pression that they were in heart with them. There was, therefore, a great advancement of the Church in the third century; the persecution doing but little to retard, and much to purify her. The immunities of Christians, were, also, considerably increased, and, under most of the emperors, they were advanced to places of power and trust.

The limits of the Church were considerably extended. Origen carried the gospel into Arabia. Pantænus into India. And some zealous missionaries planted Churches at Paris, Tours and Arles in France; also at Cologn, Treves, and Metz, in Germany, and passed into Scotland.

Almost proportionate with the extension of Christianity, was the decrease in the Church of vital piety. A philosophising spirit among the higher, and a wild monkish superstition among the lower orders, fast took the place, in the third century, of the faith and humility of the first Christians. Many of the clergy became very corrupt, and excessively ambitious. In consequence of this, there was an awful defection of Christians under the persecution of Decius. Some wholly renounced Christianity, while others saved themselves either by offering sacrifice, or by burning incense before the heathen gods, or purchasing certificates from the heathen priests.

Amid the decline of piety and under the influence of the course already mentioned, useless rites and ceremonies continued to increase. The minds of men were filled with the oriental superstition concerning demons and apparitions, and with the business of exorcism and spells. Those who were not baptized or excommunicated, were carefully avoided as possessed of some evil spirit. And when any were baptized, the evil demon, with much form and ceremony, and loud shouting, was driven out, and the baptized were crowned and clothed with white garments as conquerors over sin and the world. The sign of the cross was, in this early period, supposed to possess power to avert calamities, and to drive off demons, and was carried by Christians wherever they went. Fasting was in high repute. Prayers were offered three times a day, and forms began to be introduced. Sermons were long, full of trope and figure, in affectation of Grecian eloquence. And saints began to feel that there could be no piety out of the bounds of a particular Church government.

But notwithstanding these degeneracies, many and precious were the fruits of the Spirit. The Church existed in

an empire the most corrupt and abominable that the world had ever seen. But amid the grossest sensuality, practised without remorse, or loss of character, by men in the highest ranks, many of her fruits were holiness to the Lord. If she had not the purity of the first century, she had still a self-denial and elevation above the world, a fortitude under suffering, and a spirit of subordination, which no where else existed, and an attachment which made the wondering heathen exclaim, "Behold how these Christians love one another." Such was the strictness of her discipline, that a clergyman, once deposed for immorality, was never restored to his order; and a communicant, once cast out for his vices, might be restored, but on a second ejection, could never be admitted to the Church; though he might not be beyond the mercy of God and final salvation. Men spared no pains or expense, to obtain multiplied copies of the Word of God.

The Sabbath was strictly regarded, and the sacrament was weekly administered. This ordinance, however, began to be misused-being considered essential to salvation, and administered with pomp, even to infants.

To the powers that were, they submitted for conscience sake. The fires of persecution raged; the most odious calumnies were invented; men, vile and contemptible, exercised the most wanton barbarities, under the ensigns of office. The Christians were amazingly numerous, and were possessed of learning, wealth, and talents; many of them were officers and soldiers in the Roman armies, and, had they been disposed, might have given the government the greatest trouble, and perhaps overturned it completely; yet, no instance of insurrection or resistance to civil authority, was known among them, for they remembered God had said, "Vengeance is mine." Their bitterest enemies could bring no other charge of treason, but this, that they refused to worship the gods of Rome.

Their benevolence was such as the world had not before, and has scarce since seen. They not only gave their treasures to their own poor, but they exerted themselves to relieve distress and suffering, wherever they could find it. The Jew passed by the wounded Samaritan, and the Greek harangued about virtue, but never erected an hospital or an alms-house. But the Church in Rome supported at one time, a thousand and fifty widows. Christians felt that they did not deserve the appellation they bore, unless they spent their lives in doing good. Whole and immense estates were

consecrated to public charity. Having renounced the luxuries of the world, they did not need great wealth, and they viewed their poor brethren as on a level with themselves, as sinners, ransomed by the blood of the Son of God.

But their number and character is best shown by a writer of their own times:

"We pray," says Tertullian, in his apology for the Christians, "for the safety of the emperors to the eternal God. We, looking up to heaven with outstretched hands, because they are harmless; with naked head because we are not ashamed; without a prompter, because we pray from the heart; constantly pray for all emperors, that they may have a long life, a secure empire, a safe palace, strong armies, a faithful senate, a well-moralized people, a quiet state of the world; whatever Cæsar would wish for himself in his public or private capacity. Were we disposed to act the part, I will not say of secret assassins, but of open enemies, should we want forces and numbers? Are there not multitudes of us in every part of the world? It is true, we are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled all your towns, cities, islands, boroughs, councils, camps, courts, palaces, senate, forum:-We leave you only your temples. For what war should we not be ready and well prepared, even though unequal in numbers; we-who die with so much pleasure, were it not that our religion requires us rather to suffer death than inflict it? If we were to make a general secession from your dominions, you would be astonished at your solitude. We are dead to all ideas of worldly honor and dignity: nothing is more foreign to us, than political concerns. The whole world is our republic. We are a body united in one bond of religion, discipline and hope. We meet in our assemblies for prayer. Every one pays something into the public chest once a month, or, when he pleases, and according to his ability and inclination, for there is no compulsion. These gifts are, as it were, the deposits of piety. Hence, we relieve and bury the needy, support orphans and decrepit persons; those who have suffered shipwreck, and those, who, for the word of God, are condemned to the mines for imprisonment. This very charity of ours has caused us to be noticed by some;-"See," say they, "how these Christians love one another."

