CHAPTER I
THE GREAT PATRIARCHATES
When the Apostles were all dead, and when the extraordinary offices of Prophets, Evangelists, Doctors, &c. (Eph. iv. ii; 1 Cor. xii. 28), had gradually disappeared, we find that there remains a fixed hierarchy in each local Church. This hierarchy consists of the three fundamental, orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. In each city where there was a Christian community the Bishop "presided in the place of God"[1] in the town and in the country round. Assisting him in the liturgy and as a council, was a college of priests "in the place of a Senate of Apostles,"[2] and then came the Deacons "who are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ"[3] to preach, catechize, baptize, and take care of the poor. This hierarchy is fully developed in the 1st century. The letters of St. Ignatius, the martyr-bishop of Antioch († c. 107), are full of allusions to the three-fold order. "Let every one reverence the Deacons as Jesus Christ, so also the Bishop who is the type of the Father, and the Priests as the Senate of God and Council of the Apostles."[4] And, as far as the inner organization of each community was concerned, this hierarchy was sufficient.[5]
- ↑ Ign. ad Magn. vi. 1.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ad Trall. iii. 1.
- ↑ The only serious difficulty against the monarchical government of each diocese in the early Church is that St. Jerome (331–420) in one or two places (in Ep. ad Tit. i. 5; Ep. 146, ad Evangelum) says that a priest is the same as a bishop; that before the devil had sown discords among the faithful the Churches were governed by a council of priests; that bishops owe their
