CHAPTER XIII.

The theory of the church, and the history of its perversion—­ concluding observations.

The Church invisible and its attributes, 636
The visible Church and its defects, 637
The holy Catholic Church—­what it meant, 639
Church visible and Church invisible confounded, 640
Evils of the Catholic system, 642
Establishment of an odious ecclesiastical monopoly, ib. 
Pastors began to be called priests, 644
Arrogant assumptions of bishops, 646
The Catholic system encouraged bigotry, 647
Its ungenerous spirit, ib. 
The claims of the Word of God not properly recognized, 648
Many corruptions already in the Church, 650
The establishment of the hierarchy a grand mistake, 652
Only promoted outward, not real unity, 653
Sad state of the Church when Catholicism was fully developed, 655
Evangelical unity—­in what it consists, 656

* * * * *

          PeriodI.

          Fromthe birth of Christ to the death
          of the apostle John, A.D. 100.

* * * * *

SECTION I.

HISTORY OF THE PLANTING AND GROWTH OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

CHAPTER I.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE AT THE TIME OF THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.

Upwards of a quarter of a century before the Birth of Christ, the grandnephew of Julius Caesar had become sole master of the Roman world.  Never, perhaps, at any former period, had so many human beings acknowledged the authority of a single potentate.  Some of the most powerful monarchies at present in Europe extend over only a fraction of the territory which Augustus governed:  the Atlantic on the west, the Euphrates on the east, the Danube and the Rhine on the north, and the deserts of Africa on the south, were the boundaries of his empire.