with God or were essential to its visible manifestation and propagation. Prominent among these features were the entire sanctification of believers, holy life and conduct, the baptism, gifts, and leadership of the Holy Spirit, and the visible unity and relationship of believers in one body, the church.

I need not take time or space to describe the wonderful successes of Christianity as long as the An apostasy primitive purity and power of foretold the gospel message was sustained and its results realized in a living, Spirit-filled church. But facts compel me to record a change from that happy condition. This transition was foreseen by those who "spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Paul declared: "Some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils" (1 Tim. 4:1); "Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them" (Acts 20:30). Peter predicted, "There shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies" (2 Pet. 2:1). Jesus himself declared, "Many false prophets shall arise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Matt. 24: 11, 12).

Paul gives a more particular description of the coming apostasy in the second chapter of Second Thessalonians. Asserting that the second coming

of Christ was not at that time imminent, he says: "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God" (verses 3, 4).

The development of the "man of sin," which was occasioned by the "falling away," was to be gradual, but should finally assume great proportions, "so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God showing himself that he is God." The apostle further states: "For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming" (verses 7, 8). We should not seek for the fulfilment of this prediction in those minor sects and heresies which at an early date arose and soon passed away: the description refers to some great power occupying the greatest prominence, making the most pretentious claims, a power that is to endure until the second advent of Christ. We must, therefore, look for its fulfilment in what we may term the main line of historic Christianity.

The "falling away" from the simple truths and standards of the gospel began at a very early

First evidences of decline

date. The mystery of iniquity was already working in the apostles' day. Before the close of the first century we find in the churches of Asia Minor a sad deflection from their primitive condition. The church at Ephesus had left its first love (Rev. 2:4); the church at Pergamos was tolerating false teachers and being ruined by false doctrines (2:14, 15); Thyatira had lost the spirit of holy judgment against wrong-doing and was therefore affected by a shocking degree of immorality (2:20-23); the message to Sardis was, "Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead (3:1); Laodicea had become so lukewarm that the Lord said, "I will spew thee out of my mouth" (3:15, 16).

The transition from the apostles to the age of the early church fathers is involved in considerThe apostolic able darkness. Not until the midfathers dle of the second century, when Justin Martyr appears on the scene, does the church emerge from its obscurity into the clear light of history. The apostolic fathers-Clement of Rome, Ignatius, the Pastor of Hermas, Papias, and the unknown author of the Epistle to Diognetus-all these lived and wrote during that transitional period, and they could have told us much, but they have told us little. We can not but admire the beautiful spirit in which they wrote, and their style is earnest and vital. Nevertheless, we discern in these works two leading tendencies

which stand, so to speak, as prophecies of what was to predominate in the ecclesiastical thought of succeeding centuries.

In the mind of the author of the Epistle to Diognetus, the grand central thought is the incarnation and the spiritual presence of Christ in redeemed humanity, by which they are led to the “free imitation of God," as a result of which they become to the world what the soul is to the body-its life and the means of holding it together. This teaching is an epitome of the Greek theology developed later by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Athanasius. But in Papias, who attaches much importance to oral traditions that "came from the living and abiding voice"; in Ignatius, who exalts the bishop above other presbyters; and in Clement, who, writing as a Roman, is concerned with matters of administration and subordination to authority-in these we discern the beginnings of the Latin theology developed later by Tertullian, Irenæus, Cyprian, and Augustine, which produced the papacy, and which, as we shall show, has in a great measure dominated the ecclesiastical thought of the world until the present day.

After emerging into the clear field of historic Christianity in the time of Justin Martyr, we find

The Ante-
Nicene age

everywhere evidences of a rapidly

developing apostasy. In one respect we approach an examination of the AnteNicene church with feelings of admiration. This

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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, Irenæus, 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