The Catholic system, being an integral portion of the policy which invested the presiding elder with additional authority, rose contemporaneously with Prelacy.  When Gnosticism was spreading so rapidly, and creating so much scandal and confusion, schism upon schism appeared unavoidable.  How was the Church to be kept from going to pieces?  How could its unity be best conserved?  How could it contend most successfully against its subtle and restless disturbers?  Such were the problems which now occupied the attention of its leading ministers.  It was thought that all these difficulties would be solved by the adoption of the Catholic system.  Were the Church, it was said, to place more power in the hands of individuals, and then to consolidate its influence, it could bear down more effectively upon the errorists.  Every chief pastor of the Catholic Church was the symbol of the unity of his own ecclesiastical district; and the associated bishops represented the unity of the whole body of the faithful.  According to the Catholic system when strictly carried out, every individual excommunicated by one bishop was excommunicated by all, so that when a heresiarch was excluded from fellowship in one city, he could not be received elsewhere.  The visible unity of the Church was the great principle which the Catholic system sought to realise.  “The Church,” says Cyprian, “which is catholic and one, is not separated or divided, but is in truth connected and joined together by the cement of bishops mutually cleaving to each other.” [562:2]

The funds of the Church were placed very early in the hands of the president of the eldership, [563:1] and though they may not have been at his absolute disposal, he, no doubt, soon found means of sustaining his authority by means of his monetary influence.  But the power which he possessed, as the recognized centre of ecclesiastical unity, to prevent any of his elders or deacons from performing any official act of which he disapproved, constituted one of the essential features of the Catholic system.  “The right to administer baptism,” says Tertullian, “belongs to the chief priest, that is, the bishop:  then to the presbyters and the deacons, [563:2] yet not without the authority of the bishop, for the honour of the Church, which being preserved, peace is preserved.” [563:3] Here, the origin of Catholicism is pretty distinctly indicated; for the prerogatives of the bishop are described, not as matters of divine right, but of ecclesiastical arrangement. [563:4] They were given to him “for the honour of the Church,” that peace might be preserved when heretics began to cause divisions.

Though the bishop could give permission to others to celebrate divine ordinances, he was himself their chief administrator.  He was generally the only preacher; he usually dispensed baptism; [563:5] and he presided at the observance of the Eucharist.  At Rome, where the Catholic system was maintained most scrupulously, his presence seems to have been considered necessary to the due consecration of the elements.  Hence, at one time, the sacramental symbols were carried from the cathedral church to all the places of Christian worship throughout the city. [564:1] With such minute care did the Roman chief pastor endeavour to disseminate the doctrine that whoever was not in communion with the bishop was out of the Church.