When a few disciples were collected in a particular locality, it not unfrequently happened that they remained for a time without any proper ecclesiastical organization. [605:2] But the Christian cause, under such circumstances, could not be expected to flourish; and therefore, as soon as practicable, the apostles and evangelists did not neglect to make arrangements for the increase and edification of these infant communities.  To provide, as well for the maintenance of discipline, as for the preaching of the Word, they accordingly proceeded to ordain elders in every city where the truth had gained converts.  These elders afterwards ordained deacons in their respective congregations; and thus, in due time, the Church was regularly constituted.

In the first century Christian societies were formed only here and there throughout the Roman Empire; and, at its close, the gospel had scarcely penetrated into some of the provinces.  It is not to be expected that we can trace any general confederation of the churches established during this period, and it would be vain to attempt to demonstrate their incorporation; as their distance, their depressed condition, and the jealousy with which they were regarded by the civil government, [606:1] rendered any extensive combination utterly impossible.  At a time when the disciples met together for worship in secret and before break of day, it is not to be supposed that their pastors deemed it expedient to undertake frequent journeys on the business of the Church, or assembled in multitudinous councils.  But though, in the beginning of the second century, there was no formal bond of union connecting the several Christian communities throughout the world, they meanwhile contrived in various ways to cultivate an unbroken fraternal intercourse.  Recognising each other as members of the same holy brotherhood, they maintained an epistolary correspondence, in which they treated of all matters pertaining to the common interest.  When the pastor of one church visited another, his status was immediately acknowledged; and even when an ordinary disciple emigrated to a distant province, the ecclesiastical certificate which he carried along with him secured his admission to membership in the strange congregation.  Thus, all the churches treated each other as portions of one great family; all adhered to much the same system of polity and discipline; and, though there was not unity of jurisdiction, there was the “keeping of the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

In modern times many ecclesiastical historians [607:1] have asserted that synods commenced about the middle of the second century.  But the statement is unsupported by a single particle of evidence, and a number of facts may be adduced to prove that it is altogether untenable.  There is no reason to doubt that synods, at least on a limited scale, met in the days of the apostles, and that the Church courts of a later age were simply the continuation and expansion of those