rning affairs of common
interest, forgetting from time to time the character in which they
appeared, and venturing to make decrees by their own authority, and even
to claim a power of prescribing in matters of faith and discipline. The
principal bishop in a large district was employed by his brethren to
convoke these assemblies; and as the choice usually fell on the chief
officer of the metropolitan Church, the title of metropolitan bishop or
arch-bishop was applied to him; which term became common in the Church
after the year 430. The patriarchs were of a higher rank still; and
there were only five of them, belonging to the sees of Rome,
Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. They were not
called Primates till the time of Leo I. The ambition of the clergy found
extensive means of gratification in the changes made by Constantine, who
adapted the government of the Church to that of the State, which he had
newly divided and ordered. As the superior clergy grasped at greater
power, the inferior clergy pressed upon their steps; and we soon hear of
arch-presbyters and arch-deacons, and of the occasional union of the
offices of priest and deacon in the same individual. Thus did the
servants gradually become the masters of the Church; and thus, in four
centuries, was the constitution of Christian congregations so entirely
changed, that scarcely a shadow of their original institutions remained.

This brief detail (the truth of which is so well known that it is
needless to give as our authority every accredited ecclesiastical
history) affords the best argument for the temporary nature of the
institutions of Church government, and sanctions the declaration of
those who are charged by either Church with schism, that before they can
again be required to join the Establishment, that Establishment must be
reduced to the simplicity of government and discipline which
characterized the primitive church. The bishops must assume nothing
over their brethren, and be superior in no respect but in holiness; they
must be stewards of God, not given to lucre, but eminent in faith, in
temperance, in charity. The deacons must administer the common revenues
of the church for the benefit of those who have need, appropriating
nothing themselves nor suffering others to appropriate. The church
itself must be, in all its views and objects, not of this world; having
no respect of persons, not awarding to the man in goodly apparel a
better pl