The apostolic Church was comparatively free from divisions; and, whilst the inspired heralds of the gospel lived, it could not be said that “there were parties in religion.”  The heretics who appeared were never able to organize any formidable combinations; they were inconsiderable in point of numbers; and, though not wanting in activity, those to whom our Lord had personally entrusted the publication of His Word, were ready to oppose them, so that all their efforts were effectually checked or defeated.  The most ancient writers acknowledge that, during the early part of the second century, the same state of things continued.  According to Hegesippus, who outlived Polycarp about fifteen or twenty years, [529:1] the Church continued until the death of Simeon of Jerusalem, in A.D. 116, [529:2] “as a pure and uncorrupted virgin.”  “If there were any at all,” says he, “who attempted to pervert the right standard of saving doctrine, they were yet skulking in dark retreats; but when the sacred company of the apostles had, in various ways, finished their career, AND THE GENERATION OF THOSE WHO HAD BEEN PRIVILEGED TO HEAR THEIR INSPIRED WISDOM HAD PASSED AWAY, then at length the fraud of false teachers produced a confederacy of impious errors.” [529:3] The date of the appearance of these parties is also established by the testimony of Celsus, who lived in the time of the Antonines, and who was one of the most formidable of the early antagonists of Christianity.  This writer informs us that, though in the beginning the disciples were agreed in sentiment, they became, in his days, when “spread out into a multitude, divided and distracted, each aiming to give stability to his own faction.” [530:1]

The statements of Hegesippus and Celsus are substantiated by a host of additional witnesses.  Justin Martyr, [530:2] Irenaeus, [530:3] Clemens Alexandrinus, [530:4] Cyprian, [530:5] and others, all concur in representing the close of the reign of Hadrian, or the beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius, as the period when heresies burst forth, like a flood, upon the Church.  The extant ecclesiastical writings of the succeeding century are occupied chiefly with their refutation.  No wonder that the best champions of the faith were embarrassed and alarmed.  They had hitherto been accustomed to boast that Christianity was the cement which could unite all mankind, and they had pointed triumphantly to its influence in bringing together the Jew and the Gentile, the Greek and the barbarian, the master and the slave, the learned and the illiterate.  They had looked forward with high expectation to the days of its complete ascendency, when, under its gentle sway, all nations would exhibit the spectacle of one great and happy brotherhood.  How, then, must they have been chagrined by the rise and spread of heresies!  They saw the Church itself converted into a great battle-field, and every man’s hand turned against his fellow.  In almost all the populous cities of the Empire, as if on a concerted signal,