2 tian, which enabled these Heretics to effect the mischief they did.' Justin Martyr imputes the same tactics to Menander, the pupil of Simon, and to Marcion, as well as to the schools which proceeded from them, however opposed they might be to one another; and it is no doubt, to these Heretics that he is looking, when he says to the Emperors in his Apology, "We make it our request, that you would punish those who, whilst they offend against the laws of Christ in their lives, still go under the title of Christians." Indeed, the Fathers, who are at a loss how to designate them with propriety, sometimes call them Christian Sadducees." The Montanists, if 6. we may judge of them from Tertullian, did not ever acknowledge themselves to have absolutely renounced the Church. On the contrary, after he had joined the Montanists, he is still as free as ever in his animadversions on Heretics, classing them with heathens, and denominating them scorpions, the very title of one of his Treatises being "an antidote against their poison," as though he was himself unconscious of having swerved in fundamentals, or unwilling to own it. The author of the newly-discovered Treatise entitled " Philosophumena,”—Hippolytus, in all probability-scarcely regards the Montanists as heretics-aipeтikóтepot, or sub-heretics, he calls them, and adds, that they confessed "the Father, the God of the Universe, and the Creator of all things, as did the Church, and whatever the Gospel testifies concerning Christ." The Heretics in general seem to have affected the rites and ceremonies of the Church, administering, e. g. a baptism of their own, and an eucharist of their own-though both of them gross and profane caricatures of those of the Church-as they did also the orders of 1 Euseb. Eccl. Hist. iii. c. 26. 4 * Philosophumena, p. 275. See Dr. Wordsworth's Hippolytus, p. 35. ministry of the Church; Irenæus having constantly to remind them, that however they might adopt the name of bishop and priest, the virtue of those offices was nothing, by reason of the want of the apostolical succession; and Eusebius even telling us of a case of a presbyter of the heresy of Marcion, who suffered martyrdom under Aurelius.' Well, therefore, might indifferent lookers-on be excused if they did not know exactly under what head to place the Heretics, seeing that the parties themselves were at a loss about it. In conclusion, the remark may be repeated which has been made already so often-that grievous as was the scandal which the Heretics inflicted on the character of the Christians for a time, and serious as was the obstacle thus presented to the progress of the Gospel, the evil was not unqualified. The accusations against the Christians thus engendered, were met by indignant contradictions; by challenges to the closest scrutiny of their lives and conduct; by bold appeals to the experience of those who were most intimately associated with them, their domestics and slaves; by candid declarations of their actual habits and rules; such vindications of themselves naturally serving in the long run, when it was found to be just, to improve the knowledge of the new sect; to establish their credit; to preserve for future generations, when the faith of many should have waxed cold, a more exact idea than they would otherwise have had of the Primitive Christian, his works and ways; and so put them in possession of a profitable standard by which to try their own. 1 Euseb. Eccl. Hist. iv. C. 15. CHAPTER X. The state of the Roman Empire as affecting the Advance of the Gospel.-Early Spread of Christianity.-Witnesses to the Extension of the Church in the first three Centuries.-Justin Martyr. -Theophilus.-Irenæus.-Tertullian. -Minutius Felix. -Hippolytus. Origen.-Cyprian.-Unfairness of Gibbon.-Strength of the Church antecedent to the Conversion of Constantine.. I HAVE now developed, as I conceive, the broad basis of the history of the Primitive Church; I have laid bare the trunk out of which it arose, and the nature of the soil in which it was planted. It advanced according to this beginning; its character and circumstances from generation to generation still retaining the original cast, so that our History will preserve its own continuity, the subsequent chapters shooting out of the first, whilst it traces that of the Church century by century, the growth it made, the persecution it experienced, during that period; these three topics constituting, in fact, the annals of the Primitive Church. I said in a former chapter that the Roman Government took alarm at the progress of Christianity too late to arrest it. The secular mechanism of that Empire had been the very means, under God's invisible guidance, of giving it effect. It took possession of measures set on foot for quite other purposes, and made them minister to its own ends. The resources of the Roman Government proved its own. That which had been devised for the consolidation of an earthly tyranny established the freedom of the Gospel, and mili tary ambition became unwittingly the handinaid of the Gospel of Peace. It would belong, perhaps, to a later period in our History to trace the development and application of these provisions; suffice it to say, at present, that the civil division of the Roman Empire served eventually as the ecclesiastical of the Gospel economy; that the dioceses, the provinces, and the parishes of the Church, had all their prototypes in the respective sections of the Roman State; that when the politic Roman was shaping the surface of the earth, as he imagined, to simplify and perpetuate his own dominion, he was, in truth, but mapping it out for the occupation of a Christian Church; that in him and in that act of his, "the Most High was dividing the nations," with a reference to a better inheritance; and that like one of those dissolving views now familiar to us, the baser edifice gradually faded away, to be transfigured into a temple consecrated to the glory of God. But without as yet, at all events, adverting further to the more technical elements of the construction of the Roman Commonwealth, of which the Gospel eventually availed itself, and which did not come into operation as influencing the system of the Church till a later date than the first century, and till its polity was more nearly complete; let us look to the advantages resulting to the cause of Christianity from the general condition of the Roman Commonwealth, and learn to admire the providence of God, which allowed that monster empire to establish itself, and to perfect its organization before it trusted the precious deposit of the Gospel to mankind. Meanwhile, how sobering is the thought, how calculated to reduce the worldling's estimate of the actors and exploits on life's stage, to consider that the greatest of 1 Wordsworth, Theophilus Anglicanus, part i. c. xii. 2 Deut. xxxii. 8. them after all are but secondary and subservient ordinances scaffolding, itself perishable and to pass away; of value only because tributary to a structure that shall be beautiful and enduring. The empire of Rome, vast as it was when the Gospel began to dawn, bounded on the west by the Atlantic; on the north by Britain, the Rhine, and the Danube; on the east by the Euphrates; on the south by the sands and deserts of Arabia and Africa, and extended even yet further than this under Trajan; was as perfect in its organic arrangements, and as manageable, as if the whole had been but a single city. It had its roads, wonderful even in their ruins, which, radiating from the Forum of Rome, traversed the countries subject to its sway, however distant and difficult of access, and supplied lines of communication from the seat of government, at the capital, to the remotest borders of its territories. Posts, with relays of horses at suitable intervals, were established along them, and a constant intercourse kept up between the centre and extremities of this busy portion of the earth's surface. True to history, no doubt, was the great scholar as well as poet, when bringing before the Saviour, in the person of Satan, the tempting array of the powers and resources of Rome, he turned his eyes towards "The conflux issuing forth, or entering in; Prætors, proconsuls to their provinces Hasting, or on return, in robes of state; Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings: In various habits, on the Appian road, Or on th' Emilian; some from farthest south, |