andria, as Irenæus and Tertullian had done before him. Blondel, the most learned of the opponents of episcopacy, is compelled to admit that it had reared its head so early as the year of our Lord 140, only forty years after the death of St. John, and when many, who must have remembered that Apostle, if not others, and their polity, must have been living. In the primitive fathers, the three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, are mentioned, and mentioned incidentally, not controversially, but as we should expect a subject to be mentioned which was notorious-on which no difference of opinion existed 1.

the Bishops who presided in all the principal cities of the Roman empire, from the Apostles down to his own time, that it is as impossible for an impartial man, who shall compare this historian with the rest of the primitive fathers, whether there was a succession of Bishops from the Apostles, as it would be to call in question the succession of Roman emperors from Julius Cæsar, or the accession of kings in any other country."-See also Bilson, Perpet. Govt., &c., 260, 261.

1 It is admitted by Blondel and others, that episcopacy had established itself A.D. 140. If, therefore, any other form had been the apostolical one, there would have been probably some controversial distinctions observed in the passage in which the term ἐπίσκοπος occurs. But, if no doubt of its apostolical authority existed, then we should expect the mention of it such as we find it. Peirce, Vind. Dissent., says, "The writers of the second century began, I confess, to distinguish the names of Bishop and Presbyter." Is it probable that, when this distinction was made so early, no controversy should have arisen, nor any allusion to such controversy be made, if episcopacy had only re

I am prevented from citing these passages, only by want of time, as they may be found collected in abundance in the learned polemics' of our Church. I will merely observe, that of the many fathers in which the mention of Bishops occurs, Clement of Rome is stated to have been ordained by St. Peter; Polycarp to have conversed with the Apostles; and Ignatius to have suffered martyrdom, only a few years after St. John's death, having been then forty years Bishop of Antioch. Finally, no record whatever can be produced of any church, governed in any other manner than that which is admitted to have universally prevailed from the second century to the Reformation; nor is any controversial writing on the subject extant, of the time at which Blondel affirms episcopacy to have risen. Now if, notwithstanding all this, we are, in the sixteenth century, to be surprised with the discovery that,

cently reared its head, and was with such rapidity swallowing up another polity, which had been practised by Apostles? We contend that the jurisdiction was always distinguished, and that even where the name was used doubtfully, such usage would be (quanti valent) rather evidence that the distinction of the jurisdiction was notorious. Ignatius is very clear in his distinction of the three orders.-Vide Ep. to Ephes., §. iv.; Mag., §. iii. iv. xiii.; Trall., xii. xiii. The sense of these cannot be disputed; however the genuineness of the Epistles may have been denied. 1 See Address to the Reader, which precedes this Discourse. According to Eusebius, A. D. CX.; to Marianus Scotus, CXII.; to Usher, CVII.; to Lloyd, CVXI.-See Wake. Apost. Fathers.

2

B

during the time of Christ and his Apostles, the Church knew nothing of episcopacy, and was governed under an entirely different polity, surely we are entitled to ask how, when Churches were not only fresh from the hands of the Apostles, but were daily rising under zealous men, who were themselves contemporary with the Apostles, or at least had abundant facilities of knowing the practice of the Apostles; and when these Churches were rising in regions far distant from each other; how, in such circumstances, one vast corruption was so soon and so completely to overshadow the whole of them; and how that other polity could so entirely vanish from Christendom, that not a trace of its adoption by any one early Church, nor one voice lifted up against such a daring innovation upon the polity of their Master and his Apostles, should be left on record? The theory seems improbable, monstrous'. It behoves those who adopt

1

Bishop Taylor, in his Consecration Sermon, after affirming, upon the testimony of Epiphanius, that at first there were only Bishops and Deacons in the Churches, and that, as the harvest became greater, Presbyters were ordained, and that certain whom he enumerates were, by the universal testimony of the Church, Bishops, proceeds thus: "All which, if there be any faith in Christians that have given their lives for a testimony to the faith, and any truth in their stories; unless we who believe Thucydides and Plutarch, Livy and Tacitus, think that all Church story is a perpetual romance, and that all the brave men, the martyrs, and the doctors of the primitive Church, did conspire, as one man, to abuse all Christendom for ever; I say, unless all these im

it, not to call upon us to show our Scripture credentials, but to produce their own.

For if the

On them

Scripture evidence were only equal, the testimony of the Church should turn the scale. falls the duty of showing that some other polity was laid down in the Word of God, and laid down, not in one or two doubtful and questionable texts, but with such unquestionable clearness, that, in deference to such authority, we must (however unable to account for the facts before us) give up the plain testimony of the universal Church'. Such, I contend, is the position in which the Church of England stands. The points of our case have, on the face of the question, a strength similar to that which is attributed in law to a title by possession. The holder is not called upon to show his title-deeds; those who dispute his right must first themselves make out a case of their own. Let those who question our title, show the foundations of their own, and not call upon us to make out a title, when the judgment of the whole Church has decided in our favour.

Such, I say, is the position which we are entitled

possible suppositions be admitted, all these whom I have now reckoned were Bishops fixed in several Churches, and had dioceses for their charges."

It may

1 This is a maxim that should not be lost sight of. not be difficult to bring single texts, on which doubts and disputes might be raised. But these avail nothing against the universal testimony of the Church, and the general tenor of Scripture.

to take up. But, God be praised, those who have leisure for the enquiry need not confine themselves to this. We have no misgivings,—no flaws, which make us fear to produce our title-deeds. We can show the foundations of our polity in Scripture; that the primitive Fathers and the universal Church, though they may have sometimes disfigured the model with incongruous ornaments, yet have preserved its principle and its authority', as it came from the hands

1 It is one of the fallacies of the day to contrast the external circumstances of episcopacy, the accidents of it arising out of the position of the Church, with the external circumstances of the Apostles-circumstances, be it remembered, not embraced by choice, but imposed by necessity, and consequently neither approved nor condemned. Nothing can be more unjust than the inferences drawn from this. The principle and the foundation of episcopal jurisdiction is not altered by these extrinsic accidents, which, in various positions of the Church, and in its various relations with society, may be found to extend its usefulness. They are only means at one time applicable, at others perhaps not applicable, to the end for which episcopacy was ordained. To constitute a comparison between the Apostles and their successors, the circumstances of the Church, of society, and of the individuals, ought to be the same. If those who are so zealous for primitive practice, and so fond of drawing these parallels, would only remember that there is not one rule for applying Gospel principles to the ministers of the Christian community, and another for the laity—if they would only begin by carrying out their principles and their parallel by first reducing themselves to the state of the primitive Christian society, and then drawing the parallel for the Bishops-I think a marvellous light would break in upon some of them, and they would have much less difficulty in seeing that the circumstances of the society