CHRISTIANITY

In the first  of Christianity  the church was a republic. There was no distinction between clergymen and  laymen.Each member of the congregation had a right to preach, and each consulted God on hisown account.  The spiritus privatus everywhery preailed.   A commitee of presbyters  or elders, with a bishop or chairman,administerd the affairs of the community.

   The secon period was marked by an impotant change. The bishop and presbiters , though still elected by the congregatio, had begun to monopolize the pulpit; the distiction of clergy and laity  wasalready made. The bishop of various churches met together at councils or synods to discuss questins of disciple and dogma,  and to pass laws; but they vent as representative of their respective congregatins.

  The third period the change was more important. The congregation might now be appropriately termed a flock: the spiritus privatus was extinct: the priests  were possessed of tradition which they did not impart  to the laimen. The Water of Life was kept in a sealed vessell.; htre was no salvation outside the church: no mam could have God for a father unless he had also the church for a mother , as even Bossnet long  afterward  declared; excommunication was a sentance of ethernal death. Henseforth isputes  were  only between bishops and bishops, the laymen fallowing  their spiritual leaders, and often usig material weapons on their behalf. In the synods the bisho new met as princes of the congregatios, and , and under the influences of the Holy Ghost (spiritu sancto suggerente) issued imperial decees.  The penalities inflicted ere of of the most terible nature to thos believed that hellfair and purgatory were at the disposal of the of the priethood; whil those  whoentertained  doubs upon the  subject allowe themselves to be coursed and damned  with equanimity.  But when the church  becam united  with the state, the secular arm was at itsdisposal, and was vigoruosly used.

  The  bishops were all of them ignorant and superstitions men, but they could not all of them  think alaike . And as if to insure dissent , they procissided to define that which had never existed, and which, if had existad, could never be defined. They describe the topographyof heaven. They dissected the gohead and exponnded the immaculate concepption, giving lectures of celestial impregnation and miraculous obtetries. They do not only said  that thee wa one , and that one was three: they professed to explayn how that curious arethmetic combination had been brought abaut . The  indivisible had been divided, and yet was not divided.; it was divisible, and yet is wat indivisible.; black was white, and white was black; and yet there wery not two colors; and whoever did not belive it would be damnet. In the mids of all this subtle stuff, the dregs and insings of Platonic  school, Arians hundered out the common-sense bur heretical assertion that he Father  had existed before the Son. Two great party were  at once formed . A council of bishops was convened at Nice to consult the Holy Ghost. The chair was taken by a men who wore a wng of many colors, an silked robe embroidered with golden treads. This was Costantine the great, patro of Christianity, Nero of the bosphorus, musre of his wife and son. The discussion was noisy and abusive , and the Arianlost the day. Yet the matter did not end there  Costantius took up the Arian side. Arian missionaries converted the Vandals      and the Goths . Other emperors took the Catholics, and they convert the Franks. The court was divided by spiritual eunuchs and theological intrigues;, the provinces were laid vaste by theological war, which lasted three hundred years. What a world of voe and desolation; what a deluge of blood , becaous  the Greeks had a taste  for metaphisics !

Winwood Reade , THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN , pages 250-252.  ( It might continnue )