designated by any cognate or similar term in the direct language of the New Testament.

9. Presbyters are mentioned as joining the apostles in the COUNCIL at Jerusalem, but no express mention is made of bishops. Acts xv, 2, 4, 6, 22, 23.

10. The collections for the poor at Jerusalem are to be sent to the presbyters, and no mention of bishops. Acts xi, 30.

11. It is well known that each church, containing the congregation of a city and its suburbs, was, in the apostles' time, the whole diocess. It was never called diocess by the earliest Christian writers; the term parish was the usual appellation. Now presbyters are the only ministers expressly mentioned as having the oversight and government of the churches planted by Paul and Barnabas: Acts xiv, 23, “And when they had ordained them elders [presbyters] in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed."

If half so much could be said for the divine right of the superiority of bishops, as is found in Nos. 7-11, for the apparent superiority of presbyters over bishops, we should be accounted profane to doubt their eminence, dignity, powers, and authority. Here the presbyters are the only persons expressly mentioned as having the right and authority to lay on hands in ordination; what sacrilege, then, it would be said, to violate this divine order! The apostles are called presbyters; therefore presbyters are apostles, and the only successors to their power and authority. This is triumphantly proved, it would be argued in the same style, by the presbyters being the only ministers acting with the apostles in sacred council at Jerusalem. They only were intrusted with the collections sent by other churches to Jerusalem; therefore all the goods of the church are by divine right under their government. They were the only persons expressly said to be placed in each diocess by the apostles themselves: who, then, can doubt taat, whatever other ministers might be added afterward, they must be inferior to these apostolically succeeding presbyters?

Any man who knows church history, and the history of bishops, councils, and successions, will know that not a hundredth part of their proceedings have half so much

apparent divine right as is shown in the above particulars for the superiority of presbyters over bishops. And yet we do not seriously maintain that any essential difference existed between them. However, all the difference certainly appears in favour of the divine right of the superiority of presbyters over bishops. They were all bishops; but a presbyter-bishop was superior in gravity and wisdom, and in the authority which these qualities gave to him, over one who was simply a bishop.

Let the reader peruse again the statements of the succession divines, sec. i, and consider whether he finds a single point of that system established by Scriptural evidence. Not a word in the New Testament about bishops as a superior order to presbyters; about the sole power of ordaining ministers belonging to them; and about no ministry nor ordinances being valid but such as emanate from these "spiritual princes and vicegerents" of God and of Christ;-not a word will he find clearly in proof of these strange pretences.

The pretence, then, for bishops as an order superior to presbyters, has no ground in the New Testament; the CONTRARY is plainly made out in this section. Presbyters have, therefore, by DIVINE RIGHT, equally as much power to ORDAIN ministers, and to GOVERN the church, as bishops; nay, they have certainly more, for there is plain, Scriptural authority for their doing these things, but there is none expressly for bishops. ALL THE OTHER PROTESTANT CHURCHES IN EUROPE, besides the Church of England, have ordination by presbyters. Their ministers, therefore, and ordinances, are equally valid with those of the Church of England; and more conformable to EXPRESS Scripture. "Whatsoever," says Bishop Taylor, as the champion of high Church episcopacy, "was the regiment of the church in the apostles' times, that must be perpetuall, (not so as to have all that which was personall, and temporary, but so as to have NO OTHER,) for that, and that ONLY, is of divine institution which Christ committed to the apostles; and if the church be not Now governed as THEN, we can show NO DIVINE AUTHORITY for our government, which We MUST contend to doe, and doe it too, or be call'd

THE

SECTION VI.

SAME ARGUMENT

CONTINUED-PRESBYTERS

AND

BISHOPS THE SAME; PROVED FROM THE PUREST CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY.

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We are now coming upon ground of NO ESSENTIAL importance to our cause. DIVINE RIGHT can ONLY be proved by DIVINE AUTHORITY; the fathers are mere human authority: they never expected to be received in any other light. Indeed no church, not even the Church of Rome, ever confined itself to the authority of the fathers any further than they found that authority favour their schemes and designs. Let any man read even Bishop Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying, sections 5-8, and he will be abundantly satisfied on this point. A short extract or two from him may suffice. "No CHURCH at this day admits the one-half of those things, which certainly by the fathers were called traditions apostolical," sec. 5. And, therefore, it is not HONEST for either side to press the authority of the fathers, as a coNCLUDING argument in matters of dispute, unless themselves will be content to submit in all things to the testimony of an equal number of them, which I am certain neither side will do," sec. 8. One of the greatest of the fathers, St. Augustine, shall state this point, of the authority of fathers, councils, &c. To the Donatists he says, "You are accustomed to object against us the letters of Cyprian, the judgment of Cyprian, the council held under Cyprian. Now, who knows not that the holy and canonical Scripture is confined solely to the Old and New Testament; and in this it is distinguished from the writings of all succeeding bishops, that no doubt nor dispute whatever is to be had about the sacred Scriptures, as to the truth and right of any thing contained in the same: but the letters of bishops, written after the confirmation of the sacred canon, may be reprehended or corrected, if in any thing they deviate from the truth, by the wiser writings of ANY ONE having in this matter more knowledge than they, or by the weightier authority and deeper prudence of other bishops or councils. And even councils themselves, held

