Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031320496 Cornell University Library arV15529 The primitive Eirenicon 3 1924 031 320 496 oiin,anx f 'Ct)e 5^rimtti\3e eirenicon ; ONE EVANGELICAL IINISTEY. APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION, DOCTRINAL, NOT TACTUAL, NOR EXCLUSIVELY EPISCOPAL; OP THE PATEIAECHAL CHUECH OF ALEXANDEIA. BT REV. MASON QALLAGHER, Rector of St. PauVs Church, Paierson, N. J. AUTHOR OP "true CHDRCHMANSHIP TINDIOATED ," "TRUE APOSTOUOAL SUCCES- ,SION," AND "the REQARD DUE TO THE TIEGIN MART." " I would there were no precedency, no priority, no dignities in the Church, but that men's estimation did only rise from virtue. But now the right hand and the lefl;, the liigher and the lower place, these terms of differency have led men, not to the truth, but unto that ditch where error muddeth itself."— St. GHEaORr Naziawzek, e^fler Farindon. • NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BT HUED AND HOUGHTON. etsmiJtHJBe! aXiierstHe ^ress. 1868. /^\ UNI VERS MY LIBRARY Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by Mason Gallagher, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. RIVXRSEDE, OAMBItmOE: STBBEOTTPED AND PRllfTBD BT H. 0. UOUGUTON AND COMPANY. To THE LAITY OF THE Protestant (Epfetopal CJurt^, UPON WHOSE ENLIGHTENED UNDERSTANDING OF THE STKUGGI^ WHICH NOW CONVULSES OUR CHURCH, AND UPON WHOSE DETERMINED RESISTANCE TO THE ERRORS AND INNOVATIONS OF THE CLERICAL BODY, WHICH PORTEND ITS DISRUPTION, THIS CHURCH, UNDER GOD, RESTS FOR ITS DELIVERANCE AND PRESERVATION, JlSfs little Tolume IS AFFECTIONATELY AND EARNESTLY ADDEESSED., PREFACE. The principal object of this essay is to show that the Church of England, in publicly acknowl- edging the validity of a ministry without episco- pal ordination or consecration, for more than a century after the Reformation, and in the best period of her history, was sustained by the pre- cedent of the Primitive Church. The patriarchal Church of Alexandria is here proved to have been episcopal in government, while, at the same time, it was without episcopal consecration or succession for the space of two hundred years immediately succeeding the times of the Apostles. Ample proof is given that the English Re- formers, Compilers, and Revisers of our stand- ards, were cognizant of the fact, and reasoned and acted accordingly. vi PREFACE. The concessions of the ablest modem divines of the same Church are here presented. The Church of England is thus fully vindicated with respect to her deliberate action in the premises. Another important point is hereby established. According to the same primitive precedent, there is in the presbyterate an original, inherent power of perpetuating the ministry in all its functions, and therefore to be exercised when required, in conjunction with the laity, to remove abuses, and to purify the Church. Again, it will be seen that the doctrine of an indispensable, unbroiien episcopal tactual succes- sion, asserted by the Romanists, was rejected by the Reformers and Revisers of our standards; and, moreover, that a large portion of the Primi- tive Church acted without respect to such a suc- cession. With the overthrow of this dogma is destroyed the structure of a human, officiating priesthood, with the system of Ritualism based upon it. The question is one of testimony, not of preju- dice or of mere individual opinion. Ample tes- timony, it is claimed, is here given to establish the statements above made. A candid examina- tion is asked, and little doubt is felt that there PBEFACE. vii will be but one decision, and that in favor of the positions here maintained. The falsity of the claim of the Church of Rome to the Primacy ; that she is the mother and mis- tress of churches, is here clearly seen. In posi- tion and learning, and consequently in influence, for the two first centuries, this Church was subor- dinate to the Church of Alexandria. Superiority, neither in learning nor zeal, but in wealth and temporal influence, gave the Church of Rome the precedence, whose kingdom for so many centuries has been manifestly of this world, not of heaven. Strange is it that the Romish writers cannot agree as to the order of the early bishops of that see; nor can they prove that for two centuries they received episcopal consecration. All such statements being based on assumptions and un- founded inferences, what becomes of that much lauded succession, upon which rests the whole anti-scriptural system of doctrine and worship, by which so large a portion of Christendom has been so long deceived and shrouded in spiritual darkness? The maintenance of the succession dogma by large numbers in our own communion strengthens Romanism by distracting the Prot- estant cause, and thus promotes schism among viii PREFACE. those holding the one scriptural faith, and the true apostolical doctrine. The argument for the general prevalence of moderate Episcopacy in primitive times is strengthened, not weakened, by the views here presented. With the Episcopacy which approved itself to Cranmer, Jewel, Usher, and Leighton, the writer is fully satisfied. He has seen nothing better in his own day. The pressing of extravagant claims, supported neither by Scripture, history, reason, or a wise policy, has jeopardized the interests, checked the growth, and sadly impaired the reputation and influence of the truly noble heritage handed down to us by the Protestant Keformers of Eng- land. The effort to extend the system of Archbishop Laud in this free, intelligent land, has proved, as might have been expected, almost a complete failure ; and whatever hold our Church has upon the American people, is owing to their convic- tion, that this system is a false, and not a true presentation of Protestant Episcopacy ; that it is ephemeral, and will become, ere long, a discred- ited novelty. To any charge of a want of attachment to the PKEFACE. IX Protestant Episcopal Church, the writer will only point to a service of near a quarter of a century in her ministry. He has no other answer to give. One of the phenomena of our Church, is the rapidity with which those newly received into our fold (and more than half our ministry have come from other communions) become sounder church- men, in their own estimation, than many who have labored a lifetime in her service. A late bishop, in one of our largest and most generally exclusive dioceses, stated to the writer, a few years since, that he had ascertained that but one fifth of his clergy had been reared in the Episcopal Church. In a communion so conglom- erate, is it strange that there is so little unity, harmony, and mutual cooperation, or, that men changing their inherited beliefs, and embracing the unscriptural and unreasonable tenets of the modern, exclusive, ^wre divino Episcopacy, should proceed to any extravagance, and even land at the true logical terminus of such a theory, the Church of Rome, the present home of four of the writer's classmates of the General Theological Seminary ? The late President Nott has wisely remarked : " Men who go over from one denomi- nation to another always stund up more than X PEEFACB. straight, and for two reasons: First, to satisfy their new friends that they have heartily renounced their former error; secondly, to convince their for- mer friends that they had good reasons for de- sertion." In view of the state of things in our Church, how singularly applicable are the words of the eminent Dr. Isaac Barrow, as quoted by Dr. Arnold, an equally eminent churchman : " A con- siderable cause of our divisions hath been the broaching scandalous names,'and employing them to blast the reputation of worthy men, bespatter- ing and aspersing them with insinuations, etc. ; engines devised by spiteful, and applied by sim- ple people ; latitudinarians, rationalists, and I know not what other names intended for reproach, though imparting better signification than those .dull detractors can, it seems, discern." From the fact that, for some time, the writer conscientiously and earnestly advocated the ex- clusive episcopal theory, he thinks that he enjoys a greater advantage in the discussion of this ques- tion. He has surveyed it from more than one direction.. He has known by experience the evils of the system against which he is earnestly con- tending. A somewhat thorough study of the PREFACE. xi writings of the English Reformers, compelled him to modify his views, and to adopt the principles of the Compilers of the Prayer Book, in prefer- ence to the innovations of Laud and of his fol- lowers. Examination of the writings of the Primitive Fathers has convinced him that the High Church principle was unknown to the Church before the times of Cyprian, two centuries after the death of most of the Apostles. He has yet to find the statements of an early author, that Primitive Episcopacy was necessarily connected with an episcopal consecration, a sec- ond ordination, or an exclusive tactual succession of a third order of the ministry. Having shown that the most important Church of antiquity, while episcopal in government, with the clearest succession of patriarchs, was yet without episcopal consecration and tactual suc- cession for two centuries, the burden of proof rea- sonably lies with those who contend that other churches possessed such a tactual and uninter- rupted succession, to make clear the fact. It has never yet been done, nor can it be with our present amount of light. The mere use of the term succession, by writers xii PREFACE. like Busebius, Irenseus, and TertuUian, does not at all settle the question, inasmuch as succession in office and place are not necessarily connected. Dr. Barrow quotes Gregory Nazianzen as saying, " Athanasius was the successor of Mark, no less in piety than in presidency ; the which we must suppose to be properly succession." This tactual episcopal succession is assumed by exclusive writers, while no satisfactory proof is furnished. In a question like this, which concerns the Church standing, and the validity of ministerial acts in the largest portion of the Reformed and Protestant Communions, mere assumptions will not pass current. The reception of these exclusive assumptions, without satisfactory proof, by Christian people, we believe, as sincere as any, has produced its natural fruits, and made our Episcopacy need- lessly repulsive and odious. Primitive Episcopacy, saddled with these hu- man additions, how it has lost its rightful posi- tion ! In the Roman Church, the effect is seen in the almost complete destruction of spiritual religion, and the substitution of an amalgam of Judaism, Paganism, and a corrupted Christianity, whose latest and most favorite dogma, the sinless Con- PREFACE. xiii ception of the Virgin Mary, has been borrowed from the Koran of Mohammed. In the Anglican Church, the result has been the repulsion of a large portion of the most religious minds of the nation from its communion. In our own Church, it is seen in the sacrifice of strength and numbers, which might readily have been se- cured ; in a waning influence ; in intestine strife ; in the increase of formalism; and in the intel- lectual deterioration of the clerical body. The history of the past, as well as the present con- dition.of affairs, fully establishes these statements, and justifies the position taken by the author ; a position taken conscientiously, and with the sincerest regard for the truth and the Church Catholic, and his own branch of the same. In a succession of apostolical doctrine ; in the fact of a ministerial succession ; and in a moder- ate, wise, and safe Episcopacy, he believes with the Reformers ; but in the Laudean doctrine of an indispensable, unbroken, episcopal tactual suc- cession, one entirely different from that held by the Christian Fathers, he has no confidence. He has no respect for what has proved to be a de- structive and impolitic innovation. He trusts his book may lead others to a full investigation of this error, and to unite with him in resisting xiv PREFACE. and opposing it, until the whole Church shall combine in rejecting it. That the legitimate result of the teachings of Cyprian was the papacy, he is fully convinced. That the contest now in the Church is between the principles of Cyprian and those of Luther, he believes, in the words of Isaac Taylor : " It is thus at this moment: Cyprian and Luther are wrest- ling amain for mastery in the English Church ; and one or the other of these spirits must be dis- lodged. A season of apathy may again come upon the Church, and so the struggle may stand over to another day ; but at its next revival, the English Church will either go over uncondition- ally to antiquity, erasing from its formularies whatever is Protestant in them, and wiU expel all who adhere to scriptural doctrine ; or, it will re- cover its lost ground, and become consistently Protestant and biblical." How remarkably has this prediction, uttered in 1843, been verified ? We are already in the midst of the renewed conflict. May God speed the right, and give ultimate triumph to a true antiq- uity? May an open Bible, a free pulpit, an evangelical ministry, prevail over formalism, rit- ualism, ceremonialism, and ecclesiasticism, and every system akin to Judaism and Popery ? CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAQE THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND AOICNOWLEDGES ONE EVANGELICAL MINISTRY 1 CHAPTER II. THE FATBIAKCHAL CHURCH OF ALEXANDKLA. FUKNISHES PRIM- ITIVE PRECEDENT TO THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND WITH RESPECT TO THE VALIDITY OF ORDINATIONS IN CHURCHES DESTITUTE OF EPISCOPAL CONSECRATION AND SUCCESSION . 10 CHAPTER III. NO EPISCOPAL CONSECRATION OR SUCCESSION KNOWN IN THE CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA FOR MORE THAN TWO CENTU- RIES AFTER ST. MARK 19 CHAPTER IV. TESTIMONY OF ENGLISH REFORMERS 21 CHAPTER V. WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 45 CHAPTER VI. MODERN EPISCOPAL WRITERS 53 CHAPTER VII. THE ARGUMENT OF AN EPISCOPAL LAYMAN OF THE CHURCH OP ENGLAND, WITH RESPECT TO THE ORDINATIONS OF THE CHITRCH OF ALEXANDRIA 68 xvi CONTENTS. CHAPTEE Vm. PAGE KOMAN CATHOLIC TESTIMOHY 81 CHAPTER IX. OBJECTIONS 84 CHAPTEE X. RECAPITULATION 100 CHAPTEE XI. TESTIMONY FEOM NON-EPISCOPAL STANDAED WEITEKS . . 107 CHAPTEE XII. SUCCESSION OF SOUND DOCTEINB, THE TKUE APOSTOLIC SUC- CESSION 167 APPENDIX A. ADDITIONAL TESTIMONY 195 APPENDIX B. CONFIEMATOEY EVIDENCE 206 APPENDIX C. PUETHEE LAY TESTIMONY 217 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. CHAPTEK I. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ACKNOWLEDGES ONE EVANGELICAL MINISTRY. It is widely asserted that the Church of Eng- land, and the Protestant Episcopal Church, which are identical in doctrine and government, deny the valid character- of orders not conferred by Episcopal bishops. As this charge is a serious one, affecting the • scriptural standing of that church, it is important that it should be exam- ined, and if false, be refuted. History fully vindicates this Church from the charge, and establishes her character as compre- hensive and catholic. The principles of the Church of England were settled by the Reformers, in the reigns of Edward and Elizabeth, when the Liturgy and Articles were compiled and revised. The action of that Church during this period is the best commentary on the intention of its legislators, and the mean- ing of their words. 1 2 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. The point to be ascertained in reference to the matter we are considering, is, How did these au- thorities deal with those who sought to minister in holy things in their Church, but who had been ordained according to the Presbyterian form? Did they acknowledge the valid character of such ordination, or did they not ? This is the simple question, and on its answer the whole controversy hinges. History decides this point as it does points with respect to the meaning and intent of the American Constitution. What Washington, Hamilton, and Madison have clearly declared to be the meaning of the latter, we receive : what Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, and Jewel plainly teach with respect to the meaning of the Episco- pal standards, no unprejudiced man will gainsay. It is remarkable, in view of the opinions advanced by many modern Episcopal 4ivines, that for more than a century after the compilation of the Prayer Book, that book was used by ministers not or- dained by bishops, who yet were regularly induct- ed into parishes of the Church of England, and the sacraments administered and all the functions of the ministry exercised by the same, no man forbidding. The proof we proceed to give, and if conclu- sive, it settles the question, notwithstanding the assertions of no matter how many modern claim- ants to the exclusive validity of episcopal orders. The Protestant Episcopal Church may be thor- MODERATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 3 oughly comprehensive, while at the same time many Protestant Episcopalians may be exclusive, and stand on a contracted platform. STRYPK (died 1737). Strype, the historian, remarks on the act 13th of Elizabeth, " By this the ordinations of the foreign reformed churches were made valid, and those that had no other orders were made the same capacity with others, to enjoy any place within Englamd, merely on their subscribing the articles" (vol. ii. p. 514). . (keble.) Keble, one of the founders of the modern school of Oxford, admits, in his preface to Hook- er's works (p. 76), that " nearly up to the time that Hooker wrote (1594), numbers had been ad- mitted to the ministry of the Church of England, with no better than presbyterian ordination." BISHOP HALL (died 1656). Bishop Hall (vol. x. 341) writes : " The sticking at the admission of our brethren, returning from foreign reformed churches, was not in the case of ordination, but of institution ; they had been ac- knowledged ministers of Christ without amy other hamds laid on them ; but according to the laws of our land, they were not capable of institution to a benefice, unless they were so qualified as the 4 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. statutes of this realm doth require. And, secondly, I know those, more than one, that by virtue of that ordination, which they have brought with them from other reformed churches, have enjoyed spir- itual promotions and livings without any excep- tions against the lawfulness of their calling's" BISHOP cosiN (died 1672). Bishop Cosin, in his letter to Cordel, states : — " If at any time, a minister so ordained in these French churches came to incorporate him- self in ours, and to receive a public charge or cure of souls among us, in the Church of Eng- land (as I have known some of them to have done of late, and can instance in many others before my time), our bishops did not reordain him to his charge, as they must have done if his former ordination in France had been void ; nor did our laws require more of him than to declare his public consent to the religion received among us, and subscribe the articles established " (p. 231, Am. ed.) BISHOP BURNET (died 1714). Bishop Burnet, . in the " History of his own Times " (vol. i. p. 332), testified that to the year 1662, " those who came to England. from the for- eign churches, had not been required to be reor- dained among us." In his " Vindication " (p. 84) he says : " No bishop in Scotland, during my MODERATION OF THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 5 stay in that kingdom, did so much as desire any « of the Presbyterians to be ordained." BISHOP FLEETWOOD (died 1723). Bishop Fleetwood, in his works (p. 552), writes of the Church of England : — " Certainly it was her practice during the reigns of King James and Charles I. ; and to the year 1661, we had many ministers from Scotland, from France, and the Low Countries, who were ordained by presbyters only, and not bishops, and they were instituted into benefice with cure ; and yet were never reordained, but only subscribed the articles." HALLAM AND MACAULAY. We close our testimony in the case, with the statement of two modern standard historians. Hallam, in his " Constitutional History " (p. 224), writes : — " It had not been unusual from the very begin- ning of the Reformation, to admit ministers, or- dained in foreign churches to benefices in Eng- land ; no redrdination had ever been practiced with respect to those who had received the impo- sition of hands in a regular church ; and hence it appears that the Church of England, whatever tenet might latterly have been broached in contro- versy, did not consider the ordinations of presbyters invalid." 6 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. Macaulay, in his " History " (vol. i. 132), states : — " Episcopai ordination was now (1662), for the first time, made an indispensable qualification for preferment." From the above facts, which •cannot be gain- said, it is clear that the Church of England prac- tically acknowledged for more than a century, in the most open manner, the validity of orders not episcop^il, and allowed her members to receive the sacraments, and ministrations of clergymen, without such orders. We have presented the testimony of seven Church of England bishops, presbyters, and lay- men, churchmen of all parties, clearly to the point, that " many ministers " — " more than one " - — " numbers," " were instituted into benefices with cures," " enjoyed spiritual promotions and livings," " with the same capacity with others," " were acknowledged ministers," " were never re- ordained," for " no reordination had ever been practiced with respect to them," " from the very beginnings " of the Reformation in the Church of England. EDWARD VI. Moreover, during the same period, a Presbyte- rian Church composed of foreigners, with a Pres- byterian ministry, was placed under the spiritual charge of the Bishop of London, and has thus re- MODERATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 7 mained till the present day. The patent granted by Edward VI., 1550, reads, " that by the ministers of the Church of the Germans, and other stran- gers, a sound interpretation of the most Holy Gos- pels, and the administration of the sacraments according to the Word of God and Apostolic cus- toms may exist." If such ministrations be invalid, how can that Church, her officers and rulers, be excused for such dereliction of duty ? In this view of the valid character of the min- istrations of the foreign Presbyterian ministers, the King was fully sustained by the venerable Cranmer. ARCHBISHOP CRANMER. Archbishop Parker, in his " Antiquitates Britan- nicsB " (p. ,580), states : " Archbishop Cranmer, that he might strengthen the evangelical doctrine in the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, from which an infinite number of 'teachers might ' go forth for the instruction of the whole kingdom, called into England the most celebrated divines of foreign nations : Peter Martyr Vermellius, a Florentine, and Martin Bucer, a German, from Strasburg. The former taught at Oxford, the latter at Cambridge. With the latter, also, Paul Fagius became Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge. And besides these, Immanuel Tremellius, Berna- dinus Ochine, Peter Alexander, Volerandus Pol- 8 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. lanus, all of whom, with their wives and children, he maintained. Philip Melancthon and Musculus also were invited." The author of '' Vox Ecclesise " excepts to the statement in " True Churchmanship Vindi- cated," that these men were regarded as " minis- ters." But Parker continues : " Fagius soon died. The other two, by constant readings, sermons, and disputations, refuted popery and spread the gos- pel." In the " Zurich Letters " we find Peter of Peru- gia writing to Bullinger thus from Cambridge : " Martin Bucer-, Bernadine, and Peter Martyr are most actively laboring in their ministry." The Martyr Bradford, — whom of all the Reformers, the Romanists sought most earnestly to pervert, to their creed, — in his farewell to Cambridge, exclaims, " Remember the readings and preach- ings of God's true prophet and preacher, Martin Bucer." m Keble attempts to excuse the English Reform- ers, on the ground that they were affected by their " personal friendships and political sympathies " with foreigners ; that they had given up the argu- ment from f tradition," on which exclusive Epis- copacy is based ; and that " they wanted the full evidence of the Fathers, with which later genera- tions have been favored," especially a' " genuine copy of the works of Ignatius." To this we reply, that the Reformation divines MODERATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 9 were more fally read in the Fathers than our modern theologians, the patristic writings consti- tuting almost the sole Christian literature then extant ; that, though they differed essentially with respect to the office of tradition with this Oxford professor, nevertheless, tradition also sustains them in their views, as well as Holy Scripture. On motives of principle, as well as of sympathy and affection, they acted with ecclesiastical modera- tion, and framed our standards accordingly. Taking tradition as authority, how could they assert that episcopal orders were alone valid, when a large and important section of the Primi- tive Church, from apostolic times to the year 250, had neither episcopal consecration nor succes- sion. For, in one of the largest churches of antiquity, simple appointment by presbyters con- ferred all the rights of the primitive episcopate. CHAPTER n. THE PATRIARCHAL CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA FUR- NISHES PRIMITIVE PRECEDENT TO THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND WITH RESPECT TO THE VALIDITY OF ORDINATIONS IN CHURCHES DESTITUTE OF EPIS- COPAL CONSECRATION AND SUCCESSION. The portion of the Primitive Church to which we are to look for precedent to sustain the action of the Church of England in acknowledging ordinations without Episcopal succession to be valid is the patriarchal Church of Alexandria. In order to exhibit the important position of the Church and City of Alexandria, we give the lan- guage of a few of our standard writers : — DK. JOHN LORD. Professor John Lord, in his recent work, entitled « The Old Roman World," thus writes : " The ground-plan of this great city was traced by Alex- ander himself ; but it was not completed until the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. It continued to receive embellishments from nearly every mon- arch of the Lagian line. Its circumference was about fifteen miles ; the streets were regular, and THE CITY OF ALEXANDRIA. 