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

champion of the Montanistic reaction against the Catholic hierarchy: "Are not we laymen priests

also?"

139

38 It is written, he continues: "He hath made us kings and priests (Rev. 1:6). It is the

authority of the church alone which has made a distinction between clergy and laity. Where there

is no college of ministers, you administer the sacrament, you baptize, you are a priest for yourself

alone. And where there are three of you, there is a church, though you be only laymen. For each

one lives by his own faith, and there is no respect of persons with God."

140

39 All, therefore, which

the clergy considered peculiar to them, he claimed for the laity as the common sacerdotal privilege

of all Christians.

Even in the Catholic church an acknowledgment of the general priesthood showed itself in

the custom of requiring the baptized to say the Lord’s Prayer before the assembled congregation.

With reference to this, Jerome says: "Sacerdotium laici, id est, baptisma." The congregation also,

at least in the West, retained for a long time the right of approval and rejection in the choice of its

ministers, even of the bishop. Clement of Rome expressly requires the assent of the whole

congregation for a valid election;

141

40

 and Cyprian terms this an apostolic and almost universal

regulation.

142

41 According to his testimony it obtained also in Rome, and was observed in the case

of his contemporary, Cornelius.

143

42

 Sometimes in the filling of a vacant bishopric the "suffragium"

of the people preceded the "judicium" of the clergy of the diocese. Cyprian, and afterwards

Athanasius, Ambrose, Augustin, and other eminent prelates, were in a manner pressed into the

bishopric in this democratic way. Cyprian, with all his high-church proclivities, declares it his

principle to do nothing as bishop without the advice of the presbyters and deacons, and the consent

of the people.

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43

 A peculiar influence, which even the clergy could not withstand, attached to the

"confessors," and it was sometimes abused by them, as in their advocacy of the lapsed, who denied

Christ in the Decian persecution.

Finally, we notice cases where the function of teaching was actually exercised by laymen.

The bishops of Jerusalem and Caesarea allowed the learned Origen to expound the Bible to their

congregations before his ordination, and appealed to the example of several bishops in the East.

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44

Even in the Apostolical Constitutions there occurs, under the name of the Apostle Paul, the direction:

"Though a man be a layman, if experienced in the delivery of instruction, and reverent in habit, he

139

Nonne et laici sacerdotes sumus?

140

De Exhort. Cast. c. 7. Comp. also De Monog. 7, 12; De Bapt. 17; De Orat. 18

141

. Ad Cor. 44: 

Σύευδοκάσης τῆς ἐκκλησίας πάσης , consentiente universa ecclesia.

142

Ep. lx. 3-4 (ed. Goldhorn).

143

Ep. lv. 7:"Factus est Cornelius episcopus de Dei et Christi ejus judicio, de clericorum paene omnium testimonio, de plebis

quae tum adfuit suffragio, et de sacerdotum antiquorum et bonorum virorum collegio."

144

Sine consensu plebis.

145

Euseb., H. E. VI. 19: "There [in Caesarea] he [Origen] was also requested by the bishops to expound the sacred Scriptures

publicly in the church, although he had not yet obtained the priesthood by the imposition of hands." It is true this was made the

ground of a charge against him by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria; but the charge was that Origen had preached "in the presence

of bishops," not that he had preached as a layman. And the bishops of Jerusalem and Caesarea adduced several examples of holy

bishops inviting capable laymen to preach to the people. Prudentius and Aedesius, while laymen, founded the church in Abyssinia,

Socrates, Hist. Eccl. I. 19.

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Philip Schaff

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

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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may teach; for the Scripture says: ’They shall be all taught of God.’ "

146

45

 The fourth general council

at Carthage (398) prohibited laymen from teaching in the presence of clergymen and without their

consent; implying at the same time, that with such permission the thing might be done.

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46

It is worthy of notice that a number of the most eminent church teachers of this period,

Hermas, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Arnobius, and

Lactantius, were either laymen, or at most only presbyters. Hermas, who wrote one of the most

popular and authoritative books in the early church, was probably a layman; perhaps also the author

of the homily which goes under the name of the Second Epistle of Clement of Rome, and has

recently been discovered in full both in the original Greek and in a Syriac translation; for he seems

to distinguish himself and his hearers from the presbyters.

148

47

§ 43. New Church Officers.

The expansion of the church, the development of her cultus, and the tendency towards

hierarchical pomp, led to the multiplication of offices below the diaconate, which formed the ordines

minores. About the middle of the third century the following new officers are mentioned:

1. Sub-deacons, or under-helpers;

149

48 assistants and deputies of the deacons; the only one

of these subordinate offices for which a formal ordination was required. Opinions differ as to its

value.

2. Readers,

150

49

 who read the Scriptures in the assembly and had charge of the church books.

3. Acolyths,

151

50

 attendants of the bishops in their official duties and processions.

4. Exorcists,

152

51

 who, by prayer and the laying on of hands, cast out the evil spirit from

the possessed,

153

52 and from catechumens, and frequently assisted in baptism. This power had been

formerly considered a free gift of the Holy Spirit.

5. Precentors,

154

53

 for the musical parts of the liturgy, psalms, benedictions, responses, etc.

146

Const. Apost. VIII. 31. Ambrosiaster, or Hilary the Deacon, in his Com. Ad Eph. 4:11, 12, says that in early times "omnes

docebant et omnes baptizabant."

147

Can. 98: "Laicus praesentibus clericis nisi ipsis jubentibus, docere non audeat." The 99

th

 canon forbids women, no matter

how "learned or holy," to "presume to teach men in a meeting." Pope Leo I. (Ep 92 and 93) forbids lay preaching in the interest

of ecclesiastical order. Charlemagne enacted a law that "a layman ought not to recite a lesson in church, nor to say the Hallelujah

but only the Psalm or responses without the Hallelujah."

148

The Greek text (of which only a fragment was known before) was found and published by Bryennios, 1875, the Syriac

version by Bensley, 1876. See Harnack’s ed. in the Patres Apost. vol. I., and Lightfoot, S. Clement of Rome, Appendix (1877).

Harnack, Hilgenfeld, and Hatch (l.c. 114; note) suppose that the homily was delivered by a layman, but Lightfoot (p. 304)

explains the language above alluded to as a common rhetorical figure by which the speaker places himself on a level with his

audience.

149

Ὑποδιάκονοι,subdiaconi, perhaps the same as the ὑπηρέται of the New Testament and the earlier fathers.

150

Ἄναγνωσται, lectores, mentioned by Tertullian.

151

Ἄκόλυθοι, acolythi.

152

Ἔξορκισταί,exorcistae

153

Δαιμονιζόμενοι, ἐνεργούμενοι

154

Ψάλται, psalmistae cantores

83

Philip Schaff

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

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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