There was a Church at Cenchrea in the
time of the apostles. Rom. xvi. 1. Strabo calls Cenchrea a village, lib.
viii.

[577:3] See Bingham, iii. 129.

[577:4] Cyprian, "Council of Carthage." Girba, Mileum, Badias, and
Carpi, the sees of these bishops, were all small places with, no doubt,
a still smaller Christian population.

[578:1] Cyprian, "Council of Carthage."

[578:2] Euseb. vii. 30.

[578:3] See Sage's "Vindication of the Principles of the Cyprianic Age,"
p. 348. Edit., London, 1701.

[578:4] See Period II. sec. i. chap. v. pp. 355, 356.

[578:5] See Bingham, i. 41, 43.

[579:1] Bunsen's "Hippolytus," i. 129; and Wordsworth, p. 257. It would
appear from Celsus that not a few of the Church teachers in the second
century supported themselves by manual labour. See Origen, Opera, i.
484.

[579:2] "Adleguntur in ordinem ecclesiasticum artifices idolorum."--_De
Idololatria_, c. vii. Malchion, one of the presbyters of Antioch in the
time of Paul of Samosata, was the head-master of one of the principal
schools in the place. Euseb. vii. 29.

[579:3] Cyprian, Epist. lxvi. p. 246. In after times the bishop himself
was the grand-executor, having the charge of all the wills of his
diocese!

[581:1] Council of Elvira, A.D. 305, 18th canon.

[581:2] Period II. sec. iii. chap. vi. p. 533.

[581:3] "Nam et Alexandria a Marco Evangelista usque ad Heraclam et
Dionysium Episcopos, presbyteri semper unum ex se electum, in excelsiori
gradu collocatum Episcopum nominabant; quomodo si exercitus Imperatorem
faciat; aut Diaconi eligant de se quem industrium noverint, et
Archidiaconum vocent."--_Epist. ad Evangelum_.

[581:1] Heraclas now succeeded him. The immediate successor of Heraclas
was Dionysius.

[581:2] "_Apud nos_ quoque et _fere_ per provincias universas
tenetur."--_Cyprian_, Epist. lxviii. p. 256. The arrangement of which
Cyprian speaks was now, perhaps, pretty generally established in the
West, but he may have understood, through his intercourse with
Firmilian, that in some parts of the East a different usage still
prevailed.

[581:3] "Nam _et_ Alexandriae."

[582:1] Eutychius, the celebrated patriarch of Alexandria who flourished
in the beginning of the tenth century, makes this assertion. According
to this writer there were originally twelve presbyters connected with
the Alexandrian Church; and, when the patriarchate became vacant, they
elected "one of the twelve presbyters, _on whose head the remaini