11 crossed one another at right angles, and were wide enough to admit both carriages and foot passen- gers. " The harbor was large 'enough to admit the largest fleet ever constructed ; its walls and gates were constructed with all the skill and strength known to antiquity ; its population numbered six hundred thousand, and all nations were repre-. sented in its crowded streets. The wealth of the city may be inferred from the fact that in one year 6,250 talents, or more than $6,000,000, were paid to the public treasury for port dues. " The library was the largest in the world, and numbered over seven hundred thousand volumes, and this was connected with a museum, a menag- erie, a botanical garden, and various halls for lec- tures, altogether forming the most famous univer- sity in the empire. " The inhabitants were chiefly Greek, and had all their cultivated tastes and mercantile thrift. In a commercial point of view, it was the most important in the empire, and its ships whitened every sea. " Alexandria was of remarkable beauty, and was called by Ammianus, vertex omnium civitatum. Its dry atmosphere preserved for centuries the sharp outlines and gay colors of its buildings, some of which were remarkably imposing. " The Mausoleum of the Ptolemies, the High Court of Justice, the Stadium, the Gymnasium, X2 THE PKIMITIVE EIRENICON. the Palaestra, the Amphitheatre, and the Temple of the Caesars, called out the admiration of trav- ellers. The Emporium far surpassed the quays of the Tiber. But tbe most imposing structure was the Exchange, to which for eight hundred years all the nations sent their representatives. It was commerce which made Alexandria so rich and beautiful, and for which it was more distin- guished than both Tyre and Carthage. Unlike most commercial cities, it was intellectual ; and its schools of poetry, mathematics, medicine, philos- ophy, and theology, were more renowned than even those of Athens during the third and fourth centuries. For wealth, population, intelligence, and art, it was the second city of the world. It would be a great capital in these times " (pp. 89 90), DR. WM. 8. TYLER. Professor Tyler, in his fifth article on " Repre- sentative Cities," in " Hours at Home," October, 1867, writing of Alexandria, says : " It was the mission of Alexandria to collect manuscripts ; to revise editions of the classics ; to compose sys- tematic treatises on grammar, geography, and the mathematical and physical sciences ; to found libraries and inaugurate universities ; to establish an exchange for the intellectual productions and literary wares of distant lands ; to criticise and compare the literature of different nations; to THE CITY OF ALEXANDRIA. 13 eclecticise, if I may so say, the philosophy of the Orient and the Occident, and even to mediate be- tween the religion of Greeks and barbarians, Jews and Gentiles. In short, to collect whatever was valuable, to select whatever was true and beautiful and good, and to perpetuate whatever was worth preserving ; this was the idea, this the aim of Alexandria, though, like all other human aims and ideas, it was imperfectly accomplished. Here the Alexandrian critics corrected and settled the text of Homer, the Bible of the ancient Greeks. Here, alsoj the seventy translated the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. Here, also, was the principal catechetical school and theological sem- inary of the early Christian Church. . . . The birthplace of the eloquent ^polios, the philosoph- ical Clement, the learned Origan, and the the- ological Athanasius ; the traditional place of the martyrdom and burial of the Evangelist Mark, and the probable source of those speculations touching ' the Logos,' to which the Apostle John -alluded in the beginning of his Gospel; it was in Alexandria that Christianity, wedded to philos- ophy, began to command the respect of the learned, armed herself with new weapons for the defense of the faith, and entered upon a new, and in some respects, a higher field of conflict and triumph. . . . " Christian Alexandria holds a conspicuous place in Ecclesiastical History. Alexandria gave the 14 THE PRIMITIVE EIREITICON. world the Old Testament in Greek, and in this and various other ways contributed largely to form the language of the New Testament — that copious, flexible, and expressive Hellenistic Greek in which the Gospel was earliest and most widely promulgated among the nations. Alexandria en- listed learning and philosophy in the service of religion, and gave to the Church its first theolog- ical school, and its most full, definite, and generally accepted creed." DR. GKOKGE HOWE. Professor George Howe, in his " Bicentenary Discourse on Theological Education," 1844 (p. 69), thus speaks of the Alexandrian Seminary : — " This school was. taught by a succession of men eminent for learning, science, and piety. Among them were PantEenus, Clement, and Ori- gen, men famous while they lived for their talents, learning, and influence. " The industry of these teachers, and of Origen in particular, was intense. Besides teaching the principal branches of theological study, and the exegesis of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, they added the Grecian literature, and the study of philosophy, and indeed everything which would discipline the minds of the young men, and pre- pare them the better for a life of Christian activ- ity. Clement says that he had many eminent men as his teachers ; one in Greece, who was an THE SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA. 15 Ionian, another in Magna Grecia ; one from Ccelosyria, another from Egypt ; others from the East, and of these, one from Assyria, another in Palestine, a Hebrew by descent. The last I met wa^ the first in power : him I found concealed in Egypt, and rested satisfied. He was a true Sicil- ian_ bee, gathering the flowers of the Prophetic and Apostolic meadows, who engendered true knowledge in the minds of those who heard him. He thus describes Pantsenus, his revered prede- cessor in the Alexandrian School." HOSPmiAN. Hospinian, as quoted by Professor Emerson in his elaborate history of this school, in the " Bib- lical Repository " (vol. iv. 1834), remarks : — " Multitudes, renowned for learning and piety, issued forth from it, as from the Trojan horse, and applied themselves to the blessed work of the Lord in the churches of the East." DR. HASE. Dr. Hase, in his " Church History " (p. 117), graphically describes the most learned scholars of this most famous university, who succeeded Ori- gen : — " From the Alexandrian School proceeded those who represented the theology of their century. Athanasius, a didactic rather than an exegetical writer, who ingeniously and enthusiastically re- 16 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. duced all Christianity to the simple doctrine of the divinity of Christ; and the three Cappadocians, — Gregory of Nyssa (died about 394), who, next to Origen, was most distinguished for bis scientific profundity and originality; his brother Basil, the great metropolitan of CsBsarea (died 379), equally zealous for science and raonasticism, but more remarkable for his talents in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs ; and the abused friend of his youth, Gregory of Nazianzum (died 390), by in^ clination and fortune so tossed between the tran- quillity of a coiitemplative life and the storms of ecclesiastical government, that he had no satisfac- tion in either, — neither a profound thinker nor a poet, but according to the aspirations of his youth an orator, frequently pompous and dry, but labor- ing as powerfully for the triumph of orthodoxy as for genuine practical Christianity. Next to these were Eusebius of Csesarea (died 340), whose simple but not artless style was like that of one whose knowledge was abundant, who was fond of peace, and disinclined to the new formulae of orthodoxy; and blind Didymus (died 395), in spirit and in faith the last faithful follower of Origen." DEAN STANLEY. " The most learned body assembled at Nic£ea was the Church of Alexandria," writes Dean Stan- ley, in his "History of the Eastern Church." " The See of Alexandria was then the most ina- THE CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA. 17 portant in the whole Church. Alexandria, till the rise of Constantinople, was the most powerful city in the East. The prestige of its founder still clung to it. The Alexandrian Church was the only great seat of Christian learning. Its episco- pate was ' the Evangelical See,' as founded by the Evangelist St. Mark. ' The chair of St. Mark ' was, as it still is, the name of the patri- archal throne of Egypt. Its occupant, as we have seen, was the only potentate of the time who bore the name of ' Pope.' After the Council of Nicsea, he became the 'judge of the world,' from his decisions respecting the celebration of Easter ; and the obedience paid to his judgment in all matters of learning, secular and sacred, almost equalled that paid'in later days to the ecclesias- tical authority of the Popes of the West. The ' head of the Alexandrian Church,' says Gregory Nazianzen, ' is the head of the world.' " In his own province, his jurisdiction was even more extensive than that of the, Roman Pontiff. Not only did he consecrate aU the bishops through- out his diocese, but no other bishop had any in- dependent power of ordination (p.*237). KEY. JOSEPH BIN&HAM (died 1723). In his " Antiquities " (vol. i. p. 218), this learned author writes : — " I must here observe that the Primate of Alex- andria was the greatest metropolitan in the world, 18 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. both in the absoluteness of his power and the ex- tent of his jurisdiction. For he was not metro- politan of a single province, but of all the prov- inces of Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis, in which there were at least six large provinces, out of which sometimes above a hundred bishops were called to a provincial council, Alexander sum- moned near that number to the condemnation of Arius before the Council of Nice. And Athana- sius speaks of the same number meeting at other times ; particularly the Council of Alexandria, in 339, which heard and justified the cause of Atha- nasius aft^r Ms return from banishment, had al- most an hundred bishops in it, which was above thirty more than the Bishop of Rome's Libra, which was but sixty-nine. Nor was the Primate of Alexandria's power less than the extent of his jurisdiction ; for he not only ordained all his suffra- gan bishops, but had liberty to ordain presbyters and deacons in all churches throughout the whole district. , " M. Basnage and Launay will have it that he had the sole power of ordaining, and that not so much as a pre'sbyter or deacon could be ordained without him. Velesius thinks his privilege was rather that he might ordain if he pleased, but not that he had the sole power of ordaining presbyters and deacons. But either way it was a great priv- ilege, and peculiar to the Bishop of Alexandria ; for no other metropolitan pretended to the like power besides himself." CHAPTEE III. NO EPISCOPAL CONSECRATION OR SUCCESSION KNOWN IN THE CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA FOR MORE THAN TWO CENTURIES AFTER ST. MARK. The fullest statement we possess with respect to the ordinations in the church at Alexandria is given by Eutychius, patriarch of that see, in the tenth century. The works of this author were translated into Latin, in part, by Selden, 1642, and afterwards in fqjl by Pococke, 1659. Of this author, Mosheim writes : — " Among the Arabians no author bears a higher reputation than Eutychius, Bishop of Alexan- dria, whose annals, with several other productions of his pen, are still extant ; who cultivated the sciences of physic and theology with the greatest success, and cast a new light upon them both by his excellent writings." THE PATKIAECH EUTYCHIUS (Tenth Century). In giving a history of this, his own see, Euty- chius mentions Mark the Evangelist as having appointed Hananias the first patriarch, and then proceeds : — 20 THE PEIMITIVE EIEENICON. " Moreover he appointed twelve presbyters with Hananias, who were to remain with the pa- triarch, so that when the patriarchate was vacant they might elect one of the twelve presbyters, upon whose head the other eleven might place their hands and bless him and create him patri- arch, and then choose some excellent man and appoint him presbyter with themselves in the place of him who was thus made patriarch, that thus there might always be twelve. Nor did this custom respecting the presbyters, namely, that they should create their patriarch from the twelve presbyters, cease at Alexandria until the times of Alexander, Patriarch of Alexandria, who was of the number of the three hundred and eighteen. But he forbade the presbytese to create the patri- arch for the future, and decreed that when the patriarch was dead the bishops should meet to- gether and ordain the patriarch. Thus, that an- cient custom, by which the patriarch used to be created by the presbyters, disappeared, and in its place succeeded the ordinance for the creation of the patriarch by the bishops." George Elmacinus, a later Egyptian writer, whose works were translated by Erpenius, con- firms this testimony of Eutychius. We have, however, the confirmation of his statements by more ancient writers. TESTIMONY OF THE FATHERS. 21 SEVKRUS (Tenth Century). Severus, as quoted by Renaudot, both histo- rians of the patriarchs of Alexandria, states that after the death of Theonas " the priests and peo- ple were collected together at Alexandria, and laid their hands on Peter, his son in the faith, and disciple, a priest, and placed him in the patri- archal throne of Alexandria, according to the command of Theonas, in the tenth year of the Emperor Diocletian," HILARY, OR AMBROSE (Fourth Century). The author of a commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, by some supposed to be Hilary, and by others Ambrose, bofh of the fourth century, on EpheSians iv. 2, writes : — ^ " The Apostle calls Timothy, created by him a presbyter, a bishop (for the first .presbyters were called bishops), that when he departed the one next to him might succeed him. Moreover, in Egypt the presbyters (consignant) confirm, if a bishop be not present." A CONTEMPORARY. Another author, whose works are printed with those of St. Augustine, and supposed to be his contemporary, says : — " In Alexandria, and through the whole of Egypt, if there is no bishop, a presbyter .conse- crates." 22 THE PRIMITIYE EIRENICON. ST. JEROME (Fourth Century). The most important witness, however, one born within the century succeeding, is St. Jerome, confessedly the most learned of the ancients, who in his Epistle to Evangelus, after quoting passages of Scripture, to show that bishops and presbyters, as to their sacerdotal character, are the same, re- marks : — " But that afterwards one was chosen to be over the rest ; this was done to prevent schism, lest each one drawing the Church after hira should break it Up. For at Alexandria, also, from Mark the Evangelist to the bishops Heraclas and Dio- nysius, the presbyters always called one elected among themselves, and placed in a higher rank, their ^shop ; just as an army may constitute it& general, or deacons may elect one of themselves, whom they knaw to be diligent, and call him archdeacon. For what does a bishop do, with the exception of ordination, which a presbyter may not do ? " It is well known that Jerome teaches the same origin for Episcopacy, in his commentary on Titus i. 5, where he says : — "As the presbyters, therefore, know that they are subject by the custom of the Church to him who is placed over them, so let bishops know that they are greater than presbyters more by custom, than by any real appointment of the TESTIMONY OF THE FATHEES. 23 Lord, and that they ought to govern the Church along with the presbyters," etc. Such is the testimony of antiquity in regard to the ordinations in the patriarchate of Alex- andria in the times immediately succeeding the Apostles. Do we ever read of the validity of the minis- try of the Church of Alexandria as denied by the rest of the Primitive Church ? K not, then is the Church of England sustained in her course in this respect by primitive precedent, and those who deny the validity of presbyterian orders, im- pugn the action of this Church, and of the Prim- itive Church likewise. Their theory is a modern innovation. CHAPTER IV. TESTIMONY OF ENGLISH KEFOKMERS. This custom of the Church of Alexandria was well known to the English Reformers and Revis- ers, and is conceded by the ablest modern writers. ARCHBISHOP ■WHITGIFT (died 1604). This writer, in his "Answer to the Admonition " of Cartwright, which was revised and approved by Archbishop Parker, Bishops Cox, Cooper, and others, and according to Strype, " may be es- teemed and applied to as one of the public books of the Church of England concerning her profes- sion and principles, and as being of the like au- thority in respect to its worship and government, in opposition to the Disciplinarians, as Bishop Jewel's 'Apology and Defense,' in respect to the Reformation and doctrine of it, in opposition to the Papists," while contending for the primitive origin of Episcopacy, does not deny the state- ments of Jerome with regard to Alexandria. They were familiar to his mind, as they were to all the divines of that period. In vol. ii. p. 222, he writes : — TESTIMONY OF ENGLISH KEFOKMEES. 25 " The same Hierome, in his 'Epistles ad Evag.^ teacheth that the cause that one was chosen among the bishops to rule over the rest was to meet with schisms, lest every one according to his own fancy should tear in pieces the Church of Christ ; and says farther, that in Alexandria," etc. He then quotes the passage referred to. Vol. ii. p. 251, Whitgift writes : — " Every bishop is a priest, but every priest hath* not the name and title of a bishop, in that mean- ing that Jerome in this place taketh the name of bishop. For his words be these : ' In Alexan- dria, from Mark the. Evangelist,' etc. . . , 'Nei- ther shall you find this word episcopus commonly used but for that priest that is in degree over and above the rest, notwithstanding episcopus b,e often- times called presbyter, because presbyter is the more general name,' " etc. As this combined testimony of Whitgift, Par- ker, Cox^ Cooper, and others, is of such value, we give further extracts : — " It is plain that any one certain form or kind of external government, perpetually to be ob- served, is nowhere in the Scripture prescribed to the Church. . . . This is the opinion of the best writers ; neither do I know any learned man of a contrary judgment." — Whitgift (vol. iii. p. 215). " One church is not bound of necessity in all things to follow another ; only the . Church of Rome is so arrogant and proud to, challenge that prerogative " (p. 317). 26 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. " The doctrine taught and professed by our bishops at this day is much more perfect, and sounder than it commonly was in any age after the Apostles' time " (ii. p. 471). What Whitgift, Parker, Cox, and^ Cooper thought of the " Via Media " may here be learned. When Cartwright charged the Church of England with a closer agreement with the Papists than Vith the Reformed churches, Whitgift replied, — " Wherein do we agree with the Papists ? or wherein do we differ from the Reformed churches ? With 'these we have all points of doctrine and substance common ; from the other we dissent, in the most part both of doctrine and ceremonies. From what«spirit come these bold and untrue speeches ? " (vol. ii. p. 472.) " Beware of an ambitious morosity, and take heed of a new popedom. . . . You may not bind us to foUow any particular church, neither ought you to consent to any such new servitude " (p. 454"). BULLINGEK'S " DECADES." We give an extract from the "Decades" of this learned foreigner, inasmuch as his writings were indorsed by Archbishop Whitgift. There may not have been an entire agreement between the two authors on all points concerning church gov- ernment, but, at the same time, what modern ex- clusive Episcopal writer would have commended TESTIMONY OF BDLLINGEE. 27 the " Decades " to the study of the clergy, without reservation ? We have in this act of Whitgift an evidence of the confidence entertained by the English Divines in their Continental co-workers, Henry Bullinger was preacher of the Cathe- dral of Zurich from 1531 to 1574. He enter- tained the English exiles under Mary. Such was his influence that he was appealed to as umpire in the Vestiarian controversy ; and his decision, that the use of vestments was scriptural and proper, went far to settle the question. Whitgift, in 1586, issued the following archi- episcopal order : — " Every minister having cure . . , shall, before the second day of February next, provide a Bible, and BuUinger's ' Decades ' in Latin or English, and a paper book, and shall every day read over one chapter of the Holy Scriptures, and note the principal contents thereof in his paper book, and shall every week read over one sermon in said ' Decades,' and note likewise the chief matters therein contained in said paper." Bullinger, in his fifth Decade, third sermon, writes : — " But in the order of bishops and elders from the beginning there was singular humility, charity, and concord ; no contention, no strife for prerog- ative, or titles, or dignity ; for all acknowledged themselves to be ministers of one Master, coequal in all things touching office or charge. He made 28 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. them unequal not in office, but in gifts, by the excellency of gifts. ... In process of time all things of ancient soundness, humility^ and simplicity vanished away; while some things are turned upside down: some things either of their own accord were out of use, or else were taken away by deceit: some things are added to. Verily not many ages after the death of the Apos- tles there was seen a far other hierarchy (or gov- ernfnent) of the Church than was from the begin-, ning ; although those beginnings seem to be more tolerable than at this, day all of this same order are. St. Hierome saith, ' In time past churches were governed with the common council and ad- vice of the elders : afterward it was decreed that one of the elders, being chosen, should be set over the others : unto whom the whole care of the Church should pertain, and that the seeds of schism should be taken away.' Thus much he : In every city and country, therefore, he that was most excellent was placed above the rest. His office was to be superintendent, and to have the oversight of the minister, and of the whole flock. He had not (as we even now understand out of Cyprian's words) dominion over his fel- lows in office, or other elders; but, as the Consul in the Senate-house was placed to demand and gather together the voices of the Senators, and to defend the laws and privileges, and to be careful lest there should arise factions anaong , the Sena- TESTIMONY OF BULLINGEK. 