Thomas M. Lindsay · 12 of 17

Chapter VI. The Fall of the Prophetic Ministry and the Conservative Revolt. · Part 3

The exercises at the meeting for Exhortation were prayers, singing of psalms and hymns, reading portions of Scripture and exhortation in sermon and address. No details are given us about the order of the service save that there was a prayer between the reading of each portion of the Scripture. The early freedom of worship no longer existed. The reading, prayers, and exhortation were all in the hands of the clergy. The people shared in the singing only. It was expected that they should join heartily in this part of the service, for one of the questions put to candidates for baptism was whether they had sung heartily in the service of praise. This service was held not only on the Lord’s Day, but on every day of the week. It was the daily worship of the great Christian family. The Canons order that the elders, deacons, readers and people are to come to church at cock-crow (quo tempore canit gallus), and to consecrate the day by a service of prayer, praise, and reading the Word. All the clergy, save the bishop, are strictly ordered to be present. Only sickness or absence on a journey are to be taken as excuses. The catechumens, whose instructions in the faith by the deacons seems to have been given just before the service began, were required to be present, and had a special place assigned to them. If any members of the congregation were unable to be present at this morning worship they are enjoined to read the Scriptures at home, so that the first thing that the sun sees when it shines into their windows in the morning may be the long roll of Scripture unfolded on their knees.

The Eucharistic service is described at much greater length, and the details have to be collected from instructions scattered throughout the Canons. It had three parts—an introductory service, the actual Holy Supper, and the receiving and distributing the thankofferings. Most of the details are clearly enough stated, but it is impossible to say with any certainty whether a sermon was part of the introductory service. It was so in the time of Justin Martyr, and his account is so like an outline whose details can be filled in by what is directed in these Canons, that it is improbable that this very important portion of the service had fallen into disuse. It may be, however, that the sermon, which must have been given at the morning service on the Lord’s Day, was considered to suffice, and that the service described by Justin had been divided into two parts.

The Eucharistic service, held in the evening or in the late afternoon, began by the readers, placed at an elevated desk, reading portions of Scripture one after another, the readers taking turns and relieving each other. This went on for some time while the congregation were gradually assembling. If there was a sermon by the bishop it would be delivered after the reading was over and all had taken their places. A prayer including confession of sins followed. The bishop stood behind a table, called the “Table of the Body and Blood of the Lord,” the elders on his right hand and on his left. The elements, bread and wine, which had been furnished by intending communicants, were then brought in by the deacons, and were placed on the Table before the bishop. The elders, deacons and readers were all dressed in white—the colour of festival times. Then the bishop and the elders placed their hands on the bread and on the cup, and the bishop began the responsive prayers:—

The bishop then prayed over the elements (no form of prayer being given). The bishop himself distributed. He stood by the “Table of the Body and Blood of the Lord.” The people came one by one to the bishop, who first gave the Bread, saying, “This is the Body of the Lord,” and then the Cup, saying, “This is the Blood of the Lord,” and the people answered “Amen.” At the celebration at which the newly baptized communicants partook, the elders who stood beside the bishop had cups of milk and honey in their hands, and the communicants partook of these also from the hands of the elders to show that they had become as little children and fed on the food of infants; but whether this ceremony accompanied every celebration of the Holy Supper is uncertain. The deacons who brought in the elements were required to sing a psalm as they entered, and the sound of the singing is compared to the tinkle of the bells on the robes of Aaron.

After the celebration the faithful, who all remained in the church, came forward to the “Table” and presented their offerings, the firstfruits. These consisted of all kinds of useful things—oil, wine, milk, honey, eatables of all kinds, the fruit of trees and the fruit of the ground (apples and cucumbers being specially mentioned), wool, cloth and money. They were all placed at or on the table. The bishop prayed the prayer of thanksgiving over the gifts and the givers—a special thanksgiving being said over the oil, probably because it was so much used in ecclesiastical services. The bishop then pronounced the Benediction, and the people responded with the Doxology: Glory to Thee, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for ever and ever.

This did not end the service, however. The offerings had to be distributed before the going down of the sun. The poor, the widows and the orphans rose from their places, and came to the bishop, who distributed to them the offerings which had been received, and also the bread and wine which had remained after the Communion. Portions were no doubt reserved for those in prison, for strangers who might arrive during the week, and for the sick who were unable to come to church. The Canons forbid any of these offerings being reserved for the clergy, as was the custom in later times, and those of them who required assistance were reckoned among the poor.

It was the custom for one of the wealthier members of the congregation to give a supper on the evening of Sunday to the poor of the congregation. Members who had come from a distance, as Justin Martyr tells us they did, were doubtless included. The bishop presided, and the clergy (one deacon at least) were present. The bishop prayed for the host and for the guests, and the prayer of thanksgiving which was said during the Communion service was repeated. When it became dark the deacon had the charge of lighting the lamps, but the supper came to an end before it got very dark. The president generally gave the guests a short address, which he delivered sitting, and which was “for their benefit and for his own.” The people were told to eat their fill, but not to drink to excess; not to speak too much; not to shout; and above all not to bring disgrace on their host by indulging in mischievous gossip.

