I.

From the year 120 to 130 the Episcopate was elaborated in the Christian

Church, and the creation of the Episcopate was eminently a Roman work.

All _ecclesiæ_ imply a little hierarchy,--a bureau as it is called

to-day,--a president, some assessors, and a small staff of men in its

service. Democratic associations are careful that these functions shall

be limited as far as possible as to power and duration; but from this

arises that precarious something which has prevented any democratic

association from outlasting the circumstances which have created it. The

Jewish synagogues have had more continuity, although the synagogical

body has never come to be a clergy. This is the result of the

subordinate place which Judaism has held during several centuries: the

pressure from without has counteracted the effects of internal

divisions. If the Christian Church had been left with the same absence

of directorship, it would doubtless have missed its destiny.

If its ecclesiastical powers had continued to be regarded as emanating

from the Church itself, it would have lost all its hieratic and

theocratic character. It was written, on the contrary, that a clergy

should monopolize the Christian Church, and substitute themselves for

it. Acting as its spokesman, presenting itself as having the sole power

of attorney in every thing, this clergy will be its strength, and at the

same time its gnawing worm,--the principal cause of its future falls.

I repeat, that history has no example of a more complete transformation

than that which occurred in the government of the Christian Church about

the time of Hadrian and Antonine. What happened in the Christian Church

will happen in any association in which the subordinates could resign in

favor of the bureau, and that again in favor of the president; so that

afterwards the subordinates and the seniors would have no deliberative

voice nor influence, nor any control in the management of the funds, and

the president would be able to say, "I alone, I, am the association."

The _presbyteri_ (seniors) or _episcopi_ (superintending officers)

became very soon the only representatives of the Church; and almost

immediately another still more important revolution took place. Among

the _presbyteri_ or _episcopi_, there had been one, who, through the

habit of occupying the principal seat, absorbed the power of the others,

and became pre-eminently the _episcopos_ or the _presbyteros_. The form

of worship contributed powerfully to the establishment of this unity.

The eucharistic act could only be celebrated by one person, and gave to

the celebrant an extreme importance. That _episcopos_, with a surprising

rapidity, became the head of the presbytery, and, consequently, the

entire Church. His _cathedra_ was placed apart, and, having the form of

an arm-chair, became the seat of honor, the symbol of primacy. From this

time, each church has but one chief _presbyteros_, who is thus called to

the exclusion of the other _episcopi_. Beside this bishop, there were

deacons, widows, and a council of _presbyteri_: but the great step has

been taken; the bishop is the sole successor of the prophets, his

associates have disappeared. Apostolic authority, reputed as transmitted

by the laying-on of hands, suppressed the authority of the community.

The bishops of the various churches soon placed themselves in

communication with the others, and formed of the Universal Church a sort

of oligarchy, which held assemblies, censured its members, decided

questions of faith, and was in itself a true sovereign power. On one

side, the shepherds; on the other, the flock. Primitive equality no

longer existed: in fact, it had endured but a single day. The Church,

however, was only an instrument in the hands of those who guided her;

and these held their power, not from the community, but from the

spiritual inheritance of a transmission claiming to date back to the

apostles in a continuous line. It is evident that the representative

system will never be in any degree whatever the law of the Christian

Church.

It was the Episcopate, without the intervention of civil power, with no

support from the tribunals, which thus established order above liberty

in a society originally founded upon individual inspiration. This is why

the Ebionites, who had no Episcopate, had also no idea of Catholicity.

At first sight, the work of Jesus was not made to last. Founded upon a

belief in the destruction of the world, which, as years rolled on, was

proved an error, it seemed that his congregation could only dissolve in

anarchy. The prophetic book, the _charismes_, the speaking of tongues,

individual inspiration, were no more than were necessary to bring all

again into the proportions of a common chapel. Individual inspiration

created, but immediately destroyed what it created. After liberty, law

is necessary. The work of Jesus might be considered as saved the day in

which it was admitted that the Church has a direct power, a power

representing that of Jesus. Since then the Church dominates the

individual, drawing him to her bosom through his need. Inspiration

passes from the individual to the community. The clergy is the dispenser

of all pardons, the intermediary between God and the faithful.

Obedience, first to the Church, then to the bishop, becomes the highest

duty. Innovation is the sign of error: schism, henceforth, will be for

the Christian the worst of crimes.

In a certain regard one may say that this was a decadence, a diminution

of that spontaneity which had been eminently creative until now. It was

evident that ecclesiastical forms were about to absorb, to stifle, the

work of Jesus, that all free manifestations of Christian life would soon

be arrested. Under the censure of the Episcopate, the speaking of

tongues, prophecy, the creation of legends, the making of new sacred

books, would soon become withered powers, the _charismes_ would be

reduced to official sacraments. In another sense, however, such a

transformation was the essential condition of the strength of humanity.

And, moreover, the centralization of powers became necessary when

churches were more numerous: intercourse between these little pious

societies would be impossible, unless they had representatives appointed

to act for them. It is undeniable, moreover, that, without the

Episcopate, the churches, re-united for a time by the souvenirs of

Jesus, would gradually have been dispersed. The divergences of opinion,

the difference in the turn of imagination, and, above all, the

rivalries, and the unsatisfied _amours-propres_, would have operated by

their infinite effects of disunion and disintegration. Christianity

would have expired at the end of three or four centuries, like

Mithraicism and so many other sects which were not allowed to endure.

