The testimony which Irenæus bears to the relation between the Church and the empire is but slight. He mentions a Christian as having been in his own youth high in the imperial court, at the same time that he was a follower or admirer of Polycarp(156); he speaks of Christians in the imperial palace deriving an income from the heathen, and able to assist their poorer brethren(157); and he acknowledges the general advantages which Christians derived from the supremacy of the Romans, in common with their other subjects, in the prevalence of peace and the freedom from individual outrage(158). But he mentions very distinctly the persecutions at another time Christians suffered (particularly alluding to those which took place at Lyons), and notices that slaves were compelled to inform against their masters; and that in this way the calumny that Christians fed upon human flesh arose, from a misunderstanding of the nature of the holy Eucharist(159); the slaves having heard their masters speak of feeding on the body and blood of Christ, and taking it in a literal sense. CHAPTER III. ON THE NATURE, OFFICE, POWERS, AND PRIVILEGES OF THE CHURCH. The proper aspect to view the Church in is a matter of so much practical importance at all times, that it can never be uninteresting to know the light in which it was regarded in the subapostolical age, of which Irenæus is a very unobjectionable evidence. We shall find then that this writer considered the Church to be an ascertainable society, planted first at Jerusalem(160), and thence spread to the limits of the habitable globe(161); planted by the Apostles, and kept up by and in the elders or bishops their successors(162). It is, however, divided into separate Churches, which are to regard that of Jerusalem as their mother Church(163). The whole Church, moreover, is to its individual members as a mother to her children(164): she is appointed for the quickening of creation(165), and in her is the way of life(166), which those who keep aloof from her do not possess(167); in her is the Holy Spirit, which is not to be found out of her(168). She possesses the adoption and inheritance of Abraham, and her members are consequently the seed of Abraham(169). Being thus appointed for the quickening of the world, by being the way of life to its members, she has for that purpose received the faith from the Apostles, which it is her business to distribute to her children(170). She is therefore the appointed preacher of the faith, or the truth, which is not variable and changeable, but one, and only one(171); not merely a quality infused into the heart, but a form of truths embodied or summed up in words, and delivered to her members when they are initiated into her(172). Her ancient system is therefore the guide to truth(173), and those who wish to know it must have recourse to her, and be brought up in her bosom(174). Her testimony, moreover, is confirmed by the Apostles and Prophets(175), whose writings are kept in