopacy was the outgrowth of a wicked ambition for leadership and power that culminated in the papacy, I deem it important to give ample proof, since it is yet very popular in many of the denominations of this day. I now invite attention to the testimony of Mosheim. He says:

1. The form of church government which began to exist in the preceding century was in this century more industriously established and confirmed in all its parts. One president, or bishop, presided over each church. He was created by the common suffrage of the whole people. With presbyters for his council, whose number was not fixed, it was his business to watch over the interest of the whole Church, and to assign to each presbyter his station. Subject to the bishop and also to the presbyters were the servants or deacons, who were divided into certain classes, because all the duties which the interests of the Church required could not well be attended to by them all.

2. During a great portion of this century [second] all the churches continued to be, as at first, independent of each other, or were connected by no consociations or confederations. Each church was a kind of small, independent republic, governing itself by its own laws, enacted or at least sanctioned by the people. But in the process of time it became customary for all the Christian churches within the same province to unite and form a sort of larger society or commonwealth; and in the manner of confederated republics, to hold their conventions at stated times, and there deliberate for the common advantage of the whole confederation. This custom first arose among the Greeks, with whom a political confederation of cities, and the consequent convention of their several delegates, had been long known; but afterward, the utility of the thing being seen, the custom extended through all the countries where there were Christian churches. Such conventions of delegates from several churches assembled for deliberation were called by the Greeks synods and by the Latins councils; and the laws agreed upon in them were called canons, that is, rules.

3. These councils—of which no vestige appears before the middle of this century—changed nearly the whole form of the Church. For by them, in the first place, the ancient rights and privileges of the people were very much abridged; and, on the other hand, the influence and the authority of the bishops were not a little augmented. At first the bishops did not deny that they were merely the representatives of their churches, and that they acted in the name of the people; but little by little they made high pretensions, and maintained that power was given them by Christ himself to dictate rules of faith and conduct to the people. In the next place, the perfect equality and parity of all bishops, which existed in the early times, these councils gradually subverted. For it was necessary that one of the confederated bishops of a province should in those conventions be intrusted with some authority and power over the others; and hence originated the prerogatives of metropolitans. And lastly, when the custom of holding these councils had extended over the Christian world and the universal Church had acquired the form of a vast republic composed of many lesser ones, certain head men were to be placed over it in different parts of the world as central points in their respective countries. Hence came the Patriarchs, and ultimately the Prince of Patriarchs, the Roman Pontiff. (Ecclesiastical History, Vol. I, pages 116, 117.)

Concerning this, I note the following facts:

1. That in the second century they digressed so far from apostolic practice as to have one bishop over each church, and that he had his elders under his control. He was the pastor of that church.

2. That there was a confederation of churches into councils.

3. These councils began to be held about the middle of the second century, and resulted in augmenting the power of the bishops and diminishing the privileges of the people. This power on the part of the clergy was not assumed all at once, but gradually assumed as the people would bear it. These councils soon began to enact laws, and claimed authority from Christ to thus dictate to the people.