Tertullian lived at Carthage in the latter part of the second, and beginning of the third century. In early life, he was a lawyer; but became a presbyter of the Church. He was a man of profound learning; of warm and vigorous pi

ety; but of a temperament melancholy and austere; and unhappily adopted, in the close of life, the visions of Montanus. He is the first Latin writer of the Church, whose works have been transmitted to us.

ons.

About the same period flourished Ireneus, bishop of LyHe was a Greek by birth, and a disciple of Polycarp. "I can describe," says he, in a letter to a friend," the very spot in which Polycarp sat and expounded, and his coming in and going out, and the very manner of his life, and the figure of his body, and the sermons which he preached to the multitude, and how he related to us his converse with John and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord; how he mentioned the particular expressions, and what things he had heard from them of the Lord and of his miracles, and of his doctrine. As Polycarp had received from the eyewitnesses of the Word of life, he told us all things agreeably to the Scriptures. These things, then, through the mercy of God inviting me, I heard with seriousness: I wrote them, not on paper, but on my heart; and ever since, through the grace of God, I have a genuine remembrance of them; and I can witness before God, that if that blessed Apostolical Presbyter had heard some of the doctrines which are now maintained, he would have cried out, and stopped his ears, and, in the usual manner, have said, O good God, to what times hast thou reserved me, that I should endure such things? And he would immediately have fled from the place in which he heard such doctrines."

Ireneus was ordained successor to Pothinus, A. D. 169, and suffered martyrdom under the persecution of Severus, in the beginning of the third century. He was a man of much meekness, humility, dexterity and resolution. He had a true missionary spirit. He was a superior Greek scholar, and doubtless might have obtained the luxuries and pleasures of Asia, but these he renounced from the love of souls. He went among the Gauls, learned their barbarous dialect, and conformed to their plain and homely fare. He wrote five books against the heresies of the age, which have been transmitted to us;-precious relics of antiquity.

About the middle of this century, two men shone with distinguished brightness;-Origen, a presbyter and catechist of Alexandria, and Cyprian, bishop of Carthage.

In his youth, Origen saw his father beheaded for professing Christianity, and all the family estate confiscated. But Providence provided for him. A rich lady in Alexan

dria became his friend and patron. He applied himself to study, and soon acquired prodigious stores of learning. While pursuing his studies, he distinguished himself by his attachment to the martyrs, and was often in peril of his life. He early became a catechist in the school at Alexandria. Multitudes crowded to hear him, and were impressed by his instructions. His daily habit was one of excessive austerity. Hearing of the power of his doctrine, Mammea, the mother of the emperor, sent for him, to hear him. At the age of forty-five, he was ordained a priest, and delivered ⚫ theological lectures in Palestine. In diligence and learning, he surpassed all men. Of this the remains of his Hexapla is the memorial. To confront the Jews, who always objected against those passages of scripture which were quoted against them, as not agreeing with the Hebrew version, he undertook to reduce all the Latin and Greek versions then in use, into a body with the Hebrew text, that they might be at once compared. He made six columns. In the first, he placed the Hebrew, as the standard, and in the next, the Septuagint, and then the other versions according to their dates -passage after passage. The whole filled fifty large volumes. It was found fifty years after his death, in an obscure place in the city of Tyre, and deposited in a public library. The most of it was destroyed in the capture of the city, A. D. 653. It was called the Hexapla, a work of six columns.

As a theologian, he was ruined by the Platonic philosophy; and unhappily introduced a mode of explaining scripture which was of incalculable injury to the Church. He supposed it was not to be explained in a literal, but in an allegorical manner; and that the meaning of the sacred writers was to be sought in a hidden sense, arising from the things themselves. This hidden sense he endeavored to give, and always did it at the expense of truth. This hidden sense he farther divided into the moral and mystical. The latter was of his own creation and very wild. He seems to have been but little acquainted with the plain, evangelical doctrines of the gospel; to have adopted most fatal errors; to have given no offence in his preaching to men of the world; but, on the contrary, to have been very popular with philosophers and philologists, and men of wild fancies and visionary notions; and was much honored by courts. He introduced the practice of selecting a single text as the subject of discourse. He suffered martyrdom;