Excerpt from The Old Catholic Church: Or the History, Doctrine, Worship, and Polity of the Christians; Traced From the Apostolic Age to the Establishment of the Pope as a Temporal Sovereign
In the "Ancient Church" the author has endeavoured to illustrate the ecclesiastical history of the first three centuries. That volume - now several years before the public - has obtained extensive circulation; and though it gives a new view of some matters of importance pertaining to early Christianity, no writer at home or abroad has yet undertaken to set aside its conclusions. "The Old Catholic Church" supplies merely a brief sketch of the history of the Ante-Nicene period. The reader may find the controverted questions which relate to it investigated minutely in the preceding publication; and, in the absence of all attempts to overturn them, the writer feels himself at liberty to take for granted the soundness of his expositions relative to the Tgnatian Epistles, the rise of the hierarchy, and the formation of the Catholic system.
During the first three centuries the great struggle of Christianity was with paganism. Pagan philosophy tried to corrupt its creed, and pagan violence sought to accomplish its annihilation. During the period between the age of Constantine and the age of Charlemagne, it passed through another phase of existence. Its theology relative to the Godhead, the Incarnation, and the Fall, was defined by Councils and embodied in carefully prepared formularies; but the Church itself now basked in the sunshine of princely favour, and displayed the relaxing influence of the change. Its simple worship was disfigured by the meretricious adornments of the old pagan ceremonial, and its free constitution was ruined by imperial and papal usurpations.
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