Patristic Quote for the Day

On that account these things are so as we demonstrated that among the ancients presbyters and bishops were the same but gradually, in order that the emerging shoots of dissension might be plucked out, the whole responsibility was transferred to a single person. Therefore as the presbyters know that they are subject to the one who has been placed over them by an ecclesiastical custom, so the bishops should know that they are greater than presbyters more through custom than through verity of an ordinance of the Lord and that they all ought to rule the church in common. - St. Jerome, (MPL 26, 597-98, cited in *The Church: Selected Writings of Arthur Carl Piepkorn*, p. 78)