29 tors, even so no other was the office of a bishop in the Church ; in all other things he was but equal with the other ministers. But had not the arrogancy of the ministers and ambition of the bishops in the tinges that followed further ■ increased, we would not further speak against them. And St.. Hierome affirmeth that ' That preferment of bishops sprang not by God's ordi- nance, but by the ordinance of men.' " In the second sermon, Bullinger states : — " St. Hierome judgeth rightly, saying, that by the custom of man, and not by the authority of God, some one of the elders should be placed over the rest, and called a bishop ; whereas of old time an elder or minister and a bishop were of equal honor, power, and dignity." He then refers to the letter to Evangelus in which Jerome alludes to the Church of Alexan- dria. If Whitgift had regarded episcopal government as essential to the existence of a church, he would, reasonably, have guarded his readers against the statements of Bullinger on this point, just as the American House of Bishops, when recommend- ing " Doddridge's Commentary " to the perusal of candidates for orders, directed attention at the same time to this author's different view with re- spect to church government. 30 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. DR. JOHN RAIKOLDS. There is a striking similarity in -the statement of Bullinger, to that given by Dr. Rainolds, Prp- fessoT of Divinity at Oxford, as to the origin of Episcopacy. Archbishop "Usher presented it to the public in 1641, in a Tract entitled, « The Judgment of Dr. Rainolds, touching the Original of Episcopacy, more largely confirmed out of Antiquity." As both Rainolds and Usher had read all the Fa- thers, and were respectively esteemed the most learned men of their times, we have no account of this matter to which credence can be more im- plicitly given. What Augustine said of Jerome, may be justly applied to these profound scholars : " What they were ignorant of, no man knew." The following is Rainolds' statement : — " Presbyters were constituted bishops by the Holy Ghost, that they might superintend and feed the flock ; and that this might be more eflfec- tually accomplished by their united counsel and consent, they were accustomed to meet together in one company, and to elect one as president of the assembly, and moderator of the proceedings ; whom Christ in the Revelation denominates the angel of the church, and to whom he writes those things which he meant him to signify to the others. And this is the person whom the Fathers afterwards, in the Primitive Church, de- nominated the bishop." (Conference, ad Hart, TESTIMONY OF EAINOLDS. 31 e:ip. iv. p. 47). The tract may be found in Ush- er's Works, vol. V. p. 75. In this connection we give the important letter of Dr. Rainolds to Sir Francis Knollys, Lord Treasurer of England, who wrote to inquire whether Dr. Bancroft was right when he asserted, at St. Paul's Cross, " that bishops were superior governors over their breth- ren, by God's ordinance, i. e., jti/re divino ?" To this Rainolds replied, in what is the oldest de- fense on record of moderate primitive Episcopacy, against its first Protestant High Church champion (though Bancroft was far from holding the preva- lent exclusive view) : " It is one thing to say that there ought to be no difference between them," etc., ..." another thing to say that by the Word of God there is no difference betwixt them but by the order and custom of the Church," which St. Austin saith in effect himself. . . . " When Harding, the Papist, alleged these very witnesses to prove the opinion of bishops and priests being the same, according to Scripture, to be heresy, our learned countryman of good memory, Bishop Jewel, cited to the contrary Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, and St. Austin himself, concluding his answer with these words : " All thesa. and other more holy fathers, with St. Paul, for thus saying, by Harding's advice, must be held for heretics." " Michael Medina, a man of great account in the Council of Trent, more ingenuous therein than 82 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. many other Papists, afErmed not only th^ fdrthfer ancient writers alleged by Bishop Jewel, but also another Jerome, Theodoret, Priraasius, Sedulius, Theophylact, who were of the same raind, . . , with whom agree likewise 'CEcnmenius, and An- selmus. Archbishop of Canterbury, and another An- selmus, and Crregory, and Gratiafi, arid after them how many, it being once enrolled in the canon law for sound and Catholic doctrine, arid thereupon taught publicly by learned men, all which do bear witness against Dr. Bancroft of the point in ques- tion, that it was not condemned for a heresy by the' general consent of the whole Church. . . . Where"" to it may be added, that they also who have laboted about the reforming of the Church, these five' hnindred yeats, have taught that all pastors, be fhejr entitled bishops or priests, have equal authority and power by God's Word. First, ihe Waldeasesy next- Massilius Patavinus, then Wickliffe and his scholars, afterwards Huss ; last of all Luther, Calvin, Brentius, Bullinger, Musculus, and others,; who might be reckoned particularly in great num- ber such as were with us ; both Bishops Jewel and Pilkington, and the Queen's Professors of Divinity in pur Universities, Drs. Humphrey and Whittaker, and other learned men. Bradford, Lambert, Fox, and Fulke,. do consent therein; so' in foreign nations all whom I have read treating of this matter, and many more whom I have not read. TESTIMONY OF RAINOLDS. 33 " But why do I speak of particular persons ? It is the common judgment of the Reformed Churches of Helvetia, Savoy, France, Scotland, Germany, Hungary, Pol^d, the Low Countries, and our own. I hope Dr. Bancroft will not say that all these have approved that for sound doc- trine which was condemned by the general con- sent of the whole Church for heresy in a most flourishing time. I hope he will acknowledge that he was overseen when he avouched the supe- riority which bishops have among us oyer the^ clergy to be God's own ordinance." This testimony of Rainolds, to a point conge- nial to the one under consideration, it would seem were conclusive as to the view of the Church of •England with respect to the origin of Episcopacy. The only reply which is given, is that '.' Rainolds was a Puritan." A strict conformist to the Church of England all his days, and in his last hours a recipient of the Communion according to its rites, Rainolds was selected by King James to present the demands of the Reforming party of the Church. The changes he desired were mainly those made by Bishop White in our American Prayer-Book. To- aij impartial student no Chris- tian name in history is more worthy than this divine, who could not be .tempted by an episco- pate offered him by his sovereign ; who was long the revered instructor of the English clergy, and honored in being the tutor of Richard Hooker ; 3 34 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. a man wKoj'far in advance of his age, sought by rtioderate counsels to avert the coming storm, and' whose last legacy to the Church was the standard English version of the^Bible, made by his mon- arch at his earnest request. The soul of this true evangelical churchman went to its reward while appropriately engaged in the preparation of this greatest surviving monument of- the Reformation. DR. Andrew willet (died 1621). This writer, for his acquirements, was called " a miracle of learning." He was chaplain to" Prince Henry and Prebend of Ely. Bishop Hall includes him among the clergy of England, who were " the world's wonder." His greatest work is the " ^n- opsi$ Papismi" This work, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, and afterward to James I., passed through five editions under the royal license. In 1634 an edition was issued " by the authority of His Majesty's royal letters-patent," which state "that it hath been seen and allowed by the Lords' the Reverend Bishops, and hath also ever since been in great dsteehl in both Universities ; and also much de- sired by all the learned, both of our clergy and laity, throughout our dominions," From this important work we quote largely. Vol. iii. p. 58, Dr. Willet writes : « To the ecclesiastical policy in the advancing of the dignity of the bishops these things (of human appointment)' do TESTIMONV OF WILLET. 35 pertain. First of all, St. Hierome saith of confir- mation committed only to bishops, ' Know that this observation is rather for the honor of their priesthood than by the necessity of any lajv.' " Secondly, the Council of Aquisgrane (cap. 8) saith, that the ordination and consecration of minister^ is now reserved to the chief minister only for authority's sake. " Fourthly, the jurisdiction of the Church, which, in time past, Hierome saith, was commit- ted to the Senate or College of Presbyters, was afterwards, to avoid schism, devolved to the Bishop. And of this Senate mention is made in the Decrees. St. Hierome saith : " At Alexan- dria, from the Evangelist Mark, down to the bishops Heraclas and Dionysius, the presbyters always .gave the name of bishop to one whom they elected from .themselves, and placed in a higher degree ; in the same way as an army may create its general, or 'the deacons should choose an industrious man whom they make their arch- deacon. (Hierome ad Bvang.) So it should seem that the very election of a bishop in those days, loithout any other circumstances, was his ordina- tion." Speaking of the Greek Church, on p. 72,) he writes : " Though they yielded the supremacy to the bishop as the chief, yet the presbyters were joined with them in the regiment of the Church ; the sole administration of the keys was not in "the 36 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. bishop. The same, also, was the custom of the South Church, as Jerome writeth, how in Alex- andria, from Mark the Evangelist unto Heraclas and Dionysius, ' The presbyters did call one chosen from amongst them, and placed in an higher degree their bishop.' (Hierome ad Evang.) By the which it appeareth, that the College of the , Presbyters did elect and choose their bishop, and he was a prime man among them ; but the other were not excluded. Ambrose testifieth as much of the custom of the Egyptian Church : ' The first presbyters were called bishops, and the first removing, the next succeeded. In Egypt the presbyters, the bishop not being present, did con- firm ; but because the next- presbyters were found unworthy to hold the primacy or first place, the manner was changed by the provision of a. council, that not order, but merit and worthiness should make a bishop ' (in 4th ad Ephes.). It seeraeth then that the custom of the Egyptian Church at the first was to make the bishop only the prime or first man of the presbytery ; the change that followed was by synodical constitutions. And some evidence yet remaineth of that ancient ecclesiastical government to this day in the Ethi- opic Church, where the patriarch hath always twelve ecclesiastical persons his assistants, with whom he communicateth touching ecclesiastical affairs." Dr. Willet, on p. 53, quotes St. Ambrose as say- TESTIMONY OE WILLET. 37 ing : " He doth place the ordination of deacon after a bishop. Why ? Because there is one ordination of a bishop and a priest, for both of them is a minister, yet the Bishop is -first among the priests." " St. Chrysostom useth the same reason: ' There is almost no difference between a bishop and a priest, because that unto priests the care of the Church is committed, and that which the Apostle said of bishops doth agree unto priests.' " Page 47, he writes: " I come now to deliver our own opinion The distinction of bishops and priests, as it is now received, cannot be directly proved out of Scripture ; yet it is very necessary for the policy of the Church to avoid schism, and to preserve it in unity. Of this judg- ment, Bishop Jewel against Harding, showeth both Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Jerome to have been (Defens. Apolg. p. 248). And amongst the rest, St. Jerome thus writeth : ' That the Apostle teacheth, evidently, that bishops and priests were the same. Yet he holdeth this distinction to be necessary for the government of the Church. That one afterward was chosen to be set over the rest ; it was done to be a. remedy against schism ' (ad Bvang.). To this opinion, St. Jerome subscrib- eth — Bishop Jewel in the place before quoted, and' another most reverend prelate of our Church, (Bishop Whitgift) — in these words : ' I know these names to be confounded in the Scriptures ; 38 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. but I speak according to the manner and Custotti of the Church ever since the Apostles' time' (Defen. Answ. Admonit., p. 383). Which saying is agreeabla to that of St. Augustine (Epist. xix. ad Hieron.) : ' According to the names of honor, which the use or custom of the Chiirfih hath 6b- tained, a bishop is greater than a priest.' So that Augustine himself, who was no Ariaii, doth foUhd this distinction rather upon ancient custom than Scripture." Page 52, " Michael Medina, a Papist, thinketh that both Jerome,- Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, were in the same heresy with Arius. It may easily be disproved. Firstly, seeing Angus- tine with the rest held Arius to be a hereticj how could they condemn that for heresy in another which they themselves maintained? Secondly, it is not like that the Church, which had con- demned that for heresy in Arius, would tolerate it in the rest. Thirdly, there is great difference be- tween Arius' opinion and theirs, for he would have no difference at all between a bishop and a priest. The Fathers allowed a difference, holding it to be profitable for the peace of the Church ; they only affirmed, that this distinction was rather author- ized by the ancient practice of the' Church, than by any direct place of Scripture." We have here the testimony of Dr. Willet with respect to the view of the Church of England in regard to episcopal ordination (" our own opin- ion "), as he terms it, expressed with the approval TESTIMONY OF WILLET. 39 of Elizabeth and James, and of the bishops and universities of England. He quotes, as sustain- ing the same opinion. Bishop Jewel's " Apol- ogy," a standard authority, and also Bishop Whit- gift's " Answer to the Admonition," making the assertion during the lifetime of the latter author. As no other writer has discoursed more clearly, and more ably on these topics which so deeply concern the peace of all churches, than Dr. Wil- let, in his " Synopsis," we give another quota- tion from p. 55 : " Although it cannot be denied but that the government of bishops, according to the use of the primitive Church, is very profitable for the preserving of unity, yet dare we not con- demn the churches of Geneva, Helvetia, Ger- many, and Scotland, that have* received another form of ecclesiastical government, as the Papists proudly affirm all churches which have not such bishops as theirs are, to be no churches. Where- fore I cannot conclude that this special forrti of ecclesiastical government is absolutely prescribed in the Word ; for then all those churches which have not that prescript form, whether of bishops or others, should be condemned as erroneous churches. So then here is the difference between our adversaries the Papists and us. They say that it is of necessity to salvation to be subject to the Pope, and to bishops and archbishops under him, as necessarily prescribed in the Word ; but so do not our bishops and archbishops, which is 40 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. a notable difference between the bishops of the popish church and of the Reformed Churches. (Defens. Answ. Admonition, p. 382). " Wherefore, as we condemn not those Reformed Churches which have retained another form of ecclesiastical government, so neither are they to censure our Church, for holding still the ancient regiment of bishops, purged, from the ambitious and superstitious inventions of the .popish prel- acy. Let every church use that form which best fitteth their state ; in external matters every church is free, not one bound to the prescription of another, so they measure themselves by the will of the Word, for if any church shall seem to prescribe unto another in those things wherein they are left free, that saying of the Apostle may be fitly applied against them (1 Cor. xiv. 36), ' Did the Word of God spring from you, or came it unto you only ? ' God may give unto one church wisdom out of the Word, to know what is best for their state, as well as- to another. And so I conclude this point with that saying of St. Augus- tine to the Donatist bishops : ' Hold that which you hold : you have your sheep, I have my sheep ; be not troublesome to rny sheep, I am not trouble- some to yours ' (Exposit. 2, in Psal. xxi.). So may we say to our sisters, the Reformed Churches, and they likewise to us : Let them hold that gov- ernment they have ; we do not molest them in their course, neither let them molest us in ours." TESTIMONY OF WILLET. 41 As we are defending in this work the practice of the Church of England for one hundred years, in allowing the validity of presbyterian ordina- tion, we may be excused if we quote further from this work of Dr. Willet, which has the imprima- tur of the sovereign heads of the ■ Church of England, the bishops and the universities, and which has more fully and satisfactorily treated of this subject than any other work of that period. Volume vi. p. 368, Dr. Willet writes : " As the one hundred and eleventh error, the Papists hold that they are neither priests por deacons which' are not ordained of bishops. Neither is it true' that there are no ministers but by the ordination' of bishops, for this were to condemn all those Reformed Churches of Helvetia, Belgia, Geneva; with others which have not received the form of ecclesiastical government. tlndoubtedly where godly bishops are, there no ordination is to be had without them, as in the Church of England; but every church having- not the same office, but others equivalent or correspondent thereunto, hath full authority in itself to ordain ministers in such order and manner as the Church hath received,, agreeable to the Word of God. So that we doubt not but that all the Reformed Churches profess- ing the gospel have triie and lawful ministers, though they observe not all the same manner in the election and ordaining them. And this is the^ general consent of the churches themselves." 42 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. He then quotes, among others, the " Anglican Confession : " " We say that the minister ought lawfully, duly, and orderly to be preferred to that office of the Church of God." It may be re- , marked here that in these words we have an au- thorized interpretation of the Nineteenth Article. " This, then, is the judgment of the Reformed Churches, — that every church is not tied to the same manner of ordination of ministers, so that it be agreeable to the Word of God; but accord- ing to this rule every church may make choice of that form and order which is most agreeable to their state, so that when the calling of bishops is received, by them ministers must enter; where there are none, the calling of the church must be followed. Our arguments and reasons are these : " First, out of Scripture, Acts xiii. 3, certain prophets and teachers at Antioch lay hands upon Paul and Barnabas. The Rhemists gather here- upon " that they were ordered, admitted, and con- secrated by them." Annot.' in himc locum (which we say not, but they were only sent " out to the execution of their office, being before chosen of the Spirit.) ; but hence it foUoweth, that as at An- tioch, there being no Apostles, but only prophets and teachers, to lay hands upon Paul, the rest did it ; so those churches where there are no bishops, the right of ordaining ministers may be executed by others lawfully appointed of the Church. " If this were not so, these inconveniences TESTIMONY OF WILLET. 43 would ensue : Firstly, that all these Reformed Churches should have no true ministers, being without episcopal ordination. Secondly, that they must either be denied to be churches, or else a true church may be without the power of ordi- nation, which is in nowise to be granted. Third- ly, that those excellent men, Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, with others, extraordinarily raised up of God for the propagation of the Gospel, should not have been true ministers because they entered pot by that ordination." On p. 376, quoting again from Jerome; he adds : " To this it is further added by a reve,rend learned man, now a bishop of our Church; so at length by custom presbyters were utterly excluded from all advice and counsel, whereof Ambrose com- plaineth, and bishops only intermeddled with the regiment of the Church. This manner of subjec- tion in presbyters, and prelation in bishops, grew only in continuance of time, and not by any ordi- nance of Christ or his Apostles. See more of this matter on difference of ministers." This we have before presented. Thus we may see plainly and unmistakably, what was the view of the Church of England on the point of ordination, down to the year 1634, the very year in which Aichbishop Laud, first of Protestants, broke the unity of the Church by re- questing the English Ambassador at Paris to withdraw from the Presbyterian ministrations. 44 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. For, previous to this event, intercommunion be-- tween all the Protestant bodies was on terms of entire equality, with no disturbance on the point of church government. This was clearly estab- lished at the Synod of Dort, 1618, by the recep- tion of the Holy Communion by Bishop Carleton, Drs, Hall, DaVenant, and Ward, of the Ghurch of England, in common with the rest of the deputies, at the hands of Dr. Bogermann,,the Presbyierian moderator. " There is .no place on earth like the Synod of Dort ; no place where I should so much like to dwell," said Dr. Hall, afterwards the dis- tinguished Bishop of Norwich. Willet's " Syn- opsis," which is sustained by the statements of Jewel's "Apology," and Whitgift's " Answer," establishes clearly the moderate and Catholic principles of the Church of England. Thus the doctrine and the practice of this Church are seen to be in full accordance with each otherj as both were consonant wiih the principles and practice of the Primitive Church. CHAPTER V. WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. We have given, proof that the revisers of the standards of the Church of England under Eliza- beth and her most prominent divines, were ac- quainted with the historical fact that the Church of Alexandria, while maintaining episcopal gov- ernment, was without episcopal consecration and succession for two centuries, from the time of its founder, Mark the Evangelist. This Church, fol- lowing primitive customs, allowed such ordination to be valid. To strengthen our position, we proceed to give the concessions of distinguished later divines — two of the seventeenth and four of the present century. AECHBiSHOP USHER . (died 1655). For the first half of the seventeenth century we present Archbishop Usher as a witness of the views of the divines of that period, himself confess- edly the most learned of them all. As a man who had read all the fathers, Greek and Latin, Usher could not fail to be acquainted with the facts here 46 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. made prominent. Richard Baxter, in his " Life " (p. 206), writes of Usher : " I asked him also, in his judgment, about the validity of presbyterian ordination, which he asserted, and told me that . the king asked him, at the Isle of Wight, ' where he found in antiquity that presbyters alone or- dained any.' Arid that he answered, ' I can show your majesty more even, where presbyters alone successively ordained bishops,' and instanced in Hierome's words, Epist. ad Evagrium, of the presbyters of Alexandria choosing and making their own bishop, from the days of Mark to Heraelas and Dionysius." Usher, it is well known, held that the bishops differed from the presbyters, not in order, but simply in degree.' " The intrinsical power of ordaining," he writes, " proceedeth not from juris- diction, but only from order. But a presbyter hath the same order in specie with a bishop. •Ergo, a presbyter hath equally an intrinsical power to give orders, and is equal to him in the power of order ; the bishop having no higher degree in respect of retention or extension of the character of orders, though he hath a higher degree, i. e. a more eminent place in respect of authority and jurisdiction and spiritual regimen." Appendix to « Parr's Life," p. 6, ed. 1686. " The Lord Primate was always of this opinion," says Parr. He quotes him as saying : " Howsoever, I must needs think that the churches which have TESTIMONY OP USHER. 