from the Apostles, but it was a kingdom besides; and as a kingdom admits of the possibility of rebels, so does such a Church admit of sectaries and schismatics, but not of independent portions. Let us hear Gibbon's description of it, an external witness suited to our present purpose, whose facts we may accept, while we reject his imputations: "The Catholic Church," he says, "was administered by the spiritual and legal jurisdiction of 1800 bishops; of whom one thousand were seated in the Greek, and eight hundred in the Latin provinces of the Empire.

Episcopal Churches were closely planted along the banks of the Nile, on the seacoast of Africa, in the pro-consular Asia, and through the Southern provinces of Italy. The bishops of Gaul and Spain, of Thrace and Pontus, reigned over an ample territory, and delegated their rural suffragans to execute the subordinate duties of the pastoral office. A Christian diocese might be spread over a province, or reduced to a village; but all the bishops possessed an equal and indelible character; they all derived the same powers and privileges from the Apostles, from the people, and from the laws. . .

"The whole body of the Catholic clergy, more numerous perhaps than the legions, was exempted by the Emperors from all service, private or public, all municipal offices, and all personal taxes and contributions, which pressed on their fellow-citizens with intolerable weight; and the duties of their holy profession were accepted as a full discharge of their obligations to the republic. Each bishop acquired an absolute and indefeasible right to the perpetual obedience of the clerk whom he ordained; the clergy of each Episcopal Church, with its dependent parishes, formed a regular and permanent society, and the Cathedrals of Constantinople and Carthage maintained their peculiar establishment of five hundred ecclesiastical ministers. Their ranks and numbers were insensibly multiplied by

1 Hist. ch. xx.

the superstition of the times, which introduced into the Church the splendid ceremonies of a Jewish or Pagan temple; and a long train of priests, deacons, sub-deacons, acolythes, exorcists, readers, singers, and doorkeepers, contributed, in their respective stations, to swell the pomp and harmony of religious worship. The clerical name and privilege were extended to many pious fraternities, who devoutly supported the ecclesiastical throne. Six hundred parabolani, or adventurers, visited the sick at Alexandria; eleven hundred copiate, or gravediggers, buried the dead at Constantinople; and the swarms of monks, who arose from the Nile, overspread and darkened the face of the Christian world. . .

"Under a despotic government, the bishops alone enjoyed and asserted the inestimable privilege of being tried only by their peers; and, even in a capital accusation, a synod of their brethren were the sole judges of their guilt or innocence . . . The domestic jurisdiction of the bishops was at once a privilege and restraint of the ecclesiastical order, whose civil causes were decently withdrawn from the cognizance of a secular judge . . . The arbitration of the bishops was ratified by a positive law; and the judges were instructed to execute, without appeal or delay, the Episcopal decrees, whose validity had hitherto depended on the consent of the parties. The conversion of the magistrates themselves, and of the whole empire, might gradually remove the fears and scruples of the Christians; but they still resorted to the tribunals of the bishops, whose abilities and integrity they esteemed; and the venerable Austin enjoyed the satisfaction of complaining that his spiritual functions were perpetually interrupted by the invidious labour of deciding the claim or the possession of silver and gold, of lands and cattle. The ancient privilege of sanctuary was transferred to the Christian temples,

and the lives or fortunes of the most eminent subjects might be protected by the mediation of the Bishop.

"The Bishop was the perpetual censor of the morals of his people. The discipline of penance was digested into a system of canonical jurisprudence, which accurately defined the duty of private or public confession, the rules of evidence, the degrees of guilt, and the measure of punishment.. St. Athanasius excommunicated one of the ministers of Egypt; and the interdict which he pronounced, of fire and water, was solemnly transmitted to the Churches of Cappadocia... [Synesius of Ptolemais] vanquished the monster of Libya, the president Andronicus, who abused the authority of a venal office, invented new modes of rapine and torture, and aggravated the guilt of oppression by that of sacrilege. After a fruitless attempt to reclaim the haughty magistrate by mild and religious admonition, Synesius proceeds to inflict the last sentence of ecclesiastical justice, which devotes Andronicus, with his associates and their families, to the abhorrence of earth and heaven.... The Church of Ptolemais, obscure and contemptible as she may appear, addresses this declaration to all her sister Churches of the world; and the profane who reject her decrees will be involved in the guilt and punishment of Andronicus and his impious followers...

