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LAY ELDERS EXCLUDED BY EPISCOPACY.

The Syrian churches, Waldenses and Culdees were all episcopal.
Lay elders were introduced at Geneva, by a compromise. Af-
terwards adopted by other cantons; also in France, Nether-
lands, Scotland, England, and America,

253

SERMON.*

AMONG the reasons, my brethren, which induced the speaker to undertake, at your request, the performance of the present service, he is unwilling any one should reckon, a sense of his competency to the task. If one's ability to speak justly of another, is at all proportional to their degrees of mutual conformity in talents and virtues, there are not many persons among the acquaintance of your late pastor, of whatever experience and attainments, who ought to think themselves adequate to a complete description of him. An intimacy of nearly sixteen years, has made him who addresses you very conscious, that his inferiority in age, though a great disqualification, is probably the least considerable point in his unfitness to that undertaking. He was led, however, to hope, that he would receive so much assistance from the papers of his lamented friend, that he might almost make him his own biographer; but, to his great surprise, that peculiar man was found to have left not a sentence about himself, among all his manuscripts; nor have many particulars in his history been ascertained, besides such as are of extensive notoriety.

* Preached in the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, January 16th, 1831.

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