HISTORY OF THE BIBLE. 



regular life of a church. Persecution, however, 

 soon arose out of the hatred with which the 

 Jewish Christians were regarded by the influ- 

 ential men of their own nation. This season 

 of trial for the young Church lasted five years, 

 and only ended when the persecutors them- 

 selves were in open quarrel with the Roman 

 governors. It is probable that the persecu- 

 tion in the capital had dispersed not a few 

 of the Christians, and led to the formation of 

 churches in the distant provinces of Judea. 

 Immediately after, the first Gentile Church was 

 founded, and its seat was Antioch, where Paul 

 began his labours as an apostle, and whence 

 he took frequent missionary excursions into the 

 adjacent countries. The Church in this import- 

 ant city had the same rank among Gentile associ- 

 ations which the Church at Jerusalem enjoyed 

 among those of Palestine. The Church at Rome, 

 which had enjoyed the labours and witnessed the 

 martyrdom of Paul, became involved in a cruel 

 persecution ; the Emperor Nero having charged 

 the Christians with the crime of setting fire to 

 the city, though he was himself supposed to be 

 the incendiary. It is on this occasion that the 

 Roman historians take the first notice of the 

 Christians ; and it is abundantly evident that 

 the latter were only known to the former through 

 the reports of bitter enemies. 



When the doom of Jerusalem was impending, 

 many of the Christians are supposed to have 

 taken timely refuge in Pella, a village beyond 

 Jordan. Wherever the power of the Roman empire 

 extended, Christianity followed, in spite of deadly 

 persecution. A few years after the apostolic age, 

 the sect was numerous in Bithynia, in Asia 

 Minor ; though Pliny, the Roman governor, as 

 he explains in a letter to Trajan, questioned with 

 threats the Christians about their religion, and 

 when they would not recant, ordered them to be 

 led to execution. In the West, a still more unre- 

 lenting persecution raged against them in the 

 reigns of successive emperors ; and when the 

 imperial cruelty occasionally relaxed a little, a 

 bloodthirsty populace hunted down the Christians, 

 who yet multiplied everywhere, and gained acces- 

 sions from every rank. 



According to Mosheim, the government of the 

 primitive churches was somewhat as follows : 

 The assembly of the people chose their own 

 rulers and teachers, or received them by a free 

 and authoritative consent, when recommended 

 by others. They rejected or confirmed, by their 

 suffrages, the laws proposed by their rulers to 

 the assembly ; excommunicated unworthy mem- 

 bers ; restored the penitent ; passed judgment 

 on subjects of controversy that arose in their 

 community ; and exercised supreme authority. 

 The rulers of the church were either presbyters or 

 bishops two titles applied in the New Testament 

 to the same order of men. Their particular func- 

 tions might vary ; for, while some of them con- 

 fined their labours to teaching, others edified the 

 church by ruling; and hence the distinction be- 

 tween teaching and ruling presbyters. Three 

 or four presbyters, men of remarkable piety and 

 wisdom, ruled the small congregations, nor did 

 they need any president to maintain concord. 

 But the number of the presbyters increasing with 

 that of the churches, and the work of the ministry 

 growing more weighty, by additional duties, these 



new circumstances required new regulations. It 

 was judged necessary that one man of distin- 

 guished wisdom should preside in the council of 

 presbyters, to distribute to his colleagues their 

 tasks, and to be a centre of union to the whole 

 society. This person was at first styled the angel 

 of the church to which he belonged ; but after- 

 wards bishop. A bishop, during the first and second 

 centuries, had only the care of one Christian as- 

 sembly, which was generally small enough to be 

 contained in a private house ; there he acted, not 

 so much with the authority of a master, as with the 

 diligence of a servant. He instructed, conducted 

 public worship, attended the sick, and inquired into 

 the circumstances and supplies of the poor. He 

 charged, indeed, the presbyters with the perform- 

 ance of those duties which the multiplicity of his 

 own engagements rendered it impossible for him 

 to fulfil, but had not the power to decide anything 

 without the consent of presbyters and people. 

 The jurisdiction of the bishops was not long con- 

 fined to these limits. The bishops in the cities 

 had, either by their own ministry, or by that of 

 their presbyters, erected new churches in neigh- 

 bouring towns and villages ; and these, continuing 

 under the inspection of the bishops, grew into 

 ecclesiastical provinces, which were afterwards 

 called dioceses. As a city bishop could not extend 

 his ministry to all the churches which he had 

 planted, he appointed suffragans or deputies to 

 instruct and govern them ; and those deputies- 

 called chorepiscopi (country bishops) were inferior 

 to the bishops, but superior to the presbyters. 



A slight acquaintance with human nature will 

 lead us to see how easy it was for city bishops 

 who, in the superintendence of their churches, 

 were the apostles' successors to arrogate not a 

 little of the power which belonged exclusively to 

 the apostles, as inspired and divinely appointed 

 servants of Christ. It was but natural, also, that 

 their lordly tendencies should be confirmed by 

 the wealth and splendour to which Constantine 

 exalted them when he became the convert and 

 the patron of Christianity. The great body of 

 the church members, too, would almost willingly 

 surrender their power and independence to digni- 

 taries who held such a high rank in the empire. 

 In fact, the organisation that the church assumed 

 was almost a copy of that of the civil society in 

 the midst of which it arose. It was almost in- 

 evitable that it should be so ; nor can we agree 

 with those who, taking their stand on what they 

 conceive to have been the apostolic practice, and 

 altogether forgetting those laws which a wider 

 survey of history shews us to pervade all human 

 societies whatever, hold the ecclesiastical system 

 which gradually developed itself into a papal head 

 for the Western Church, and a patriarchal head 

 for the Eastern, to have been nothing but abuse 

 and corruption. Certain it is that most of the 

 errors which corrupted primitive Christianity were 

 developed long before the period of ecclesiastical 

 domination. The body of doctrine now in the 

 Greek Church existed there long before the time 

 of the patriarchate ; and the dogmas of the Church 

 of Rome which Protestants denounce, had their 

 place long before the papal power. But even the 

 medieval institutions and practices of the Church 

 of Rome are not to be blindly and extravagantly 

 assailed. ' Their monasteries were mission-stations, 

 which resembled ours in being dispensaries for the 



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