47 no bishops are thereby become very much defec- tive in their government, and that the churches in France, who, living under a Popish power, cannot do what they would, are more excusable in this defect than the Low Countries, that live under a free State. Yet, for the testifying my communion with these churches (which I do love and honor as true members of the Church uni- versal), I do profess that, with like affection, I should receive the blessed sacrament at the hands of the Dutch ministers, if I were in Holland, as I should do at the hands of the French ministers, if I were in Charenton." This language is the more important to our purpose, inasmuch as but recently, in 1634, Arch- bishop Laud, the father of exclusive Episcopacy, had desired the English Ambassador to France not to attend the preaching and sacraments of • the Presbyterian ministers at Charenton, on the ground that they had no valid ordination. BISHOP STILLINGFLEKT (died 1699). We pass now to the testimony of one of the most distinguished divines of the latter half of the same century, Bishop Stillingfieet, about whom there has been as much controversy as concerning any divine of his Church. The testi- mony of Stillingfleet is the more forcible, as he belongs to that class of Episcopalians, who, led astray from their early moderation, have adopted 48 THE PKIMITIVE EIRENICON. more stringent views of Episcopacy in after life, Stiilingfleet, however, lilie many others, on further reflection, returned to the comprehensive views he had so ably presented in his " Irenicum." Stiilingfleet,- after he was made dean, in 1680, used strong language towards the non-conform- ists, and advanced higher claims for Episcopacy, and intimated that he would, not then have made all the concessions which he had advanced in his " Irenicum," written in 1662. He wrote, how- ever, in the heat of a most violent controversy — " that age of fierce and savage conti-oversy, of the tomahawk and scalping-knifej" as Kogers terms it. In the last years of his life, Stiilingfleet revised, and endorsed entire, Bishop Burnet's work on " The Articles," a work most obnoxious to ex- clusive churchmen, wherein the author asserts, " Whatsoever some hotter spirits have thought of this since that time, yet we are very sure that not only those who penned the Articles, but the body of the Church, half an age after, did, not- withstanding those irregularities, acknowledge the foreign Churches, so constituted to be true Churches as to all the essentials of a Church, though they had been at first irregularly formed, and continued still to be in an imperfect state. And, therefore, the general words in which this part of the Article (23d) is penned, seem to have been designed on purpose not to exclude them-" This language Stiilingfleet fully endorsed. TESTIMONY OF STILLINGFLEET. 49 Ten years previous, he united with Tillotson, Tennison, Patrick, and others, in an earnest attempt for a comprehension of dissenters, and one of the conditions of the plan was that " for- eign Presbyterian ministers should be received without reordi nation." Birch, in his " Life of Til- lotson," gives the particulars. The arrangement was defeated by the bigotry and intolerance of the lower House of Convocation ; in consequence, England has presented the sad anomaly, for two centuries, of a national Church rejected by half the population. The equally distinguished John Howe, in reply to Stillingfleet after his defection, writes: — "Somewhat it is likely he was expected (and might be expected) to say to this business; and his own thoughts being set to a work, fermented into an intemperate heat, which, it is to be hoped, will in time evaporate," which, as we have seen, was the case. Bishop Burnet, so intimate with this author, writes of him : " To avoid the imputation that book brought on him, he went into the business of a high sort of people beyond what became him, perhaps beyond his own sense of things." Our own Bishop White writes concerning the " Irenicum " : " The book,' however, was, it seems, easier retracted than refuted; for, though offen- sive to other parties, it was managed, says the same author (Burnet), with so much learning and 50 THE PRIMITIVE -EIEENICON. skill, that none of either side undertook to answer it." (" The Case of the " Episcopal Churches," p. 22.) Presuming, then, that the testimony of Stilling- fleet is the more conclusive from his subsequent history, we give a few extracts from the abundant supply at hand. On page 298, he asserts: "Be- fore the jurisdiction of presbyters was restrained by mutual consent, in this instance, doubtless, the presbyters enjoyed the same liberty that the presbyters among the Jews did, of ordaining other presbyters by the power with which they were invested at their own ordination. In the first primitive Church, the presbyters all acted in com- mon for the welfare of the Church, and either did or might ordain others to the same authority with themselves; because the intrinsical power of order is equally in them, and in those who were after appointed' governors over presbyters. And the collation of orders doth come from the power of order, and not from the power of jurisdiction. It being, likewise, fully acknowledged by the school-men that bishops are not superior above presbyters as to the power of order. " But the clearest evidence of this is in the Church of Alexandria, of which Hierome speaks : ' For at Alexandria,' " etc. Then quoting the pas- sages we have previously given, and contending that the ordination as well as election was con- ducted by the presbyters simply, he proceeds: TESTIMONY OF STILLINGFLEET. 51 " To which we may add .what Eutychius, the patriarch of Alexandria, saith in his Origines Ecclesim Alexandrinae, published in Arabic by our most learned Selden, who expressly affirms, ' that the twelve presbyters,' " etc. ; then giving the language as we have formerly quoted it, he proceeds : " Neither is the authority of Eutychius so niuch to be slighted in this case, coming so near to Hierome as he doth." " By these we see that where no positive re- straint from constraint and choice, for the unity and peace of the Church, have restrained their liberty as to their external exercise of the power of order or jurisdiction, every one being ad- vanced into the authority of a church governor, hath an internal power of conferring the same on persons fit for it." On page 326, he writes : " At Alexandria, where the succession runs clearest, the original of the powers is imputed to the choice of presbyters, and to no divine institu- tion." On page 398, after showing that in Scot- land ordination was practiced by presbyters from A. D. 263 to A. D. 430, he proceeds : " Neither is it any ways sufficient to say that those presbyters did derive their authority from bishops ; for, how- ever, we see here a Church governed without such, or if they had any, they were only chosen from their Culdei, much after the custom of the Church of Alexandria, as Hector Boethius doth imply." Then, stating that the Gothic churches 52 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. were planted and governed by presbyters for seventy years, and the great probability that pres- byters ordained in the Church of France, he con- cludes : " We nowhere read in those early planta- tions of chwrches, that where there were presbyters already, they sent to other Chwches to derive epis- copal ordination from them." And in relation to the doctrine of the Church of England as to the point, on page 438, he writes : " B, is acknowl- edged by the stoutest champions for Episcopacy, before the late unhappy divisions, that ordination performed by presbyters, in cases of necessity, is valid." In testimony to this last statement he refers to Bishops Jewel, Pilkington, Bridges, Bilson, Alley, Andrews, Downham, Davenant, Prideaux, and Mbrton, with Drs. Field, Saravia, Nowel, and Mason, " to whom may be added the Primate of Armagh (Ussher), whose judgment is well known as to the point of ordination." Thus much for the testimony of the seventeenth century. In our next chapter, the witness of liv- ing .Episcopal writers will be presented. CHAPTER VI. MODERN EPISCOPAL WRITERS. Having presented proof that the Church of England acknowledged the validity of Presbyte- rian Orders, in the most public manner, for up- wards of a century after the compilation of her standards, we proceeded to vindicate her action on the ground that it was in accordance with primitive precedent. That for the space of two hundred years in the Church of Alexandria, after its foundation by St. Mark, no episcopal conse- cration or succession was practiced or possessed, we have shown by the statements of the early Fathers, and the later writers of the Alexandrian Church. That this was known and acknowl- edged by the ablest writers of the Church of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, has been seen by quotations from their writings. We proceed now to present the admissions of modern Episcopal writers in relation to a fact which completely silences all exclusive Episcopal claims. And first, — 54 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. DR. 8TAKLBY (Dean of Westminster). In his " History of the Eastern Church " (pp. 326-27), when speaking of the period of the Council of Nice, he says : — " In a few weeks after the close of the Council, Alexander died, and Athanasius succeeded to the vacant see. It was a marked epoch in every sense for the Egyptian primacy. Down to this time (according to the traditions of the Alex- andrian Church itself), the election to the great post had been conducted in a manner unlike to that of the other sees of Christendom. Not the bishop, but twelve presbyters, were the electors and nominators, and (according to Eutychius) consecrators. It was on the death of Alexander that this ancient custom was exchanged for one more nearly resembling that which prevailed elsewhere. " Jerome speaks of the custom as having lasted only till the Bishops Heraclas and Dionysius (Epist. ad Evang. 85). But the tradition of the Alexandrian Church, as preserved in Euty- chius (1-331), maintained that it lasted till Alexander. The change which he ascribes to Heraclas is another, which may have led to Jerome's statement, namely, that down to that time there had been no bishop in Egypt except the Bishop of Alexandria." TESTIMONY OF LITTON.' 55 PROFESSOR LITTON (of Oxford). This able writer remarks, in his treatise on " The Church of Christ " (p. 570) : " When Epis- copacy was introduced, to bishops as being so far successors of the Apostles as that they were the highest order of ministers in the Church, the power of ordination was, agreeably to apostolic precedent, reserved — a reservation which was ratified by ancient canons, and has received the sanction of immemorial usage. On this solid ground it is best to rest the practice of Episcopal ordination. That bishops rightly ordain, we can say with certainty ; to say that none but they can orda.in, is, not only to add something of our own to the written Word, but to set aside the evi- dence of history, which testifies to the contrary, and to abandon the moderate position taken upon this subject by our most learned divines. " The most remarkable instance, in which a deviation from the rule that bishops only should ordain, appears to have taken place; is the well- known one of the Alexandrian Church, in which, as Jerome reports, it was the custom for the pres- byters ' to choose one of their own number, and placing him in a higher position, to salute him bishop ; as if an army should make an emperor, or the deacons should elect one of themselves and call him archdeacon.' (Epist. ad Evang.) To the same effect is the testimony of Hilary the deacon, and of Eutychius of Alexandria. To the 56 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. evidence of the former writer Mr. Palmer (on the Church, pt. 6, c. 4), objects that the word ' consignant,' which he (Hilary) uses, signifies not ' ordain,' but ' confirm,' and to that of the latter, that he lived too late fin the tenth century) to have any weight in determining such a ques- tion. But, however indecisive the expressions, or the opinions, of late writers separately may be, the presumption in favor of the obvious meaning of Jerome's language, created by their united testimony, is very strong, especially as it is con- firmed by a passage which occurs in the book printed with Augustine's works, ' Questiones,' etc. : ' Nam in Alexandria et per totam -^gyptum si desit episcopus, consecrat presbyter.'" (Q,ues. 51.) DR. WILLIAM GOODE. From " The Divine Rule of Faith and Prac- tice " of this eminent controversialist, we extract the following testimony : — " That episcopal consecration was generally appointed in very early times to be, as it was, the seal to the episcopal appointment, can hardly, I think, be questioned by any one who is at all versed in the records of the Primitive Church ; but, nevertheless, there are testimonies occurring which seem to show, not merely that it was not absolutely" essential,' but that it was not univer- sally practiced. TESTIMONY OF 600DE. 57 " For instance, the testimony of, Eutychius of Alexandria, is plain that such was not the case originally at Alexandria. His words are these : ." Then quoting the passage, he proceeds : " I have given this passage in full, because it has been sometimes replied that it referred only to the election of the patriarch, and that we must sup- pose that he was afterwards consecrated to his office by bishops. But it is evident to any one who takes the whole passage together, that such an explanation is altogether inadmissible ; and, moreover, the very same word which (following Selden) I have translated created, is used with respect to the acts of the presbyters, and is after- wards used with respect to the acts of the bishops in the appointments. I am quite aware that very considerable learning has been employed in the attempt to explain away this passage, and the reader who wishes to see how a plain statement may thus be darkened, may refer to the works mentioned below." Commenting on a passage from Renaudot, he continues : " The sole object for which I quote the passage is, to show, that according to Euty- chius, the person appointed to the episcopal office in Alexandria held and exercised the duties of the office without any episcopal consecra- tion. " And this statement of Eutychius is clearly and expressly supported by the testimony of 58 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. Jerome, in a passage where he plainly maintains the doctrine that such an appointment is suffi- cient to constitute a presbyter a bishop, and adduces this example in proof of it." After quoting Jerome's words, he adds : " This passage, be it observed, does not take away from the episcopate its rights, but distinctly admits that the power of ordination belongs properly to that office, and that its possessor has a higher rank than the presbyter. But, at the same time, it clearly maintains that as it respects the ministerial character, there is no difference be- tween a presbyter and a bishop, the difference being only to be found in the ecclesiastical dis- tribution of the duties to be performed by them, and what is still more to our purpose, that appointment to the episcopal office by the pres- byters of the Church is sufficient (as far as essen- tials are concerned) to entitle a presbyter to perform the duties of the episcopal function, " Now these two positions are perfectly con- sistent with each other. We may maintain fully even the apostolicity of the episcopal form of church government, and yet deny, that episcopal consecration is a sine qua non to the performance of the duties of the bishop or president of a church. And, if we bear this in mind, we shall find that Jerome, notwithstanding the charges of self-contradiction that have been brought against him, is perfectly consistent in what he has written TESTIMONY OF RIDDLE. 59 on this subject. The great point with Jerome manifestly is, that such a president of the Church should be appointed, and such powers conceded to him ; and, in his view, when that is done, the essentials are safe." (Vol. ii. pp. 256-59.) KEY. J. B. EIDDLB. We present another witness in this coflnection, whose testimony is of great weight from his emi- nent learning in the department of Christian Antiquities, — Rev. Mr. Riddle; of St. Edmunds .HaU, Oxford. As a commentator on the Gospels and Prayer Book, as a Church historian, as a chronologist, a lexicographer, as Bampton lec- turer for 1852, and particularly as the compiler of the most learned of English modern works on Christian Antiquities, this author's opinion on the point we are considering is of peculiar value. From Mr. Riddle's full and candid dissertation on the ancient distinction between the bishop and presbyter, we t^e the following extract : " Jerome, one of the most learned of the Latin fathers, who had before him all the testimonies and arguments of earlier writers, has placed this matter in its true light with peculiar distinctness. In his annotation on the first chapter of the Epistle to Titus, he gives the following account of the nature and origin of the episcopal office : ' A presbyter is the same as a bishop. And until, 60 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. by the instigation of the devil, there arose divis- ions in religion, and it was said among the peo- ple, " I am of Paul, and I of ApoUos, and I of Cephas," churches were governed by the Com- mon Council of the presbyters. But afterwards, when every one regarded those whom he baptized as belonging to himself rather than to Christ, it was everywhere decreed that one person, elected from the presbyters, should be placed over the others; to whom the care of the whole church might belong, and thus the seeds of division might be taken away. Should any one suppose that this opinion, — that a bishop and presbyter is the saiAe, and that one is the denomination of age and the other of office, — is not sanctioned by the Scriptures, but is only a private fancy of my own, let him read over again the Apostles' words to the Philippians, — " Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi with the bish- ops and deacons : Grace be unto you and peace, from God our !Pather, and* from the Lord Jesus Christ," etc. Philippi is a siijgle city of Mace- donia, and .certainly, of thosa who are now styled bishops, there could not have been several at one time in the same city. But, because at that time they called the same persons bishops whom they styled also presbyters, therefore the Apostle spoke indifferently of bishops as of presbyters.' " The writer then refers to the fact, that St. TESTIMONY OF RmDLE. 61 Paul, having sent for the presbyters (in the plural) of the single city of Ephesus only, afterwards calls these same persons bishops. (Acts xx.) To this fact he calls particular attention, and then observes that, in the Epistle to the Hebrews also, we find the care of the Church divided equally among many. ' " Obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves, for they watch for your souls as they that must give account ; that they may do it with joy and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you ! " And Peter,' con- tinues Jerome, ' who received his name from the firmness of his faith, says in his Epistle : " The presbyters who are among you I exhort, who am also a presbyter, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed ; feed the flock of God which is among you [he omits the word, " taking the oversight thereof," episcopountes, i. e., superin- tending it], not by constraint but willingly." These -things we have brought forward to show that, with the ancients, presbyters were the same as bishops. But in order that the roots of dissen- sion might be plucked up, a usage gradually took place that the whole care should devolve upon one. Therefore, as the presbyters knew that it is by the custom of the Church that they are subject to him who is placed over them, so let the bishops know that they are above presbyters rather by custom than by the Lord's appointment, and that 62 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. they ought to rule the Chwch in common, herein imitating Moses,' etc. " The same views are maintained by this father in his ' Epistle to Evagrius,' with the additional mention of the fact, that from the first foundation of the Church of Alexandria, down to the days of Heraclas and Dionysius, the presbyters of that Church made (or, as we should say, consecrated) bishops. The passage, which is quoted at some length in the note, is very important. Having re- ferred to several passages of the Acts and epistles in proof of an assertion which he had made, to the effect that bishop and presbyter were at first the same, he proceeds to say that * afterwards, when one was elected and set over the others, this was designed as a remedy against schism. .... For at Alexandria, from the Evangel- ist Mark, down to the bishops Heraclas and Dionysius, the presbyters always gave the name of bishop to one whom they elected from them- selvesj and placed in a higher degree ; in the same way as an army may create its general, or as deacons may elect one of their own body, whom they know to be assiduous in the discharge of duty, and call him archdeacon. For what does a bishop perform, except ordination, which a pres- byter may not do,' etc. " The fact which Jerome here states, respecting the appointments and ordination of bishops in the Church of Alexandria by presbyters alone, for TESTIMONY OF TERTULLIAN. 