celebrated letter to Cyprian.  “It is of necessity arranged among us,” says he, “that we elders and presidents meet every year [616:1] to set in order the things entrusted to our charge, that if there be any matters of grave moment they may be settled by common advice.” [616:2] The author of this epistle lived in the very country where synods are supposed to have assembled so much more frequently half a century before, so that his evidence demonstrates the fallacy of the hypothesis framed by some modern historians.

About the beginning of the third century, or at the time when Tertullian wrote, it would seem that the members of the Greek synods had an arrangement which was not then generally adopted.  The Greek councils met together “in fixed places.”  There is reason to believe that these “fixed places” were, commonly speaking, the metropolitan cities of the respective provinces.  But still, as we have seen, the pastors and elders had not yet generally agreed to the regulation that the chief pastor of the metropolitan city should be the constant moderator of the provincial synod.  In the case of the bishop of Rome the rule was, no doubt, already established; but, in other instances, the senior pastor present was, as yet, invited to fill the office of president.  The constant meeting of the synod in the principal town of the province tended, however, to increase the influence of its bishop; and he was at length almost everywhere acknowledged as the proper chairman. [616:3] At the Council of Nice in A.D. 325 his rights were formally secured by ecclesiastical enactment.  About the same date synods appear to have commenced to assemble with greater frequency.  “Let there be a meeting of the bishops twice a year,” says the thirty-seventh of the so-called Apostolical Canons, “and let them examine amongst themselves the decrees concerning religion, and settle the ecclesiastical controversies which may have occurred.  One meeting is to be held in the fourth week of the Pentecost, and the other on the 12th day of the month of October.” [617:1]

As soon as the light of historical records begins to illustrate the condition of any portion of the ancient Church, its synodical government may be discovered; and though the literary memorials of the third century are comparatively few, they are abundantly sufficient to demonstrate that, as early as the middle of that period, ecclesiastical courts upon a tolerably extensive scale were everywhere established.  About that time the controversy relative to the propriety of rebaptizing heretics created much agitation, and the subject was keenly discussed in the synods which met for its consideration.  Nowhere is any hint given that these courts were of recent formation.  Though meeting in so many places in the East and West, and in countries so far apart, they are invariably represented as the ancient order of ecclesiastical regimen.  They all appear, too, as co-ordinate and independent judicatories; and though