History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

betray themselves even in our present period, particularly in Cyprian, together with a protest against

it. Cyprian himself is as much a witness for consolidated primacy, as for independent episcopacy,

and hence often used and abused alike by Romanists and Anglicans for sectarian purposes.

The characteristics, however, of the pre-Constantinian hierarchy, in distinction from the

post-Constantinian, both Greek and Roman, are, first, its grand simplicity, and secondly, its

spirituality, or freedom from all connection with political power and worldly splendor. Whatever

influence the church acquired and exercised, she owed nothing to the secular government, which

continued indifferent or positively hostile till the protective toleration edict of Constantine (313).

Tertullian thought it impossible for an emperor to be a Christian, or a Christian to be an emperor;

and even after Constantine, the Donatists persisted in this view, and cast up to the Catholics the

memory of the former age: "What have Christians to do with kings? or what have bishops to do in

the palace?"

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18 The ante-Nicene fathers expected the ultimate triumph of Christianity over the

world from a supernatural interposition at the second Advent. Origen seems to have been the only

one in that age of violent persecution who expected that Christianity, by continual growth, would

gain the dominion over the world.

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19

The consolidation of the church and its compact organization implied a restriction of

individual liberty, in the interest of order, and a temptation to the abuse of authority. But it was

demanded by the diminution of spiritual gifts, which were poured out in such extraordinary

abundance in the apostolic age. It made the church a powerful republic within the Roman empire,

and contributed much to its ultimate success. "In union is strength," especially in times of danger

and persecution such as the church had to pass through in the ante-Nicene age. While we must deny

a divine right and perpetual obligation to any peculiar form of government as far as it departs from

the simple principles of the New Testament, we may concede a historical necessity and great relative

importance to the ante-Nicene and subsequent organizations of the church. Even the papacy was

by no means an unmixed evil, but a training school for the barbarian nations during the middle

ages. Those who condemn, in principle, all hierarchy, sacerdotalism, and ceremonialism, should

remember that God himself appointed the priesthood and ceremonies in the Mosaic dispensation,

and that Christ submitted to the requirements of the law in the days of his humiliation.

§ 42. Clergy and Laity.

The idea and institution of a special priesthood, distinct from the body of the people, with the

accompanying notion of sacrifice and altar, passed imperceptibly from Jewish and heathen

reminiscences and analogies into the Christian church. The majority of Jewish converts adhered

tenaciously to the Mosaic institutions and rites, and a considerable part never fully attained to the

height of spiritual freedom proclaimed by Paul, or soon fell away from it. He opposed legalistic

and ceremonial tendencies in Galatia and Corinth; and although sacerdotalism does not appear

among the errors of his Judaizing opponents, the Levitical priesthood, with its three ranks of

high-priest, priest, and Levite, naturally furnished an analogy for the threefold ministry of bishop,

priest, and deacon, and came to be regarded as typical of it. Still less could the Gentile Christians,

119

"Quid Christianis cum regibus ? aut quid episcopis cum palatio?"

120

Contra Cels. VIII. 68. Comp. the remarks of Neander, I. 129 (Boston ed.).

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History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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as a body, at once emancipate themselves from their traditional notions of priesthood, altar, and

sacrifice, on which their former religion was based. Whether we regard the change as an apostasy

from a higher position attained, or as a reaction of old ideas never fully abandoned, the change is

undeniable, and can be traced to the second century. The church could not long occupy the ideal

height of the apostolic age, and as the Pentecostal illumination passed away with the death of the

apostles, the old reminiscences began to reassert themselves.

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20

In the apostolic church preaching and teaching were not confined to a particular class, but

every convert could proclaim the gospel to unbelievers, and every Christian who had the gift could

pray and teach and exhort in the congregation.

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21

 The New Testament knows no spiritual

aristocracy or nobility, but calls all believers "saints" though many fell far short of their vocation.

Nor does it recognize a special priesthood in distinction from the people, as mediating between

God and the laity. It knows only one high-priest, Jesus Christ, and clearly teaches the universal

priesthood, as well as universal kingship, of believers.

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22

 It does this in a far deeper and larger

sense than the Old;

124

23

 in a sense, too, which even to this day is not yet fully realized. The entire

body of Christians are called "clergy" (

      

 a peculiar people, the heritage of God.

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24

On the other hand it is equally clear that there was in the apostolic church a ministerial

office, instituted by Christ, for the very purpose of raising the mass of believers from infancy and

pupilage to independent and immediate intercourse with God, to that prophetic, priestly, and kingly

position, which in principle and destination belongs to them all.

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25

 This work is the gradual

process of church history itself, and will not be fully accomplished till the kingdom of glory shall

come. But these ministers are nowhere represented as priests in any other sense than Christians

generally are priests, with the privilege of a direct access to the throne of grace in the name of their

one and eternal high-priest in heaven. Even in the Pastoral Epistles which present the most advanced

stage of ecclesiastical organization in the apostolic period, while the teaching, ruling, and pastoral

functions of the presbyter-bishops are fully discussed, nothing is said about a sacerdotal function.

The Apocalypse, which was written still later, emphatically teaches the universal priesthood and

kingship of believers. The apostles themselves never claim or exercise a special priesthood. The

121

Renan, looking at the gradual development of the hierarchy out of the primitive democracy, from his secular point of view,

calls it, the most profound transformation "in history, and a triple abdication: first the club (the congregation) committing its

power to the bureau or the committee (the college of presbyters), then the bureau to its president (the bishop) who could say:

"Je suis le club,"and finally the presidents to the pope as the universal and infallible bishop; the last process being completed in

the Vatican Council of 1870. See his E’glise chrétienne, p. 88, and his English Conferences (Hibbert Lectures, 1880), p 90.

122

Comp. Acts 8:4; 9:27; 13:15; 18:26, 28; Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:10, 28; 14:1-6, 31. Even in the Jewish Synagogue the liberty

of teaching was enjoyed, and the elder could ask any member of repute, even a stranger, to deliver a discourse on the Scripture

lesson (Luke 4:17; Acts 17:2).

123

1 Pet. 2:5, 9; 5:3; Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6. See Neander, Lightfoot, Stanley, etc., and vol. I. 486 sqq. I add a passage from

Hatch’s; Bampton Lectures on The Organization of the Early Christian Churches (1881), p. 139: "In earlier times there was a

grander faith. For the kingdom of God was a kingdom of priests. Not only the ’four and twenty elders’ before the throne, but

the innumerable souls of the sanctified upon whom ’the second death had no power,’ were ’kings and priests unto God.’ Only

in that high sense was priesthood predicable of Christian men. For the shadow had passed: the reality had come: the one High

Priest of Christianity was Christ."

124

Exod. 19:6.

125

1 Pet. 5:3. Here Peter warns his fellow-presbyters not to lord it (

κυριεύειν)over the κλῆροι or the κληρονομία, i.e., the lot

or inheritance of the Lord, the charge allotted to them. Comp. Deut. 4:20; 9:29 (LXX),

126

Comp. Eph. 4:11-13

79

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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