63 the space of more than two centuries, is attested also by Eutychius, Patriarch of Alexandria. And the opinion of Jerome respecting the original equality, or rather identity, of presbyter and bishop, is in perfect accordance with the language of a still earlier writer, TertuUian, ' De Baptis- mo,' c. xvii. The two passages together form a text and a commentary, sufficient to elucidate the whole matter : " ' The highest priest,' who is the bishop,' says TertuUian, ' has the right of administering bap- tism. Then the presbyters and deacons, yet not without the authority of the bishop, because of the honor of the Church, which being preserved, peace is preserved. Otherwise the right belongs even to laymen Emulation is the mother of division. " All things are lawful to me," said the most holy Paul, " but all things are not expedient." Let it suffice that you use your liberty in cases of necessity, when the condition of the person, or the circumstances of the place, compel you to it.' " Upon j;he whole, then, it appears that the or- der (or office) of a bishop is above that of a priest, not by any authority of Scripture, but only by the custom of the Church, or by virtue of an ecclesi- astical arrangement " (Riddle's " Antiquities," pp. 235-42, ed. 1843). The declaration of Jerome, that as late as the fourth century, the authority to ordain was the 64 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. sole peculiar privilege of the bishop, and this an ecclesiastical arrangement, not a divine ordinance, is in itself a sufficient refutation of the exclusive Episcopal claim, upon which such a dangerous superstructure of wood, hay, and stubble, has been erected in later times. In his preface to this same volume, entitled " A Plea for Episcopacy, Charity, and Peace," Riddle writes : " I have thus put together a few thoughts which have arisen in my mind while I have been particularly conversant with works re- lating to the history and antiquities of the Chris- tian Church. Perhaps even those grounds of episcopacy which I have described as certain and strong, may be regarded by some persons in a dif- ferent light, while others may think that clear cer- tainty and evidence attach to those which I have ventured to describe as doubtful. But such dif- ference of opinion will not trouble either my readers or myself, if we are duly influenced by Christian humility and a peaceful love of truth. " Lessons of moderation, candor, and Chris- tian charity, may be continually learnt by a care- ful examination of church history and antiquities. Great mischief and many dissensions have arisen from refusing to acknowledge certain questions to be doubtful or open, which yet have never been determined, and which it is not needful to com- press within narrow limits. The study of Chris- tian antiquities may show that questions do ex- APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 65 ist, in connection with the origin and claims of Episcopacy, which, if positively decided and main- tained in the affirmative by any one set of persons, must lead to unpleasant differences, and perhaps to a want of Christian sympathy, between those who ought to ' love as brethren.! Let the advo- cates of different systems of church government treat each other not merely with forbearance, but with unfeigned respect. None of the prevalent systems of the present day can afford to maintain any exclusive claims in the face of history. Nor can such claims consist with charity " The following questions, for example, may well be left open, being such as will always re- ceive different answers from different inquirers. " Did the Apostles, in any way sanction the doctrines commonly connected with the theory of apostolic succession ? If an apostolic succession had been designed from the first, it may reason- ably be supposed that the Apostles would have made some pointed allusion to such a provision for the transmission of the faith, and for the peace of the Church, especially in their warnings against false doctrines and divisions. But although such warnings are numerous, they contain no intima- tions of such a bulwark of sound doctrine and centre of Christian unity. St. Paul, in full pros- pect of the attempts of false teachers, did not charge the elders of Ephesus to abide by the de- cisions and doctrines of a bishop, but he desired 5 66 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. them to take heed to themselves, and then com- mended them to God " Whatever may become of apostolic succession as a theory or institute, it is impossible, at all events, to prove the fact of such succession, or to trace it down the stream of time. In this case, the fact seems to involve the doctrine ; and if the fact be hopelessly obscure, the doctrine is irrecov- erably lost. But can we suppose that the divine Author of our religion has suffered any part of his Gospel to perish ? It is, of course, possible that a truly apostolic succession may have existed, although the traces may haVe entirely disap- peared, but must we not allow men to regard such a loss as constituting to render the whole doctrine and institute extremely doubtful? Should we not weaken the good cause of Episcopacy, by insisting upon pretensions which cannot be estab- lished, and which may really be fictitious ? " It is impossible to prove the personal succes- sion of modern bishops, in an .unbroken episcopal line, from the Apostles, or men of the apostolic age. " As a matter of history and fact, apostolic succession, in this acceptation of the term, is an absolute nonentity. Call it a theory, a fiction, a vision, or whatever you choose, you cannot give it a name too shadowy and unsubstantial. It exists, indeed, as an honest prejudice in the minds of many sincere Christians, and so far is entitled , TESTIMONY OF RIDDLE. 67 to consideration and respect. But in itself it is an empty sound. "Doubtless the custom of setting apart men for the Christian ministry by the laying on of hands, has existed in the Church from the apos- tolic age, having been originally derived from the practice of the Jewish synagogues, under vsrhich institution all who were appointed as fixed min- isters, to take care of the performance of religious duties, were solemnly appointed in this manner. The hands of the Apostles and their contempo- raries form, therefore, the first link of a chain which has extended to the present day ; and this circumstance is a pleasing subject of contempla- tion to the minds of many persons, and espe- cially to the members of those churches which have retained the custom. But we must be in possession of many other particulars, which are irrevocably lost, in order to build upon this fact the doctrine of a succession, derived from the Apostles themselves, in the line of bishops alone, and . for the conveyance of a peculiar grace " (Preface to Riddle's " Antiquities," pp. 41, 46 ; 50, 51). The views of the most distinguished writers of the Church of England, with respect to apostolic succession, are given at the end of the volume. CHAPTER Vn. tHE ARGUMENT OP AN EPISCOPAL LAYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, WITH RESPECT TO THE ORDINATIONS OP THE CHURCH OP ALEXANDRIA. We quote from " An Inquiry into the Scrip- tural View of the -Constitution of a Christian Church," etc., by William Albin Garratt, A. M., Barrister at Law. London : 1846. As the view taken by a lay member of the Church of England, employing a legal mind in the examination of historical testimony, we re- gard the passage as eminently valuable, and therefore quote it almost entire. On the laity of the Church, under God, depends its deliver- ance from its present danger^, and to them espe- cially is commended a careful examination of the testimony here presented. On p. 367, this author writes : " Eutychius, of Alexandria, after mentioning that Mark the Evangelist went and preached at Alexandria, and appointed Hananias the first patriarch of that city, adds." The author, after quoting Eutychius, and then Severus, whose language we have before given, says : " The slight apparent discrepancy between these two passages AEGUMENT OF AN ANGLICAN .BARRISTER. 69 may easily be removed. Eutychius mentions the twelve presbyters only in whom the appointment of patriarch was vested, from whom the patriarch was to be chosen, and of whom the remaining eleven were to lay their hands on his head. Seve- rus says that the priests (sacerdotes) and people were assembled ; while Eutychius does not say that the people were excluded from being present at the appointment of a new patriarch. Severus mentions the priests generally, not particularly specifying the twelve presbyters ; nor had he any occasion to specify them, as he does not mention the election, but only the assembling and the lay- ing on of hands and the enthroning. We may, indeed, infer from the tenor of this narrative that the election in the case of Peter was merely formal; the choice having been previously fixed upon him as the spiritual son and disciple of Theonas, and in pursuance of his ' command ' (his recommendation probably). Lastly, Severus, if taken literally and strictly, would seem to say that the persons assembled, priests and people, laid hands on Peter; but no one would under- stand him to say that every individual present laid his hands on Peter. The plain meaning is, that those of the individuals assembled whose oifice it was laid hands on the patriarch elect, the others being assembled to witness the transaction. " We have, then, in Eutychius, illustrated and confirmed by Severus, distinct evidence of the ex- 70 THE PKIMITIVE EIEENICON. istence of a custom in the Church of Alexandria differing altogether from the customs mentioned by Cyprian, as prevailing among the African churches in his province ; a custom traced back to the time of Mark the Evangelist ; a custom which vested the election and creation of the patriarch in twelve presbyters without the concurrence of any bishop. The eleven presbyters who remained after one of their number had been elected bishop, laid their hands upon his head and implored a blessing upoji him, thereby setting him apart for his new office as the ' prophets and teachers,' not ' apostles or bishops,' which were in the Church at Antioch, ' fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on ' Paul (an apostle already) and Barna- bas, and ' sent them away,' thus separating them for ' the work ' to which the Holy Ghost had ' called them,' — the missionary journey on which they went, as related immediately afterwards. " By this election and imposition of presbyters' hands, the individual was, according to Eutychius, created patriarch, invested therefore (without episcopal intervention), with the full authority of the episcopal office, and, accordingly (as we learn from Severus), Peter, immediately on being so appointed, was placed on the patriarchal throne. This statement of Severus overturns the fancy of some persons, that the rule mentioned by Euty- chius related only to the election, and that the patriarch elect was afterwards ordained by bish- ARGUMENT OF AN ANGLICAN BARRISTER. 71 ops. A fancy which Mr. Goode, on Other grounds, has shown to be without foundation. This view of the usage of the Church of Alexandria is con- firmed by a- passage in Jerome (born about a. d. 345), which, on account of its importance, I have quoted at some length." Having given the pas- sage as we have previously quoted it, he pro- ceeds : " In this passage Jerome not only con- fi.rms Eutychius' statement of the custom of the Church of Alexandria, but shows his understand- ing of the custom to be that the presbyters there exclusively appointed their bishops ; and he fur- ther tells us how bishops were originalLy intro- duced into the Church. " He confirms the statements of Eutychius, though he speaks of the custom as continuing (not till Alexander, but) till Heraclas and Diony- sius, bishops He must have derived his information from some other source, probably from some writer contemporary with Heraclas and Dionysius, from whom, of course, he would only have learned that the custom had continued till their time ; and he does not say that it has ceased. His, therefore, is testimony independent of those of Eutychius and Severus, and probably derived from an earlier source, contemporary with the existence of the custom. It leaves no room to doubt the accuracy of the statements of Euty- chius and Severus. " More than this, Jerome's testimony establishes 72 THE PEIMITIVE EIRENICON. as correct that view of the custom which ascribes to the presbyter from first to last the appointment of the Patriarch of Alexandria ; not only his elec- tion (unum ex se electum), but his elevation to a higher rank ; for Jerome compares the proceeding to that of an army constituting a general {imper- atorem faciat), which, according to the Roman custom, was by acclamation, or of deans choosing an archdeacon. And the whole tenor of the pas- sage shows that Jerome intended to state the ap- pointment of the bishops of Alexandria as made without amy episcopal interference or sanction ; on the custom so understood his argument is founded, and it is intelligible on no other hypothesis. He asks, indeed, ' What does a bishop do, with the exception of ordination, which a presbyter may not do ? ' But he does not ascribe this exception to any difference of apostolic commission between a bishop and presbyter. His position is that ' the bishop and the presbyter are the same,' both ' suc- cessors of the Apostles,^ successors (not in the sense of a transmitted commission, but) as hold- ing in the Church the same office of pastors and teachers, the bishop being placed ' over the rest ' as their ruler. " And this is obviously the ground of the ex- ception, it belonging to the bishop, as chief ruler of the Churchy to ordain ; an exception, therefore, limited to the case of a church having a bishop, and not precluding the presbyters (when the see ARGUMENT OF AN ANGLICAN BARRISTER. 73 is vacant) from electing and laying hands (as those of Alexandria did) on their new bishop." " Once more, Jerome's account of the introduc- tion of bishops, as distinguished from presbyters, deserves serious attention. Jerome had his faults, — and great faults, — but he was a man of exten- sive learning. He argues from Scripture that ' a bishop and presbyter ' are the same ; and then adds, that ' afterwards one was chosen over the sect.' Why ? ' To prevent schism ; ' to form a bond of union between the presbyters, and again to facilitate union among the different churches. That he is right in his view of the passages of Scripture which he cites (Phil, i, 1, Acts xx. 28, Tit i. 5, 1 Tim. iv. 14, 1 Peter v. 1, 2 John i., and 3 John i.) is, I think, clear, and will scarcely be disputed by any one, though an advocate for Episcopacy, who has carefully considered the question ; and what he adds, as a matter of fact, respecting the purpose for which one person was ' chosen to be over the rest,' is not inconsistent with what we read in the epistles to the seven apocalyptic churches, or with the facts which have been deduced from our examination of the Fathers down to the time of Cyprian. It is a statement which implies a gradual introduction of Episco- pacy into the churches, first into one church, and then into another ; a statement in perfect harmony with the result which I deduced from an examina- tion of several epistles of the apostolic fathers. 74 THE PRIMITrVE EIKENICON. and at the same time utterly at variance with the notion of apostolic succession by episcopal ordi- nation. The purpose, however, for which princi- pally I quote this passage of Jerome, is not for his opinion respecting the bishops and presbyters, but to confirm the statements of Eutychius re- specting the original custom of the Church of Alexandria in the appointment of its patriarchs, and to overjturn the erroneous glosses sought to be put upon it, " I now revert to that statement of Eutychius as incontrovertibly correct, and as establishing that, from the time of Hananias,' who was ap- pointed by St. Mark Bishop of Alexandria, till after the Council of Nice, a period of more than two centuries, the twelve presbyters of Alexandria elected from among themselves their bishop or patriarch, and by their appointment of him to the episcopal office (the other eleven laying hands opon him) constituted him bishop or patriarch, the ruler of their church, entitled (without any sanc- tion or confirmation of any other bishop) to per- form all the duties of the episcopal office. " It is further evident from the statement that this practice existed when there was no want of bishops to ordain or consecrate (had that been thought necessary) the patriarch. For Alexander (the patriarch who put an end to the custom) is said to have transferred the election to * the bish- ops ; ' and may we not, from this expression, and AEGDMENT OF AN ANGLICAN BARRISTEE. 75 from the title given to the bishops of Alexan- dria, reasonably conclude that Alexandria was a mother church by which other churches had been founded with bishops of their own ? Yet these bishops took no part in the appointment of the patriarchs until after the Council of Nice. " Further, this custom was observed for more than two centuries without objection being made to it; observed, not in an obscure church, but in one of the principal churches of the age, in the chief city and metropolitan church of Egypt, in a church and city of which the catechetical school, successively under Clement and Origen, was renowned throughout the world. Its patri- archs (those created by the presbyters) were recog- nized by other churches, and we learn from the statements in Eutychius, that its patriarch Alex- ander was one of the three hundred and eighteen bishops assembled at the Council of Nice. What then is the effect of this one fact ? What is the effect of this Alexandrian custom upon the ques- tion of episcopal succession by episcopal ordinot- tion from the times of the Apostles ? " In the first place, it confirms the objections which I have offered to various passages in Ire- nsBUs, TertuUian, Origen, and Cyprian, being re- ceived as evidence in support of the alleged ^fact of apostolical succession ' in the Tractarian sense of the word ; those passages I mean in which the writer either speaks in general terms of succession 76 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICOIT. or episcopal succession from the Apostles, or as- serts that apostolical churches can enumerate the succession of their bishops, from the first bishop appointed by an apostle. It annihilates all such passages as evidence for such a purpose. The Alexandrian patriarchs, Heraclas, or Dionysius, or Alexander, could, with strict truth, have talked of episcopal succession in this church, from the first bishop appointed by Mark the Evangelist, and have enumerated the succession of bishops of Alexandria from that first bishop, and yet those bishops were ' created ' by the presbyters ; yet they were not episcopaUy ordained to the oflS^ce of bishop. " In the next place, the Alexandrian custom makes a gap in apostolical succession, through episcopal ordination, which can never be filled up; breaks a link in the supposed chain which can in no way be replaced. Even if it could be shown that the custom was peculiar to the Church of Alexandria, how could any bishop of the present day, tracing back his succession through a series of bishops to an apostle, prove satisfactorily that no individual in that series had derived, m'ediately or immediately, from one of these Alexandrian patriarchs? But can it be shown that the custom was, in the first ages of Christianity, peculiar to the Church of Alexan- dria ? Is it probable that the Eva,ngelist St. Mark should have there introduced a usage at variance ARGUMENT OF AN ANGLICAN BARRISTER. 77 with the practice of other churches ? The truth seems to be that the Apostles laid down general principles for the government of churches and the appointment of ministers; and that those prin- ciples were variously carried out in diiferent churches, according to circumstances, resulting in some churches earlier, in others later, in all ulti- mately, in the threefold distinction of ministers, as consonant with, but not essentially required by, those principles " (pp. 367-79). This a^le review, after thorough examina- tion of Scriptural and patristic testimony, con- cludes : " Firstly, that a church, bearing a three- fold ministry of bishops, elders, and deacons is conformable to the plan ultimately introduced, with the apostolic sanction, into the churches of Asia Minor, and consequently consistent with the .will of God; secondly, that such a form of church government is the best, where the circum- stances of the Church do not essentially differ from those of the seven Asiatic churches; and, thirdly, that a church possessing that form of gov- ernment ought not to depart from it without clear and strong grounds, such as an obvious necessity for the preservation of the true faith." " But we cannot conclude from any practice of the Church, as recorded in the New Testament, either, firstly, that a church sound in apostolic doctrine, but wanting the threefold ministry, is not a true Church of Christ ; or, secondly, that a church having both an apostolic doctrine and a threefold 78 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. ministry, but whose bishops cannot trace back an uninterrupted succession to an apostle, is not a true Church of Christ " (pp. 198, 199). We think great good might be done by the republication of this able and candid work by a clear-headed layman. bowdler's •vibw. We give, in this connection, the language of another able layman of the Church of England, who has employed his pen against ^e modern innovators on her doctrines : — " It is no part of my plan to trace the origin or course of departure from the system of church government in the apostolical times, as it lies before us in all its simplicity. I admit — indeed, as the lawyers say, it is a part of my case — that some change was unavoidable ; and I see nothing, in the present constitution of the Church of Eng- land that is inconsistent with the principles of the Apostles. But to say that they are identical is a mere abuse of words. Still less is it to be heard say, without some impatience, that there is safety in her communion only, as she has descended from the Apostles, through ail the changes and abominations that have intervened." After an examination of the primitive writers he proceeds : " I am aware that in St. Jerome's time there existed generally, though by no means universally, this difference between the bishop and the presbyter, namely, that to the former was TESTIMONY OF BOWDLEE. 79 then confided the power of ordination. The transition from perfect equality to absolute su- periority was not suddenly effected ; it was the growth of time, not of years, but of centuries, the distinction of authority or ofiice preceding that of order or degree in the Church, and being introductory to it. With the former I have no concern, it being sufficient to show, that as a distinct and superior order in the Church, Epis- copacy, in the modern acceptation of the term, did not exist in the time of the Apostles; and that, however expedient and desirable such an institution might be, it cannot plead the sanction of apostolic appointment or example. " It may be difficult to fix the period exactly when the episcopate was first recognized as a distinct order in the Church, and when the con- secration of bishops, as such, came to be in gen- eral use. Clearly not, I think, when Jerome •wrote. Thus much, at least, is certain, namely, that the government of each Church, including tUe ordination of ministers, was at first in the hands of the presbytery ; that when one of that body was raised to the office of president, and on whom the title of bishop was conferred, it was simply by the election (co-optatio) of the other presbyters, whose appointment was final, requir- ing no -confirmation or consecration at the hands of any other prelates, and that each Church was essentially independent of every other. " If, then, all this be so, there seems to be an 80 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. end to the question ; for, under whatever circum- stances the privilege of ordaining was afterwards committed to the bishop, he could of necessity receive no more than it was in -their power to bestow, from whom he received it, who were co- ordinate presbyters, not superiors. At whatever period, therefore, it were adopted, and with what- ever uniformity it might be continued, and what- ever of value or even authority it might hence acquire, still, as an apostolical institution, it has none ; there is a gap which can never be filled, or rather, the link by wrhich the whole must be suspended is wanting, and can never be supplied. There can be no apostolical "succession of that which had no apostolical existence ; whereas, the averment, to be of any avail, must be, not only that it existed in the time of the Apostles, but was so appointed by them, or that there can be no true Church without it." (" Bowdler's Letters on Apostolic Succession," pp. 32 - 48.) That two laymen of ability and learning, after a thorough examination of the subject, should come to the same conclusion, and this in opposi- tion to the general current of opinion in their Church, is certainly strongly confirmatory of the position here maintained, and should induce our intelligent laity to investigate the basis of a sys- tem which, confessedly, is doing so much 'damage to the cause of peace and unity in our com- munion, and promoting schism among the com- mon brotherhood of the faith. CHAPTEE Vin. ROMAN CATHOLIC TESTIMONY. In giving the language of Drs. Stanley, Litton, Goode, and Riddle, with respect to the Alexan- drian presbyterial ordination, we have presented the concessions of some of the ablest of living Episcopal writers, sufficient for our purpose, and we now offer ROMAN CATHOLIC TESTIMONY. The concession of writers of the Roman Church strengthen the force df our argument, and we therefore give the language of the learned MOEINUS, as quoted by Dr; Goode. Dr. Goode remarks: " It is most important to observe, that even the Romanist Morinus, one of the most learned di- vines of the Church of Rome, fully admits, and even maintains by the citations of various testi- monies, that this was- for a long period the cus- tom at Alexandria, referring for proof particularly to the passage of Jerome, just cited, and vindica- ting the meaning I have affixed to it against ob- 82 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. jections. He finds fault, indeed, with the passage of Eutychius on other grounds, but with that I have no concern. I adduce it simply to show that in the case to which it refers, episcopal consecra- tion was not considered necessary to constitute a presbyter a bishop." Now, on this point, Morinus himself speaks thus : " St. Jerome testifies that at Alexandria, from the time of Mark the Evan- gelist to Dionysius,.that is, for the space of nearly two hundred years, the bishops were inaugurated without any. consecration, but the presbyters of Alexandria, when their bishop was dead, elected one of their own order, and belonging to their own church, and placed him upon the higher throne, and called him bishop. By which exam- ple, truly, it most clearly appears that neither Jerome nor the Alexandrians recognized that character by which •& bishop is said to be above a presbyter, since no prayer, no ceremony, no form of words, was used above the presbyters elected. You will say he mentions none, but it cannot well be concluded that there was none, since it is certain that authors do not always relate every- thing that took place. This indeed is true, but the scope and words of St. Jerome do not admit of this objection. For he contends, that a pres- byter is the same as a bishop, and proves this from the peculiar and unusual custom of the Al- exandrians, who made use of no consecration, no words to ' consecrate as a bishop the presbyter TESTIMONY OF MOEINUS. 