that if they had penetrated, no record of their existence was likely to survive (1). These religious invaders, according to the later Christian romance, made a regular partition of the world, and assigned to each the conquest of his particular province. Thrace, Scythia, Spain, Britain, Ethiopia, the extreme parts of Africa, India, the name of which mysterious region was sometimes assigned to the southern coast of Arabia, had each their Apostle, whose spiritual triumphs and cruel martyrdom were vividly pourtrayed and gradually amplified by the fertile invention of the Greek and Syrian Death of historians of the early church. Even the history of St. John, whose St. John. later days were chiefly passed in the populous and commercial city of Ephesus, has not escaped. Yet legend has delighted in harmonising its tone with the character of the beloved disciple, drawn in the Gospel, and illustrated in his own writings. Even if purely imaginary, these stories show that another spirit was working in the mind of man. While then we would reject, as the offspring of a more angry and controversial age, the story of his flying in fear and indignation from a bath polluted by the presence of the heretic Cerinthus, we might admit the pleasing tradition that when he grew so feeble from age as to be unable to utter any long discourse, his last, if we may borrow the expression, his cycnean voice, dwelt on a brief exhortation to mutual charity (2). His whole sermon consisted in these words: "Little children, love one another;" and when his audience remonstrated at the wearisome iteration of the same words, he declared that in these words was contained the whole substance of Christianity. The deportation of the Apostle to the wild island of Patmos, where general tradition places his writing the book of Revelations, is by no means improbable, if we suppose it to have taken place under the authority of the proconsul of Asia, on account of some local disturbance in Ephesus, and, notwithstanding the authority of Tertullian, reject the trial before Domitian at Rome, and the plunging him into a cauldron of boiling oil, from which he came forth unhurt (3). Such are the few vestiges of the progress of Christianity which we dimly trace in the Constitu- obscurity of the latter part of the first century. During this period, tion of however, took place the regular formation of the young Christian churches. republics, in all the more considerable cities of the Empire. The Christian primitive constitution of these churches is a subject which it is im- (1) Euseb. Ecc. Hist. iii. 1. The tradition is here in its simpler and clearly more genuine form. (2) Euseb. Ecc. Hist, iii 22. postea quam in oleum igneum demersus, nihil passus est. Mosheim suspects that in this passage of Tertullian a metaphor has been converted into a fact. Mosheim, de Reb. Christ. ante (3) Ubi (in Roma) Apostolus Johannes, Constant. p. 111. of the first century, appears uniformly governed by certain superiors of each community, called bishops. But the origin and extent of this superiority, and the manner in which the bishop assumed a distinct authority from the inferior presbyters, is among those difficult questions of Christian history which, since the Reformation, has been more and more darkened by those fatal enemies to candid and dispassionate inquiry, prejudice and interest. The earliest Christian communities appear to have been ruled and represented, in the absence of the Apostle who was their first founder, by their elders, who are likewise called bishops, or overseers of the churches. These presbyter bishops and the deacons are the only two orders which we discover at first in the church of Ephesus, at Philippi, and perhaps in Crete (1). On the other hand, at a very early period, one religious functionary, superior to the rest, appears to have been almost universally recognised at least, it is difficult to understand how, in so short a time, among communities, though not entirely disconnected, yet scattered over the whole Roman world, a scheme of government popular, or rather aristocratical, should become, even in form, monarchical. Neither the times nor the circumstances of the infant church, nor the primitive spirit of the religion, appear to favour a general, a systematic, and an unauthorised usurpation of power on the part of the supreme religious functionary (2). Yet the change has already taken place within the Apostolic times. The church of Ephesus, which in the Acts is represented by its elders, in the Revelations (3) is represented by its angel or bishop, We may, perhaps, arrive at a more clear and intelligible view of this subject, by endeavouring to trace the origin and development of the Christian communities. Christian The Christian church was almost universally formed by a seces- churches sion from a Jewish synagogue. Some synagogues may have become from, and (1) Acts, xx. 17., compared with 28. Philip. i. 1. Titus, i. 5-7. (2) The most plausible way of accounting for this total revolution is by supposing that the affairs of each community or church were governed by a college of presbyters, one of whom necessarily presided at their meetings, and gradually assumed and was recognised as possessing a superior function and authority. In expressing my dissatisfaction with a theory adopted by Mosheim, by Gibbon, by Neander, and by most of the learned foreign writers, I have scrutinised my own motives with the utmost suspicion, and can only declare that I believe myself actuated only by the calm and candid