Prelacy had been employed as the cure for Church divisions, but the remedy had proved worse than the disease.  Sects meanwhile continued to multiply; and they were, perhaps, nowhere so abundant as in the very city where the new machinery had been first set up for their suppression.  Towards the close of the second century their multitude was one of the standing reproaches of Christianity.  What was called the Catholic Church was now on the brink of a great schism; and the very man, who aspired to be the centre of Catholic unity, threatened to be the cause of the disruption.  It was becoming more and more apparent that, when the presbyters consented to surrender any portion of their privileges to the bishop, they betrayed the cause of ecclesiastical freedom; and even now indications were not wanting that the Catholic system was likely to degenerate into a spiritual despotism.

CHAPTER V.

THE CHURCH OF ROME IN THE THIRD CENTURY.

Though very few of the genuine productions of the ministers of the ancient Church of Rome are still extant, [343:1] multitudes of spurious epistles attributed to its early bishops have been carefully preserved.  It is easy to account for this apparent anomaly.  The documents now known as the false Decretals, [343:2] and ascribed to the Popes of the first and immediately succeeding centuries, were suited to the taste of times of ignorance, and were then peculiarly grateful to the occupants of the Roman see.  As evidences of its original superiority they were accordingly transmitted to posterity, and ostentatiously exhibited among the papal title-deeds.  But the real compositions of the primitive pastors of the great city supplied little food for superstition; and must have contained startling and humiliating revelations which laid bare the absurdity of claims subsequently advanced.  These unwelcome witnesses were, therefore, quietly permitted to pass into oblivion.

It has been said, however, that Truth is the daughter of Time, and the discovery of monuments long since forgotten, or of writings supposed to have been lost, has often wonderfully verified and illustrated the apologue.  The reappearance, within the last three hundred years, of various ancient records and memorials, has shed a new light upon the history of antiquity.  Other testimonies equally valuable will, no doubt, yet be forthcoming for the settlement of existing controversies.

In A.D. 1551, as some workmen in the neighbourhood of Rome were employed in clearing away the ruins of a dilapidated chapel, they found a broken mass of sculptured marble among the rubbish.  The fragments, when put together, proved to be a statue representing a person of venerable aspect sitting in a chair, on the back of which were the names of various publications.  It was ascertained, on more minute examination, that, some time after the establishment of Christianity by Constantine, [344:1] this monument had been erected