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DISSERTATION I.

ON EPISCOPACY.

CHAPTER I.

"The foul practices which have been used for the overthrow of Bishops, may, perhaps, wax bold in process of time, to give the like assault even there, from whence at this present they are most seconded. Nor let it over-dismay them who suffer such things at the hands of this most unkind world, to see that heavenly estate and dignity thus conculcated, in regard whereof so many their predecessors were no less esteemed than if they had not been men, but angels amongst men. With former Bishops it was as with Job, in the days of that prosperity which at large he describeth, saying, 'Unto me men gave ear; they waited and held their tongue at my counsel; after my words they replied not; I appointed out their way, and did sit as chief: I dwelt as it had been a king in an army.'-At this day the case is otherwise with them; and yet no otherwise than with the self-same Job at what time the alteration of his estate wrested these contrary speeches from him; 'But now they that are younger than I mock at me; the children of fools, and offspring of slaves, creatures more base than the earth they tread on; such as if they did shew their heads, young and old would shout at them and chase them through the street with a cry, their song I am, I am a theme for them to talk on.' An injury less grievous, if it were not offered by them whom Satan had through his fraud and subtilty so far beguiled, as to make them imagine herein they do unto God a part of most faithful service. Whereas the Lord in truth, whom they serve herein, is, as St. Cyprian telleth them, like not Christ (for he it is that doth appoint and protect Bishops) but rather Christ's adversary and enemy of his Church. A thousand five hundred years and upwards the church of Christ hath now continued under the sacred regiment of Bishops. Neither for so long hath Christianity been ever planted in any kingdom throughout the world but with this kind of government alone; which to have been ordained of God, I am for mine own part even as resolutely persuaded, as that any other kind of government in the world whatsoever is of God."-Hooker. Eccles. Polity.

THREE distinct ecclesiastical orders existed at the period of the Reformation, throughout every part of the Christian world, under the name of Bishops,

B

DISS. I.

CHAP. I.

Episcopacy

universal

till the time formation.

of the Re

CHAP. I.

DISS. I. Priests, and Deacons. To each of these three orders were allotted separate duties, and different degrees of rank and power. Not only among all the churches subject, in the west, to the Roman Pontiff; and in the east and south, to the Patriarchs of Antioch, Byzantium, and Alexandria ; but also among the numerous Christian societies who rejected their doctrine and disowned their authority, were the three orders in question established and maintained. The polity of the Nestorians, Monothelites, and Armenians, on one side of Christendom, as well as of the Albigenses, Waldenses, and Bohemians, on the other, was uniformly episcopal: however widely most of these numerous sectaries were opposed to the rest, and to the great communities from which they separated. The most industrious explorer of Church antiquity, searching from the shores of the Atlantic, to those of the Indian Ocean, from Abyssinia to Scandinavia, has never yet distinctly traced a single Church, in which a hierarchy possessed of diocesan rights and privileges did not, at the period here referred to, prevail'.

Apostolically instituted:

As the Christian hierarchy were in actual and universal possession of these peculiar rights and privileges, so they claimed them also for their ancient and undisputed inheritance; an inheritance transmitted and held, by the venerable title of prescription, during fifteen centuries; and by

1 See note (A), at the end of the volume. See also in confirmation of this assertion, Hooker and Charles Leslie.

the still more venerable and sacred tenure of apostolical institution.

DISS. I.

CHAP. I.

Nor is this all. For when the general adherence of the episcopal order to the errors and corruptions of the Romish creed, presented, in some countries, formidable obstacles against the progress of Reformation; those pious Presbyters who had engaged in that great work, and who were thus reduced to the necessity of abandoning their design, Reluctantly departed or of contriving a new system of Church govern- from. ment and discipline, adopted this latter alternative with reluctance. They deplored as a calamity, the necessity for this innovation. They regarded it as defensible mainly on the ground of political expediency. They appear to have been overborne equally by the governors and the governed; by the jealousy and cupidity of rulers, as well as by the prejudices and clamours of the multitude, whom the obstinacy and mismanagement of their spiritual superiors had goaded almost to frenzy. In that celebrated symbol of faith, the earliest declaration of doctrine among Protestants, entitled the "Augsburg Confession," these conscientious Augsburg and reluctant innovators, express openly their sorrow that the canonical form of Church government which they earnestly desired to maintain, should, in some places, have been dissolved'. In another passage of the same important record they thus express themselves:-" Now here again we

1

Quam nos magnopere conservare cupiebamus.-See Bishop Hall's "Episcopacy by Divine Right," p. 11.

confession.

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