of the Synagogue; the leading feature of Christian worship being the Eucharist, to which there was nothing corresponding in the Synagogue worship. And, even supposing that there might be some similarity between the government of separate Jewish and Christian congregations, this would not help us to determine how the whole Church of a city or district, consisting of many congregations, was governed.

Neither was the Christian Episcopate a copy of the Levitical gradations of high priests and priests. It is true that the Fathers, such as Clement, see typical references in the one to the other, but the fact of Episcopal rule is amply accounted for by the previous existence of Apostolic authority.

All difficulties vanish if we but remember, that in New Testa ment times Church rule had not hardened, or crystallized, as the saying is, into a fixed system. It could not do so as long as the paternal autocracy of the primitive Apostolate was in existence. Names, too, were applied loosely, and offices appear as gifts of the Spirit; but this state of things could not continue, and can never be reproduced. I do not see how such a rule as the Apostolic could possibly crystallize into any government, except that which we find existing all over the world in the second and third centuries.

SECTION II.

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION.

Episcopacy has been held by some to be a Divine inɛtitution, or at least one that has a Divine sanction, and yet not to be traceable to Apostolic Succession.

It has been asserted to have been developed during the latter part-i.e., the last thirty years-of the first century, and to owe its origin mainly to the influence of St. John. The Episcopate of the second century is thus supposed not to spring from the Apostolate, but from the Presbyterate. A break is assumed between the Apostolic and the earliest Episcopal rule; during which interval some sort of Presbyterian or Congregational system is supposed to have existed. This was found not equal to the requirements of the times, and so the surviving Apostles, and notably St. John, elevated deserving presbyters everywhere into Bishops, and in this way the Episcopate of the Catholic Church was founded.

I believe this theory to be without historical foundation, and to be quite inadequate to account for the universal spread of Episcopal rule; and besides this, an acquaintance in early years with the life and workings of the Presbyterian system, has impressed upon me very strongly a conviction of the moral impossibility of any primitive (i.e., Apostolically-ordained) Presbyterian system having been superseded without a disruption of the Church from the first.

The earliest Episcopacy naturally arises out of the Episcopacy, i.e., the oversight, exercised by the Apostle

St. Paul,' and committed by him during his absence, or at his death, to his delegates or vicars; and this oversight or Church rule, both as the Apostle exercised it, and as he commissioned his delegates to exercise it, could not, unless by a miracle, issue in anything else except the Episcopate of the Church Catholic.

What are the incontrovertible facts?

Till about the year 70, the only ultimate authority (of course excepting that of St. James at Jerusalem) was the Apostolic. It is idle to speculate about the local government of this or that Church, when there was a power existing personally in one man, which might enable him to write to any Church such a sentence as we find in the first Epistle to the Corinthians: "If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord." (1 Cor. xiv. 37.)

It is idle, I say, to speculate about whether the goverument of the Corinthian Church in St. Paul's time was Episcopal, or Presbyterian, or Congregational. If these words were well spoken, it was really under a Theocracy as direct as that of the Church in the wilderness, though the outward signs might not be so overpowering.

This state of things lasted till the death of St. Paul. By the middle of the next century-i.e., about 80 years afterwards-Episcopacy was so universally established, that the very memory of any other form was unknown to such men as Irenæus and Tertullian; that is, to men who must have been not only alive, but sufficiently old to observe what was going on in the middle of that century.

1 Of course this is not to be taken as excluding the rest of the Apostles. I merely mention St. Paul because we have his history and Church rule principally mentioned in the New Testament.

How, then, was this universal prevalence of Episcopacy brought about?

It is impossible to conceive that a man like St. Paul would have left in a state of anarchy the Churches which he had founded. The Apostle not only taught and built up his Churches, but watched over them with the eye of a most careful and vigilant ruler. Whatever under-pastors they might have, he yet held himself to be the pastor of each Church; so that he could say respecting each, "I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ."

It is preposterous to suppose that a man who took such a view of his responsibilities would make no provision for the permanent oversight of the Churches which he had founded.

What permanent provision, then, did he make?

It is impossible to suppose that he instituted anything like Presbyterian institutions (i.e., institutions involving the holding of governing powers equally by the several members of a college of presbyters), for if he had, it is quite certain that we should have had some account of it; for be it remembered that, of all forms of Church rule, Presbyterianism, if it is intended to be permanent, is the most artificial and complicated.

I say "if it is to be permanent," for it is a system which requires numerous provisions to keep it from sliding into Episcopacy on the one hand, or into mere Congregational Democracy on the other. A system in which the supreme power is held in trust by a college of presbyters, if it is to be permanent, must contain checks against the ambition of those who would turn the office of temporary president into a permanent one. It must contain provisions for the election of the elders on each ruling board ·

and, if the system is to be general, for the representation of these at provincial synods. When the supreme power is held by one person, the problem of government is far simpler than when it is shared by many; for in the latter case a multiplicity of rules come in to preserve to each person his due share. In fact, something like a constitution is implied, if any such system is to work either efficiently or permanently. I need hardly say that no trace of any such system exists in any record of the early Church.

We have had existing in Scotland a Presbyterian system which has stood its ground for three centuries; but the smallest acquaintance with it will serve to show that it is a very elaborate system, requiring the most constant watchfulness on the part of those who are under it to keep its machinery in due operation.

Of course the Apostle ordained no such system as a permanency; his Epistles, especially those which are occupied with Church government, recognise no inherent power in people or in presbyters. If the Apostle ordained any Presbyterian system, he must either have established a loose, unorganized system, which must in the nature of things speedily fall into anarchy, and have to be supcrseded by some other mode of Church rule; all which, I think, is exceedingly contrary to all that we know of the Apostle or else he must have ordained a system which he intended to be permanent, in which case he must have impressed upon it the traditional principles, and formed it into the organization calculated to ensure its permanency; and if he had so done, all experience of Presbyterianism is against the idea that the presbyters would ever have surrendered their rights even to such an A postle as St. John, without a struggle which would have left a very deep mark on the earliest history of Christendom.