2. Your own standard writers acknowledge that, whenever a distinction of titles took place, it was in consequence of a distinction of offices having taken place. This, Blondel and Salmasius acknowledge. And this is one of their arguments against the genuineness and authenticity of the Ignatian Epistles. And as Blondel, in particular, admits this distinction of offices as early as the year 140, in which, as I have shown, he is followed by the whole Provincial Council of London, it follows that when the Bishop became the chief officer in the Church, he became also the fountain of ecclesiastical authority. And had those two learned men admitted the authenticity of the Ignatian Epistles, they must, on their own principles, have admitted that the Bishop was the ordaining officer. But to avoid being driven to this consequence, they rejected those epistles, well knowing, that if they admitted them, diocesan episcopacy would have been traced up to the apostolic age; and then, who could doubt of its being of apostolic origin?

3. As Ignatius says, "Without a Bishop, Presbyters, and Deacons, no Church is named;" a Bishop must have been an essential officer of the Church; and being so, he must, from his presiding over all the Presbyters and congregations within his district or diocese, have been a superior officer; and consequently all commissions must flow from him as the chief of the ecclesiastical community. So that diocesan episcopacy being once established, the right of ordaining belongs to the Bishop of

course.

I do not think that any thing more need be said on this head. The case is so plain, so consonant to the common sense and practice of mankind, that to dispute it would argue more of a captious disposition, than of the ingenuousness of fair disputation.

In the third particular of your 'summary,' you say, 'It appears that Presbyters are represented by early writers, and particularly by Ignatius and Irenæus, as the successors of the Apostles, and as presiding over the Church.’

It is the invariable doctrine of the primitive Church, that Bishops by single succession, exercised a supremacy over all orders in the Church. They are not asserted to be the successors of the Apostles, because they preached and administered the sacraments; (for in that qualified sense the Presbyters were so too;) but because they governed the Church as the Apostles did. Ignatius repeatedly asserts the superior power and authority of the Bishops over Presbyters, and never says Presbyters are successors of the Apostles, but when he places the Bishops in a still higher grade, as when he calls them the vicegerents of GOD, makes them preside in the place of GOD, or of CHRIST; and then to preserve some proportion between them and the Presbyters, says of the latter, that they succeeded the Apostles. But in the very passages in which he thus speaks, he first takes care to raise the Bishops much above them; so that

he evidently speaks analogically. If Presbyters were in the same sense, and in the same degree successors to the Apostles, that the Bishops are, there would be no difference between them, and then the comparisons of Ignatius would be perfect non

sense.

Nor will the Presbyters mentioned by Irenæus be of the least service to you; for it has been abundantly proved, that they were the Bishops of the Churches, presiding over the other orders, and over numerous congregations. He particularly marks them, as holding the apostolical pre-eminence, and as succeeding singly to the government of particular Churches. But he gives us no account whatever of the succession of Presbyters in any one Church. We find in him a list of the Bishops, but not of the Presbyters of Rome. This succession of a single person, where there were many Presbyters, and many congregations, is a decisive proof of diocesan episcopacy, and consequently a decisive proof that Presbyters were not the successors of the Apostles in their supremacy over the Church.

This point needs no further observations. I will, therefore, dismiss it with St. Jerome's well known declaration: "Wherever there is a Bishop, whether at Rome or Eugubium, at Constantinople or Rhegium, at Alexandria or Tanais, he is of the same merit, of the same priesthood-they are all the Apostles' successors." The Bishops, of his day, whom all Presbyterians acknowledge to have been superior to the Presbyters, succeeded to the pre-eminence of the Apostles, who, according to all writers, ancient and modern, held the first rank.