83 elected by them, but only placed him on the throne, and called him bishop." Referring to the " Breviarum " of Liberatus, p. 122, he says : " It clearly follows from it that for at least two hundred years after Alexander, the presbyters of Alexandria, not the bishops, elected the patriarch ; and that neither the pres- byters nor the bishops, nor any other person, laid their hands on the person elected." Bishop Jewel states that it was the custom " for the newly elected patriarch to place the hand of his deceased predecessor on his own head." The statement of Jewel is cohfirmed by Bing- ham in his " Antiquities." The inquiry here arises — Did the succession flow through the hand of the dead patriarch, or from the living presbyters, and w^hich was the bet- ter of the two ? CHAPTEE IX. OBJECTIONS. It is not surprising that this remarkable fact in ecclesiastical history has much troubled our more extravagant and exclusive Episcopal writers, and among others, BISHOP PEAESON, of revered and honored memory. This learned writer professes to discredit the testimony of Eutychius, in his " Vindicise Igna- tianse," while at the same time, he quotes him elsewhere as an authority with respect to the chronology of the early Roman Church. Gibbon remarks (vol. i. p. 108) : " The ancient state, as it is "described by Jerome, of .the bishops and presbyters of Alexandjia, receives a remark- able confirmation from the patriarch Eutychius (Annal., tom. i., p. 330, vers. Pococke), whose testimony I know not how to reject, in spite of all the objections of the learned Pearson in his ' Vindicise Ignatianse.' " And page 131, " Its in- ternal evidence would be a sufficient answer to all that Pearson has urged." On a question of EXAMINATION OF OBJECTIONS. 85 this kind, we may regard Gibbon as an impartial and reliable authority. OTHER OBJECTIONS. We find, in the seventeenth century, Bishop Parker and Dr. Hickes ; and in our times, Hobart, Bowden, Cooke, Chapin, Jarvis, Boyd, and Per- cival, offering criticisms similar to those of Pear- son and Palmer. As a specimen, Dr. Jarvis objects that " Selden, who made this discovery, had not a profound knowledge of Arabic, nor was he well versed in ecclesiastical history." Such language borders on the ludicrous. Dr. Pococke assisted Selden in his translation, and according to the " EncyclopEedia Britannica," " Pococke was for many years the first orientalist in Europe." He afterwards pub- lished the complete works of Eutychius, to which edition Gibbon refers. Of Selden, Bishop Jebb writes : " Of this great man's attainments, it were superfluous to speak ; his life, properly told, would be a complete history of the learning of his time." Lord Clarendon says : " Mr. Selden was a person whom no char- acter can flatter, or transmit in any expressions equal to his mind and virtue. He was of such stupendous learning, in all kinds and in all lan- guages, as may appear from his excellent and transcendent writings, that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant among 86 THE PEIMITIVE EIRENICON. books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing." Archbishop Usher, the greatest- scholar of his century, in his funeral sermon over Selden, said : " He looked upon the deceased as so great a scholar, that himself was scarce worthy to carry his books after him " (EIrington's « Usher," p. 273). To the objections of Palmer, we have given the reply of Dr. Litton. Bowden, Hobart, and Cooke have endeavored to disparage the testimony of Eutychius, by charging him with ignorance of the facts, misstatements, etc. To such objections, and to the charge that the work has been garbled, we reply with Mosheim, that Eutychius was " the most learned man of his nation, in medicine and theology," in a most learned time ; with Giesler, " It is at least certain that the part which is contradictory to the usage of later times, has not been interpolated, and so far has a historic value." And in the apt words of Stillingfleet, in answer to Pearson (" Irenicum " p. 300), " Neither is the authority of Eutychius so much to be slighted in this case, coming so near to Hierome as he doth, who doubtless had he told us, that Mark and Ananias, etc., did.all these with- out any presbyters, might have had the good for- tune to have been quoted with as much frequency and authority as the anonymous author of the martyrdom of Timothy in ' Photius ' (who there unhappily follows the story of the seven sleepers), EXAMINATION OF OBJECTIONS. 87 or the author of the ' Apostolical Constitutions ' whose credit is everlastingly blasted by the excel- lent Mr. Daille, on the counterfeit writings of the Apostles, so much do men's interest tend to the enhancing or abating the esteem and credit both of the dead and living." RKV. J. M. NBALE. This author, in his recent elaborate history of the " Church of Alexandria," endeavors to over- throw the testimony of Eutychius, by charging him with ignorance. He contends that the act of the presbyters was simply an election. One of his most prominent . authorities, Le Quien, he con- fesses, was " ignorant of Arabic." Neale offers nothing new in bis argument. FULL STATEMENTS OF OPPONENTS. In order that our readers may see all that may be said on the opposite side of this vital question on the point of succession, we give the full argu- ments of three of the most recent exclusive epis- copal writers. DR. PEKCIVAL. And first, Percival on the " Apostolical Succes- sion," p. 26, writes: " The next precedent cited, is that of Alexandria, where it is pretended that, for about two hundred and fifty years after Christ, the presbyters ordained the bishop. This rests upon the supposed testimony of two witnesses — 88 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. St. Jerome, who lived one hundred and fifty years, and Eutychius, who lived seven hundred and fifty years after the time mentioned. I wonder what woulc^be said of any churchman who would at- tempt to found a precedent on two single wit- nesses so far removed. However, let us consider what their evidence amounts to. St. Jerome speaks thus : ' At Alexandria, from the Evangelist Mark, to Heraclas and Dionysius the bishops, the presbyters always gave the name of bishop, or nominated to be bishop, one chosen from among themselves, and placecl in a higher degree.' Ob- serve, firstly, the utmost that can be made of this passage, by itself, is that the presbyters at Alex- andria had a voice in the appointment of the pa- triarch, which in other places res^d with the bish- ops of the province. And even this is not dis- tinctly stated. Jerome does not say the bishop was chosen by the presbyters, but from among them. Nor does he say by whom he was placed in a higher degree. Observe, secondly, that St. Jerome proves, by his very next sentence, that he did not mean that the presbyters ordained the patriarch ; for he subjoins, - For what does a bish- op do, except ordination, which a presbyter may not do?' Observe, thirdly, that from the very passage appealed to by the Presbyterians, it ap- " pears that, from the days of St. Mark, the founder of the Church of Alexandria inclusive, the Church there had always been governed by a single chief EXAMINATION OF PEECIVAL. 89 pastor, called bishop, of a higher degree than presbjrters ; . so that episcopacy is admitted to be an evangelical arrangement. Thus the chief evidence witnesses the direct contrary to that for which appeal had been made to him. Next, let us call the other witness, Eutychius, a writer of the tenth century, who states that ' St. Mark in- stituted twelve presbyters at Alexandria, who, upon the vacancy of the See of Alexandria, did choose of their number one to be head over the rest, and the other seven did lay their hands upon him, and made him patriarch.' " But observe, firstly, that even if we could re- ceive Eutychius' statements without exception, before the Presbyterians could derive any benefit from it, they must show first, reason to believe that the presbytery here spoken of was not an episcopal, or apostolic college, as we have seen before ; that all the early commentators under- stood the presbytery (1 Tim. iv'. 14)- to be. Sec- ondly, that the patriarch thus appointed, received no other ordination, and then, when they have done all this, still thus much will remain proved against them, by this very story, that ecclesias- tical government, by a community of presbyters, without a chief pastor over them, was unknown at Alexandria, as well as in the rest of Christen- dom. " But observe, secondly, that if Eutychius, who lived in the tenth century, is allowed to be a com- 90 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. petent witness of what happened in the first and second, Severas, a writer of the same age and country, must be also allowed to bear testimony. Severus distinctly speaks of bishops and presby- ters and laity being all concerned in the appoint- ments of patriarchs of Alexandria, in the very earliest successions. So that we must inquire further, whfther any other historical evidence that may be adduced on the point, tends most to con- firm Eutychius or Severus. Now, firstly, it is certain that all the other churches received the canons, called apostolical, which require a bishop to be ordained by two or three bishops, and recog- nize no other order as qualified to ordain. Be- tween these churches and Alexandria, constant communication was kept up, sometimes on the most friendly, sometimes on the most unfriendly footing. But in none of their intercourse, neither amicable or hostile, is this point of difference ever urged ; which, sure, it would have been, on one side or the other, as a handle of reproach, if it had really existed. Secondly, the learned Abraham Echellensis has shown that, from the beginning, these very canons were received by the Church of Alexandria itself; so that the Christians there must have violated their own laws, had they done as the Presbyterians suppose. Thirdly, we find from other quarters that, early as A. d. 300, there were not less than one hundred bishops in the patriarchate of Alexandria. Fourthly, which EXAMINATION OF PEECFVAL. 91 seems decisive of the point, we find a question coming before a council of Alexandria, a. p. 339, concerning one Ischryas, who acted as a presbyter, pretending to have received orders from a certain CoUuthus. But when it was made plain that Colluthus himself had died a presbyter, the coun- cil decreed that all on whom he had laid hands should be regarded as mere laymen. Surely the world will hardly be persuaded that the council would have thus denied the power of a presby- ter to ordain even a presbyter, if, in the memory of living men at the time, their patriarch himself had received no other ordination. What then must we suppose to have been the ground of the opinions expressed by Jerome and Eutychius? Simply some peculiar privileges in the election of the patriarchs of Alexandria which, from several other quarters,- we learn that the presbyters of that city possessed. " Abraham Echellensis, in the documents relat- ing to the Alexandrian Church, which he has collected, has preserved one which gives an ac- count of a discussion between the bishops of the province and the presbyters of the city, upon this very point ; in which, while the bishops freely acknowledge the right of election to be in the presbyters, they as freely asserted their right of veto upon such election, provided the persons elected were unworthy of the office." (See Le Q,uien,.in his"Oriens Christianus; Patr. Alex.") 92 THE PRIMITIVE EIBENICON. As to the statements of Percival, it may be ob- served : — 1st. If Jerome is not to be received as a wit- ness, because living one hundred and fifty years after the events described, why is Busebius more worthy of credence, who lived as long after the men whose succession he gives, upon what he confesses to be uncertain teetimony ? Without Ensebius, Percival could not pretend to present authority in regard to episcopal succession. Je- rome, moreover, had access to all the authorities which were in the hands of Busebius. 2d. It should be borne in mind that there were no bishops in the neighborhood to ordain the patriarch. This is a sufficient answer to nearly all the objections of Percival. 3d. Because Jerome states that bishops en- joyed in the fourth century one* privilege beyond presbyters, namely, that of ordaining, it does not follow that it had always been regarded as essen- tial for them to ordain, or that they received the right by episcopal succession, or, that the exclu- sive privilege was divinely conferred. The oppo- site is clearly established in this discussion. 4th. Scriptural Episcopacy, it is here asserted,- always existed at Alexandria ; episcopal govern- ment, but not episcopal succession. Confusion on this point is the source of most of the difficulties in this controversy, 5th. Percival does not give the language of EXAMINATION OF PERCIVAL. 93 Severus. Eutychius confirms Jerome's testimony. Severus contradicts Jerome. Severus must, there- fore, be untrustworthy. 6th. The facts prove that the Alexandrian Church did not receive the so-called Apostolical Canons. Dr. Whittaker states in his " Disputa- tion of Scripture " (p. 508) : " The canons which go under the name of the Apostles are supposi- tions." Fulke, his contemporary, styles them " the counterfeit canons," and Whitgift says (vol. ii. p. 121) : " There is a gyeat suspicion in the counterfeiting of them." 7th. Of Abraham Echellensis, Johnson, the biographer of Selden (p. 288), states : " This Abraham Echellensis was a Maronite priest, in the pay of the Roman Pontiff, and he employed so much personal abuse in an attempt to refute Selden, that he injured his own reputation more than that of him whom he attacked." 8th. What occurred after the year 300 has no bearing on the argument. , .9th. In regard to Colluthus, Stillingfleet affirms that the ordinations of Colluthus were pronounced invalid, because conferred " without the diocese " and " without a title." They were void because done "in contempt of ecclesiastical canons,"- canons made after the times under consideration. The case of Colluthus has clearly nothing to do with our subject. 94 THE PEIMITIVE EIRENICON. DR. JABVI8. We proceed now to give all that a learned countryman, Dr. Samuel F. Jarvis, has to "offer in opposition to the ground here taken. In Chapin's " Primitive Church " (p. 200), Dr. Jarvis adds in a note : " In Egypt the ancient custom originally was, and now is, to have a threefold im- position of hands in the creation of bishops. The votes of the people were given and numbered by lifting up of hands, and confirmed by the laying on of hands by the principal laity. The presbyters laid their hands twice on the head of the person elected, first in giving their votes, and afterwards their solemn approbation of his admission to the episcopate. The bishops also twice laid on their hands, first, to confirm their suffrage, and finally at their consecration. The following is the order prescribed in the ancient constitutions of the Church in Alexandria." After quoting canons to this effect, Dr. Jarvis proceeds : — " This also furnishes an answer to another argument urged against this conclusion. During the troubles in the reign of Charles the First, an attempt was made to prove that the churches of Alexandria, founded by St. Mark, were originally JPresbyterian. An extract from the Annals of Eutychius, who succeeded Christobulus, a. d. 933, as the Melchite Patriarch of Alexandria, was employed for this purpose. Selden, who made this discovery, had not a profound knowl- OBJECTIONS OF JAEVIS. 95 edge of Arabic, nor was he well versed in ecclesi- astical history. His translation, therefore, was inaccurate in several points, which vitally affected his argument ; and he seems not to have been aware, that the ancient records of the Egyptian Church were inaccessible to Eutychius, and that his testimony is of no value, except with regard to the history of the Melchites. These facts show, most conclusively, that both Caius and Eutychius were mistaken, and that at Alexan- dria, as elsewhere, none but bishops ordained. This Jerome himself allows, in opposition to the authority he had quoted, if, indeed, it is quoted correctly." In reply to this statement we remark. 1st. How ancient the custom and canons alluded to were, the writer does not state. They were manifestly later than the period we are discuss- ing, and, therefore, of no account in this argu- ment. 2d. The establishment of our point proves that the Church of Alexandria was Episcopal, not Presbyterian, and therefore one allegation of Dr. Jarvis is false. It was the efforts of Laud to change the ancient principles of the Church, and to establish the divine right of episcopal succes- sion, which drove Selden, Owen, Baxter, and others out of the Church of England ; which produced the schism in the Church ; which led to the civil war ; at the restoration inflicted upon 96 THK PRIMITIVE EIREaSTICOK. Christianity the stain of a second St. Bartholo- mew's Day; drove from their pulpits near two thousand of the best ministers of England ; brought down the Divine judgment in the form of a century of ecclesiastical torpor; has kept half -the population out of a so-called national Church; which in our own land has made our Church a mere handful of the nation, and is rapidly destroying its reputation and influence. Selden did not try to establish Presbyterianism, but as a wise and intelligent layman he opposed ecclesiastical tyranny. His friend, Archbishop Usher,, endorsed his work on Eutychius, and labored to restore the primitive, moderate Epis- copacy. He failed, and the Church has reaped the sad harvest. The unjust animadversions of Jarvis on Selden's learning we have already no- ticed (p. 85), and we find nothing further in this author's statement that needs a reply. DR. MAHAfT. The latest effort to disprove the statements of Jerome, Eutychius, and others, we find, is that of Professor Milo Mahan, who, in his « Church History" (p. 227), writes: " In the constitution of the Episcopate of Alexandria there seems to have been some departure from the general prac- tice of the Church, the exact nature of which, however, it is not easy to determine. The amplest account of the peculiarity is given by EXAMINATION OF MAHAN. 97 Eutyehius, a patriarch of Alexandria in the tenth century." After giving the language of Euty- ehius, he proceeds : " St. Jerome gives substan- tially the same account, except that he makes no mention of ordination by the eleven, and says the change of custom occurred in the times of Heraclas and Dionysius. " In the silence of contemporaries on the sub- ject, and from the vagueness and lateness of the testimony given, there is room for the conjecture that Egypt, instead of being divided among several local sees, was governed for a while by a college of twelve chief pastors residing in Alexandria, the bishop of that see being at their head. Nothing could be more natural than such an arrangement, at the first planting of the Church. In later times, however, as the Gospel extended into the provinces, it would be found inconvenient, and each important city would desire a resident bishop of its own. This is the most natural in- ference, if the language of Eutyehius be taken to the letter. For the presbyters mentioned by him were presbyters who had power to ordain ; but presbyters with power to ordain are the same as bishops, in the restricted sense of the word. As St. Jerome says, in connection with this sub- ject, ' What does a bishop do, except ordination, which a presbyter cannot do ? ' " This is said on the supposition that the eleven both elected and ordained their patriarch. But, 7 98 THE PEIMITIVE EIRENICON. as that point is not certain, resting only on the testimony of a writer manifestly inaccurate in language, and living six centuries after the period of which he speaks, the peculiarity of the Church of Alexandria may have been merely that of electing a bishop out of a close corporation of twelve presbyters, instead of choosing from the Church at large, as was customary in other places." In a note he adds : " It is fatal to the theory of any radical or even marked change in the church government of Egypt, that the period in question is covered by the names of Origen, Meletius, and others, who belonged to an opposi- tion party, and who certainly would have made themselves heard, if the ruling party had been guilty of innovations. . . . It is hardly neces- sary to remind the reader, that the term Pres- byter, like the term Priest, or Sacerdos, was often used as a name for the ministry in general, and, therefore, might be applied to any order. 2 John, i. 3; John, i. 1; Peter, v. 1." We have here, then, all that an ingenious writer, in the light of the past, can offer, to offset the historical testimony given with regard to the omission of episcopal consecration and succes- sion in the famous Alexandrian Church. Such a statement virtually yields the point in dispute. The testimony of Jerome is not here disputed, EXAMINATION OF MAHAN. 99 and as the fact that there were no bishops in Al- exandria, or in the neighborhood, after the death of the patriarch, cannot be controverted, there re- mains nothing in the remarks of this author which requires an answer. CHAPTER X. RECAPITULATION. We propose briefly to recapitulate the argu- ments by which (as we think) we have estab- lished the fact that in the patriarchal church of Alexandria, the patriarch was elected by presby- ters for the space of over two hundred years, and had no episcopal consecration whatever. 1st. In the first place, we gave the clear, de- cisive testimony of Jerome, and of a contempo- rary, who lived within a century after the custom described. 2d. We presented the full and particular state- ment of Eutychius, Patriarch of Alexandria, and of another later Egyptian writer, confirming the facts. 3d. We showed by standard writers of the Church of England, during the Reformation, that these facts were well known at that time. 4th. The statements of the most learned writers of the next century were presented, confirming the same. 5th. Four of the ablest living scholars of the RECAPITULATION. 101 Church of England were quoted, as acknowledg- ing the truth of our statement. 6th. As evidence of the views of Roman Cath- olic writers, the language of Morinus was given, who fully acknowledged the truth of the histor- ical fact we have undertaken to substantiate. 