ly old men, "elders" in the literal sense of the word; for it was the mature or elderly men that would naturally be chosen, and the office was for life. So the aged presbyter might be pictured as handing on, before he should "go hence and be no more," the tradition of apostolic teaching, which he himself had learned in youth from some aged predecessor.

Irenæus himself was such an "elder." In his early days in Asia he had even known men who had known Apostles; he had been a friend and pupil of Polycarp, who had been a friend and pupil of the Apostle John.' So it was a chain of but three links -the Apostle John, the martyr Polycarp, the bishop Irenæus : only a single intermediate link between Irenæus and the disciple that leaned upon Jesus' breast at the Last Supper. Or, to mark the successive dates, we may think of our Lord as speaking his last words to the disciples, and sending them out into all the world as his witnesses, about the year 30 of our era; of the disciple John in Ephesus at the close of his life, about the year 100; of Polycarp in Smyrna, about the year 155; of Irenæus in Lyons, about the year 202. Here, distinctly traceable, was a succession of evangelic witnesses from the very days of Jesus, sending down the word of oral testimony through five generations of Christian believers.

But it could not always continue so. As the oncoming years kept pushing the apostolic age farther and farther back into the shadow-land of antiquity, this line of testimony would be seriously weakened. What should take its place? The answer of our age would be: Scholarship-not tradition, but the original documents, the apostolic writings, are the rule of faith; and these must be vouched for by New Testament scholars. The answer of that age, however, as uttered by Irenæus, was one

"For when I was a boy I saw thee [Florinus, a presbyter of the church at Rome] in lower Asia with Polycarp, moving in splendor in the royal court.... I am able to describe the very place in which the blessed Polycarp sat as he discoursed, .. and the accounts which he gave of his intercourse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord." (Irenæus, quoted in Eusebius, H. E., v. 20.)

that could be much more easily grasped and utilized: The bishops, he said, are the official conservators of both the apostolic writings and traditions. They were able to vouch for the true apostolic doctrine, delivered to them through the presbyteral succession, to be delivered by them in turn to those who should succeed to their places, and so on through the generations of time.

Here, then, were the official custodians and interpreters of apostolic teaching. But what if they should make mistakes concerning it? This was a difficulty with which Irenæus did not directly deal. But he did suggest that the bishops were supernaturally illumined, so that it was not to be supposed that they I would make mistakes. In virtue of their office they received from the Holy Spirit a gift of insight-a "sure gift of the truth"-through which they would be able to recognize a genuine apostolic writing or tradition. He speaks but vaguely and uncertainly, it is true, about this episcopal gift-as well he might.' But at any rate the bishops are to be acknowledged and trusted as the bond of orthodoxy, the guarantors of the faith, the duly qualified teachers of the Church.'

'The passages (the only two, so far as I know) in which this special power of discerning the truth seems to be claimed for the chief officers of the churches are the following: "Wherefore we should hearken to the presbyters who are in the Church; those who have their succession from the Apostles, as we have pointed out; who with their succession in the episcopate received a sure gift of the truth (certum charisma veritatis), at the good pleasure of the Father." ("Against Heresies,” IV. 26, 2.) "Now where one may find such [good presbyters] Paul teaches, saying, 'God hath set some in the Church, first Apostles, then prophets, thirdly teachers.' Then where the Lord's free gifts are set, there we must learn the truth." (Ibid., IV. 26, 5.) In this latter passage Irenæus apparently has in mind the charismata of the apostolic age, and supposes the charisma veritatis to be one of them, and to be possessed by the presbyters (and here he probably means specifically the bishops) of his own day.

"Of course I am here quoting, not indorsing, Irenæus' views. The fact of a church's having apostolic founders and being presided over either by presbyters or by a single bishop did not guarantee the purity of its teaching. Neither the general congregation nor the office of supervision was such a doctrinal wheat field that the enemy could not enter it to sow tares. On the contrary, from the first "when the blade sprang up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also."