You go on: It appears, that in every worshipping assembly, in the primitive Church, the presence of a Bishop was considered as indispensable.' This is the way, Sir, that people who are not well acquainted with this controversy, are imposed upon. By a Bishop, you mean a congregational Pastor. Now, have you produced a single instance that, in Jerusalem, Rome, Carthage, Antioch, Smyrna, Alexandria, or any other city, in which Christianity was placed, there was but one congregation, or that where there was a plurality, the Presbyters, as co-pastors, governed the Church, without a Bishop over them? You have not produced a single instance of any such thing in the second, third, and fourth centuries; and I challenge you, with all your diligence, to produce an instance. Remember, it is not a challenge to produce an instance where there was but one congregation in a city, in which the gospel was but lately preached; for in the natural course of things, there would be one congregation before there were two, or more: but a challenge to produce an instance, after congregations and Presbyters were multiplied, of the Church in that city being without a Superintendent, President, or Bishop. That there was no such instance, even in the apostolic age, we prove from facts recorded in Scripture. That the government of the Church of Jerusalem was not of that kind, we prove from the sacred text. There we find numerous congregations, and

numerous Presbyters, with St. James presiding over them. And to show that we are not mistaken with respect to the character of St. James, we produce the testimonies of the ancients, who are unanimous on this point. We also produce the Church of Ephesus, where there was a plurality of Presbyters, and, consequently, a plurality of congregations, over which St. Paul held a rod of discipline, till he placed Timothy over that Church. And, to confirm our statement, we produce the testimony of Eusebius, and of the council of Laodicea, which reckons a succession of twenty-seven Bishops from Timothy to their time. Is not this enough for an impartial man?

You proceed-It was the Bishop's peculiar duty to preach, and to bless the people; to administer baptism and the LORD'S supper.' None of these things were peculiar to him. Presbyters performed them all under his control, as appears from Ignatius and all the other ancients who have said any thing on the subject. He was the chief minister in all these matters; the Presbyters were his assistants; necessarily so; because without them he could not possibly have performed these duties to a plurality of congregations.

Next; it was his duty to attend to the case of every poor person in his parish that needed relief; to celebrate, or give his personal consent to the celebration of all marriages among the people of his charge; to visit the sick; to instruct the children of his flock statedly every week; and, in short, to perform all those duties which are now and ever have been considered as the proper work of a parish minister.'

I have shown that it was impossible for a Bishop to attend to every poor person within his charge, when he presided over many thousands of Christians. It was impossible, for instance, that the Bishop of Jerusalem should have known the case of every poor person in his district, which contained not less than forty or fifty thousand souls, but by the instrumentality of his Presbyters, who kept a matriculation book, in which the names of the poor were inserted. The Presbyters, even in Jerome's day, when all acknowledge diocesan episcopacy to be prevalent, were the stewards of the Bishop, of his appointing, and accountable to him as the supreme governor of the Church. What they did were his acts, although done by the hands of others. Qui facit per alterum, facit per se, is universally admitted. When diocesan episcopacy is once proved, every expression of this kind must be understood in a commodious manner.

The same must be said of the Bishop's consent to the celebration of marriages, of visiting the sick, of instructing the children, and of every necessary duty in his diocese. Where there were thousands of Christians, the intervention of inferior officers was absolutely necessary.

d Sciat Episcopus, cui commissa est Ecclesia, &c. Ep. 2. ad Nepot. e [He who does any thing by the agency of another, does it himself.]

Still you go on with frivolous objections. 'It appears,' you say, ' after all that has been said to the contrary, that the number of Bishops found, in early times, in small districts of country, precludes the idea of their having been any other than parish ministers.'

You have produced but one instance in the first three centuries of a numerous council of Bishops, and this you have founded on a grossly mistranslated passage in Eusebius. And the councils of the fourth and fifth centuries were held after episcopacy had been established, in the opinion of all your writers, and by your own acknowledgement; so that it is ridiculous to quote such instances. Yet I have given a particular answer to each case, and have shown that they are all groundless, and without so much as the semblance of fact.

The next particular of your summary is, 'That even after a kind of prelacy arose, the Bishops were still, for the most part, only pastors of single congregations; and that there was little if any other difference between them and their Presbyters than that which now subsists between pastors and their assistants in Presbyterian Churches, and Rectors and their Curates in Episcopal Churches.'