in particular regions or provinces, yield, without question, to the authority of fuller councils, collected from the whole Christian world; and these fuller councils are often corrected by succeeding ones, when experience has brought something to the light which was before hid, and something which escaped has become known; and all this may, and ought to be done, without any sacrilegious presumption, any inflated arrogance, and with Christian charity.' This is worthy of St. Augustine. The Scriptures are alone divine authority; all human writings and councils are fallible: their regulations are merely prudential. This the reformers maintained: this is the true principle of PROTESTANTISM.

However, we shall see whether the boasting of these writers, as to the authority of the fathers, in favour of their scheme, is not vain also. The best writers on this subject mostly confine the purest Christian antiquity to the FIRST THREE CENTURIES. Now I challenge any man to produce clear evidence of high Church episcopacy from the fathers of this period.

There is one very natural mistake into which the advocates of this opinion have fallen. It is this, that whenever bishops are mentioned distinctly from presbyters, in ancient writers, they immediately suppose their point is proved. I say this, to them, is rather a natural mistake; for such men are so accustomed to use the terms bishops and presbyters, in their own times, for what they receive as, by DIVINE RIGHT, two distinct ORDERS, that they easily fall into the persuasion that the ancient writers meant the same as they mean. Bingham has quoted, though for a different purpose, a good observation from Cardinal Bona : "They deserve very ill of the sacred rites of the church, and of their venerable antiquity, who measure all ancient customs by the practice of the present times, and judge of the primitive discipline only by the rule and customs of the age they live in; being deceived by a false persuasion, that the practice of the church never differed in any point from the customs which they learned from their forefathers and teachers, and which they have been inured to from their tender years: whereas we retain MANY WORDS in common

* Contra Donatistas, lib. ii, c. 3, pp. 32, 33, vol. vii, fol. ed., Lug duni, 1664.

with the ancient FATHERS, but in a sense AS DIFFERENT from THEIRS as our times are REMOTE from the FIRST AGES after Christ." Hence it is necessary to take care that we neither deceive ourselves, nor others, by a misapplication of words. Mr. Sinclair (p. 21) has a strange rule of criticism in these matters. Having translated the word nyovμevol, in St. Clement, by "supreme rulers," he justifies his translation by saying, that in "LATER times it is among the ordinary designations of a bishop." A very convenient way this of making the fathers say what we say. To prevent mistakes in words, it will be proper to fix the meaning of the terms ordo, gradus, &c., order and degree, as used by the fathers.

1. Order, and gradus or degree, then, are by the fathers used PROMISCUOUSLY. "It is evident," says Bishop Taylor, "that in antiquity, ordo and gradus (order and degree) were used promiscuously." Bingham says, "St. Jerome, who will be allowed to speak the sense of the ancients, makes no difference in these words, ordo, gradus, officium," (order, degree, and office.†)

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2. By these words-order, degree, and office-the fathers only meant distinct classes of persons, without implying any DIVINE authority for the arrangement. It is not denied by these divines that there were OTHER classes of persons in the primitive church besides bishops and presbyters; THESE CLASSES are also called ORDERS, offices, or degrees, by the ancients. So, for instance, among clerical ordinations, “ordinationibus CLERICIS," Cyprian mentions his ordaining Aurelius to the DEGREE, gradus," of a "READER." So of Celerinus as to the same office ;§-of Optatus to that of "SUBDEACON."|| And Cornelius, bishop of Rome, in the third century, mentions "subdeacons, clerks, exorcists, readers, and janitors." Jerome, who, Bingham grants, will give us the sense of the ancients, mentions QUINQUE ecclesiæ ORDINES, episcopi, presbyteri, diaconi, fideles, catecumeni; the FIVE ORDERS of the church, bishops, presbyters, DEACONS, the faithful, and catechumens."** And there

* Bingham's Works, vol. i, Pref., p. 2, folio, London, 1726.

† Book 2, chap. i, p. 17.

Ep. 34, p. 58.

Euseb. E. H. L. 6, c. 43.

Epistola 33, ed. Pamel.

Il Ep. 24.

** Hieronymi Op., vol. v, fol. 41, ed. 1516: Basil.