The Ancient Church: Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution

by W. D. Killen

I. The Montanists, towards the termination of the second century, created much confusion by their extravagant doctrines and their claims to inspiration. These fanatics were in the habit of disturbing public worship by uttering their pretended revelations, and as they were often countenanced by individual elders, the best mode of protecting the Church from their annoyance soon became a question of grave and pressing difficulty. Episcopacy, as shall afterwards be shewn, [518:2] had already been introduced in some great cities, and about this time the Churches generally agreed to follow the influential example. It was, no doubt, thought that order could be more effectually preserved were a single individual armed with independent authority. Thus, the system of government by presbyters was gradually and silently subverted.

II. It is well known that the close of the second century is a transition period in the history of the Church. A new ecclesiastical nomenclature now appeared; [519:1] the bishops acquired increased authority; and, early in the third century, they were chosen in all the chief cities by popular suffrage. The alteration mentioned by Hilary may, therefore, have been the immediate precursor of other and more vital changes.

III. Though Eusebius passes over in suspicious silence the history of all ecclesiastical innovations, his account of the bishops of Jerusalem gives good reason for believing that the law abolishing the claim of seniority came into operation about the close of the second century. He classes together the fifteen chief pastors who followed each other in the holy city immediately after its restoration by Hadrian, [519:2] and then goes on to give a list of others, their successors, whose pastorates were of the ordinary duration. He mentions likewise that the sixteenth bishop was chosen by election. [519:3] May we not here distinctly recognize the close of one system, and the commencement of another? As the sixteenth bishop was appointed about A.D. 199, the law had, probably, been then only recently enacted.

IV. Eusebius professes to trace the episcopal succession from the days of the apostles in Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem; and it has often been shewn that the accuracy of these four lists is extremely problematical; but it is remarkable that in other Churches the episcopal registry cannot be carried up higher than the end of the second century. The roll of the bishops of Carthage is there discontinued, [519:4] and the episcopal registry of Spain there also abruptly terminates. But the history of the Church of Caesarea affords the most extraordinary specimen of this defalcation. Caesarea was the civil metropolis of Palestine, and a Christian Church existed in it from the days of Paul and Peter. [520:1] Its bishop in the early part of the fourth century was the friend of the Emperor Constantine and the father of ecclesiastical history. Eusebius enjoyed all needful facilities for investigating the annals of his own Church; and yet, strange to say, he commences its episcopal registry about the close of the second century! [520:2] What explanation can be given of this awkward circumstance? Had Eusebius taken no notice of any of the bishops of his own see, we could appreciate his modesty; but why should he overlook those who nourished before the time of Victor of Rome, and then refer to their successors with such marked frequency? [520:3] May we not infer, either that he deemed it inexpedient to proclaim the inconvenient fact that the bishops of Caesarea were as numerous as the bishops of Jerusalem; or that he found it impossible to recover the names of a multitude of old men who had only a nominal precedence among their brethren, and who had passed off the stage, one after another, in quick succession?

V. A statement of Eutychius, who was patriarch of Alexandria in the tenth century, and who has left behind him a history of his see from the days of the apostles, supplies a remarkable confirmation of the fact that, towards the close of the second century, a new policy was inaugurated. According to this writer there was, with the exception of the occupant of the episcopal chair of Alexandria, "no bishop in the provinces of Egypt" before Demetrius. [520:4] As Demetrius became bishop of Alexandria about A.D. 190, Christianity must have now made extensive progress in the country; [520:5] for it had been planted there perhaps one hundred and fifty years before; but it would seem that meanwhile, with the one exception, the Churches still remained under presbyterial government. Demetrius was a prelate of great influence and energy; and, during his long episcopate of forty-three years, [521:1] he succeeded in spreading all over the land the system of which he had been at one time the only representative.

It is not, indeed, to be supposed that the whole Church, prompted by a sudden and simultaneous impulse, agreed, all at once, to change its ecclesiastical arrangements. Another polity, as has already been intimated, at first made its appearance in places of commanding influence; and its advocates now, no doubt, most assiduously endeavoured to recommend its claims by appealing to the fruits of experience. The Church of Rome, as will subsequently appear, took the lead in setting up a mitigated form of prelacy; the Churches of Antioch and Alexandria followed; and, soon afterwards, other Christian communities of note adopted the example. That this subject may be fairly understood, a few chapters must now be employed in tracing the rise and progress of the hierarchy.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RISE OF THE HIERARCHY CONNECTED WITH THE SPREAD OF HERESIES.

Eusebius, already so often quoted, and known so widely as the author of the earliest Church history, flourished in the former half of the fourth century. This distinguished father was a spectator of the most wonderful revolution recorded in the annals of the world. He had seen Christianity proscribed, and its noblest champions cut down by a brutal martyrdom; and he had lived to see a convert to the faith seated on the throne of the Caesars, and ministers of the Church basking in the sunshine of Imperial bounty. He was himself a special favourite with Constantine; as bishop of Caesarea, the chief city of Palestine, he had often access to the presence of his sovereign; and in a work which is still extant, professing to be a Life of the Emperor, he has well-nigh exhausted the language of eulogy in his attempts to magnify the virtues of his illustrious patron.

Eusebius may have been an accomplished courtier, but certainly he is not entitled to the praise of a great historian. The publication by which he is best known would never have acquired such celebrity, had it not been the most ancient treatise of the kind in existence. Though it mentions many of the ecclesiastical transactions of the second and third centuries, and supplies a large amount of information which would have otherwise been lost, it must be admitted to be a very ill-arranged and unsatisfactory performance. Its author does not occupy a high position either as a philosophic thinker, a judicious observer, or a sound theologian. He makes no attempt to point out the germs of error, to illustrate the rise and progress of ecclesiastical changes, or to investigate the circumstances which led to the formation of the hierarchy. Even the announcement of his Preface, that his purpose is "to record the successions of the holy apostles," or, in other words, to exhibit some episcopal genealogies, proclaims how much he was mistaken as to the topics which should have been noticed most prominently in his narrative. It is somewhat doubtful whether his history was expressly written, either for the illumination of his own age, or for the instruction of posterity; and its appearance, shortly after the public recognition of Christianity by the State, [523:1] is fitted to generate a suspicion that it was intended to influence the mind of Constantine, and to recommend the episcopal order to the consideration of the great proselyte.