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ON THE EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR OF EPISCOPACY, AS A DISTINCT ORDER, IN THE FIRST CENTURY.

Continued from p. 4.

WE will now shew the subject in station which daily exposed them to

another light. For this purpose let one fact be granted, which was never denied by any candid adversary of primitive episcopacy, namely, that this order, in the sense contended for, was actually existing and generally established as early as the year 160. Now the mere existence of an institution affords a presumption that it has existed so long as nothing can be proved to the contrary, and this presumption throws the burden of the proof on the party denying; it is, however, not meant to insist upon that advantage, but to call for another account of this phænomenon on the fair and equitable ground, that, as the existence of episcopacy at the period now before us is linked to a chain of circumstantial evidence, which runs through the period immediately preceding up to the apostolic age, the conclusion drawn from that evidence must either be allowed at once, or overturned by inferences equally cautious from authorities of equal antiquity. But, in addition to the slender reasons which have been already considered, no attempt, so far as I know, has hitherto been made to account for an appearance, so prominent and striking as that of the universally allowed existence of a proper episcopacy in the middle of the second century, but by supposing a secret and progressive usurpation to have taken place upon the primitive rights of the presbytery.

On this supposition here is a strange phænomenon indeed:-the primitive martyrs and confessors acting in a manner at once unprincipled and absurd; from the most undesigning of mankind converted into intriguing politicians; usurping power while themselves were objects of persecution; and soliciting by false pretensions a CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 27.

die for the truth.

But the solution of this fact, as given by the advocates of presbytery, is still more strange: personal preeminence in the church was brought about imperceptibly; or, in other words, an insensible revolution took place!

Does history then or experience teach us that power has so few charms for the heart of man, as to be abandoned to every bold pretender without a struggle or a remonstrance; or is ecclesiastical power alone exempt from the general fascination? Revolutions, indeed, in taste and sentiment, in languages and habits, are yearly and insensibly taking place in the world; but revolutions in order and government are things anxiously ob served, and deeply felt, and long remembered. The management of an obscure club of mechanics could not pass from a committee to a president, without producing debates with which the parish would ring. If then a similar revolution had taken place at this time in church government, what might be expected in the writings of the earliest fathers? Narratives, remonstrances, appeals, replies, rejoinders, the natural effusions of minds. heated by contention, or zealous for rights, struggling on the one hand to seize, and on the other to retain authority. Yet I will venture to affirm, that in these compositions no traces of dissension can be discovered but those in which the laity constituted one party and the clergy the other. Ecclesiastics were then bound to one another by ties, which neither interest nor ambition were able to separate; they were mortified to all aspiring views by fellowship in sufferings.

Supposing, again, a total silence on the subject from the cessation of scrip

S

ture evidence to the period assumed, how small is the interval (little more than sixty years) to be accounted for; how powerful and certain must have been the operation of principles then established upon the age immediately preceding; and how clearly do the features of episcopacy, when she emerges with unclouded brightness in the middle of the second century, proclaim her of the same family with that, which became partially obscured in the conclusion of the first. It may be proved, that the angels of the apocalypse were bishops; and, as we find by the confession of all parties, the same hierarchy established (and that with a consistence which no order of things immediately assumes) within sixty years after, how is the profound silence of contemporary writers, on the subject of usurpation, to be accounted for, but by supposing that there was no such thing; or how is the fact of the existence of episcopacy to be accounted for, but by supposing that it had existed from the beginning? The mere continuance of an old establishment may easily fail of being directly noticed in the records of the times; but the commencement of a new one could not be overlooked.

Another question arising out of this hypothesis, and not easily answered by it, is, under what favourable circumstances episcopal encroachment be came as universal as it seems to have been unregarded? The propagation of the gospel has been ascribed by an infidel to the overruling hand of its great author; but by what hand were the silent footsteps of this consequent usurpation conducted from city to city and from province to province, so that at length no vestige of pure and primitive equality remained in the church?