desire of truth. But the universal and almost simultaneous elevation of the bishop, under such circumstances, in every part of the world (though it must be admitted that he was for a long time assisted by the presbyters in the discharge of his office), appears to me an insuperable objection to this hypothesis. The later the date which is assumed for the general establishment of the episcopal authority, the less likely was it to be general. It was only during the first period of undivided unity that such an usurpa- formed on the model of the syna. gogue. altogether Christian; but, in general, a certain part of an existing community of Jews and Gentile proselytes incorporated themselves into a new society, and met for the purpose of divine worship in some private chamber,—sometimes, perhaps, in a public place, as rather later, during the times of persecution, in a cemetery. The first of these may have answered to a synagogue, the latter to an unwalled proseucha. The model of the ancient community would naturally, as far as circumstances might admit, become that of the new. But in their primary constitution there was an essential point of difference. The Jews were a civil as well as a religious, the Christians exclusively a religious, community. Every where that the Jews were settled, they were the colony of a nation, they were held together almost by a kindred, as well as by a religious, bond of union. The governors, therefore, of the community, the Zakinim or Elders, the Parnasim or Pastors (if this be an early appellation), were by no means necessarily religious functionaries (1). Another kind of influence, besides that of piety, age, worldly experience, wealth, would obtain the chief and ruling power in the society. Their government neither rested on, nor required, spiritual authority. Their grave example would enforce the general observance, their censure repress any flagrant departure from the law : they might be consulted on any difficult or unusual point of practice; but it was not till the new rabbinical priesthood was established, and the Mischna and the Talmud universally received as the national code, that the foreign Jews fell under what may be considered sacerdotal dominion. At this time, the synagogue itself was only supplementary to the great national religious ceremonial Essential of the Temple. The Levitical race claimed no peculiar sanctity, at difference least it discharged no priestly office, beyond the bounds of the Holy the church Land, or the precincts of the Temple; nor was an authorised gogue. instructor of the people necessary to the service of the synagogue. It was an assembly for the purpose of worship, not of teaching. The instructor of the people, the copy of the law, lay in the ark at the east end of the building; it was brought forth with solemn reverence, and an appointed portion read during the service. But oral instruction, though it might sometimes be delivered, was no necessary part of the ceremonial. Any one, it should seem, who considered himself qualified, and obtained permission from the archisynagogi, the governors of the community, who exercised a sort of presidence in the synagogue, might address the assembly. It was in this character that the Christian Apostle usually began to announce his religion. But neither the chazan, or angel (2) of the synagogue between and syna. (1) In some places, the Jews seem to have been ruled by an Ethnarch, recognised by the Roman civil authorities. Strabo, quoted by Josephus, Antiq. xiv. 12., speaks of the Ethnarch in Alexandria. Josephus mentions their Archon or chief, in Antioch. The more common constitution seems to have been the γεραιοὶ and δυνατοί, -the elders or authorities. (2) The angel here seems to hear its lower meaning a messenger or minister. (which was a purely ministerial, comparatively a servile, office), nor the heads of the assembly, possessed any peculiar privilege, or were endowed with any official function as teachers (1) of the people. Many of the more remote synagogues can rarely have been honoured by the presence of the "Wise Men," as they were afterwards called, the lawyers of this period. The Jewish religion was, at this time, entirely ceremonial; it did not necessarily demand exposition; its form was moulded into the habits of the people; and till disturbed by the invasion of Christianity, or among very flourishing communities, where it assumed a more intellectual tone, and extended itself by the proselytism of the Gentiles, it was content to rest in that form (2). In the great days of Jewish intellectual activity, the adjacent law school, usually inseparable from the synagogue, might rather be considered the place of religious instruction. This was a kind of chapter-house or court of ecclesiastical, with the Jews identical with their national, law. Here knotty points were publicly debated; and "the Wise," or the more distinguished of the lawyers or interpreters of the law, as the rabbinical hierarchy of a later period, established their character for sagacious discernment of the meaning and intimate acquaintance with the whole body of the law. Thus, then, the model upon which the church might be expected to form itself, may be called purely aristocratical. The process by which it passed into the monarchical form, however limited the supremne power of the individual, may be traced to the existence of a monarchical principle anterior to their religious oligarchy, and which distinguished the Christian church in its first origin from the Jewish