ommenced about the middle of the second century. But the
statement is unsupported by a single particle of evidence, and a number
of facts may be adduced to prove that it is altogether untenable. There
is no reason to doubt that synods, at least on a limited scale, met in
the days of the apostles, and that the Church courts of a later age were
simply the continuation and expansion of those primitive conventions. We
know very little respecting the history of the Christian commonwealth
during the former half of the second century, for the extant memorials
of the Church of that period are exceedingly few and meagre; and as the
proceedings of most of the synods which were then held did not perhaps
attract much notice, [607:2] it is not remarkable that they have shared
the fate of almost all the other ecclesiastical transactions of the same
date, and that they have been buried in oblivion. [607:3] It is nowhere
intimated by any ancient authority that synodical meetings commenced
fifty years after the death of the beloved disciple, and the earliest
writers who touch upon the subject speak of them as of apostolic
original. Irenaeus, the pastor of Lyons, had probably reached manhood
when, according to Mosheim and others, synods were at first formed; he
enjoyed the instructions of Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostle John;
he was beyond question one of the best informed Christian ministers of
his generation; and yet he obviously considered that these
ecclesiastical assemblies were in existence in the first century.
Speaking of the visit of Paul to Miletus when he sent to Ephesus and
called the elders of the Church, [608:1] he says that the apostle then
convoked "the bishops and presbyters of Ephesus and of the other
adjoining cities" [608:2]--plainly indicating that he summoned a
synodical meeting. Had an assembly of this kind been a novelty in the
days of Irenaeus, the pastor of Lyons would not have given such a
version of a passage in the inspired narrative. Cyprian flourished
shortly after the time when, according to the modern theory, councils
began to meet in Africa, but the bishop of Carthage himself
unquestionably entertained higher views of their antiquity. He declared
that conformably to "the practice received from _divine tradition_ and
_apostolic observance_," [608:3] "all the neighbouring bishops of the
same province met together" among the people over whom a pastor was to
be ordained; [608:4] and he did not here merel