A similar remark may be made with respect to Timothy and Titus, through whom the attempt has been made to derive the succession of Bishops. They belonged not to the class of ordinary teachers, and consequently had, and could have, no successors.

I do not pretend to have given even an outline of the evidence from the New Testament against the exclusive claim of Episcopacy to the possession of an authorized ministry. I have stated two or three facts or grounds of argument merely. More is not needed. The subject has been often enough treated at sufficient length; and even did it admit of being thoroughly discussed within the limits of a single discourse, without the exclusion of other topics, about which I cannot be wholly silent, I should shrink from taxing your patience by a long-drawn argument on so dry a point.

But though no evidence of the distinction contended for be found in the Scriptures, do we not meet with vestiges of it in the writings of the ancient Christians? have we not proof that it existed before the last witnesses of the resurrection had sunk to their rest? This ground has been taken by the advocates of the Apostolic origin of Diocesan Episcopacy; but it is equally untenable, I conceive, with the former. The opponents of Episcopacy are able to show from the old writers, that, for fifty years after the last of the Apostles had passed from the earth, the terms Bishop and Elder were used interchangeably as designating one order, and continued to be so used occasionally for a long time afterwards.

The earliest writings of Christian antiquity which have come down to us, those contained in the New Testament excepted, are those of Justin Martyr, the pieces attributed to the Apostolic Fathers being of doubtful antiquity, and in their present form certainly not genuine. Justin was a learned convert from Paganism to Christianity, and flourished a little before the middle of the second century. He is separated from the time of the Apostles by a dark gulph. But cross the chasm, what do we find? How far has the ancient simplicity been preserved? Have the primitive and lowly Pastors, the unassuming Presbyter-bishops of the first days, passed away? What evidence do we discover in the writings of Justin, that there existed in his time a class of officers in the Church, superior in order to the Elders? Not the least. The name of Bishop, if I mistake not, does

Yet occa

`not occur in any of his productions now extant. sions in sufficient abundance offered, of mentioning the order, had it existed as distinct from the presiding elder or elders of each congregation. He has left us a description, somewhat minute, of the mode in which Sunday was observed, and baptism and the supper administered; but, in speaking of the person who conducted the service, and who appears to have been the highest officer then known in the Church, he calls him simply the "president of the brethren," language which savors much of the primitive simplicity.*

Originally there were several Presbyters or Bishops to each congregation, and Justin, it is true, mentions but one. Here then seems to have been a change, but such as is easily accounted for. Among the original Presbyters, one would, of course, preside, for the sake of order; and the office of president, if not originally perpetual, appears to have soon become such. To this office the term Bishop came afterwards to be restricted. But this was not yet the The presiding Presbyter might be, and no doubt was, even in Justin's day, sometimes called Bishop, or the Bishop of the congregation, by way of eminence, his office giving him a certain rank and dignity. But we have proof that he was not yet regarded as belonging to a distinct order.

case.

I may be told that the evidence from Justin on this point is only of the negative kind. Admit it; I must be permitted to observe, that, all circumstances taken into the account, this evidence is, in the present case, of no small weight.

But we have other which is positive. Irenæus, who was bishop of Lyons in Gaul, and lived some years after Justin, speaks indiscriminately of the "succession of Presbyters,' and "succession of Bishops," from the Apostolic times, a fact to be explained only on the supposition that both, in his view, belonged to one order, and were in this respect equal, though one of them being chosen, or succeeding by virtue of age, to the presidency, would acquire the title of chief or first Presbyter, called by Justin the president of the brethren, and frequently, as I have said, Bishop of the congregation. Distinct traces of the old doctrine of the identity of Bishops and Presbyters, as regards order, occur

* Apol. I. pp. 95-98. Ed. Thirlb.

also in the writings of Clemens of Alexandria, and Tertullian, in the early part of the third century, and even later.

The testimony of Jerome, who flourished late in the fourth century, and who was the most learned man and profoundest antiquary of his time, is very express. He speaks of the origin of Bishops as distinguished from Presbyters. He shows from the writings of the New Testament that they originally constituted one order, but afterwards, "as a remedy to schism," he says, "one was elected to preside over the rest." Though in his day Bishops alone were considered as having power to ordain, it was not so from the first; for in Alexandria, so late as the days of Heraclas, and Dionysius, they made and ordained their own Bishops, and had done so from the days of Mark the Evangelist, the reputed founder of the Alexandrian Church. Those Bishops, as it appears from the illustrations employed by Jerome, one of which is the making of an Arch-Deacon by Deacons, were evidently viewed, not as belonging to a distinct order, but only as having a certain preeminence conferred by election. They were, in fact, little more than a sort of perpetual moderators.

