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6. Janitors or sextons,

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 who took care of the religious meeting-rooms, and at a later

period also of the church-yards.

7. Besides these there were in the larger churches catechists, and, where the church language

in the worship was not understood, interpreters; but the interpreting was commonly done by

presbyters, deacons, or readers.

The bishop Cornelius of Rome (d. 252), in a letter on the Novatian schism,

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55 gives the

number of officers in his church as follows: Forty-six presbyters, probably corresponding to the

number of the meeting-houses of the Christians in the city; seven deacons, after the model of the

church at Jerusalem (Acts vi); seven sub-deacons; forty-two acolyths, and fifty-two exorcists,

readers, and janitors.

As to the ordines majores, the deacons during this period rose in importance. In addition to

their original duties of caring for the poor and sick, they baptized, distributed the sacramental cup,

said the church prayers, not seldom preached, and were confidential advisers, sometimes even

delegates and vicars of the bishops. This last is true especially of the "archdeacon," who does not

appear, however, till the fourth century. The presbyters, on the contrary, though above the deacons,

were now overtopped by the new office of bishop, in which the entire government of the church

became centred.

§ 44. Origin of the Episcopate.

Besides the works already cited, compare the special works and essays on the Ignatian controversy,

published since 1837, by Rothe (close of his Anfänge, etc.), Hefele (R.C.), Baur, Hilgenfeld,

Bunsen, Petermann, Cureton, Lipsius, Uhlhorn, Zahn, Lightfoot (I. 376 sqq). Also R. D.

Hitchcock on the Origin of Episcopacy, N. Y. 1867 (in the "Am. Presbyt. & Theol. Review"

for Jan. 1867, pp. 133–169); Lightfoot on the Christian Ministry (1873); Hatch on the

Organization of the Early Christian Church (1881); Renan, 

L’Eglise chrétienne

 (1879), ch. VI.

Progrés

de l’épiscopat;

 and Gore, The Ministry of the Church (1889).

The most important and also the most difficult phenomenon of our period in the department of

church organization is the rise and development of the episcopate as distinct from the presbyterate.

This institution comes to view in the second century as the supreme spiritual office, and is retained

to this day by all Roman and Greek Christendom, and by a large part of the Evangelical church,

especially the Anglican communion. A form of government so ancient and so widely adopted, can

be satisfactorily accounted for only on the supposition of a religious need, namely, the need of a

tangible outward representation and centralization, to illustrate and embody to the people their

relation to Christ and to God, and the visible unity of the church. It is therefore inseparable from

the catholic principle of authority and mediation; while the protestant principle of freedom and

direct intercourse of the believer with Christ, consistently carried out, infringes the strict episcopal

constitution, and tends to ministerial equality. Episcopacy in the full sense of the term requires for

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θυρωροί, πυλωροί, ostiarii janitores.

156

In Euseb. vi. 43.

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

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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its base the idea of a real priesthood and real sacrifice, and an essential distinction between clergy

and laity. Divested of these associations, it resolves itself into a mere superintendency.

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During the lifetime of the apostles, those eye- and ear-witnesses of the divine-human life

of Jesus, and the inspired organs of the Holy Spirit, there was no room for proper bishops; and

those who were so called, must have held only a subordinate place. The church, too, in the first

century was as yet a strictly supernatural organization, a stranger in this world, standing with one

foot in eternity, and longing for the second coming of her heavenly bridegroom. But in the episcopal

constitution the church provided an extremely simple but compact and freely expansible organization,

planted foot firmly upon earth, became an institution for the education of her infant people, and,

as chiliastic hopes receded, fell into the path of quiet historical development; yet unquestionably

she thus incurred also the danger of a secularization which reached its height just when the hierarchy

became complete in the Roman church, and which finally necessitated a reformation on the basis

of apostolical Christianity. That this secularization began with the growing power of the bishops

even before Constantine and the Byzantine court orthodoxy, we perceive, for instance, in the lax

penitential discipline, the avarice, and the corruption with which Hippolytus, in the ninth book of

his Philosophumena, reproaches Zephyrinus and Callistus, the Roman bishops of his time (202–223);

also in the example of the bishop Paul of Samosata, who was deposed in 269 on almost incredible

charges, not only against his doctrine, but still more against his moral character.

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Origen

complains that there are, especially in the larger cities, overseers of the people of God, who seek

to outdo the pomp of heathen potentates, would surround themselves, like the emperors, with a

body-guard, and make themselves terrible and inaccessible to the poor.

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We consider, first, the origin of the episcopate. The unreliable character of our documents

and traditions from the transition period between the close of the apostolic church and the beginning

of the post-apostolic, leaves large room here for critical research and combination. First of all comes

the question: Was the episcopate directly or indirectly of apostolic (Johannean) origin?

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59 Or did

it arise after the death of the apostles, and develope itself from the presidency of the congregational

presbytery?

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60

 In other words, was the episcopate a continuation and contraction of, and substitute

for, the apostolate, or was it an expansion and elevation of the presbyterate?

162

61 The later view is

more natural and better sustained by facts. Most of its advocates date the change from the time of

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Such is the Swedish and Danish Lutheran, the American Methodist, and the Moravian episcopate, which recognizes the

validity of non-episcopal orders. The Anglican church harbors a high-church and a low-church theory of episcopacy, the one

derived from the mediaeval hierarchy, the other from the Reformation, but repudiates the primacy as an antichristian usurpation,

although it must be confessed to be almost as old as episcopacy, its roots going back to Clement of Rome, or at all events to the

age of Irenaeus.

158

Comp. Euseb. vii. 27-30

159

See the passages quoted by Gieseler, vol. I. 282 sq. (Harpers’ ed. of New York.)

160

This is the Greek, the Roman Catholic, and the high Anglican theory. It is advocated by a very few Continental Protestants

as Chevalier Bunsen, Rothe and Thiersch (an Irvingite), who trace episcopacy to John in Ephesus.

161

So the Lutheran, Presbyterian, and some eminent Episcopal writers. We mention Mosheim, Neander, Lightfoot, Stanley,

Hatch. Also Baur and Renan, who judge as mere critics.

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Bishop Lightfoot (l.c. p. 194) thus states the question with his own answer: "The episcopate was formed, not out of the

apostolic order by localization, but out of the presbyterial by elevation; and the title, which originally was common to all, came

at length to be appropriated to the chief among them."

85

Philip Schaff

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

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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