It cannot but strike every thinking man, that at the period I have assumed (the year one hundred and sixty) the effect of such a struggle, as is here supposed, must have been a diversity of constitutions; in one city, for instance, an aspiring presbyter would have subdued his brethren; in another, the equal humility, or equal spirit and vigilance of the clergy, would have preserved the primitive purity, so that the christian world in this part of the second century would have exhibited a motley group of presbyteries and bishoprics; for it is not within the bounds of probability to

suppose, that in every place, at the same time, a race of men should have arisen equally bold and ambitious, and, what is much more, that they should have met with the same uniform and silent acquiescence. This is to suppose every city in Christendom to have produced a tyrant and none a patriot.

The establishment of christianity, with its first constitution, whatever it was, cannot be accounted for but by supposing a course of miraculous interventions in its behalf: but in the course of a single century the unrecorded, unresisted, universal reception of another order would have required nothing less than an equal influence on the understandings and passions of men.

What account then can be given of a fact, which no one ever denied or, probably, doubted; that at this period (A.C. 160) episcopacy was established without a rival, not only in the great cities; not only in a few central provinces, of which the leading ministers might, by a stretch of conjecture, be supposed to carry on a concerted plan; but to the very extremity of the Roman Empire, wherever the gospel itself had been established? I would ask,what account can be given of this fact but continuance and not usurpation? Poor and remote cities were out of the reach of change; they were not worth a revolution. Had presbytery ever been planted in such situations a century before, it would have been found there still.

My last argument shall be drawn from the authority of tradition, an invidious and suspected word which I have purposely chosen, because I think that in the great controversy between the Romish and Protestant Churches, the one party had raised this species of proof to an height which it could not support; the other have sunk it so low as to affect the general credibility of historical evidence. But as the ground of all our reasonings on this subject, it will be necessary to transcribe two passages from Irenæus, one of which was adverted to above. Traditionem itaque apostolorum in toto mundo manifestatam adest perspicere omnibus qui veru velint videre, et habemus annumerare eos qui ab apostolis instituti episcopi in ecclesiis, et successores eorum usque ad nos. From such a barbarous version, in which alone the greater part of this

venerable work is now to be found, I turn with pleasure to the following passage, which has been fortunately preserved in the original Greek. The English reader, however, will be satished with a faithful version. "The apostles having founded the Church (of Rome), committed the administration of the bishopric to Linus. Of this Linus, Paul maketh mention in his epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anencletus; after him, and in the third place from the apostles, the bishopric devolved upon Clemens, who also had seen the apostles and conferred with them, and had still their preaching sounding in his ears, and their tradition before his eyes; and not he alone, for as yet many were left alive, who had been taught by the apostles. This Clemens was succeeded by Euarestus, and Euares tus by Alexander: afterwards Xystus, the sixth from the apostles, was constituted bishop, and next Telesphorus, who afterwards glorified God by martyrdom. Then followed Hyginus, and after him Pius, whose successor was Anicetus, who was followed by Soter, and now this station is filled by Eleutherius, twelfth in order from the apostles."

This is tradition: let us, therefore, fairly weigh its credibility. In all this chain there are only two links of oral evidence, that which connects the intelligence of Irenæus with Polycarp, and of Polycarp with St. John. Now, allowing the authenticity of this citation, which has never been doubted, there are only two ways of eluding the information which it contains; one, by supposing that Irenæus meant to deceive; another, that he was himself deceived. To repel the accusation of fraudulent designs let it be remembered, that the passage in question is found, not in a work directly historical, but controversial; that the facts asserted are not points to be proved, but assumed as previously proved, or rather as universally assented to, the episcopal succession being merely quoted as the channel through which certain orthodox doctrines were alleged to have been conveyed. Had these facts been designedly falsified, the bishop of Lyons had to contend with adversaries not deficient either in acuteness or information. The Valentinians were not illiterate fanatics, but, like the other casts of Gnosticisin, men whose minds were over

run with false and fantastic science. Every thing asserted lay within the compass of little more than a century, in a learned and inquisitive age, and in the most cultivated portion of the earth. Had, therefore, a fraud been intended, if there were no such order or succession as was pretended, what had the writer to expect but inevita ble detection and disgrace?

