the sacrifices to the old gods should not be paid by the State as hitherto. Yet as late as 410 A.D., when Alaric was battering at the gates of Rome, the Senate went up to the Capitol, and made sacrifices to their ancient gods, which the Bishop of Rome, Innocent I., doubtless witnessed. The fall of the Roman Empire, 476 A.D., may be regarded as the end of Paganism, for Christianity then finally superseded it.

The growth of the New Faith would have been certainly more rapid, but for the disputes that broke out among its professors. The most celebrated, but not the first of these disputes, was that of Arius, who, in 312 A.D., declared his disbelief in the Divinity of Christ, as do the Unitarians of our day. It was to extinguish this heresy that the first Christian Assembly took place. At the Council of Nice, in Asia Minor, 325 A.D., the various Bishops met,* under the Presidency of the Emperor Constantine, when the subversive doctrines of Arius were denounced. It was some three hundred years before the Sect disappeared, and during this interval other heresies sprung up.†

One more quotation will be made from the author already cited. "In the first age of Christianity," he says, "the Church was a republic. There was distinction between clergymen and laymen. Each member of the congregation had a right to

no

* The number of Bishops at this time was estimated at 1800-1000 in Greece, and 800 in Roman provinces.

+ From the year 264 A.D., when Sabellius and the Sabellians were denounced at the Council of Alexandria, down to 1843, when the "Free Church of Scotland" was founded by Chalmers, no less than fifty-five different leading sects have arisen, all professing Christianity, but each with some new modification of its own. Joe Smith, the Mormon, is the only one who got up another bible, written, as St Joe declared 1830, by Mormon, a Jewish prophet, 600 years before Christ.

preach, and each consulted God on his own account. A committee of presbyters, or elders, with a Bishop, or chairman, administered the affairs of the community.

"The second period was marked by an important change. The Bishop and presbyters, though still elected by the congregation, had begun to monopolize the pulpit; the distinction of clergy and laity was already made. The Bishops of the various Churches met together at councils or synods to discuss questions of discipline and dogma, and to pass laws; but they went as representatives of their respective congregations.

"In the third period the change was more important still. The congregation might now be appropriately termed a flock. The priests were possessed of traditions which they did not communicate to the laymen. The Water of Life was kept, as it were, in a sealed vessel. There was no salvation outside the Church; no man could have God for a Father unless he had also the Church for a mother; excommunication was a sentence of eternal death. From this time disputes were only between Bishops and Bishops; the laymen followed their spiritual leaders, and often took up material weapons on their behalf. In the synods the Bishops now met as princes of their congregations; and under the influence of the Holy Ghost (Spiritu Sancto suggerente) issued imperial decrees. The penalties inflicted were of the most alarming nature to those who believed that purgatory and hell-fire were at the disposal of the priesthood; but those who had doubts on the subject allowed themselves to be damned with equanimity. When the Church, however, was united to the State,

the secular arm was then at its disposal, and was rigorously used."

These three periods of the primitive Church cover the interval from the rise of Christianity down to the conversion of Constantine-over 300 years. The same writer remarks that the Bishops of that day were all of them ignorant and superstitious men: but they did not all of them think alike; and as if to insure dissent, they set to work to define that which many believed had never existed, and which, if it had, could never be defined. They described the topography of Heaven. They dissected the Godhead, and expounded the Immaculate Conception. They not only said that three was one, and that one was three, but they undertook to explain how this combination had been brought about.

After the adoption of Christianity by Constantine, when it became the State religion, the Church is said to have lost much of its early Democratic character; and the Bishops, who had formerly been the Tribunes of the people, became the creatures of the Crown. Just as in Asia and Africa; just as in Greece and Rome in the days of Paganism, the heads of the Christian Church were no sooner recognized by the State than they were obliged to give it their support. It was in 313 A.D. that Constantine, by his edict at Milan, made Christianity the religion of the Empire, and at the Council of Nice, 325 A.D., as stated, the New Faith was formally inaugurated. Henceforward the Church made rapid

*

* It was Constantine who first created ecclesiastical distinctions, and made Archbishops and Patriarchs, each with large jurisdictions and superior powers. The Patriarchate of Alexandria became the most powerful, but was swept away in the seventh century by the Mohammedans.

advances, and devoted itself to the accomplishment of three great works-the conversion of the barbarians, the overthrow of heresies, and the preservation and diffusion of civilization.

The Goths, the Vandals, the Lombards knew the name of Christ at the close of the fourth century; but they first embraced Arianism, afterwards returning to the true Faith. The Franks were converted under Clovis, the founder of the French Monarchy, in 496; the Anglo-Saxons at the end of the sixth century; the Germans in the eighth century. The more distant populations of Northern Europe-the Danes, Swedes, Russians, Poles, and Hungarianswere converted one after another from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.

In Asia and Africa, Christianity made slower progress; and in the seventh century, the followers of Mahomet nearly blotted it out altogether. The new Church had also to contend with internal dissensions. In the ninth century, a Schism broke out which separated the Church in the East, called the Greek Church, from the Church in the West, called the Latin or Roman Church. Almost at the same period, during the eighth and ninth centuries, raged the Iconoclastic Controversy, as to whether images of Christ and the saints should be exposed in the churches or not.

DARK AGES.

THE Roman Empire of the West fell to pieces, as already stated, at the close of the fifth century. Probably Constantine foresaw its fate when he removed the political Capital from Rome to Constantinople. During the fifth century, the Empire had been repeatedly assailed by the Goths, Huns, and Vandals; and finally the Herules under Odoacer in 476 A.D., the Ostrogoths in 493, and the Lombards in 568, became masters of the whole of Italy. During the same period, the most of Roman Britain was occupied by the Saxons and other northern tribes; whilst the Franks took possession of Gaul. Thus the old Roman Empire of the West became the prey of the various German tribes.

The new religion, unquestionably, precipitated the fall of this once great power. Proclaiming the equality of all men before God, Christianity overthrew Paganism by alienating the masses held in slavery. Bereft of religious and moral support, the Imperial Government sought to maintain itself by a crushing despotism, till at last the barbarians were welcomed as liberators.

The ensuing three centuries were a period of frightful anarchy, and are fitly described as the Dark Ages. The various barbarous tribes who possessed Italy and France were engaged in constant wars, and all traces of former civilization disappeared.