In seventy years the Christians had many church edifices, or _ecclesia cathedralis_ (church meeting-places), and a pretty well developed and organized prayer and singing service; but cathedral or church service did not come to great perfection till the days of Gregory the Great, who was born A. D. 540, and died in 604. Chanting had its origin in the church of Antioch during the episcopate of Lontius, A. D. 347-356. Theodoret informs us that Flavianus and Diodorus divided the choir into two parts, and made them sing the Psalms of David alternately, and that this method began first at Antioch. At the Council of Laodicea, held between 360 and 370, it was determined that there should be canonical singers, who should sing out of written books. We may imagine something of the state of affairs before the order passed; for Balsamon says that, prior to the convening of this council, the laity would many times, and at their pleasure, begin to sing such hymns and songs in the church as were crude and unusual. To obviate this the canon was made, ordering that none should begin to sing but those whose office it was to do so, the laity having permission, however, to sing with them in the entire service; and so was inaugurated our modern congregational singing, to be led, however, by an appointed choir. Choir-singing was carried into Rome in 380, under Pope Damasus; and in the time of Gregory the Great, about 620, it was brought to great perfection. Gregory sent Austin to introduce it into England. He found the clergy there unwilling to receive it, and it is said that he caused twelve hundred of them to be slaughtered at once. In 670 Theodore was sent by Vitalian to fill the See of Canterbury, and he succeeded in introducing the cathedral service; and he also has the credit of introducing organs into divine worship. The year 679 is the earliest certain date of cathedral worship in Great Britain. In France Gregorian chant-work began about the year 787, and was patronized by Charles the Great. In the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. thirty-two commissioners were appointed to examine all canons, constitutions, and ordinances, provincial and synodal, and they declared against a cathedral service. The judicious and pious Hooker, ceremony-loving, and jealous of the interests of the church, yet under the ban and interdicted, could not suppress his thought, and he says:-- Cathedrals are as glasses, wherein the face and very countenance of apostolical antiquity remaineth, even as yet to be seen, notwithstanding the alterations which the hand of time and the course of the world hath brought. So the work continued till a final establishment of present customs, and Seymour says of cathedrals and their service as at present carried on:--