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Reply to anti-episcopal objections.

[СНАР. canons established from time to time to regulate the appointment, and specify the duties of the three different orders. The most important reference for this purpose is the book, entitled "Apostolic Canons," which, though not so ancient as the title "Apostolic" would imply, nor as some learned critics have maintained, is nevertheless of great and acknowledged antiquity. That it contains rules of discipline traditionally preserved and gathered from the general practice of the primitive times we are as fully warranted in maintaining, as that the long known declaration of our Faith, called the Apostles' creed, (and which we cannot trace to the Apostles as its authors,) contains a genuine summary of Apostolic doctrine'.

CHAPTER III.

THE evidence advanced in the preceding chapters, both from Scripture and from primitive antiquity, to prove the Apostolic institution of Episcopal Church polity, contains a very small proportion only of the testimonies which might have been brought forward, had this discourse been intended to exhaust the whole subject, and to pursue every topic of inquiry through every possible ramification. But it seems extremely probable that the general reader, already weary of our quotations, or perhaps pronouncing them superabundant, will now be less desirous of further arguments than curious to know by what methods those which we have adduced are replied to, or evaded by our anti-episcopalian brethren. He will now be prepared to ask, what authorities do they appeal to, as of sufficient weight to counterbalance such a host of witnesses? How can they, without self-condemnation, lift up their voices against the concurrent voice of all antiquity? or how pretend to understand and explain the constitution of the ancient Church of Christ more cor

For quotations from the Apostolic Canons, as well as from the decrees of various councils, respecting clerical subordination, and the several descriptions of Church officers, see note (J) at the end of the volume.

rectly than the ancients themselves? The expedients which at different times have been resorted to for eluding our deductions from Scripture and from antiquity, are numerous and often plausible, but will not bear the test of careful investigation. We propose examining in succession a few of the most specious and popular.

1. The first of these fallacies to be mentioned respects accidental omissions by the Fathers in their enumeration of Church offices. Whenever any Father has occasion in his writings to name two only among the three offices, an inference is confidently and absurdly made that the office which he omits must be the Episcopal; that Presbyters and Deacons must alone have existed in his time; and that Bishops, consequently, must be an invention of later ages. And this confident inference is not supposed to be at all invalidated by the fact, that the very same Father, (in other passages of the very work which they appeal to,) alludes distinctly to the existence of three orders, and regards Episcopacy in particular as an Apostolical institution. reasoners appear to value more highly what a writer has not written than what he has written. They place more reliance upon the silence, than upon the speech of a witness. They supply all deficiencies from the stores of their own ingenuity, and attach more importance to his omissions in some one instance than to his direct assertion in many others.

These

Thus the Bishop of Rome, St. Clement, styled by the Romanists Pope Clement the first, mentions (in his epistle to the Corinthians, already largely quoted from,) that the Apostles, after preaching through various countries, ordained Bishops and Deacons out of the best qualified of their disciples: and he refers to the following prophecy of Isaiah as a warrant for these ordinations-" I will appoint their overseers," (bishops) "in righteousness, and their ministers" (deacons) "in faith." From this quotation, it has been fallaciously argued, that St. Clement considered Presbyters and Deacons as one and the same order: that this Bishop of Rome had no knowledge of Bishops properly so called: and that all ministerial functions, in his time, were divided between Presbyters and Deacons. Such is the argument from the silence of this holy Father. But let us place beside it the 7

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First objection, omissions by the Fathers. [CHAP.

really more important argument from his actual declarations. We have already seen the same venerable writer alluding plainly to the existence of three orders; asserting the pre-eminence of Bishops, and inculcating subordination upon Presbyters. He draws a clear distinction between the chief rulers (yoúμɛvo, or præpositi) and the Presbyters; he admonishes the people to venerate the former, and to show due reverence for the latter'. He draws his reason for confining the inferior Christian ministers to their subordinate functions, from the circumstance that three distinct orders of Church officers existed under the Jewish economy; each order restricted to its own peculiar duties. He exhorts the Corinthians, every one of them to bless God in his proper station, not exceeding his appointed rule of service: and he insists that greater care to avoid schism and disorder was required in the Christian Church than in the Jewish, conformably to the equitable maxim, "The greater our knowledge, the more fearful our responsibility."

