Church History, Volume 1 Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009 - 618 pages Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1889. Excerpt: ... more and more to embrace all the interests of the culture of the age; --a transformation which indeed in many respects involved a secularizing of the church and imparted to its spiritual functions too much of an official and superficial character. 41. Schismatic Divisions In The Church. Even after the ecclesiastical sentence had gone forth against Montanism, the rigoristic penitential discipline in a form more or less severe still found its representatives within the Catholic church. As compared with the advocates of a milder procedure these were indeed generally in the minority, but this made them all the more zealously contend for their opinions and endeavour to secure for them universal recognition. Out of the contentions occasioned thereby, augmented by the rivalry of presbyter and episcopus, or episcopus and metropolitan, several ecclesiastical divisions originated which, in spite of the pressing need of the time for ecclesiastical unity, were long continued by ambitious churchmen in order to serve their own selfish ends. 1. The Schism of Hippolytas at Some about A.D. 220.--On what seems to have been the oldost attempt to form a sect at Rome over a purely doctrinal question, namely that of the Theodotians, about A.d. 210, see 33, 3.--Much more serious was the schism of Hippolytus, which broke out ten years later. In A.d. 217, after an eventful and adventurous life, a frcedman Callistus was raised to the bishopric of Rome, but not without strong opposition on the part of the rigorists, at whose head stood the celebrated presbyter Hippolytus. They charged the bishop with scoffing at all Christian earnestness, conniving at the loosening of all church discipline toward the fallen and sinner* of all kinds, and denounced him especially as a supporter of the Noetian here... |
