the Apostles' conduct. They make no pretensions to the power of ordination. They merely, after having prayed, choose by lot one to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Judas; a course they never afterwards adopted (when their powers were fully conferred). I need not describe the scene on the day of Pentecost, when the power was, according to Christ's promise, given, and their divine commission sealed, in the same manner as it had been sealed in Christ's Baptism, by the Spirit, before an assemblage1 capable of estimating the sufficiency of their credentials. Up to this point a full and formal account of the nature and source of their authority is given. It cannot be more particular. The illustrations of its application to practice are to be found only incidentally in the Epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles-a history not professing to give much more than a brief account of the beginnings of the Church in Judæa and among the proselytes, its opening to the Gentiles, and the travels of St. Paul'. The notices in the history are 1 Acts ii. 8-11. 2Their doctrine, indeed, doth plainly appear in their writings; their successors doe not. For how should the Apostles declare by their pennes who succeeded them after their deathes? Is not the whole Church of Christ a lawful and sufficient witnesse in that case? If we believe not the Churches that were directed and ordered by the Apostles' preaching and presence, nor their schollers that lived with them and next succeeded in their roomes; who that wise is will beleeve our bare surmises and conjectures of 1 few, but not fewer than from the professed object of it, and the progress of the rising Church struggling with persecution, we might expect, particularly when the jurisdiction of the Apostles could not be doubted. In the Epistles, an unhesitating ' tone of authority prevails, every where bearing evident marks of a consciousness on the part of the writers, that it is as unquestioned by those whom they address as it is by themselves. 2 The time warns me that I must not attempt to adduce passages in support of these positions. But things done 1500 yeares before wee were borne ?". - Bilson, cap. 12. 223. 1 2 Thess. iii. 6. 1 Cor. xi. passim; xii. ditto; xiii. ditto; xvi. 1. 10, 11. Epistles to Tim. and Titus, passim.-Numberless passages might be pointed out; and the tone is found to prevail, not here and there only, but through all the Apostolic writings. 2 "No Christian Church could, in respect to their (the Apostles') authority, aspire to independent rights, on the ground of being a voluntary association, without a dereliction of the very principles of Christianity, without disregarding the moral evidence which attested the truth of the Gospel. No such contempt of Apostolic authority is chargeable on the primitive Churches: on the contrary, there was a general disposition to defer, in all respects, to their directions; and in the first ages of the Church, the societies in which an Apostle, or the companion of an Apostle, had presided, were looked upon as claiming a sort of preeminent dignity."-Conder, Prot. Nonconformity. Bilson asserted, long ago, the same; and shrewdly questions when and by what authority this principle of obedience to the episcopal rule of the Apostles, and men appointed by the Apostles, was altered. I am consoled by the certainty, that these general characters of the Acts and the Epistles are matters of notoriety to every well-informed congregation, and I request any who doubts to read St. Paul's Epistles, with a view to this characteristic. I contend not here for mere verbal distinctions, nor shall I enter into the questions which have been raised upon the application of the term Presbyter to the Apostles as well as to other teachers, or the supposed application of TioкоTоç to the mere Presbyter. All I shall observe on this head is, that though every Apostle or Bishop certainly was a Presbyter, it will not follow that every Presbyter was an Apostle or Bishop'. The Acts of the 1 I say supposed application to the mere Presbyter, meaning thereby that the Episcopalian has at least full as much ground to question such application of episcopacy in certain passages, as his opponents have to affirm it. As, for example, in Titus i. 5, compared with verse 7, our opponents say, that here mere Presbyters, in the restricted sense of the word, were spoken of as Bishops. I contend, not only from the application of the title Episcopus given to them in the 7th verse, but from the very terms and tenor of the sentence itself, that they were not spoken of as ordinary Presbyters, but merely as of men of age and gravity, and also in the form of expression familiar to the Jews and holy writers who gave to all the heads of the people, as an appellation of reverence, the name of Elders. St. Paul says, I left thee in Crete, &c., that thou shouldest (not, as our translation has it, "ordain," but) appoint, or set, Presbyters over each city, as I had arranged with thee. κατάστης κατὰ πόλιν πρεσβυτέρους, a direction not ill-suited to Crete, called έкaτóμжоλ, the land of a hundred cities. The phrase karà ñóλɩy does not necessarily imply Apostles and general tenor of the Scriptures all speak the same language as the early Church, and are not to be shaken by a few ingenious verbal distinctions and niceties upon one or two disputable texts. The question is not to be treated, as it often is, as though the presumption were against episcopacy, when it is the reverse, both by the testimony of the Church and general tone of the Bible. I take my stand upon the manifest intention of the commission given to the Apostles, and to the Apostles only, upon the broad marks of appropriation of authority-upon the distinct tenure of power, ordination, and direction which the Apostles display in the exercise of their functions1, and that a Bishop was appointed to every city, but only to each city where he was required. The opponent of episcopacy may reply, I interpret this the other way. Be it so. Then to what better arbitration can we refer the question, than the practice of the Apostles, and men to whom the Apostles delegated their authority, such as Timothy and Titus-the general tenor of Scripture, and the testimony of the Church? I merely take this as an example, not meaning to enter into the wide field of controversy on single texts. The 1 An excessive importance appears to be attached, in this controversy, to the question whether the terms Episcopus or Presbyter were distinctly appropriated or not in Scripture. main point is, whether the office existed, was appropriated, and delegated to successors, and continued in the Church. That it was so by the Apostles, and by Timothy and others, and by the universal Church, there appears to me a mass of evidence which cannot be affected by the time at which the mere terms became distinctly and strictly appropriated. Bishop which they enjoin to those to whom they commit Bishop Taylor says,-1st, That the word "Presbyter" is but an honourable appellative used amongst the Jews, as "Alderman" amongst us; but it signifies no order at all, nor was ever used in Scripture to signify any distinct company or order of clergy and this appears not only by an induction in all the enumerations of the offices ministerial in the New Testament*, where to be a Presbyter is never reckoned either as a distinct office or a distinct order, but by its being indifferently communicated to all the superior clergy, and all the princes of the people. 2ndly, The second thing I intended to say, is this; that although all the superior clergy had not only one but divers common appellatives, all being called πρεσβύτεροι and διάκονοι, even the Apostolate itself being called a Deaconship †, yet it is evident, that before the common appellatives were fixed into names of propriety, they were as evidently distinguished in their offices and powers, as they are at this day in their names and titles. A great stress has been laid upon Jerome's authority-his meaning grievously perverted-by those who wished to represent him as affirming that there was no distinction between the office of the Bishop and the Presbyter, unless by the custom of the Church. For he himself distinctly admits that the Bishop had exclusively the power of ordination: "Quid enim facit, excepta ordinatione, episcopus, quod Presbyter non faciat." He recites, as among the Apostolic traditions, that Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons have the same relative gradations as Aaron, his sons, and the Levites, and says the Presbyter is contained in the Bishop as the less in the greater. If his authority, therefore, standing alone, could be set against that of the earlier fathers and the universal Church, it would not avail; for he brings no argu * Rom. xii. 6. Eph. iv. 11. 1 Cor. xii. 28. C |