The Ancient Church eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 775 pages of information about The Ancient Church.

The Ancient Church eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 775 pages of information about The Ancient Church.

In one of the letters purporting to have been written by Pius, bishop of Rome, to Justus of Vienne, shortly after the middle of the second century, there is a passage which supplies a singularly striking confirmation of the testimony of Jerome.  Even were we to admit that the genuineness of this epistle cannot be satisfactorily established, it must still be acknowledged to be a very ancient document, and were it of somewhat later date than its title indicates, it should at least be received as representing the traditions which prevailed respecting the ecclesiastical arrangements of an early antiquity.  In this communication Pius speaks of his episcopal correspondent of Vienne as “constituted by the brethren and clothed with the dress of the bishops.” [583:1] By “the brethren,” as is plain from another part of the letter, [583:2] he understands the presbytery.  And as the soldiers made a sovereign by saluting him emperor, and arraying him in the purple; so the elders made a president by clothing him with a certain piece of dress, and calling him bishop.  Thus, the statement of Jerome is exactly corroborated by the evidence of this witness.

We may infer from the letter of Pius that in Gaul and Italy, as well as in Egypt, the elders were in the habit of making their own bishop. [583:3] There is not a particle of evidence to shew that any other arrangement originally existed.  The declaration of so competent an authority as Jerome backed by the attestation of this ancient epistle may be regarded as perfectly conclusive. [583:4] But other proofs of the same fact are not wanting.  For a long period the bishop continued to be known by the title of “the elder who presides"-a designation which obviously implies that he was still only one of the presbyters.  When the Paschal controversy created such excitement, and when Victor of Rome threatened to renounce the communion of those who held views different from his own, Irenaeus of Lyons wrote a letter of remonstrance to the haughty churchman in which he broadly reminded him of his ecclesiastical position. “Those, presbyters before Soter who governed the Church over which you now preside, I mean,” said he, “Anicetus, and Pius, Hyginus with Telesphorus and Xystus, neither did themselves observe, nor did they permit those after them to observe it....  But those very presbyters before you who did not observe it, sent the Eucharist to those of Churches which did.” [584:1] Irenaeus here endeavours to teach the bishop of Rome a lesson of humility by reminding him repeatedly that he and his predecessors were but presbyters.

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The Ancient Church from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.