It is pleasant to learn that occasional suppers were given to the widows of the congregation. The poor bodies, who are elsewhere praised for their fasting, seemed to have enjoyed a good supper, where they could eat and drink ad satietatem neque vero ad ebrietatem, and to have been inclined to prolong the feast as much as possible, for they need to be warned thrice over within four short sentences that they are to end their supper by the going down of the sun. These suppers are called Agapae by Dr. Achelis. Dr. Riedel, on the other hand, refuses to translate the word in this way. This is to be said, however, in justification of Dr. Achelis’ translation that the entertainments have all a religious significance, that there seems to have been a symbolical breaking of bread at all of them, that one of them, which was a memorial feast in honour of a martyr, was preceded by the celebration of the Holy Supper, and that at all of them the prayer of thanksgiving which was included in the Eucharistic service was recited. The Lord’s Day supper, at any rate, has all the appearance of the older Agape, separated from the Holy Supper, and coming after it instead of preceding it.

It is very interesting to observe that there is nothing in the Canons which implies that the Holy Supper has any special and unique sacrificial conceptions attached to it. Such ideas are markedly absent. The word altar occurs in the Canons; but in those portions which refer to the act of celebrating the Lord’s Supper, the phrase used is “Table of the Body and Blood of the Lord.” The term offering is certainly used of the Bread and the Wine in the Holy Supper, but it is equally employed to denote the firstfruits given to the bishop by the people. The term priest is never found in connexion with ordination or with the celebration of the Holy Supper. It occurs in two references only, and is used of the bishop when he is described as receiving the firstfruits and as exorcising the sick; and since both of these acts were performed by the pagan priesthood it is easy to conjecture why the word is applied to the bishop in these acts.

Reverence in all the actions of public worship is carefully inculcated. The Church is the house of God and the place of prayer with fear; women are not to come there in gaudy apparel, and they are not to laugh nor chatter there. A worthy matron was made an “inspectress,” to see that the women and girls behaved themselves properly. The clergy are to see that the communion elements are kept with care from all impurity, and specially that flies do not get into the wine of the sacrament. Great care is also to be taken that no drop of the wine nor crumb of bread falls to the ground while the elements are partaken of by the communicants. In short, the Canons contain many a little suggestion, familiar to all missionaries, for the purpose of teaching that reverence in worship which is almost always lacking in heathen religious rites.

These early Christians were men of their generation, however. They believed that the air around them was full of evil spirits bent on their discomfiture, whose malignity had to be guarded against; but while the traces of such superstitions appear, one cannot fail to see how the attempt is continually made to wean the Christians from pagan superstitions which they have brought over with them into Christianity. To take only one example, sick persons are prohibited from continuing beyond the hours of prayer in the Church or from sleeping there. When it is remembered that sick folk were taken to the heathen temples in order that the dwelling in a sacred place might cure them, it is easy to see what the meaning of the prohibition is. One can perceive the doors by which pagan ideas might enter into Christian worship, but the sorry mixture of paganism and Christianity which was to follow Cyprian’s conceptions of priesthood and sacrifice were still in the future.

Such were the ordinary services, and such the organization of a Christian Church in the earlier decades of the third century, before accommodation to imperial points of view and imitation of pagan organization had invaded the Church of Christ.

Perhaps a brief comparison of this organization of the ministry with modern types may bring it more distinctly before us. It had some relation with all modern types of ecclesiastical organization, and was identical with none.

The organization had a certain resemblance to modern Congregationalism, for the vast majority of communities called churches were simply self-governing and independent congregations. The bishop was the pastor of the congregation, and in him, as in a modern congregationalist Church, all the ecclesiastical life centred. On the other hand, this does not apply to all these primitive churches; for the independent unity was the community large or small, and before the close of the second century the larger communities must have included several congregations, and all were served on the collegiate principle by the one bishop and his body of elders and deacons—the one pastor or bishop representing the unity of the community. These primitive independent churches all cherished the essential idea that they belonged to, and were portions of, a common visible Church—the Great Church it was called, to distinguish it from the Marcionite and Montanist Churches; but they had not yet discovered the way to express this idea of a visible catholicity in a definite political organization. We have the beginnings of the polity in the common though not universal custom that all the neighbouring bishops assisted at the ordination of a bishop.

The organization had a much greater resemblance to what is commonly called the Presbyterian, and ought properly to be called the Conciliar, system of Church government. The points of agreement are very many. There is common to both the conception of the three-fold ministry of pastor or bishop, eider or presbyter, and deacon, and both have the theoretical equivalence of the offices of bishop and elder (save only a special seat in the Church and the right to ordain elders and deacons), while in practice the bishop or pastor is the real head of the whole of the ecclesiastical life. In both there is the idea that the unit of organization is the Christian community of the place, and the conception that the unity can be preserved by a collegiate administration. Both have the thought that the whole congregational activity centres in the bishop or pastor, who is the leader in public worship and who celebrates the sacraments. Both believe strongly that each congregation is a portion of the visible Catholic Church, that catholicity can best be reduced to a polity by means of representative councils with gradually widening areas of control, and that the ordination of a bishop or pastor is to be performed by the pastors or bishops of the bounds as representatives of the Church Catholic. The two great differences are: that the modern system of organization insists that the bishop or pastor cannot, of his own authority, delegate to a presbyter or to a deacon the right to celebrate the sacraments, and that the bishop or pastor of the early centuries had almost unlimited control over the ecclesiastical finances and property of the congregation. This characteristic of primitive Christian organization arose from the fact that at first the sole property was the firstfruits given to the bishop at the close of the Holy Supper and distributed afterwards by him, and it was strengthened when the churches were able to hold buildings and burial places by the Roman laws regulating the property of corporations.

The modern episcopal system, apart from the retention of the name “bishop,” has fewest points of resemblance to what we find in the ancient ecclesiastical manuals we have been studying; but the germs of the mediaeval and modern episcopacy are there in the power which the primitive bishop possessed of delegating functions which were peculiarly his, such as baptizing and celebrating the Holy Communion, to his elders and even to his deacons.