to the
Church of Alexandria, one of the greatest sees in Christendom, where for
upwards of a century and a half after the days of the Evangelist Mark,
the presbyters appointed their spiritual overseers, and performed all
the ceremonies connected with their official investiture. But it does
not therefore follow that meanwhile these overseers had always possessed
exactly the same amount of authority. The very fact mentioned by Jerome
suggests a quite different inference, as it proves that whilst the power
of the presbyters had been declining, that of the bishops had increased.
In the second century the presbyters inaugurated bishops; in the days of
Jerome they were not permitted even to ordain presbyters.

Jerome says, indeed, that, in the beginning, the Alexandrian presbyters
nominated their _bishops_, but we are not to conclude that the parties
chosen were always known distinctively by the designation which he here
gives to them. He evidently could not have intended to convey such an
impression, as in the same Epistle he demonstrates, by a whole series of
texts of Scripture, that the titles bishop and presbyter were used
interchangeably throughout the whole of the first century. By bishops he
obviously understands the presidents of the presbyteries, or the
officials who filled the chairs which those termed bishops subsequently
occupied. In their own age these primitive functionaries were called
bishops and presbyters indifferently; but they partially represented the
bishops of succeeding times, and they always appeared in the episcopal
registries as links of the apostolical succession, so that Jerome did
not deem it necessary to depart from the current nomenclature. His
meaning cannot be mistaken by any one who attentively marks his
language, for he has stated immediately before, that episcopal authority
properly commenced when the Church began to be distracted by the spirit
of sectarianism. [534:1]

In this passage, however, the learned father bears unequivocal testimony
to the fact that, from the earliest times, the presbytery had an
official head or president. Such an arrangement was known in the days of
the apostles. But the primitive moderator was very different from the
bishop of the fourth century. He was the representative of the
presbytery--not its master. Christ had said to the disciples--"Whosoever
will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be
chief among you, let him be your serv