conclusion rests, our labour will not have been altogether in vain.

I have hitherto, by abstaining from the many ethical deductions that presented themselves to my mind in the course of my investigation, studiously endeavoured to avoid the appearance of invading the sacred function. There is a decorum in leaving to those "who minister in holy things" the discussion of the subjects proper to their office, which I feel the utmost unwillingness, in any degree, to violate. But, notwithstanding, one of these deductions has so close a connection with the obligations of Christianity which are peculiar to our own times, that I cannot refrain from recording it, before I finally take leave of the subject.

No prophecy regarding the final triumphs of Messiah's kingdom, can possibly have received its accomplishment, in the circumstances of the first propagation and establishment of Christianity in the earth. If I have read their history aright, its corruption always kept pace with its diffusion, during these early periods. Let, then, those who bear, in our days, the ark of the New Covenant between God and man, and all who have joined the solemn and mysterious procession whereby it is rapidly borne onwards, "thank God and take courage." The clouds of ignorance and of error lower in dense and accumulated masses, over the perilous paths which were the scenes of the early progress of this precious depository of the hopes of the human race: the future, and the future only, is refulgent with the glory of God!

APPENDIX.

I HAVE felt myself called upon, in the preceding work, to avow my attachment to the Church of England. And the circumstances of the times seem also to render imperative upon me, the duty of stating my reasons for that attachment, on such parts of the question between her and her opponents, as have been brought under my notice in the course of the investigation.

I commence with the subject of church government; regarding which, I hesitate not to repeat my conviction, that its details do not come within the scope of the revelation of the New Testament; because it is absolutely impossible for any church to arrange its internal polity in exact uniformity with the exemplar of the primitive times, unless its members be also endued with the same miraculous gifts. We cannot entertain the supposition, that the presence or absence of so important a circumstance would in no way modify or influence the form of church government: it is in itself highly improbable, and is, moreover, directly contradicted by the inspired writers. No list of ecclesiastical dignities occurs in the New Testament,1 in which all the higher ranks are not assigned to those who were miraculously gifted; to apostles, prophets, evangelists, &c. The

1 1 Cor. xii. 28. Eph. iv. 12.

2

2 If any distinct office is designated by the title evangelist, and of this there can be but little doubt, it probably consisted in a miraculous power conferred on certain of the immediate disciples of our Lord, of detailing the

ordinary offices, whether they be termed those of pastors, or teachers, or bishops, or presbyters, or deacons, are invariably spoken of, either directly or by implication, as subordinate to these. We have admitted that two distinct functions only of this nature existed in the primitive church; and that the same state of things continued in the time of Clement of Rome; the date of whose epistle, from casual allusions to certain historical facts, we are able to limit to within five years of the death of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul. But half a century afterwards, when Ignatius wrote, we find that a change had taken place in the mode of enumerating these offices. A third and superior order had been erected over the other two, for the purpose of overlooking the entire concerns of the church; of which duties the title of bishop is descriptive. Let it be observed that I only quote this author as an evidence to the fact: my opinion of the strain of mad blasphemy in which he enforces the authority of the clergy, I have, I trust, not at sll scrupled to give elsewhere.

Hermas also, his contemporary, or, perhaps, his predecessor, speaks to the same purport of "the bishop who is also the president:"3 and I believe it has never been denied that this order prevailed uninterruptedly in the church, from their times down to the period of the Reformation.

I feel no doubt that this change in church government, which took place during the latter half of the first century, originated in the disorders and confusions that disturbed the church, after the removal, by death or martyrdom, of those who

acts and discourses of their divine Master, with perfect and undeviating accuracy. I think there is an allusion to some such gift possessed by the apostle St. John, in the epistle of Irenæus to Florinus, (see above, p. 13.); and nothing is more certain, from the whole tenor of the early Christian writings, than that the facts, afterwards recorded in the Gospels, were very sedulously detailed to their converts universally, by the first propagators of Christianity; a circumstance which pretty clearly shows the necessity of the supernatural endowment we are supposing.

3 Episcopus qui et præses.

were possessed of miraculous gifts, and who in virtue of them, exercised a supreme authority therein. We know well, that it was against these, that the sword of persecution was especially unsheathed, and that they were always among the first to suffer. Nothing, therefore, is more probable than that, when the apostles had all returned to him that sent them, and the gifts of prophecy and evangelism had well nigh passed away, great and grievous inconveniences would be experienced, from the want of their superintendencé and authority. It was in vain that their successors called upon their spiritual charges for the same deference which had been willingly paid to the inspired and gifted apostles: they asked for the visible credentials which these gifted persons had presented to them, but, in the great majority of instances, they had them not; and, therefore, most probably, (for unhappily we have no historical records to guide us,) they hesitated to entrust with an uninspired and ungifted man, the powers which hitherto had only been exercised by the accredited ambassadors of heaven.

The epistle of Clement to the Corinthians establishes two points in favour of our assumption. The one is, that great confusions and disorders agitated the church at the time it was written; not confined to Corinth, but diffused very widely. The other is, that all these originated in the refusal of the people to yield to the clergy that degree of deference, which was deemed needful for the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline.

Evidence of the same state of things is also to be found in the Shepherd of Hermas, which was probably composed in order to procure for its author the credit of inspiration. And many unintelligible places, in his Visions and Similitudes, are probably allusions to persons and events connected with the quarrels in the Christian community to which he was, in some way or other, immediately attached.

We have also seen enough in the writings of Ignatius and Polycarp, to show that the question, in their time, remained a very sensitive one.

We know, then, that the church was agitated with continual dissensions regarding the authority of the clergy during the latter part of the first century:-that the persons upon whom the Holy Ghost had conferred miraculous gifts at the first annunciation of Christianity by the apostles, must, in the course of nature, have died somewhere about this period, (and we have historical evidence that many of them had then already suffered martyrdom); we have also ascertained, that these persons exclusively administered the supreme authority in the church; the symbol by which they held their high offices being the supernatural powers possessed by them. We, therefore, draw the conclusion that these divisions originated in the absence of miraculous endowments, from the ministerial qualifications of their

successors.

We conceive that these are the circumstances which led to the change in question. The supreme authority which had been exercised by the apostles, was still found to be indispensable to the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline, and was, therefore, vested in one of the presbyters of each church, to whom, as the functions of the several orders became better defined, the title of bishop was appropriated. Nor am I prepared to deny, that the foundation of such an arrangement may have been laid at an earlier period. St. Clement mentions the triple order of High Priest, Priest, and Levite, in the Jewish economy, in an argument which certainly implies, (though he does not formally express it) the existence of a corresponding triple order in the Christian church, (Epist. ad Cor. I. c. 40., ad finem.) And the title Præses, President, which the bishop retained up to the end of the second century, seems, at a very early period, to have been applied to one among their number, in each synod of Presbyters.

But waiving this point altogether, the mode of ecclesiastical polity for which we contend, was first adopted immediately upon the cessation of miracles, and remained unquestioned to the time of the Reformation. And though no one can possibly estimate the logical force of this consideration, unaided by other circumstances,