edience. Let them feel that your
prerogative is not exercised capriciously, but for good and necessary
purposes. Let the elders and deacons regard you, not so much in the
light of a superior, as the servant of Christ."

In another portion of this letter a piece of intelligence is
communicated, which, as coming from Pius, possesses peculiar interest.
When the law was enacted altering the mode of succession to the
presidency, it may be supposed that the proceeding was deemed somewhat
ungracious towards those aged presbyters who might have soon expected,
as a matter of right, to obtain possession of the seat of the moderator.
The death of Telesphorus, the predecessor of Hyginus, as a martyr, was,
indeed, calculated to abate an anxiety to secure the chair; for the
whole Church was thus painfully reminded that it was a post of danger,
as well as of dignity; but still, when, on the occurrence of the first
vacancy, Pius was promoted over the heads of older men, he may, on this
ground, have felt, to some extent, embarrassed by his elevation. We may
infer, however, from this letter, that the few senior presbyters, with
whose advancement the late arrangement interfered, did not long survive
this crisis in the history of the Church; for the bishop of Rome here
informs his Gallic brother of their demise. "Those presbyters," says he,
"who were taught by the apostles, [549:1] and who have survived to our
own days, with whom we have united in dispensing the word of faith, have
now, in obedience to the call of the Lord, gone to their eternal
rest." [550:1] Such a notice of the decease of these venerable colleagues
is precisely what might have been expected, under the circumstances, in
a letter from Pius to Justus.

IX. The use of the word _bishop_, as denoting the president of the
presbytery, marks an era in the history of ecclesiastical polity. New
terms are not coined without necessity; neither, without an adequate
cause, is a new meaning annexed to an ancient designation. When the name
bishop was first used _as descriptive of the chief pastor_, there must
have been some special reason for such an application of the title; and
the rise of the hierarchy furnishes the only satisfactory
explanation.[550:2] If then we can ascertain when this new nomenclature
first made its appearance, we can also fix the date of the origin of
prelacy. Though the documentary proof available for the illustration of
this subject is comparatively scanty, it