e members as his guests; and,
as he was elevated above most, if not all, of those with whom he acted,
in point of wealth, social standing, address, and knowledge of the
world, he was usually called on to occupy the chair of the moderator. In
process of time that which was originally conceded as a matter of
courtesy passed into an admitted right. So long as the metropolitan
bishop was inducted into office by mere presbyters, the circumstances of
his investiture pointed out to him the duty of humility; but when the
most distinguished chief pastors of the province deemed it an honour to
take part in his consecration, he immediately increased his pretensions.
Thus it is that the change in the mode of episcopal inauguration forms a
new era in the history of ecclesiastical assumption.

About the middle of the third century various circumstances conspired to
augment the authority of the great bishops. In the Decian and Valerian
persecutions the chief pastors were specially marked out for attack, and
the heroic constancy with which some of the most eminent encountered a
cruel death vastly enhanced the reputation of their order. In a few
years several bishops of Rome were martyred; Cyprian of Carthage endured
the same fate: Alexander of Jerusalem, and Babylas of Antioch, also laid
down their lives for their religion. [600:1] At the same time the schism
of Novatian at Rome, and the schism of Felicissimus at Carthage
threatened the Church with new divisions, and the same arguments which
were used, upwards of a hundred years before, for increasing the power
of the president of the eldership, could now be urged with equal
pertinency for adding to the authority of the president of the synod. In
point of fact perhaps the earliest occasion on which the bishop of Rome
executed discipline in his archiepiscopal capacity was immediately
connected with the schism of Novatian; for we have no record of any
exercise of such power until Cornelius, at the head of a council held in
the Imperial city, deposed the pastors who had officiated at the
consecration of his rival. [601:1] From this date the Roman metropolitan
probably presided at all the ordinations of the bishops in his vicinity.

To prevent the recurrence of schisms such as had now happened at Rome
and Carthage, it was, in all likelihood, arranged about this period, at
least in some quarters of the Church, that the presence or sanction of
the stated president of the provincial synod sho