in the presbytery.  The period, thus pointed out, can be easily ascertained.  Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, after a long official life of forty-three years, died about A.D. 232, [581:1] and it is well known that Heraclas and Dionysius were both members of his presbytery towards the close of his episcopal administration.  It was, therefore, shortly before his demise that the new system was introduced.  In certain parts of the Church the arrangement mentioned by Jerome probably continued somewhat longer.  Cyprian apparently hints at such cases of exception when he says that in “almost all the provinces,” [581:2] the neighbouring bishops assembled, on the occasion of an episcopal vacancy, at the new election and ordination.  It may have been that, in a few of the more considerable towns, the elders still continued to nominate their president.

When the erudite Roman presbyter informs us that “even at Alexandria” [581:3] the elders formerly made their own bishop, his language obviously implies that such a mode of creating the chief pastor was not confined to the Church of the metropolis of Egypt.  It existed wherever Christianity had gained a footing, and he mentions this particular see, partly, because of its importance—­being, in point of rank, the second in the Empire—­and partly, perhaps, because the remarkable circumstances in its history, leading to the alteration which he specifies, were known to all his well-informed contemporaries.  Jerome does not say that the Alexandrian presbyters inducted their bishop by imposition of hands, [582:1] or set him apart to his office by any formal ordination.  His words apparently indicate that they did not recognize the necessity of any special rite of investiture; that they made the bishop by election; and that, when once acknowledged as the object of their choice, he was at liberty to enter forthwith on the performance of his episcopal duties.  When the Roman soldiers made an emperor they appointed him by acclamation, and the cheers which issued from their ranks as he stood up before the legions and as he was clothed with the purple by one of themselves, constituted the ceremony of his inauguration.  The ancient archdeacon was still one of the deacons; [582:2] as he was the chief almoner of the Church, he required to possess tact, discernment, and activity; and, in the fourth century, he was nominated to his office by his fellow-deacons.  Jerome assures us that, until the time of Heraclas and Dionysius, the elders made a bishop just in the same way as in his own day the soldiers made an emperor, or as the deacons chose one whom they knew to be industrious, and made him an archdeacon.