What an astonishing instance of bold assertion! You say, a kind of prelacy took place in the third century. In that age, I have proved by numerous qnotations, clear, pointed, and decisive, that a Bishop presided over a plurality of Presbyters and congregations; that he was raised to the "top of the priesthood" by a new ordination; that he had the supreme power of the keys; that the Bishops formed a college distinct from, and superior to that of the Presbyters: and that this regimen was believed by all the writers of that age to be of divine institution. Have you said a syllable to these quotations? Not one. Nothing, but that you will not follow me through my tedious detail. But, Sir, it was not left to you to follow me or not; you were bound to do it, or to give up the point. I proved, by the most complete evidence that was ever given to any matter of fact; I proved it too by the best writers that ever took up the pen in favour of presbyterian parity, that your notion of a kind of prelacy is a mere whim. No, Sir, you did not decline the discussion because you thought my proofs were not sufficiently clear and decisive; but, I will be bold to say, because you knew yourself unable to invalidate them; because you saw, that you would plunge yourself into difficulties perplexing and insuperable. Yet you have not the manliness to retract. Non persuadebis etiamsi persuaseris, may, on this occasion, be pertinently applied to you.

You still go on: 'It appears from Jerome, that the first approach towards prelacy was the standing moderatorship of one of the Presbyters; that this began in the Church of Alex

f" You shall not persuade me, even though you do persuade"-put in the mouth of a confuted disputant.]

andria very early; soon, if not immediately after the days of Mark the Evangelist; and this was the only kind of clerical imparity, that existed in that Church until the middle of the third century, when it gave place to some higher encroachments of ecclesiastical ambition.'

Jerome does not say one word about a standing moderatorship. He says, "From the time of Mark till the middle of the third century, the Presbyters elected their Bishop;" but then, as we learn from history, a change took place in the mode of election. You misrepresent Jerome by using the words soon and immediately after, instead of from, which necessarily implies, that when St. Mark died the Presbyters elected a Bishop. And this Jerome does to show the Roman Deacons, who thought themselves equal to Presbyters, that they were inferior to them; as the Presbyters alone, without the concurrence of the Deacons, elected their Bishop. This is precisely the point Jerome had in view; and it shows decisively that diocesan episcopacy is of apostolic institution, for Mark unquestionably presided over the Church of Alexandria by apostolic appointment. But your representation of the Bishop's office, considering it as nothing more than a standing presidency, has no warrant from the words of Jerome. A standing presidency indeed it was; but just such a one as all the succeeding Bishops held, down to the time of Eusebius, who does not give the least hint of any change in the office, but considers the whole succession as founded on apostolic institution. What shall we say then to your bold assertion, that 'the standing moderatorship was the only kind of clerical imparity that existed in that Church until the middle of the third century, when it gave place to some higher encroachments of ecclesiastical ambition?" This is nothing but your own imagination. There is not a lisp of it in Jerome. He says, or, at least, his words imply it, that the mode of electing a Bishop was altered in the third century; but not that the powers of the office were increased by clerical ambition. This whole matter, then, you have misrepresented most grossly.

The next particular of your summary is in relation to Deacons. 'It appears,' you say, 'from several unexceptionable testimonies, that Deacons, in the primitive Church, were not an order of clergy at all; that they were only entrusted with the care of the poor, and employed to assist in the administration of the LORD's Supper-and that their gradually coming to be considered as a third order of the clergy, was, like the claims of the prelates, an innovation.'

It appears undeniably from the epistles of Ignatius, that Deacons were in his day, (and if in his day, in the apostolic age) an inferior order of the clergy. He says expressly, that they are not the ministers of meats and drinks, but of the Church of GOD-ministers of the mysteries of CHRIST; and he gives them a degree of presidency over the people. Study to do all things in divine concord; your Bishop presiding in the