Democracy is sometimes eminently creative; but it is upon the condition

that the democracy comes forth from conservative institutions which

prevent the revolutionary fever from prolonging itself indefinitely.

Here was the greatest miracle of the new Christianity. It drew order,

hierarchy, authority, and obedience from the free subjection of desires:

it organized the crowd; it disciplined anarchy. What does this miracle

accomplish other than to strike at the pretended derogations to the laws

of physical nature? The spirit of Jesus strongly inoculated in his

disciples that spirit of sweetness, of abnegation, of forgetfulness of

the present; that unique pursuit of interior joys which kills ambition;

that strong preference given to childhood; those words repeated without

ceasing, as from Jesus, "Whoever is first among you, let him be the

servant of all." The influence of the apostles was not less in that

direction. The apostles lived and ruled after their death. The idea that

the head of the Church held his command under the members of the Church

who had elected him never once occurs in the literature of this time.

The Church thus escaped through the supernatural origin of its power,

that element of decay which exists in delegated authority. A legislative

and executive authority may come from the people; but sacraments and

dispensations of celestial pardons have nothing in common with universal

suffrage. Such privileges come from heaven, or, according to the

Christian formula, from Jesus Christ, the source of all pardon and of

all good.

The religion of Jesus thus became something solid and consistent. The

great danger of Gnosticism, which was to divide Christianity into

numberless sects, was exorcised. The word "Catholic Church" resounded

everywhere, as the name of that great body which would thenceforth

survive the ages unbroken. The character of this catholicity is already

seen. The Montanists are regarded as sectarian; the Marcionites are

convinced of the falseness of the apostolic doctrine; the different

Gnostic schools are more and more driven from the bosom of the general

church. Something had arisen which was neither Montanism, nor

Marcionism, nor Gnosticism; which was Christianity, not sectarian,--the

Christianity of the majority of bishops, resisting sects, and using them

all, having, if you will, only negative characters, but preserved by

these negative characters from the pietist aberrations, and from

dissolving rationalism. Christianity, like all parties who wish to live,

disciplines itself, and restrains its own excesses. It unites to

mystical exaltation a fund of good sense and moderation which will kill

Millenarism, Charisms, Glossolaly, and all the primitive phenomenal

spirits. A handful of excited men, like the Montanists, running into

martyrdom, discouraging penitence, condemning marriage, are not the

Church. The _juste milieu_ triumphs. Radicals of any sort will never be

allowed to destroy the work of Jesus. The Church is always of a medium

opinion: it belongs to all the world, and is not the privilege of an

aristocracy. The pietist aristocracy of the Phrygian sects and the

speculative aristocracy of the Gnostics are equally stripped of their

pretensions.

In the midst of the enormous variety of opinions which fill the first

Christian age, the Catholic opinion constitutes a sort of standard. It

was not necessary to reason with the heretic in order to convince him.

It was sufficient to show him that he was not in communion with the

Catholic Church, with the grand churches which trace the succession of

their bishops to the apostles. _Quod semper, quod ubique_ became the

absolute rule of truth. The argument of prescription to which Tertullian

gave such eloquent force reviews all the Catholic controversy. To prove

to any one that he was an innovator, a disturber, was to prove that he

was wrong,--an insufficient rule, since, by a singular irony of fate,

the doctor himself who developed this method of refutation in so

imperious a manner, Tertullian, died a heretic.

Correspondence between the churches was an early custom. Circular

letters from the heads of the great churches, read on Sunday in the

re-unions of the faithful, were a sort of continuation of the apostolic

literature. The ecclesiastical province, questioning the precedency of

the great churches, appeared in germ. The Church, like the synagogue and

the mosque, is essentially a citadel. Christianity, like Judaism and

Islamism, is a religion of cities. The countryman, the _paganus_, will

be the last resistance which Christianity will encounter. The few rural

Christians came to the church of the neighboring city. The Roman

municipality thus enclosed the church. Among the cities, the _civitas_,

the grand city, was alone a veritable church, with an _episcopos_. The

small city was in ecclesiastical dependence on the great city. This

primacy of the great cities was an important fact. The great city once

converted, the small city and the country followed the movement. The

diocese was thus the unity of the conglomerate Christians. As for the

ecclesiastical province, it corresponded to the Roman province: the

divisions of worship of Rome and Augustus were the secret law which

ruled all. Those cities which had a flamen, or _archiereus_, are those

which later had an archbishop: the _flamen civitatis_ became the bishop.

After the third century, the flamen held the rank in the city which was

later that of the bishop in the diocese. Thus it happened that the

ecclesiastical geography of a country was very nearly the geography of

the same country in the Roman epoch. The picture of the bishops and the

archbishops is that of the ancient _civitates_, according to their line

of subordination. The empire was as the mould in which the new religion

was formed. The interior framework, the outlines, the hierarchical

divisions, were those of the empire. The ancient archives of the Roman

administration, and the church-registers of the middle ages, and even

those of our own day, are nearly the same thing.

Thus the grand organisms which have become so essential a part of the

moral and political life of European nations were all created by those

_naïve_ and sincere Christians, whose faith has become inseparable from

the moral culture of humanity. The Episcopate under Marcus Aurelius was

fully ripe: the Papacy existed in germ. [OE]cumenical councils were

impossible. The Christian Empire alone could authorize great assemblies;

but the provincial synod was used in the affairs of the Montanists and

of the Passover. The bishop of the capital of the province was allowed

to preside without contest.