7th. Gibbon was quoted, answering the objec- tions of Bishop Pearson and others, who have sought to establish the exclusive view. 8th. After meeting the objections of Jarvis, Palmer, Percival, and Mahan, we closed the ar- gument with an historical criticism by an accom- plished barrister of the English Church, who feels compelled, after full investigation, to acknowl- edge that the testimony of history on this point is satisfactory and conclusive. Such is the testimony offered with regard to this custom of the Church of Alexandria. The evidence is more certain and accurate than we possess with respect to the manner of ordina- tion of any other primitive church. There has been more dispute with respect to Ignatius, and the Church of Antioch, than with regard to the statements of Eutychius. With regard to the Church of Antioch, Jerome differs from Origen and Eusebius, and these from other writers. With respect to the Church of Rome, no one knows whether St. Peter visited Rome or not. 102 THE PKIMITIVE EIRENICON. There is no satisfactory proof to this effect, while the probabilities are that he never saw Rome. No one can tell who was the -first Bishop of Rome, and there are at least twelve differing opin- ions as to who were the first six bishops, and their order. Truly, as Stillingfleet remarks, " The suc- cession of Rome is as muddy as the Tiber," and its doctrine more muddy than its succession. Our knowledge of the ancient successions is almost wholly derived from Eusebius, while Jerome had access to the same authors as the former writer. The following important results flow from the establishment of the historical point we have ventilated : — 1st. There was no uniform manner of ordina- tion established by the Apostles. 2d. Consecration by presbyters was practiced in one of the great patriarchates for more than two centuries immediately succeeding the Apostles, or, election without consecration was deemed sufficient to constitute a bishop. 3d. Succession through presbyterian ordination was acknowledged by the Primitive Church, Alex- ander and Athanasius of Alexandria being among the foremost members of the Council of Nice. Bingham states that the Patriarch of Alexandria consecrated all the bishops of his vast province, and claimed the right of ordaining all the elders and deacons ; consequently, the celebrated Atha- nasius had but a presbyterian succession, and his RECAPITULATION. 103 orders were worth as much as those of the Meth- odist Bishop Asbury, and the Lutheran superin- tendents. 4th. The Ghurch of England was right in al- lowing the full validity of presbyterian orders. 5th. All those who acknowledge such ordina- tion are both Anglican and Primitive ; those who deny it are opposed both to the Anglican and Primitive Churches. 6th. Archbishop Laud, in introducing among Protestants the doctrine that episcopal orders are alone valid, was an ecclesiastical innovator, and a promoter of schism. 7th. That his system, as adopted by the Non- jurors and Tractarians and their sympathizers, is founded on error, and is chargeable with the dis-. sensions which have divided, distracted, and deeply injured the reputation and influence of the Protestant Episcopal Church ; consequently, it is the duty of every member of the same, as it is of all Christians, persistently and earnestly to oppose and resist the unchurching, exclusive dogma. 8th. That to those Christians who hold to Biblical, spiritual, and evangelical views of the Church of Christ, as opposed to those which are ecclesiastical, sacrificial, and legal merely, there is no difficulty in healing all divisions with respect to church orders and government. The general acknowledgment of the historical fact that the Alexandrian Church was not epis- 104 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. copal in its consecration, and consequently in its succession, though governed by a patriarch, while the churches of Antioch and Rome were possibly so, and all the churches, by common agreement, soon after the Apostles, under the superintendence of bishops, by the custom of the Church, and not by divine law (as Augustine and Jerome and oth- ers directly Etssert), virtually, settles the controver- sies which afflict the Church, and " Ephraim will no longer envy Judah, nor Judah vex Ephraim." The orders, ministry, and sacraments of the Protestant. Evangelical churches of England, America, and Germany, will be mutually ac- knowledged ; the way will be opened for agree- ment upon the primitive basis of Episcopacy, to which happy result the claims of extreme Episco- palians have presented the most formidable obsta- cles. Then the practice of reordinatiori by the Epis- copal, or any other church, will be sustained only on the grounds on which Archbishop Leighton consented to be reordained, and on which the Church of Geneva reordained those who came to them from the Church of France, as Bingham has stated — i. e., that every church has an inher- ent right to arrange its form of ordination, and that the repetition of the rite is simply a solemn imprecation for a renewal of ministerial grace ; terms similar to those upon which Bishop Heber invited the Lutheran ministers of India to con- RECAPITULATION. 105 form to the Church of England, and the same on which Archbishop Bramhall received the conform- ing Presbyterian clergy of Ireland. On no other grounds can reordination be rightfully received or allowed, and those who have permitted or received it with the opposite, exclusive view have departed from the principles of the Primitive and Protest- ant Episcopal churches, influenced, no doubt, by the wide-spread misconceptions which have so long prevailed on this subject. Let the view and practice of the Primitive Church be substituted for this novelty of Romish origin; let truth take the place of error; let the mistake, conscientiously made, be rectified in ac- cordance with the facts of history, and on princi- ples both of charity and sound policy ; then the Protestant Episcopal Church will become, as she is prepared to be (instead of holding a negative and subordinate position), the Macedonian Pha- lanx, the Tenth Legion, the Old Guard, in the coming fierce onset upon the power of the evil spirit, the god of this world. Such are the conclusions which we submit to the candid reader. If Jerome and Hilary, Euty- chius, Severus, and Elmacinus, Whitgift and Willet, Usher and Stillingfleet, Morinus and Gibbon, were deceived ; if Stanley, and Goode, and Litton, and Riddle, and Garrat, and a multi- tude of the most learned men of other churches, have misconceived the truth, let wiser and better 106 • THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. scholars give proof to this effect. Otherwise let the truth be generally received ; let the one evan- gelical ministry be acknowledged, whether epis- copal or presbyterian in its succession, both primi- tive and both valid, both egually blessed of the Lord, and sharing his abounding grace and favx)r, and let all the people say amen ! CHAPTER XL TESTIMONY FROM NON-EPISCOPAL STANDARD WRITERS. As there are some who do not think episcopal ordination or consecration necessary to give value to a writer's statements, and that an author may be as learned and reliable outside the Episcopal Church as within it, we present the confirmatory evidence of a few leading non-episcopal standard historians. As these are generally text-books in most of the divinity schools in this country, it will be evident how slight is the prospect of the spread of exclusive episcopal claims among American Christians. We present as our first witness, DR. PHILIP 8CHAFF, of the German Reformed Communion. Dr. Schaff", who is second to no living author- ity on a point like this, in his " History of the Christian Church" (pp. 418, 419), thus writes: " In favor of the second view, which denies the apostolic origin of the episcopate as a separate ofiice or order, and derives it by way of human, though natural and necessary development from the presidency of the original congregational pres- 108 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. byterate, are the following facts : The custom of the Church of Alexandria, where, &om the Evan- gelist Mark down to the middle of the third cen- tury, the twelve presbyters elected one of their number president, and called him bishop. The fact rests on the authority of Jerome, and is con- firmed independently by the annals of the Alex- andrian patriarch Eutychius, of the tenth century. The latter states that Mark instituted in that city a patriarch (this is an anachronism) and twelve presbyters, who should fill the vacant patriarchate by electing and ordaining to the oflice one of their number, and then electing a new presbyter, so as always to retain the number twelve. He relates, moreover, that down to the time of Deme- trius, at the end of the second century, there was no bishop in Egypt besides the. one in Alexan- dria ; conseqv^ently, there could have been no episcopal ordination except by going out of the province." GIESLER. This learned writer in his " History " (vol. i. pp. 56-65), writes : " The new churches everywhere formed themselves on the model of the mother church at Jerusalem. At the head of each were the elders, presbuteroi, episcopoi, all ofiicially of equal rank, though in several instances a peculiar authority seems to have been conceded to some one individual from personal considerations." He gives the language of Jerome, and referring to TESTIMONY OF GlESLER. 109 Augustine, Chrysostonj, and Theodoret, remarks : " It is remarkable how long this notion of the original sameness of bishops and presbyters was retained." He then refers to Isidore, Bernaldus, Gratian, and Lancelot, as Romanists who sus- tained this view, and says : " It was not till after the Reformation that this view (the original iden- tity of bishops and presbyters) was attacked. Since this, all Catholics as well as the English Episcopalians, maintain an original difference be- tween bishop and presbyters." . . . . " After the death of the Apostles," he continues, " and the pupils of the Apostles, to whom the general direc- tion of the churches had been conceded, some one among the presbyters of each church was suifered gradually to take the lead in its affairs. In the same irregular way the title of episcopos, bishop, was appropriated to the first presbyter." To sus- tain this view, he quotes Ambrosiaster, about 380, Jerome, Hilary, and Eutychius, with respect to the Alexandrian Church, and remarks of this last author : " In this passage it is at least certain that the part which is contradictory to the usage of later times has not been interpolated, and so far has an historical value. Attempts have been made to explain away its evidence by Morinus, Pearson, Le Quilen, Renaudot, Petavius, and es- pecially by Abraham Echellensis." 110 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. NEANDEB. In this author's " Church History " (voL i. p. 190), we read: " Soon after the apostolic age, the standing office of president of the presbytery- must have been formed ; which president, as hav- ing preeminently the oversight over all, was desig- nated by the special name of episcopos, and thus distinguished from the other presbyters. Thus the name came to be applied exclusively to this presbyter, while the name presbyter continued at first to be common to all ; for the bishops as pre- siding presbyters, had no official character other than that of the presbyters generally. They were only primi inter pares. Many of the later Fathers still have a right understanding of this process of the matter. (Hilary, in ep. i. ad Timoth., c. iii.) Omnis episcopus presbyter, non tamen omnis pres- byter episcopus ; hie enim episcopus est, qui inter presbyteros primus est. "Jerome (146, ad Evang.) says that it had been the practice of the Alexandrian Church, until the times of the bishops Hieroclas and Dionysius, in the middle of the third century, for the presbyters to choose one of their own num- ber as a president, and call him bishop. And so also there may be some foundation of truth in the account of Eutychius, though it may not be wholly true, and must be chronologically false. This person, who was Patriarch of Alexandria in the first half of the tenth century, relates that in TESTIMONY OF HERZOG. Ill the Alexandrian Church, up to the time of the Bishop Alexander, in the beginning of the fourth century, the following arrangement had existed : There was a college of twelve presbyters, one of whom presided over the rest as bishop, and these presbyters always chose their bishop out of their own number, and the rest ordained him." From this author's " Encyclopedia of Theol- ogy," edited by Dr. Bomberger, we take the follow- ing extract. Under the head " Bishop," we read : " In addition to having the general direction of affairs, the bishop early acquired authority to ap- point and ordain elders. But even in this respect there was for several centuries no uniform rule ; for whilst the Council of Ancyra (314) made or- dination the duty of bishops of the larger cities, and forbid country ' bishops or presbyters to or- dain, the distinction was not strictly observed in other parts of the Church. Thus, in Egypt, ! where to the time of the Patriarch Demetrius (190-232), there were no bishops but the one in Alexandria, and the presbyteries exercised episco- pal functions stiU later. (See Jerome, ad Evang., Giesler, Ritchl.) The same holds of -the Church in Ethiopia and Scythia." THOMAS POWELL. Thomas Powell, an English Wesleyan, in an 112 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON, elaborate answer to Percival, republished by the Methodist Book Concern, on page 130, after quot- ing the statements of Jerome, with respect to the Church of Alexandria, proceeds : " Here, then, it is evident that Jerome speaks simply of the fact and custom which had then, in his day, become established as to what bishops do and presby- ters may not do ; not of the power or right of presbyters, or that they could not by divine right do what the bishops did. This custom, or ec- clesiastical arrangement, which, for the honor of the bishop and his church, made ordination gen- erally a prerogative of the bishop's office, Jerome advises the presbytery to comply with. Therefore, ' they may not,' because of this custom, especially without the bishop's license, ordain. Any other supposition would make Jerome contradict, in the same page, what he had most firmly maintained. " His illustrations show the same. The custom of the Church of Alexandria was evidently in- tended by him as an example of ordination by presbyters ; else why mention it as something • which had ceased in his day to be common. " The presbyters at Alexandria, prior to a. d. 250, elected one of themselves, placed him in the chair (all the consecration which he had), and gave him his title of bishop. It is trifling to say, as Episcopalians do, ' Perhaps there were bishops present who laid on hands and consecrated him.' This is little short of contradicting Jerome. He TESTIMONY OF POWELL. 113 certainly makes the presbyters the doers of all that was done in. making the bishop. The case of the army making its general, is another in- stance which he mentions in illustration of his position. Every school-boy knows that the Ro- man army in those days frequently created their generals by acclamation ; and it is to these pro- ceedings Jerome alludes ; the lawfulness of the thing was no more necessary to his argument, than the lawfulness of the unjust steward's con- duct to our Lord's argument. It is the fact, and its bearing, which are important. The deacons, too, then appointed one of themselves as their head, calling him archdeacon ; so the presbyters make a presbyter their head, and call him bishop. The army made the general ; the deacons, the archdeacons ; and the presbyters made the bishop. This is plainly the sense. Presbyters, then, orr dained even bishops, in the See of Alexandria, from the time of St. Mark up to Heraclius and DionysiuSjthat is, for about the first two hundred years after Christ. " Stillingfleet has, moreover, quoted, in confirma- tion of this view, the testimony of Eutychius, the Patriarch of Alexandria, who expressly affirms," etc " The names, it seemed, varied; the thing was the same. There never was any universally established manner of making bish- ops, in the Christian Church, except the Scriptu- ral one, by which every man is made a minister 114 THE PEIMITIVE EIRENICON. and bishop at once, by one and the same ordina- tion." KATHAN BANGS. Dr. Bangs, of the same communion, in his work, " An Original Church of- Christ," remarks (p. 69), after quoting Mosheim's commendations of the learned writings of Eutychius : " Here then was a patriarch living in the very place, and occupying the episcopal chairs of the very church whose annals he wrote, and which annals Mos- heim tells us were extant in his time ; and. it is from these same annals, called by Stillingfleet, Origines Ecdesice Alezandrina (Origin of the Alexandrian Church), which the learned Selden published in Arabic, that the above testimony is quoted. Whcr more likely to ascertain the facts in the case than the very man who lived, taught, and wrote in the very city and church whose annals he wrote ? Had he not the most easy access to the archives of the Church whose overseer he was ? " But, says our objector, that testimony of Eutychius is not to be relied on, because he lived in the tenth century ! Verily, this is an age of discovery! How long did Moses live after the events had come to pass which he narrates ? Josephus must be muzzled because he happened to lived upward of four thousand of years after Adam was taken from the ground ? Indeed, ac- cording to this rule, by a summary process all the historians, except those who have confined their TESTIMONY OF BANGS. 115 narratives to their own times, must pass under the knife of excision, as pseudo-annalists, and therefore worthy of death ! Kollin, Hume, the authors of the ' Universal History,' Mosheim, Mil- ner, Haweis, Gregory, Dupin, and a thousand others, must all go by the board, as unworthy of credit, because they wrote of times so long ante- rior to their days ! " But it is not surprising that an attempt should be made to set aside this testimony of Eutychius, for it is a death-blow to the doctrine of the essentiality of a third order to a valid ordi- nation. And hence the most unreasonable de- mand, that I must prove that Eutychius did in truth express himself thus. I have produced the witness,' plain, positive. Let them if they can invalidate the truth of hi» evidence. I have, moreover, corroborated the truth of this testimony by that of a number of others, all of whom testify to the general fact^. namely, that presbyters did ordain other presbyters, and also, in many in- stances, superior ministers in office. Can they invalidate this testimony ? They know that they cannot. I lay it down then as a principle ab initio, that the right of ordination was in the college of presbyters, and that they exercised when, where, and as long as they pleased ; and that, whenever they were divested of it, it was either a voluntary act of their own, or was taken from them by force." 116 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. ABEL STEVENS. Dr. Stevens, an eminent living Methodist di- vine, in his " Essay on Church Polity," a standard in his denomination, writes (p. 58) : " The exam- ple of the Church of Alexandria furnishes a com- plete vindication of Mr. Wesley's ordination in the American Church." He then quotes Dr. Goode's translation of Eutychius, and gives Arch- bishop Usher's concession with respect to the ordination by Alexandrian presbyters. Bishop John Emory, in his " Episcopal Controversy Re- viewed " (pp. 90-100), largely ventilates the sub- jectj taking the same view. It must be evident to all, from the extracts given from standard Methodist Divines, that exclusive Episcopacy has a poor prospect of propagating its scheme among the members of this leading denomination in our land. The suc- cess of this communion is a testimony to the ef- ficiency of episcopal government, when adapted to the age and people where it is employed. DK. JAMES P. WILSON. This Presbyterian author was eminent for learning, and no less for candor. In his treatise on " The Primitive Government of Christian Churches," he takes ground against the doctrine of the lay eldership of his own communion, as well as the theory of episcopal government. Concerning Jerome's letter to Evagrius, he writes TESTIMONY OF WILSON. 117 (p. 172) : " In no city was planted, by the Apos- tles, more than one church ; this the scriptural and subsequent history of the Church demon- states. A presbytery existed in every organized Church, and no more in a city ; consequently, one presiding presbyter, who afterwards, by cus- tom, for prevention of schisms, became the bishop, belonged to each church, and conse- quently to every city in the age of Jerome. At the period of the forgeries, which bear the name of the pious Ignatius, parochial Episcopacy pre- vailed ; but they betray ignorance, who affirm that presbyters were then laymen, or that such a grade is an essential characteristic of the Presbyterian Church. Seven deacons were appointed at Jeru- salem ; no more were ordained in Rome. This paucity, and the nature of their duties, created popularity, whilst the number of presbyters dimin- ished their importance. Dissensions arose be- tween these orders, and Augustine has recorded an appeal to the bishop of that metropolis, to decide between them. Probably this letter was sought and given on that occasion; or it may have been in defense of the Bishop of Rome, who was persecuted by a deacon of high rank. Though a presbyter, Jerome never officiated as such except in private lectures on part of the Scriptures, but even these were scarcely delivered by him as an officer either at Rome or Beth- lehem. 118 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. " This letter could not have been the offspring of jealousy, but of regard to the truth. His lan- guage is temperate, his arguments rational, and his authorities the Scriptures; to these custom and expediency are subordinate — canons he does not even name. " From the practice here mentioned of the Church at Alexandria, after the death of Mark, the Evangelist, the existence of Episcopacy from that period, which was apostolic, has been in- ferred. There could have been little difference between the state of things in apostolic times, and at the death of Mark. In both, the pres- byters had their ruling elder or president; upon them custom, founded on consent, devolved the responsibility and superintendency of the pres- bytery, of which the Church of Alexandria fur- nished a proof. Jerome shows this was a human innovation, because that presbyter and bishop were originally the same office, and so regarded by Paul, Peter, and John ; also, by the churches of Philippi, Ephesus, and those of Crete, and other places, each of which had been governed by the Common Council of its own presbytery. " The election of such a presiding presbyter at Alexandria, he does not refer either to antece- dent apostolic precept or example, but expressly to the presbyters themselves, whose election con- stituted the only disparity. Mark held the high office 'of evangelist, and, as such, might preside TESTIMONY OF WILSON. 119 in any church, especially of his own planting. If he supplied the place of a president, In ad- vanced age, after his death the presbytery of Alexandria, acting as others, must have chosen one permanently, the growth of whose power afterwards kept pace with the customs of other churches. The assertion by Eutychius, a. d. 950, that the presbyters in Alexandria, from the first, ordained such bishop, is incredible. Jleordination began in the Cyprianic age, and, in Jerome's day, was performed only by bishops; so, also, was the ordination of presbyters. ' What does a bishop, ordination excepted, that a presbyter may not do ? ' The first of these verbs denoted a present,^ and continuous acting ; the second is of the same sort, but potential, and consequently expressing a future. To imagine this spoken by Jerome, of early times, is, therefore, obviously incorrect. When he wrote, every one knew that for presbyters to ordain was contrary to the laws and canons of the Church ; his proof of their original identity, from the fact that presbyters might now perform all other duties of bishops, required the exception. But every mind per- ceives that the establishment of the identity destroyed T;he origiuEility and authority of the exception. " Any other interpretation would unnerve his argument, produce self-contradiction, and con- flict with the fact that Timothy was ordained by 120 THE PKIMITIVE EIRENICON. a presbytery. The sameness of the ofRce could, therefore, never be reconciled with episcopal ordi- nation, as in this day. The confession of such an exception, if it referred to apostolical times, immediately after showing that presbyters of themselves chose, and placed in his seat, and denominated the person the Bishop of Alexan- dria, would betray weakness in the extreme. Although thp presbyters of Alexandria officiated in their respective places in the city, they were rather a parish than a diocese, being one church, whereof they, with their bishop, who was one with themselves, constituted the presbytery — not a church session of mute elders — every pres- byter had his place of preaching in iyexandria. Had the presbyters, so chosen to preside, been ordained by presiding presbyters of cities in Palestine or Syria, instead of being an example of the introduction of the custom of devolving the responsibility and oversight, which had be- longed to the presbytery, on one of their number, it would have proved the reverse, and contra- dicted the position that presbyter and bishop denoted at first the same office." .... Page 175. " The fanciful idea of episcopal successorship by divine right was reJTtignant to the views of Jerome, who has . unanswerably refuted it by numerous Scriptural testimonies, and demonstrated his meaning and consistency by asserting equally of presbyters, that they were TESTIMONY OF COLEMAN. 