The characteristic of this century is its utter confusion and want of order. There was no longer the unity even of despotism at Rome to make a common centre round which every thing revolved. There were tyrants and competitors for power in every quarter of the empire--no settled authority, no government or security, left. In the midst of this relaxation of every rule of life, grew surely, but unobserved, the Christian Church, which drew strength from the very helplessness of the civil state, and was forced, in self-defence, to establish a regular organization in order to extend to its members the inestimable benefits of regularity and law. Under many of the emperors Christianity was proscribed; its disciples were put to excruciating deaths, and their property confiscated; but at that very time its inner development increased and strengthened. The community appointed its teachers, its deacons, its office-bearers of every kind; it supported them in their endeavours--it yielded to their directions; and in time a certain amount of authority was considered to be inherent in the office of pastor, which extended beyond the mere expounding of the gospel or administration of the sacraments. The chief pastor became the guide, perhaps the judge, of the whole flock. While it is absurd, therefore, in those disastrous times of weakness and persecution to talk in pompous terms of the succession of the Bishops of Rome, and make out vain catalogues of lordly prelates who sat on the throne of St. Peter, it is incontestable that, from the earliest period, the Christian converts held their meetings--by stealth indeed, and under fear of detection--and obeyed certain canons of their own constitution. These secret associations rapidly spread their ramifications into every great city of the empire. When by the friendship, or the fellowship, of the emperor, as in the case of the Arabian Philip, a pause was given to their fears and sufferings, certain buildings were set apart for their religious exercises; and we read, during this century, of basilicas, or churches, in Rome and other towns. The subtlety of the Greek intellect had already led to endless heresies and the wildest departures from the simplicity of the gospel. The Western mind was more calm, and better adapted to be the lawgiver of a new order of society composed of elements so rough and discordant as the barbarians, whose approach was now inevitably foreseen. With its well-defined hierarchy--its graduated ranks, and the fitness of the offices for the purposes of their creation; with its array of martyrs ready to suffer, and clear-headed leaders fitted to command, the Western Church could look calmly forward to the time when its organization would make it the most powerful, or perhaps the only, body in the State; and so early as the middle of this century the seeds of worldly ambition developed themselves in a schism, not on a point of doctrine, but on the possession of authority. A double nomination had made the anomalous appointment of two chief pastors at the same time. Neither would yield, and each had his supporters. All were under the ban of the civil power. They had recourse to spiritual weapons; and we read, for the first time in ecclesiastical history, of mutual excommunications. Novatian--under his breath, however, for fear of being thrown to the wild beasts for raising a disturbance--thundered his anathemas against Cornelius as an intruder, while Cornelius retorted by proclaiming Novatian an impostor, as he had not the concurrence of the people in his election. This gives us a convincing proof of the popular form of appointing bishops or presbyters in those early days, and prepares us for the energy with which the electors supported the authority of their favourite priests.