It is not, indeed, to be supposed that the whole Church, prompted by a sudden and simultaneous impulse, agreed, all at once, to change its ecclesiastical arrangements.  Another polity, as has already been intimated, at first made its appearance in places of commanding influence; and its advocates now, no doubt, most assiduously endeavoured to recommend its claims by appealing to the fruits of experience.  The Church of Rome, as will subsequently appear, took the lead in setting up a mitigated form of prelacy; the Churches of Antioch and Alexandria followed; and, soon afterwards, other Christian communities of note adopted the example.  That this subject may be fairly understood, a few chapters must now be employed in tracing the rise and progress of the hierarchy.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RISE OF THE HIERARCHY CONNECTED WITH THE SPREAD OF HERESIES.

Eusebius, already so often quoted, and known so widely as the author of the earliest Church history, flourished in the former half of the fourth century.  This distinguished father was a spectator of the most wonderful revolution recorded in the annals of the world.  He had seen Christianity proscribed, and its noblest champions cut down by a brutal martyrdom; and he had lived to see a convert to the faith seated on the throne of the Caesars, and ministers of the Church basking in the sunshine of Imperial bounty.  He was himself a special favourite with Constantine; as bishop of Caesarea, the chief city of Palestine, he had often access to the presence of his sovereign; and in a work which is still extant, professing to be a Life of the Emperor, he has well-nigh exhausted the language of eulogy in his attempts to magnify the virtues of his illustrious patron.

Eusebius may have been an accomplished courtier, but certainly he is not entitled to the praise of a great historian.  The publication by which he is best known would never have acquired such celebrity, had it not been the most ancient treatise of the kind in existence.  Though it mentions many of the ecclesiastical transactions of the second and third centuries, and supplies a large amount of information which would have otherwise been lost, it must be admitted to be a very ill-arranged and unsatisfactory performance.  Its author does not occupy a high position either as a philosophic thinker, a judicious observer, or a sound theologian.  He makes no attempt to point out the germs of error, to illustrate the rise and progress of ecclesiastical changes, or to investigate the circumstances which led to the formation of the hierarchy.  Even the announcement of his Preface, that his purpose is “to record the successions of the holy apostles,” or, in other words, to exhibit some episcopal genealogies, proclaims how much he was mistaken as to the topics which should have been noticed most prominently in his narrative.  It is somewhat doubtful whether his history was expressly written, either for the illumination of his own age, or for the instruction of posterity; and its appearance, shortly after the public recognition of Christianity by the State, [523:1] is fitted to generate a suspicion that it was intended to influence the mind of Constantine, and to recommend the episcopal order to the consideration of the great proselyte.