Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE SECOND AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.289Aurelius to the death of Alexander Severus. Atthe first-named date we find that it had spreadbeyond the confines of the Roman empire, andtaken incipient possession of all the great centresof human intercourse by founding its hierarchyin them. At the second date it has subdued thepowerful and widespread family of heresies whichthreatened to distort and corrupt its doctrines,and has clone this by the vigour of its teachingoifice, which combined in one expression the yetfresh apostolic tradition stored up in its churches,and the doctrine of its sacred scriptures ; while ithas well-nigh determined the number and genuinenessof these, severing them off from all otherwritings. The episcopate in which its teachingoffice resides appears not as a number of bishops,each independent and severed, and merely governinghis diocese upon a similar rule, but with abond recognised among them, the superior prin-cipate of the Roman See. That is, as the teachingoffice itself is in them all the voice of livingOteach-ers, so its highest expression is the voice of theliving Peter in his see. And this bond as discernedrecognised by the Asiatic disciple of S.>, the bishop of the chief city of Gaul,trong that he uses for it rather the term denoting Ophysical necessity than moral fitness :59 as if h59 Observed by Hagemann, p. G18, referring to the words of S.Irenteus, " ad hanc enim Ecclesiam propter potior m T)rmtiecesse est omnem convenire Ecclosiam," &c. It must be rememberedthat the proper word for the power which held together the wholeII.U