That St. Clement should not always give a full enumeration of ecclesiastical dignities, when his subject leads him to mention two of them, is not extraordinary; and affords no proof that he recognised two only. We ourselves, in the prayer for the clergy, mention only "Bishops and Curates:" without meaning to deny that a third order is established in the Church, or intending to confound the two orders of Presbyters and Deacons, for each of which we have distinct duties and distinct forms of ordination. As another instance of similar omission, we may refer to the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. In that single chapter there is mention, no less than five times, of " Apostles and Elders," or of " Apostles, Elders, and Brethren" in the Church of Jerusalem, without the slightest notice of Deacons, though Deacons certainly had been before appointed in that Church 2.

St. Augustin, in like manner, when he conceives the sixteenth verse of the forty-fifth Psalm to be a prophecy concerning the divine appointment of Christian ministers, follows the very method of St. Clement, when the latter, as we have seen, made a similar prophetical application from

1 See note at the commencement of Chap. II.

2 Acts vi.

Isaiah. The prophet, in his text, had only specified two classes of persons: the Psalmist only notices one. One class only therefore, in the latter instance, and two only in the former, could, without interpolation, have been inferred. Neither Clement, however, nor Augustin could be expected to interpolate the Old Testament; with a view of obviating the kind of inference from their silence, which, according to the fallacy we are now exposing, might be deduced. The words of St. Augustin are, "What is the meaning of the declaration, Instead of thy fathers thou shalt have children? The Apostles," he continues, " are the fathers. Instead of them, sons are born unto thee: namely, those that are called Bishops." How absurd would be a conclusion from this passage, that St. Augustin acknowledged only one class of ministers to be divinely constituted in the Church-namely, the Episcopal.

But an omission still more apposite to our purpose is made even by St. Clement himself, in the thirty-second chapter of the very Epistle now in question. He speaks of Priests and Levites as the ministers of God's altar, under the Jewish dispensation; but on the subject of the High Priest he is utterly silent-a silence quite as extraordinary and as effectual to prove the non-existence of the High Priesthood; as the silence of the same author in the corresponding passage, (so obtrusively insisted on,) is effectual to prove the non-existence of the Episcopate1.

But let us see how such a mode of arguing would startle any conscientious reasoner on other subjects of still more serious import. Suppose that any adversary to the doctrine of the Trinity were allowed the same privilege of

1 It appears a needless concession to allow that St. Clement, when he speaks of "Overseers and Ministers," actually omits the Episcopal order: since perhaps the order really as well as nominally omitted is that of Presbyters. We have only to assert (and our assertion is as good as that of our opponents) that Presbyters are here included under the general name of Ministers, if the word minister be taken in the popular and indefinite acceptation, which then, as now, would occasionally prevail. But, after all, may not St. Clement here refer to the period previous to the nomination of Bishops, when Presbyters and Deacons were the only Church officers whom the Apostles had appointed? It may be added that the Apostles retained for a longer period the government of the Churches in Western than in Eastern Christendom.

drawing inferences from omissions: he would quote passages to be found in Scripture where the Father and the Son alone are spoken of, and deny the personality of the Holy Ghost'. Or again, from other texts which make exclusive mention of the Father and of the Holy Ghost, he would draw conclusions adverse to the divinity of the Son.

But perhaps the most distinct illustration of the absurdity in question may be collected from secular affairs, and from daily circumstances in ordinary life. For instance, let us imagine that any early writer of English history should mention two branches only of our Legislature, the Lords and Commons, would any rational commentator feel entitled to conclude that no third branch existed? that there was then no King in England? and that the royal dignity was an institution of later times? Or suppose the same historian, in another page of his history, to mention the King and Lords: would an inference be warranted that no House of Commons then existed, and that the people did not, till afterwards, enjoy a share of political power? more especially if the very same writer, in other parts of his work, should represent King, Lords, and Commons as all of them essential parts of the English constitution ??

2. Another practice very frequent with anti-episcopalian writers is to put a modern construction upon words and phrases, and to insist that the Fathers of the Church must have used them in the same acceptation with ourselves. Thus, because the Greek term parochia (rapoikia), from which our English word parish is derived, was used commonly in the three first centuries, as synonymous with diocese (dioiknois), to express the territorial limits of a Bishop's jurisdiction, it has been argued that a Bishop, in those times, held only one Church; presided only in a single congregation; and was in fact no higher than a parish priest. No conclusion could be more precipitate nor more unfounded. The word άoukot, or parishioners, together with various others from the same root, is applied in Scripture to persons

1 Col. ii. 2.

2 Should the reader desire further information on this passage from St. Clement, he will find the subject discussed at large by Bishop Beveridge, in the chapter of his work on the Apostolic Canons, entitled "De Episcopis."