And such, as late as the commencement of the twelfth century, were the Bishops of the Waldenses, a primitive and unlettered people, long concealed amid the secluded recesses of the Cottian Alps, to which they had retired during the persecutions under the early Emperors.†

Soon the dawn of the Reformation appeared, and the doctrine of the original equality of Bishops and Presbyters was among the first to be recovered. We find Wiclif, at whose "torch all succeeding reformers more effectually lighted their tapers," asserting it in the fourteenth century, and Cranmer and most of the founders of the Anglican Church early in the sixteenth trod in his steps. The doctrine then and some time afterwards, was, that ordination is the "ancient right" of Presbyters, and that there was originally no difference between them and Bishops. That the latter are jure divino, superior, constituting a distinct order, and having the exclusive right to ordain, and that they are indispensable to the existence of a true Church, was not, I believe, maintained in Protestant England, till some enthu

* Epist. ad Evagr.

Blair's History of the Waldenses. Edinburgh, 1833.

siasts among the Presbyterians or Independents contended that their own form of polity and no other could be extracted from the Bible. The Episcopalians then "found out that one claim of divine right was best met by another."* Hooker, some time their oracle, often, however, but ill understood, maintained that no form of ecclesiastical polity was found in the Bible, and, if found there, might be lawfully changed, expediency requiring it. Laud, while yet a member of the university, showing the spirit of the future man, undertook the defence of the divine right and necessity of Bishops, in his exercise for the degree of Bachelor of divinity, and, for his temerity, received a college censure. The learned Selden, the best read in ecclesiastical antiquity of any man of his time, turned the doctrine of the divine right into a jest, and Usher was too great an antiquary to be ignorant that Presbyters formerly ordained.† But it is not my purpose to give a history of opinions.

* Hallam's "Constitutional History of England," Vol. I. p. 922. † The good sense and moderation of many of the old advocates of Episcopacy, some of them among the brightest ornaments of their church, should put some modern writers to the blush. If those who assert, that, from the time of the Apostles to the Reformation, "no other form of government but the Episcopal had ever been known to the Christian Church," mean, by the "Episcopal form of government," such as is at this day established in England, they must be prepared to hear either their learning or their honesty called in question. They must know, if they have ever dipped into the original writings of primitive antiquity, that a Bishop, for some time after the name came to be generally appropriated to the first or presiding Presbyter, had charge only of a single parish or congregation, and was in fact, no more than what may be called a congregational or parochial Bishop. They must know that no such thing as a Diocesan Bishop then existed. Erius in the fourth century, instead of being "the first person who ever thought of confounding Bishops and Presbyters," as it is pretended (Le Bas' "Life of Wiclif,” p. 300,) only asserted the old doctrine. St. Luke and St. Paul had certainly confounded them before him. The doctrine of their identity, however, had become in his day in a measure obsolete. He attempted to revive it, and, meeting the usual fate of reformers, was treated as an innovator.

There is something peculiarly disingenuous, to use no harsher epithet, in the mode of appeal to antiquity sometimes adopted by the friends of Episcopacy. Thus, because the term Bishop occurs in the early writers, as the name of a church officer, they give their readers to understand that Bishops, such as we now have them, then existed. They must know, as I have said, that it was not so. A sort of Episcopacy was early introduced, to be sure, but it was not Diocesan Episcopacy.

Thus far I have treated of the question of ordination in reference to the Episcopal controversy, which is the attitude in which it has been generally viewed. We infer the validity of Presbyterian ordination, strictly so called, in opposition to the Episcopal claim, from the fact, that the original Bishops, the only ones known to Scripture or antiquity, were simply Presbyters. Of this fact we think we have the clearest historical proofs. I have but hinted at the nature of these proofs. I have not attempted to spread them before you in full, nor shall I. I wish to take broader ground, and discuss the question of ordination, not simply with reference to the Episcopal controversy, but to its general merits; especially as I discover, as I think, in a portion of the community, great remaining misapprehensions on the subject of ecclesiastical power, usage, and polity, some of them affecting important rights.

I am to speak of the nature of ordination, to show what is its purport, and to whom the right or power to ordain belongs. In doing this, I must touch briefly on the spirit and end of Christianity, the character of the ministry, and the nature and primitive constitution of the church.

Jesus left no form of external polity, nor could he, consistently with the purpose he had in view, have ordained any as invariable and permanent. He came, not to introduce any partial, temporary, and local institution, but to give to the world, the whole world, and to all future ages, a religion suited to man's spiritual and progressive nature, a religion which, recognising the soul's freedom, worth, and immmortality, labors to rescue it from the withering embrace of sin, to endow it with inward piety and strength, minister to its growth in godlike virtue and benevolence, and procure for it pardon, peace, and unfading joy in a final union with its Father. Its end is the sanctification, improvement, and progress of natures formed in the glorious image of the Divinity. It descends from heaven to bear the human soul up thither. It comes to speak of that better world where is the spirit's home; of that eternity, through which its thoughts even now wander, and for which it would fit and educate it.

The Bishops of primitive times were all equal, each being the Pastor of a single flock. "One altar, one Bishop," was the maxim. He was a mere Presbyter-bishop, "unbeneficed, unrevenued, and unlorded."