'Every popular government has experienced the effects of rude or artificial eloquence. . . . The Bishop or some distinguished presbyter, to whom he cautiously delegated the powers of preaching, harangued, without the danger of interruption or reply, a submissive multitude, whose minds had been prepared or subdued by the awful ceremonies of religion. Such was the strict subordination of the Catholic Church, that the same concerted sounds might issue at once from a hundred pulpits of Italy

....

or Egypt, if they were tuned by the masterhand of the Roman or Ålexandrian primate. . . . The representatives of the Christian republic were regularly assembled in the spring and autumn of each year; and these synods diffused the spirit of ecclesiastical discipline and legislation through the hundred and twenty provinces of the Roman world. At an early period, when Constantine was the protector rather than the proselyte of Christianity, he referred the African controversy to the Council of Arles, in which the Bishops of York, of Treves, of Milan, and of Carthage met as friends and brethren, to debate in their native tongue on the common interest of the Latin or Western Church. Eleven years afterwards, a more numerous and celebrated assembly was convened at Nice in Bithynia, to extinguish, by their final sentence, the subtle disputes which had arisen in Egypt on the subject of the Trinity. Three hundred and eighteen Bishops obeyed the summons of their indulgent master; the ecclesiastics, of every rank, and sect, and denomination, have been computed at 2048 persons; the Greeks appeared in person; and the consent of the Latins was expressed by the Legates of the Roman Pontiff.”

Here is assuredly abundant evidence of the nature of the unity, by which the Church of those ages was distinguished from the sects among which it lay. It was a vast organized association, coextensive with the Roman Empire, or rather overflowing it. Its Bishops were not mere local officers, but possessed a power essentially ecumenical, extending wherever a Christian was to be found. "No Christian," says Bingham, "would pretend to

This is an apparent allusion to the Emperor's having called the Novatian Bishop Acesius to the Council. Gibbon argues also that the number 2048 must have included sectaries. As far as this fact or opinion is a deduction from the force of his general description, valeat quantum.

travel without taking letters of credence with him from his own bishop, if he meant to communicate with the Christian Church in a foreign country. Such was the admirable unity of the Church Catholic in those days, and the blessed harmony and consent of her bishops among one another." St. Gregory Nazianzen calls St. Cyprian an universal Bishop, "presiding," as the same author presently quotes him, "not only over the Church of Carthage and Africa, but over all the regions of the West, and over the East, and South, and Northern parts of the world also." This is evidence of a unity throughout Christendom, not of mere origin or of Apostolical succession, but of government. He continues "[Gregory] says the same of Athanasius; that, in being made Bishop of Alexandria, he was made Bishop of the whole world. Chrysostom, in like manner, styles Timothy, Bishop of the universe. . . . . The great Athanasius, as he returned from his exile, made no scruple to ordain in several cities as he went along, though they were not in his own diocese. And the famous Eusebius of Samosata did the like, in the times of the Arian persecution under Valens. Epiphanius made use of the same power and privilege in a like case, ordaining Paulinianus, St. Jerome's brother, first deacon, and then presbyter, in a monastery out of his own diocese in Palestine." And so in respect of teaching, before Councils met on any large scale, St. Ignatius of Antioch had addressed letters to the Churches along the coast of Asia Minor, when on his way to martyrdom at Rome. St. Irenæus, when a disciple of the Church of Smyrna, betakes himself to Gaul, and answers in Lyons the heresies of Syria. The see of St. Hippolytus, as if he belonged to all parts of the orbis terrarum, cannot be located, and is variously placed in the neighbourhood of Rome and in Arabia. Hosius, a Spanish Bishop, Antiq. ii. 4, § 5. 2 Ibid. 5, § 3.