Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE SECOND AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH. 257Philippus should be bishops together. The latter,however, voluntarily gave way to Ammonius, andsucceeded him at his death. Such, ninety yearsbefore the Nicene Council, which recognised andapproved these powers of the bishop of Alexandria,as being after the model"of those exercisedby the bishop of Rome,21 was his authority by thenatural force of the hierarchic principle which builtup the Church. And so little were these Christiancommunities, which we have seen so complete intheir own organic growth, independent of the bich held the whole Church together, and ofwhich the authority of the Egyptian primate wasitself a derivation.These, then, were the two modes in which theChristian Faith pursued and attained its orderlyincrease; as a seed it grew to a plant in each city,and as a plant it ramified, or as Tertullian says,carried "the vine-layer of the faith"22 from cityto city, from province to province. In the meantimethe last disciples of the Apostles, those whofrom the especial veneration with which they wereregarded as teachers of the Faith and " secondlinks in the chain of tradition," were termed Presbyters,23had died out. S. Poly carp, at the timeAtffyHal Tle^TaTrJAei, ware rb^ ?AAe|a^S/}¬ms tTrtaKOTrov Travrwv rovrw e%ei^ TT/^Qovaiav, eVeiS^ /cat rw eV fPa5^u?? Arancavy roi>ro vvvyQes forty. See Hagemann,rfid Romisclie Kirclid^ 59G-8.22 " Traducem fidei et semina doctrine." De P,Hipp. n. Kail. p. 338-343, for the meaning of this wordin with it a special magisterium fidei.II.S