ere was a growing impression that all its
office-bearers were degraded by such services. Cyprian speaks with
extreme bitterness of a deceased elder who had appointed a brother elder
the executor of his will, declaring that the clergy "should in no way be
called off from their holy ministrations nor tied down by secular
troubles and business." [579:3] But the common sense of the Church
revolted against such high-flown spiritualism, as in many districts
where the disciples were still few and indigent, they could not afford a
suitable support for all entrusted with the performance of
ecclesiastical duties. Hence, before the recognition of Christianity by
Constantine, even bishops in some countries were permitted by trade to
eke out a scanty maintenance. "Let not bishops, elders, and deacons
leave their places for the sake of trading," says a council held in the
beginning of the fourth century, "nor travelling about the provinces let
them be found dealing in fairs. However, _to provide a living for
themselves_, let them send either a son, or a freedman, or a servant, or
a friend, or any one else: and if they wish to trade, let them do so
within their province." [580:1]

It is clear, from the New Testament, that, in the apostolic age,
ordination was performed by "the laying on of the hands of the
presbytery," and this mode of designation to the ministry appears to
have continued until some time in the third century. We are informed by
the most learned of the fathers, in a passage to which the attention of
the reader has already been invited, [580:2] that "even at Alexandria,
from Mark the Evangelist until Heraclas and Dionysius the bishops, the
presbyters were always in the habit of naming bishop one chosen from
among themselves and placed in a higher degree, in the same manner as if
an army should make an emperor, or the deacons choose from among
themselves one whom they knew to be industrious and call him
archdeacon." [580:3] As Jerome here mentions various important facts of
which we might have otherwise remained ignorant, and as this statement
throws much light upon the ecclesiastical history of the early Church,
it is entitled to special notice.

In the letter where this passage occurs the writer is extolling the
dignity of presbyters, and is endeavouring to shew that they are very
little inferior to bishops. He admits, indeed, that, in his own days,
they had ceased to ordain; but he intimates that they once possessed