of the
Ante-Nicene church with feelings of admiration. This was a heroic age,
an age of Christian martyrs. The struggles of Christianity against the
powers of heathenism enthroned in the Roman Empire and throughout
the world form a bright chapter in the annals of historic deeds and
supreme loyalty to lofty ideals. When we view the subject from
this angle, it would almost seem to be an act of irreverence or of
sacrilege to call in question the doctrines and practises of that
period when the church was baptized by fire and waded through rivers
of blood. Reverence for the martyrs and for their noble efforts to
extend the cause of Christ is praiseworthy, but in justice to truth,
we must remember that even the martyrs were not inspired teachers
commissioned to build a model for all succeeding ages. That they
were heroic does not prove them infallible. We should never hesitate,
therefore, to compare their teaching with the pure doctrines of the
Word of God, and wherein there is any lack of harmony, we should be
guided by the truth as it is in Jesus.

However much we may admire the early church fathers, we can not help
noticing the sharp contrast between them and the first apostles;
between their writings and the sublime, inspired teaching of the
divine Word. If, after reading Paul, Peter, or John, we turn to
Tertullian, Irenaeus, or Cyprian, we instinctively realize that
we have, so to speak, been transferred from sunny Italy to frigid
Siberia. We are conscious of a change to another era, and to another
country. Notwithstanding the fact that we find numerous familiar
objects, we know that we are moving in another atmosphere amid foreign
surroundings.

[Sidenote: Growth of ritualism]

The church of the Middle Ages was the natural fruitage of the seeds
planted during the second and third centuries. There we began to
notice particularly foreign elements which stand out in bold
contrast to the simple forms of primitive Christianity. One of these
innovations was the development of the ritualistic spirit, according
to which undue importance was attached to particular forms of worship,
such as time, place, positions of the body, and ceremonial observances
in general. Take baptism for an example. Apart from erroneous notions
concerning the efficacy of baptism, which will be referred to under
another head, the writings of the church fathers abound with the
most minute and puerile details concerning how the act is to be
performed-