But neither was Irenæus himself deceived; for when a man publishes to the world what he has seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears, or when he affirms a fact of public notoriety, or a series of facts of uninterrupted continuance, which are happening at the very time he writes in a neighbouring city; this is not tradition but original and authentic intelligence. Such was the knowledge which Irenæus had of Polycarp in his early days, such also was the fact that Eleutherius was then bishop of Rome. Every thing tends to confirm these circumstances: with respect to the first, Irenæus was a native Asiatic; as to the second, a friendly and charitable correspondence was then maintained between different churches and the intercourse between Rome and Lyons in the time of Verus was not less direct, and probably not much less frequent, than between London and Edinburgh at present. But of what he affirms concerning the persons whose names appear in this catalogue, and who were out of his recollection; of the information derived to him through Polycarp from the apostles; and of the conclusions in favour of their common order to be de rived from thence, a different account must be given. I assert then that a tradition, consisting of two steps only, conveyed by men of allowed integrity and clear understandings, not embracing minute circumstances, nor confined to single facts, however important, but referring to a whole order of things, to the discipline and government of the society, to which the informant belonged, points which agitated all the feelings and engrossed much of the attention of that society: I assert that such a tradition could not be false.

The following illustration will set this idea in a clearer light. If, in defect of all contemporary written evidence, it were told me by a man of sense and probity, who had received the same account from one who had

been a party in the transaction, that in the civil wars of the seventeenth century, the usurper Cromwell had violently turned the House of Commons out of doors, I might not possibly yield the same full and undoubting assent to this story that I should have done, had it been written and published at the time, yet my doubts would not be considerable. But to the minute circumstances of the narrative, as whether Cromwell entered the house at ten o'clock or eleven, covered or uncovered, with his sword drawn or by his side; whether his attendants remained in the lobby, advanced half way up the house, or beset the speaker's chair; to these as related through the channel of the most unsuspected tradition I should not deem much regard to be due. But if the intelligence conveyed through this short and unbroken chain of tradition were some great outline of tradition, like the following, that, for a certain number of years in the last century, the existence of regal and episcopal authority in England was suspended and afterwards restored, this information would not only claim the fullest assent at present, but, if committed to writing (the authenticity of that writing being proved,) would be entitled to the same regard a thousand years hence.

If thus much is conceded (and it cannot be denied) to the testimony of Irenæus, it will lay the hypothesis of original parity among the ministers of the church, and a successive usurpation by certain individuals upon the rights of the body, under the following difficulties. Either Irenæus was unacquainted with the rank and office of one of the most distinguished characters in the church, and one to whom he had familiarly been known; or secondly, Polycarp was an usurper; or lastly, St. John himself, in his declining years, did at least connive (I put this supposition in the most decent and favourable terms) at the introduction and progress of a new and domineering regimen in the church.

Lastly, If we fix the date of this passage in Irenæus, according to the common accounts, at A. C. 178, which is eighteen years lower than episcopacy is allowed to be found in the church, Eleutherius was a bishop in the sense contended for; but in Irenæus, not merely the same word is employed, but it is employed in the same singular and appropriate sense to denote the functions of Polycarp, of Eleutherius, and of the predecessors of the latter at Rome. Whatever, therefore, Eleutherius then was, Polycarp had been: Polycarp had been constituted what he was under the auspices and authority of one apostle at least: Eleutherius was a bishop in the strictest sense: episcopacy, therefore, in the same sense, is an apostolical constitution.

For the same reason the predecessors of Eleutherius were bishops also. Included as they are in the same series, deduced in chronological order; holding their offices for life; distin guished from the body of the clergy; not losing their genealogy after a few years in a cloud of obscure and equal presbyters; but preserving their line unentangled to its origin-the allowed episcopacy of the second century is identified with the ecclesiastical regimen of the first: the consequence of which is, that episcopacy was instituted by the apostles, and therefore comes from God.

