THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.

CHAPTER I.

SUMMARY VIEW.

THE Christian church derived its earliest form from a small society of believers, who were united together by no law but that of the love which they felt to one another, and to their common Lord. After his ascension, they continued to meet, in singleness of heart, for the mutual interchange of sympathy and love, and for the worship of their Lord and Master. The government which, in process of time, the fraternity adopted for themselves, was free and voluntary. Each individual church possessed the rights and powers inherent in an independent popular assembly; or, to adopt the language of another, "The right to enact their laws, and the entire government of the church, was vested in each individual association of which the church was composed, and was exercised by the members of the same, in connection with their overseers and teachers, and, when the apostles were present, in common also with them."2 This general exposition of the government of the primitive church, it will be our

1 Neander's Apost. Kirch. Vol. I. c. 1. Rothe, Anfänge der Christ. Kirch. I. S. 141-2.

2 Cited in Allgemeine Kirch. Zeitung, 1833. No. 103.

business to illustrate and defend in the following pages. The course of our inquiries will lead us to examine the popular government of the apostolical and primitive church, to trace the gradual extinction of this form of government, and the rise of the Episcopal system; and also to consider the simplicity of primitive worship in its several parts.

The arguments for the popular government of the apostolical and primitive church may be arranged under the following heads.

1. It harmonizes with the primitive simplicity of all forms of government.

The multiplication of offices, the adjustment of the gradations of rank and power, and a complicated system of rites and forms, are the work of time. At first, the rules of government, however administered, are few and simple. The early Christians, especially, associating together in the confidence of mutual love, and uniting in sincerity of heart for the worship of God, may fairly be presumed to have had only a few conventional rules for the regulation of their fraternity.

2. It is, perhaps, the only organization which the church could safely have formed, at that time, under the Roman government.

Without any established religion, the Romans tolerated indeed, different religious sects, and might have extended the same indulgence to the primitive Christians. But they looked with suspicion upon every organization of party or sect, as treason against the state, and punished with cruel jealousy every indication of a confederacy within the empire. The charge of treasonable intentions prevailed with the Roman governor against our Lord. And under Trajan, A. D. 103, a bloody persecution was commenced against the church, on the suspicion that it might be a secret society, formed for seditious purposes. Under these circumstances,

it is difficult to conceive how a diocesan consolidation of the churches established by the apostles, could have been effected without bringing down upon them the vengeance of the Roman government, to crush, at the outset, a coalition to it so obnoxious. Their apparently harmless and informal assemblies, and the total absence of all connection, one with another, was, according to Planck and many others, the means of saving the early churches so long and so extensively from the exterminating sword of Roman jealousy.3

Crevit occulto, velut arbor, aevo.

3. Such an organization must have been formed, it would seem, in order to unite the discordant parties in the primitive churches.

Here was the Jew, the Greek, the Roman, and Barbarians of every form of superstition; converts, indeed, to faith in Christ, but with all their partialities and prejudices still. What but a voluntary principle, guaranteeing to all the freedom of a popular assembly, could unite these parties in one fraternity? Our Lord himself employed no artificial bands to bind his followers together into a permanent body; and they were alienated from him upon the slightest offence. The apostles had still less to bind their adherents firmly to themselves. It required all their wisdom and address to reconcile the discordant prejudices of their converts, and unite them in harmonious fellowship one with another. This dif ficulty met the apostles at the outset of their ministry, in the murmuring of the Greeks against the Jews, that their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. This mutual jealousy was a continual trial besetting them on every side, from the churches which they had formed. Under such circumstances, they assumed not the responsibility of settling these controversies by apostolical or Episcopal authority; but by their counsel and persuasion, they sought to obviate the

3 Gesellschafts-Verfass, I. S. 40-50.

prejudices of their brethren. Everything relating to the interests of each church they left to be publicly discussed, and decided by mutual consent. In this manner they quieted these complaints of the Greeks respecting the distribution of alms. Acts 6: 1-8. And such, no doubt, became their settled policy in their care of the churches. Even the apostles were not exempt from these infirmities and misunderstandings, and might have found no small difficulty in arranging among themselves a more artificial and complicated system of church government.4

4. The same is inferred from the existence of popular rights and privileges in the early periods of the Christian church.

It is known to every one at all acquainted with the early history of the church, that from the second century down to the final triumph of papacy, there was a strong and increasing tendency to exalt and extend the authority of the clergy, and to curtail and depress that of the people. The fact is undeniable. But how shall it be explained? If a prelatical form of organization was divinely appointed by Christ and his apostles, vesting in the clergy alone the right of government, and if the tide of clerical encroachment ran so steadily and strongly from the first, then it is inconceivable, how, under these circumstances, the doctrine of popular rights should ever have obtained such a footing in the church, as to maintain itself for centuries against the influences of a jealous and oppressive hierarchy. Had the doctrine of the popular rights been totally lost in the second and third centuries, this would by no means warrant the inference that such rights were unknown in the days of the

4 Schroeter und Klein, Für Christenthum Oppositionsschrift, I. S. 567. Siegel, Handbuch, II. 455—6. Arnold, Wahre-Abbildung der Ersten Christen, B. II. c. 5, seq. Schoene, Geschichtsforschungen d. Kirch. Gebräuch. I. S. 234-5.