by a minister who did not belong to their own party.  They could not challenge a single flaw in the creed of Novatian, [649:3] and yet they strongly maintained that his preaching was useless, and that the baptism he dispensed was worthless as the ablution of a heathen.  “You should know,” says Cyprian, “that we ought not even to be curious as to what Novatian teaches, since he teaches out of the Church. Whosoever he be, and whatsoever he be, he is not a Christian who is not in the Church of Christ.” [649:4] “When the Novatians say—­’Dost thou believe remission of sins and eternal life by the Holy Church?’ they lie in their interrogatory, since they have no Church.” [649:5]

Strange infatuation!  Who could have anticipated that one hundred and fifty years after the death of the Apostle John, such miserable and revolting bigotry would have been current?  The Scriptures teach us that, in the salvation of sinners, ministers are as nothing, and the gospel everything.  “Whosoever,” says Paul, “shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved....  Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” [650:1] Cyprian did not understand such doctrine.  He imagined that the Word of God had no power except when issuing from the lips of the ministers of his own communion.  The Catholic Church must put its seal upon the gospel to give it currency.  Without this stamp it was all in vain to announce it to a world lying in wickedness.  The Catholic pastor might be a man without ability; he might be comparatively ignorant; and he might be of more than suspicious integrity; and yet the King of the Church was supposed to look down with complacency on all the official acts of this wretched hireling, whilst no dew of heavenly influence rested on the labours of a pious and accomplished Novatian minister!  When men like Cyprian were prepared to acknowledge such folly, it was not strange that a darkness which might be felt soon settled down upon Christendom.

* * * * *

In the preceding pages the history of the ancient Church for the first three centuries has passed under review, and a few general observations may now be not inappropriately appended to this concluding chapter.  The details here furnished supply ample evidence that Christianity was greatly corrupted long before the conversion of Constantine.  It is true, indeed, that much of the superstition which has since so much disfigured the Church was yet unknown.  During the first three centuries we find no recognition of the mediatorship of Mary, or of the dogma of her immaculate conception, [650:2] or of the worship of images, or of the celebration of divine service in an unknown tongue, or of the doctrine of the infallibility of the Roman bishop.  But the germs of many dangerous errors were distinctly visible, and when the sun of Imperial favour began to shine upon the Christians, these errors rapidly reached maturity.  The Eucharistic