The comparison between the two cases may be drawn still closer. Dr. Morley, bishop of Winchester, a great actor and sufferer in the same unhappy times, died in 1684: the pious and amiable Wilson, bishop of Man, was born in 1663, was therefore twentyone years of age at the death of bishop Morley; and, consequently, might have conversed with him. Bishop Wilson died in 1755, and is remembered by several persons yet alive. Were a modern divine, or a bishop, if you please, who had conversed with Dr. Wilson, as he is supposed to have done with Dr. Morley, in a controversy with the Dissenters of the present day, to affirm, on this authority, the prior existence, the temporary suspension, and lastly, the final restoration of the episcopal order, nearly a century and a half ago, in defect of all written evidence on the subject, would it be reasonable to reject this proof at a remote period of THE following communication reachtime, the written record being allowed us before the publication of J. P.'s ed to be authentic? I should think letter on the same subject, in our last it unreasonable in the highest degree. number (p. 67); and although we

do not attach so much importance to the discussion as our correspondents seem to do, yet, as the disputed passage is involved in real difficulty, we think it right to give them an opportunity of stating their sentiments upon it*.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. Οι σαρκικοι τα πνευμα]ικα πράσσειν & δυνανται, εδε οἱ πνευματικοι τα σαρκικα, Ign. ad Eph. The carnal cannot do the works of the spirit, neither the spiritual things carnal. THE erroneous statement of G. S. O. P. M. Vol. II. No. 11, has induced me to send you some additional remarks on Rom. vii. 14, &c. I do this with much reluctance, after the forbearing reply of Paulinus; and because I feel as if controversy did not become me. Being, however, charged with intentions, of which I am not conscious, and held up as attempting to fritter away the truth, there can be little impropriety in exonerating myself from such imputations. When we have made up our minds on a subject, we may think it plain and obvious; but the passage under consideration is so far from being so in reality, that the most pious and learned are not agreed as to its true meaning. Even the penetrating Jerome, in his answer to the enquiries of the pious and zealous Aglesia, confesses, that it is a subject involved in many difficulties. Nor has your correspordent antiquity in his favour. The interpretation, which he thinks plain and obvious, owes its credit and authority to Augustin; and is not countenanced by any preceding writer of distinction. The more ancient fathers saw, indeed, the difficulty of the passage, and its liability to abuse; but their expositions rather guard the ignorant, and caution the vicious against apply ing it to St. Paul, the confirmed christian, than oppose any such interpretation maintained by men of piety and

talents.

Paulinus rests the weight of his in

* We have sometimes been greatly surprised at the confidence with which sensi

ble men have ventured to advance their own interpretations of this text as almost infallible; and at their impatience of opinions in any degree differing from their own, as if there were no room for doubt respecting its true import.

terpretation on the following marks of good in the soul. "He disallows and hates the evil which he does, insomuch that it is not so properly he who does it as sin that dwelleth in him; he consents to the law that it is good, he delights in it after the inner man, he serves it with the mind, he himself serves it."

With due deference to Paulinus, I beg leave to suggest the reasons which induce me to believe that the passages, to which he alludes, are strictly applicable to the case of any unre generate person of an informed conscience, whether a professing christian or a heathen.

1. Sincere repentance implies a change of mind and conduct, a sorrow for and a forsaking of sin; and it is equally true, that every real penitent begins a new life by putting away his greatest sins.

When his conscience becomes more and more enlightened, other offences, not at first visible, are seen, felt, repented of, and forsaken. But the word of God affords instances of characters approving of, and delighting in, what is good, without departing from sin and yielding to God the fruits of a christian life: of this

description was Herod. He heard John the Baptist with pleasure, and did many good things; while, at the same time, he lived in the allowed transgression of the seventh commandment; and even added, also, to his other sins, the positive breach of

the sixth.

2. The position I have laid down is countenanced by our Lord, in his description of the stony-ground hearers, which we must allow to be a just description, being delineated by him received the divine word with atten"to whom all hearts be open." They tion, approbation, and delight; yet, nevertheless, their passions proved too strong for their convictions; for, in time of temptation, they fell away.

3. What I have advanced is further confirmed by the writings of such as had no other guide except natural conscience. The outward and the inward man are noticed by the Stoic Cleanthes; and they are somewhat enlarged upon, and their opposition strongly marked, by Galen. Τι ποθ ̓ ἐσθ' ό, τι βάλει, θυμε, τουτο μοι Φράσον.

Εχω λογισμον παν ὁ βουλομαι ποιεῖν,
Βασιλικον πλην όμως ειπον παλιν.
Ως αν επιθυμῷ ταυθ ̓ ὑπως γενησεται.

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