synagogue. The Christians from the first were a purely religious community; this was their primary bond of union; they had no national law which held them together as a separate people. Their civil union was a subordinate effect, arising out of their incorporation as a spiritual body. The submission of their temporal concerns to the adjudication of their own community was a consequence of their respect for the superior justice and wisdom which sprung from their religious principles, and an aversion from the litigious spirit engendered by the complicated system of Roman jurisprudence (3). In their origin they were almost universally a commu- Christian nity, formed, as it were, round an individual. The Apostle, or pri- formed mitive teacher, was installed at once in the office of chief religious functionary; and the chief religious functionary is the natural head (1) Vitringa labours to prove the point, that the chief of the synagogue exercised an office of this kind, but in my opinion without success. It appears to have been a regular part of the Essenian service, a distinction which, Vitringa has neglected to observe. De Syn. Vet. l. iii. c. 6, 7. (2) The reading of the law, prayers, and psalms, were the ceremonial of the synagogue, Probably the greater part of their proselytism (3) The Apostle enjoined this secession from church round an individual. of a purely religious community. Oral instruction, as it was the first, so it must have continued to be the living, conservative, and expansive principle of the community (1). It was, anterior to the existence of any book, the inspired record and supreme authority of the faith. As long as this teacher remained in the city, or as often as he returned, he would be recognised as the legitimate head of the society. But not only the Apostle, in general the primitive teacher likewise, was a missionary, travelling incessantly into distant regions for the general dissemination of Christianity, rather than residing in one spot to organise a local community (2). In his absence, the government, and even the instruction, of the community devolved upon the senate of Elders, yet there was still a recognised supremacy in the founder of the church (3). The wider, however, the dissemination of Christianity, the more rare, and at longer intervals, the presence of the Apostle. An appeal to his authority, by letter, became more precarious and interrupted; while, at the same time, in many communities, the necessity for his interposition became more frequent and manifest (4); and in the common order of nature, even independent of the danger of persecution, the primitive founder, the legitimate head of the community, would vacate his place by death. That the Apostle should appoint some distinguished individual as the delegate, the representative, the successor, to his authority, as primary instructor of the community; invest him in an episcopacy of overseership, superior to that of the co-ordinate body of Elders, is, in itself, by no means improbable ; it harmonises with the period in which we discover, in the Sacred Writings, this change in the form of the permanent government of the different bodies; accounts most easily for the general submission to the authority of one religious chief magistrale, so unsatisfactorily explained by the accidental pre-eminence of the president of a college of co-equal presbyters; and is confirmed by general tradition, (1) For some time, indeed, as in the Jewish synagogue, what was called the gift of prophecy seems to have been more general; any individual who professed to speak under the direct impulse of the Holy Spirit was heard with attentive reverence. But it may be questioned whether this, and the display of the other Xapioμara recounted by the Apostle, 1 Cor. xii. 4-10., were more than subsidiary to the regular and systematic teaching of the apostolie founder of the community. The question is not whether each member was not at liberty to contribute by any faculty which had been bestowed on him by God, to the general edification; but whether, above and anterior to all this, there was not some recognised parent of each church, who was treated with paternal deference, and exercised, when present, paternal authority. (2) Yet we have an account of a residence even of St. Paul of eighteen months at Corinth, of two years at Ephesus, and he was two years during his first imprisonment at Rome. Acts, xviii. 11.; xix. 10.; xxviii. 30. (3) St. Paul considered himself invested with the superintendence of all the churches which he had planted. 2 Cor. xi. 28. (4) St. Jerome, quoted by Hooker (Eccles. Polity, b. vii. vol. iii. p. 130.), assigns the origin of episcopacy to the dissensions in the church, which required a stronger coercive authority. "Till through instinct of the devil, there grew in the church factions, and among the people it began to be professed, I am of Paul, I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, churches were governed by the common advice of presbyters: but when every one began to reckon those who he had baptized his own, and not Christ's, it was decreed in the whole world that one chosen out of the presbyters should be placed above the rest, to whom all care of the church should belong, and so all seeds of schism be removed." The government of the church seems to have been considered a subordinate function. “And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers: after that, miracles, the gifts of healing, helps, governments diversities of tongues. 1 Cor. xii. 28. |