Observe, the idea of the episcopate for which the devout and impassioned Ignatius pleads is that of the individual bishop, presiding over his congregation with absolute authority, and standing toward it in the place of God himself. No predecessor, no preceding ordination, no intermediary of any kind is taken account of. Immediately from God is this pastoral office with its unimpeachable authority over each separate little Christian community. But the idea which the more thoughtful and largeminded Irenæus, two generations later, would make good, is that of the bishops as the chief officers of successive apostolic churches, fulfilling the function of depositaries of the faith once delivered to the saints, and standing in the place of the Apostles. In Irenæus, then, appears (and for the first time in Christian literature) the idea of an apostolic succession-though not of such a succession as is now ordinarily known by that name.

16

IX.

THE BISHOP: LATER DEVELOPMENT OF HIS

OFFICE.

A HALF century later we reach the age of "the Ignatius of the West," Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (d. 258). The name of this able and zealous administrator is perhaps the most significant in the whole history of the episcopate.

I. PECULIARITIES OF THE CYPRIANIC EPISCOPATE. Cyprian strenuously emphasized the authority of the individual bishop. Like his prototype, Ignatius, he regarded this authority as monarchical. Though elected to his office by the bishops of the province, with the consent and coöperation of the people,' the bishop, when once elected, becomes not the people's representative, but their lord. The presbyters, to be sure, are his councilors, and he ought to consult them, as also the people (Cyprian did so). But like the early Roman king in relation to his senate, or the modern Methodist Episcopal bishop in relation to his "cabinet" of presiding elders, he may at his option either accept or reject their counsel. Under a sense of responsibility to God alone, it is his own will, not that of presbyter or people, that he executes."

Nor might any bishop exercise the least authority over any other. There could be no lower and higher: the episcopal pastor

"Which very thing, too, we observe to come from divine authority, that the priest [bishop, here as uniformly in Cyprian] should be chosen in the presence of the people, under the eyes of all, and should be approved worthy and suitable by public judgment and testimony." (Cyprian, Ep. LXVII. (LXVII.), 4.)

"Though the presbyters may still have retained the shadow of a controlling power over the acts of the bishop, though the courtesy of language by which they were recognized as fellow-presbyters was not laid aside, yet for all practical ends the independency of the episcopate was completely established by the principles and the measures of Cyprian." (Lightfoot, "The Christian Ministry" (Whittaker), p. 108.)

of a church in the obscurest village in Christendom stood on precisely the same legal level with the pastor of the church in the city of Carthage or Alexandria or Rome. Though all the bishops in the world except one should unite to command or to judge that one, he would rest under no obligation to submit. Each was a monarch; and no monarch, however small his dominion, may acknowledge the control of any other, nor of all others combined. "For no one of us," said Cyprian, presiding at a Council of Carthage, "sets himself up as a bishop of bishops, or by tyrannical terror forces his colleagues to obeying, inasmuch as every bishop, in the free use of his liberty and power, has the right of forming his own judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he can himself judge another." The president's language surely does not lack strength or explicitness.

But more distinctively the name of Cyprian stands for the recognition of the collective bishops as constituting the universal Church. "The Church is in the bishop:" that was his word, and it had reference not only to the local congregation, but to all Christian congregations as a whole. For he goes on to say: "While the Church, which is catholic and true, is not cut nor divided, but is indeed connected and bound together by the cement of priests [bishops] who cohere one with another."

It is true, a germ of this doctrine might be discovered in the teaching of Ignatius and of Irenæus, and its germination in the councils composed mainly of bishops, that had already been held from time to time. But it was through the influence of Cyprian -as shown, for instance, in his contest with Stephen of Rome on the subject of re-baptism—that the significance and utility of the council of bishops were demonstrated as never before. And it was through him that, as never before, not simply the council

'Augustine, "On Baptism," against the Donatists, II. 3.

Ep. LXVIII. (LXVI.), 8. Cf. "The episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one for the whole ('On the Unity of the Church,' 5), and 'the Church is founded upon the bishops, and every act of the Church is controlled by these same rulers.'" ("To the Lapsed," Ep. XXVI. (XXX J.), 1.)