HISTORY

OF

ODL

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

CHAPTER I.

The Foundation of the Christian Church.-Unity an essential Feature. Indications, in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, of Church Discipline and Order not to be found in the Gospels. -Our Lord instructed the Apostles after his Resurrection in things pertaining to the future Government of the Church.

PROPOSE to lay before my readers in the following pages a History of the Church in the first three centuries-a Manual, perhaps, I should rather call it—which, without extending to the length such a subject naturally seems to threaten, may suffice to put them in possession of the leading features, the prominent points, the events the most weighty, because the most pregnant with consequences, which present themselves to our notice during that interesting period of the Church's growth. For if the rise and progress of secular empires excites our curiosity and concern; if to investigate the germ and expansion of civil constitutions that have eventually attained to eminence and renown is a pleasurable task; how much rather to explore the unobtrusive advance of

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that greatest of commonwealths, the Christian, which has already survived so many secular empires, and is destined to survive so many more,-that noblest of codes, the Gospel of Christ, which lies at the foundation of so many others, and which purifies and elevates them in proportion as they admit and appropriate its refining influence. In treating such a subject, however, after the manner I have proposed, I shall find it necessary to suppress, or review with rapidity, incidents not in themselves characteristic; such as, if entered into in minute detail, would only divert the attention from cardinal matters, and have the effect of dissipating the impression of epochs in the annals of the Church from which the general estimate of its nature and principles ought to be determined. Indeed were an author, when about to engage in a history of the early Church, to lay down his plan for a circumstantial, unbroken, continuous narrative, he would find himself baffled in the execution of it, for want of material. The documents out of which he has to gather his knowledge are incomplete; they are a chain of authorities, but with links occasionally wanting. The writers in most cases were not contemplating a formal account of the Church their subjects led them to a partial development of it; but it was incidentally, and without any such express design. And where the historian happens to be met with amongst them, his range is probably limited to this locality or that; to the circumstances of the Church under this emperor or the other, according to taste or accident and as it was meanwhile impossible for him to anticipate the kind of details we should desiderate at this distant date, so does he frequently pass them over, being things perfectly familiar to himself, and leave us to get an insight into them as best we may. Under these circumstances, I repeat, we have abundant stores of information on some particulars, a very scanty supply on others; and

the ecclesiastical author, however pains-taking and laborious, must be content, after all, with filling up his narrative from time to time by inferences, because facts may not be always forthcoming.

At the moment when our blessed Lord said to St. Peter, "Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock will I build my Church," it was evidently of a future event that He spoke. The Church at that instant remained to be built; its foundation was on the point of being laid, but it had not been laid then. Meanwhile, Jesus ascended into heaven, leaving upon earth many so far converted to the Gospel as to be designated the Brethren; five hundred such being assembled in Galilee, to whom He showed Himself after His resurrection; but at Jerusalem the number of the names of the disciples was together only one hundred and twenty. Then followed the miraculous descent of the Holy Ghost, and the three thousand converts made on that occasion by St. Peter's Sermon; and, after this, we are told by St. Luke, "there were added to the Church daily such as should be saved." The Church therefore was now no longer in futurity only, but in actual existence, called into existence then in one sense-for in another there had been a Church from the beginning on this memorable day; St. Peter's address, poured forth under the strong influence of the Holy Ghost, laying, as it were, the first stone of the spiritual House, and so far realising the promise made to him by his Lord. It is remarkable, too, and perhaps to be regarded as a further fulfilment of that promise, that as here, where Jews only, or Jewish proselytes,2 had to be dealt with, St. Peter was the party employed to open to them the way, so when the, Gentiles were to come in, the instrument of their initiation was the same. For 2 Acts ii. 5. 10.

1 Pearson on the Creed, p. 336; Minor Theolog. Works, i. p. 318.

Cornelius was not directed by the vision to send to Jerusalem for St. James, or to Damascus or Tarsus for St. Paul-destined moreover as this latter was, to be eventually the great teacher of the Gentiles-but to Joppa for St. Peter: a selection which St. Peter does not fail to refer to, with satisfaction, as well he might, on a future occasion, and in terms which possibly convey the notion that he considered such honourable distinction as the last instalment in discharge of Jesus' original pledge to him; 2 and it was to St. Peter, and no other, that the correlative vision was accordingly vouchsafed, in order to clear up his scruples-scruples which he felt in common with all his nation-respecting the admission of the Gentiles into the Church, and to satisfy him that they too were to be received into the covenant of Baptism. Here again, therefore, it might seem, I repeat, that our Lord was manifesting his call to be true, in the fullest sense, to his word, so that whether the walls of his rising Church were to be constructed of Jews or of Gentiles, and by whatsoever hand they were afterwards to be carried up, they were still to spring, in either case, from one and the same Rock, St. Peter. It may not, perhaps, be necessary to search further for the cause of this preference, than in the circumstances which first called forth our Lord's expression of it; the early faith of the Apostle which enabled him to penetrate a great mystery, and assign to Jesus his true character, before it had dawned upon the minds of his colleagues, marking him as chosen above his fellows for this service by God Himself, and entitling him to the designation of "first" amongst the Apostles, a title of

1 Whitby; Pearson's Minor Theolog. Works, i. pp. 373, 374.

2 Acts xv. 7, ἀφ ̓ ἡμερῶν ἀρχαίων. "And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren,

ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel and believe.”

honour and not of date, for in point of date' St. Andrew had the precedence. Else it would be natural to impute the preference to that force of temperament, that fitness for action, which evidently belonged to him, and, humanly speaking, qualified him, beyond any of the disciples, for high and hazardous enterprises. And, indeed, Eusebius actually calls him the great and mighty one of the Apostles, who, by his courage, took the lead of all the others.2 Whatever thou findest to do, do it with all thy might," was eminently St. Peter's motto. God has ever

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been wont to avail Himself of such instruments for working out his gravest purposes, consecrating such energies to his own ends. "He maketh his ministers a flame of fire." "Be strong and of a good courage," was God's injunction to Joshua; and, again, He repeats it, "only be strong and very courageous" (Josh. i. 6, 7). Such was Joshua. Such again was David; as brave and bold in the field, as he was zealous in the service of his God. Such was Saul; as resolute a persecutor of the Gospel once, as he was its champion afterwards, when the current of his life took a different direction. Such, we may suppose, from the surname of Boanerges, or Sons of Thunder, which our Lord gave them, were St. James and St. John; and such again from the patronymic of "Zelotes" attached to him, might probably be Simon. And to come to more modern times, it may be observed that the strong blood which in Lord Herbert of Cherbury discovered itself in daring speculation and adventurous feats of chivalry, when working in his brother's veins, under God's grace, rendered him most valiant in faith: and that which in Ridley's family had stirred the natural man to deeds of sanguinary strife with the rival neighbour on the borders, took in Ridley himself a different com

1 Matt. x. 2.

2 Euseb. Hist. ii. c. 14.