barbarian, the master and the slave, the learned and the illiterate.
They had looked forward with high expectation to the days of its
complete ascendency, when, under its gentle sway, all nations would
exhibit the spectacle of one great and happy brotherhood. How, then,
must they have been chagrined by the rise and spread of heresies! They
saw the Church itself converted into a great battle-field, and every
man's hand turned against his fellow. In almost all the populous cities
of the Empire, as if on a concerted signal, the errorists commenced
their discussions. The Churches of Lyons, [531:1] of Rome, of Corinth,
of Athens, of Ephesus, of Antioch, and of Alexandria, resounded with the
din of theological controversy. Nor were the heresiarchs men whom their
opponents could afford to despise. In point of genius and of literary
resources, many of them were fully equal to the most accomplished of
their adversaries. Their zeal was unwearied, and their tact most
perplexing. Mixing up the popular elements of the current philosophy
with a few of the facts and doctrines of the gospel, they produced a
compound by which many were deceived. How did the friends of the Church
proceed to grapple with these difficulties? They, no doubt, did their
utmost to meet the errorists in argument, and to shew that their
theories were miserable perversions of Christianity. But they did not
confine themselves to the use of weapons drawn from their own heavenly
armoury. Not a few presbyters were themselves tainted with the new
opinions; some of them were even ringleaders of the heretics; [531:2]
and, in an evil hour, the dominant party resolved to change the
constitution of the Church, and to try to put down disturbance by means
of a new ecclesiastical organization. Believing, with many in modern
times, that "parity breedeth confusion," and expecting, as Jerome has
expressed it, "that the seeds of schisms might be destroyed," they
sought to invigorate their administration by investing the presiding
elder with authority over the rest of his brethren. The senior
presbyters, the last survivors of a better age, were all sound in the
faith; and, as they were still at the head of the Churches in the great
cities, it was thought that by enlarging their prerogatives, and by
giving them the name of bishops, they would be the better able to
struggle energetically with the dangers of their position. The principle
that, whoever would not submit to the bishop sho