121 successors to the degree of the Apostles. ' Qui apostolico gradui succedenies ' (ad Heliodorus, torn. 1, p. 1)." Irenseus had set him examples of each long before. " That these successors of the Apostles inherited their gifts, authority, or influence, or had any other ordination than that of their co-presbyters, prior to the Cyprianic age, has never been shown to us by credible testimony. His defense of presbyters against deacons, his use of the word presbyter without the imaginary distinction of preaching and lay elders, and his universal silence with regard to the latter, evince that Jerome had no idea of lay presbyters. He is, therefore, another ' witness against that novel order, of which not a vestige has been found in the first four centuries.' " LTMAN COLEMAN. This Congregational divine, in his " Apostol- ical and Primitive Church " (ed. 1844, p. 183), thus writes : " We have next the authority of Jerome, who died a. d. 426. He was one of the most learned of the Latin Fathers. Erasmus styles him ' by far the most learned and eloquent of all the Christians, and the prince of Christian divines.' Jerome received his education at Rome, and was familiar with the Roman, Greek, and Hebrew lan- guages. He visited Egypt, and travelled exten- sively in France and the adjacent countries. He 122 THE PEIMITIVE EIRENICON. resided in the course of his life at Constantinople, at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and at Bethlehem. By his great learning, and extensive acquaintance with all that related to the doctrines and usages both of the Eastern and of the Western Churches, he was eminently qualified to explain the rights and prerogatives of the priesthood. " But does Jerome testify to the rights of pres- byters to ordain ? ' What does a bishop,' says he, ' ordination excepted, which a presbyter may not do ? ' This, however, is said of the relations of bishops and presbyters as they then were. This restriction of the right of ordaining to the bishops alone was a recent innovation, which had begun to distinguish them from the presbyters, and to subvert ,the original organization of the Church. But it was an acknowledged fact, in his day, that the bishops had no authority from Christ or his Apostles for their unwarranted assumptions. 'As the presbyters know that it is by the custom of the Church that they are subject to him who is placed over them, so let the bishops know that they are above presbyters rather by the custom of the Church, than by the fact of our Lord's appoint- ment, and that they (both bishops and presbyters) ought to rule the Church in common, in imitation of the example of Moses.' •' He reviews the same subject with great point in his famous epistle to Evagrius, or more prop- erly, in modern editions, to Evangelus. He re- TESTIMONY OF COLEMAN. 123 bukes with great severity certain persons who had preferred deacons in honor ' above presbyters, i. e. bishops.^ Having thus asserted the identity of bishops and presbyters, he goes on to prove his position from Phil. i. 1, from Acts xx. 17, 28, from Titus i. 5, from 1 Tim. iv. 14, and from 1 Pet. v. 1. ' Does the testimony of these men seem of small account to you 1 ' he proceeds to say ; ' then clangs the gospel trumpet, — that son of thun- der whom Jesus so much loved, and who drank at the fountain of truth from the Saviour's breast, — " the presbyter to the elect lady and her chil- dren," 2 John i. 1 ; and in another Epistle, " the presbyter to the well beloved Gains," 3 John i. 1,' " Then quoting the passage with reference to the Alexandrian Church, Mr. Coleman proceeds: " Here the psesbyters themselves elect one of their number and make him bishop, so that even the bishop himself is ordained by the pres- byters, if indeed it can be called an ordination : if not, then he is only a presbyter still, having no other right to ordain than they themselves have. Such, Jerome assumes, is the usage ' in every cowntry^ There was but one ordination for bish- ops and presbyters in his time, though bishops had now begun exclusively to administer it. But we have a stream of testimonies coming down to us from the time of the Apostles, fhat it had been the custom of the Church from the beginning, for bishops and presbyters to receive the same ordi- 124 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. nation. This is another consideration of much importance to show that presbyters .were entitled to ordain. Having themselves received episcopal ordination, as truly as the bishops, they were equally qualified to administer the same. " But' Jerome himself attributes to presbyters the original rights of ordination. ' Priests who baptize, and administer the Eucharist, anoint with oil, impose hands, instruct catechumens, con- stitute Levites and others priests, have less reason to take offense at us, explaining these things, or at the prophets foretelling them, than to ask of the Lord forgiveness.' " The relevancy of this passage depends upon the question, who are the sacerdotes, priests, of whom Jerome speaks ? He is commenting upon Zephaniah iii. 3 : ' Her princes within her are roaring lions,' by which he understands Inei priests, saying, ' I am aware that I shall offend many be- cause I interpret these things as said of bishops and presbyters.' Then, after remarking, at length, upon this degenerate priesthood, he adds the sen- tence above. Jerome, therefore, ascribes to pres- byters and bishops alike the same rights to con- stitute ' Levites and others priests,' applying the terms not to the Jewish priesthood, but to the clergy of the Christian Church in his day, and in- cluding both bisbops and presbyters in the same category, as possessing equal rights to baptize, to ordain, and to administer the sacraments. TESTIMONY OF COLEMAN. 125 " That the right of ordination belonged to pres- byters is evident from the authority of Euty- chius, of Alexandria, the most distinguished writer among the Arabian Christians of the tenth cen- tury. His authority confirms the testimony of Jerome, while it illustrates more clearly the usage of the Church in Egypt. The citation, with the translation, is from Goode." This author then gives the extract from Eutychius with Dr. Goode's comments. Neander, who indorses Dr. Coleman's work, in his introduction, thus speaks of episcopal gov- ernment: " This change in the mode of adminis- tering the government of the Church, resulting from peculiar circumstances, may have been in- troduced as a salutary expedient, without imply- ing any departure from the. purity of the Christian spirit. When, however, the doctrine, as it gradu- ally gained currency in the third century, that the bishops are, by divine right, the head of the Church, and invested with the government of the same ; that they are the successors of the Apos- tles, and by this succession inherit apostolical au- thority ; that they are the medium through which, in consequence of that ordination which they have received, merely in an outward manner, the Holy Ghost, in all time to come, must be transmitted to the Church, — when this becomes the doctrine of the Church, we certainly must perceive in these assumptions a strong corruption of the purity of 126 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON'. the Christian system. It is a carnal perversion of the true idea of the Christian Church. It is a falling back into the spirit of the Jewish religion. Instead of the Christian. idea of a church, based on inward principles of communion, and extend- ing itself by means of these, it presents us with the image of one like that under the Old Testa- ment, resting on outward ordinances, and by ex- ternal rites seeking to promote the propagation of the Kingdom of God. This entire perversion of the original view of the Christian Church was itself the origin of the above system of the Ro- man Catholic religion — the germ from which sprung the Popery of the Dark Ages. " We hold indeed no controversy with that class of Episcopalians who adhere to the episcopal sys- tem above mentioned as well adapted, in their opinion, to the exigencies of their Church. We would live in harmony with them, notwithstand- ing their mistaken views of the true form of the Church, provided they denounce not other sys- tems of church government. But the doctrine of the absolute necessity of the episcopal as the only valid form of church government, and of the episcopal succession of bishops above men- tioned, in order to participation in the gifts of the Spirit, all this we must regard as something for- eign to the true idea of the Christian Church. It is in direct conflict with the spirit of Protestant- ism ; and is the origin, not of the true Catholicism TESTIMONY OF GUMMING. 127 of the Apostles, but of that of the Romish Church. When, therefore. Episcopalians disown, as essentially deficient in their ecclesiastical or- ganization, other Protestant churches which evi- dently have the spirit of Christ, it only remains for us to protest, in the strongest terms, against their setting up such a standard of perfection for the Christian Church. Par be it from us who began with Luther in the spirit, that we should now desire to be made perfect by the flesh." Gal. iii. 3. DR. JOHN CUMMING. Dr. Cumming, in his " Lectures on Roman- ism" (p. 163), writes : " Let me now proceed to show you, by two simple statements, what is really understood by apostolical succession. It is, in the first place, supposed that each bishop has been consecrated by his contemporary bish- ops, on the death of his predecessor, and that no one link in the long line of successive conse- crators or consecrations is wanting between Dr. Bird Sumner, the present excellent Archbishop of Canterbury, and St. Peter, St. Timothy, or St. Paul. " The second position is, that ordination per- formed by successive bishops only, is valid, and that the party obtaining this ordination thereby receives ail the gifts and grace of the Spirit, by which his act and deed give vitality and virtue to every sacrament and ordinance he administers. 128 THE PKIMITIVE EIRENICON. These are the two great positions of those who advocate what is called the apostolical succes- sion. The simplest illustration of it that I can give you, would be a long magnetic, galvanic, or electric chain, starting at the foot of an apostle, and extending downward to the present Primate of all England; to the first link of which was imparted a mysterious and subtle element or virtue, which has been transmitted by successive consecrations, link by link, parallel with the plane of the earth, until it has reached the bishops of the present day, on whose heads, as in reservoirs, it is condensed and ready for use and transmis- sion to their successors, " Now, you will see at once, that if the first link in a long chain is wanting, the whole falls to the ground ; or if twenty links in the middle of a chain are wanting, the whole falls to the ground ; or if, in this electric chain of which I have been speaking, some links in the middle, instead of being veritable conductors of the mys- terious virtue, are incapable of transmitting it, or are so vitiated that the current must fly off by a centrifugal force, then, again, the transmission is arrested and dissipated, and all post et propter hoc is vitiated. In all these respects I am ready to prove, that" the apostolical succession be- longs to those things called ' endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edi- fying.' TESTIMONY OF GUMMING. 129 " Now, I will show you, that in .the far stretch- ing chain of succession to the Apostles, the very- first link after the Apostles is wanting. '' My proof, on this point, is drawn from the recorded state of the see (using the word in the ancient sense), or bishopric, or oversight, or by whatever equally suitable name it may be called, of Alexandria. Eutychius, of Alexandria, states that St. Mark, the Evangelist, first of all preached the gospel in Alexandria." After quoting the language of Eutychius, Dr. Gumming proceeds : " It is here distinctly de- clared, that during the three hundred years that preceded the Council of Nice — that is, up to 325 — the custom in Alexandria was, not for other bishops to consecrate the bishop that was to be the head of the diocese, but for the twelve presbyters to meet together and choose one of themselves as chairman, or moderator, or patri- arch, and their choice and designation, without any consecration by a bishop, was ipso facto et de jure the appointment of that bishop. This is utterly opposed to recent views, and, even on moderate Episcopal principles, it is irregular at least. " If all the presbyters of London were to meet together at the death of the Bishop of London, and to elect- one of themselves as bishop and consecrate him, every Tractarian would protest against it as a departure from the vital laws of 130 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. the Church, and an utter interruption and de- struction of the succession, and such a person would be pronounced to be no more bishop than I should be held to be their diocesan by the same party. " But if it be the fact, that the presbyters thus originally constituted their bishops in so great a see, and if it be a fact, also, that there is no transmission of the apostolical succession where there is no consecration by bishops, then I ask. Can any one of the present bishops of the Eng- lish Church prove that his succession and conse- cration may not be derived from some of the elected said bishops, who were merely non- consecrated presbyters of Alexandria, and so, after all, be nuU on Tractarian principles, how- ever sound and admissible on ours? Sure we are there is a risk of some non-conducting link being introduced into a chain, during these three hundred years, when a custom prevailed in so important and influential a diocese, so opposite to that which is now thought essential." After quoting the confirmatory statements of Severus and Jerome, our author proceeds : " These collateral witnesses prove, equally, that the cus- tom existed at Alexandria of the presbyters conse- crating or ordering their bishops. And if this be the fact (and we have the best of all demonstra- tion of it, because it is proved by the very wit- nesses to whom the tractators appeal), then, we TESTIMOHY OF KILLEN. 131 repeat it, as the appointment of presbyters was the only consecration that was had in that city during three centuries, the element which, upon Tractarian principles, is essential to the transmis- sion of the succession, was altogether wanting, and this vicious procedure may have infected all parts of the Church." DR. W. D. KILLEN. Professor Killen, of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, in his interesting work on the " An- cient Church for the First Three Hundred Years" (p. 580), writes : " It is clear, from the New Tes- tament, that in the apostolic age ordination was performed by 'the laying on of hands of the presbytery,' and this mode of designation to the ministry appears to have continued until sojne time in the third century. We are informed by the most learned of the Fathers, in a passage to which the attention of the reader has been already invited, that ' even at Alexandria,' etc. . . . (p. 533). " As Jerome here mentions various important facts of which we might otherwise have re- mained ignorant, and as this statement throws much light upon the ecclesiastical history of the early Church, it is entitled to special notice. " In the letter where this passage occurs, the writer is extolling the dignity of presbyters, and is endeavoring to show that they are very little 132 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. inferior to bishops. He admits, indeed, that, in his own days, they had ceased to ordain ; but he intimates that they once possessed the right, and that they retained it in all its integrity until the former part of the preceding century. Some have thought that Jerome has here expressed him- self indefinitely, and that he did not know the exact date at which the arrangement he describes ceased at Alexandria. But his testimony, when fairly analyzed, can scarcely be said to want pre- cision, for he obviously speaks of Heraclas and Dionysius as bishops by anticipation, alleging that a custom, which anciently existed among the elders of the Egyptian metropolis, was main- tained until the time when these ecclesiastics, who afterwards successively occupied the epis- copal chair, sat together in the presbytery. " The period thus pointed out can be easily ascertained. Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria* after a long official life of forty-three years, died about A. D. 232, and it is well known that Hera- clas and Dionysius were both members of his presbytery towards the close of his episcopal administration. It was, therefore, shortly before his demise that the new system was introduced. In certain parts of the Church the arrangement mentioned by Jerome probably continued some- what longer. Cyprian apparently hinted at such cases of exception when he says, that in ' almost all the provinces,' apud nos quoque et fere per TESTIMONY OF KILLEN. 133 provincias vniversas tenetur (Epist. 68), the neigh- boring bishops assembled, on the occasion of an episcopal vacancy, at the new election and ordi- nation. It may have been that, in a few of the more considerable towns, the elders still con- tinued to nominate their president. " When the erudite Roman presbyter informs us that ' even. Sit Alexandria,' nam et Alexandria, the elders formerly made their own bishop, his ' language obviougly implies that such a mode of creating the chief pastor was not confined to the church of the metropolis of Egypt. It existed wherever Christianity had gained a footing, and he mentions this particular see, partly, because of its importance, being, in point of rank, the second in the empire, and partly, perhaps, because the remarkable circumstances in its history, lead- ing to the alteration which he specifies, were known to all his well-informed contemporaries. " Jerome does not say that the Alexandrian presbyters inducted their bishop by imposition of hands, or set him apart to the office by any formal ordination. " Eutychius, the celebrated Patriarch of Alexan- dria, who flourished at the beginning of the tenth century, makes this assertion. According to this writer there were originally twelve presbyters con- nected with the Alexandrian Church; and when the patriarchate became vacant, they elected one of the twelve presbyters, on whose head the re- 134 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. maining eleven laid hands, and blessed him and created him patriarch. (See the original passage in Selden's works, ii. c. 421, 422 : London, 1726.) This passage furnishes a remarkable confirma- tion of the testimony of Jerome, as to the fact that the Alexandrian presbyters originally made their bishops, but it is probably not very accurate as to the details. As to the laying on of hands, it is not supported by Jerome. " His words apparently indicated that they did not recognize the necessity of any special need of investiture ; that they made the bishop by elec- tion ; and that, when once acknowledged as the object of their choice, he was at liberty to enter forthwith on the performance of his episcopal duties. When the Roman soldiers made an em- peror, they appointed him by acclamation, and the cheers which issued from their ranks as he stood up before the legions, and as he was clothed with purple by one of themselves, constituted the ceremony of his inauguration. The ancient arch- deacon was still one of the deacons (the case is different with the modern English archdeacon who is a presbyter) : as he was the chief almoner of the Church, he required to possess tact, dis- cernment, and activity ; and, in the fourth cen- tury, he was nominated to the office by his fellow- deacons. Jerome assures us, that until the time of Heraclas and Dionysius, the elders made a bishop just in the same way as in his own day TESTIMONY OF KILLEN. 135 the soldiers made an emperor, or as the deacons chose one whom they knew to be industrious, and made him an archdeacon." After quoting from the letters of Pius, Bishop of Rome, to Justus of Vienne, and of Irenffius to Victor of Rome, in support of Jerome's state- ment, our author proceeds : " Some imagine that no one can be properly qualified to administer di- vine ordinances who has not received episcopal ordination, but a more accurate acquaintance with the history of the early Church is all that is re- quired to dissipate the delusion. The preceding statement clearly shows that for upwards of a hun- dred and fifty years after the death of our Lord, all the Christian ministers throughout the world were ordained by presbyters. The bishops themselves were of ' the order of the presbytery,' and as they had never received episcopal consecration, they could only ordain as presbyters. The bishop was, in fact, nothing more than the chief presbyter. Thus the author of the ' Questions on the Old and New Testament,' says : ' QuitB est episcopus nisi primus presbyter,' c. 101." A Father of the third century accordingly ob- serves : " All power and grace are established in the church where elders preside, who possess the power as well of baptizing, as of confirming and ordaining." " Omnis potestas et gratia in ecclesia constituta sit, ubi prcesident majores natu, qui et 136 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. baptizendi et manum imponendi et ordinemdi" (Firmilian, Epist. Cyprian, " Opera," p. 304). (Firmilian was Bishop of Cappadocia, in Asia Minor, an intimate friend of Origen, who passed much time with him, and who shared with him his freedom from eeclesiasti'cism ; Origen having preached the gospel as a layman for many years* receiving orders at a late period in life.) Dr. Killen continues : " An old ecclesiastical law, recently presented for the first time to the English reader (see Bunsen's ' Hippolytus,' ii. 851-7), throws much light on a portion of the history of the church long buried in great obscu- rity. This law may well remind us of thosfe re- mains of extinct classes of animals which the naturalist studies with so much interest, as it ob- viously belongs to an era even anterior to that of the so-called apostolical canons (probably framed only a few years before the middle of the third century, and called apostolical, perhaps, because concocted by some of the bishops of the so-called apostolic churches). " Though it is a part of a series of regulations once current in the Church of Ethiopia, there is every reason to believe that it was framed in Italy, and that its authority was acknowledged by the Church of Rome in the time of Hippolytus. The canons edited by Hippolytus were, no doubt, at one time acknowledged by the Western Church. It marks a transition period in the history of ec- TESTIMONY OF KILLEN. 137 clesiastical polity, and whilst it indirectly confirms the testimony of Jerome, relative to the custom of the Church of Alexandria, it shows that the state of things to which the learned presbyter refers, was now superseded by another arrange- ment. " This curious specimen of ancient legislation treats of the appointment ajid ordination of min- isters. ' The bishop,' says this enactment, ' is to be elected by all the people And they shall choose one of the bishops and one of the PRESBYTBHS, .... AND THESE SHALL LAY THEIR HANDS UPON HIS HEAD AND PKAY ' (BuH- sen's ' Hippolytus,' iii. 43). " Here, to avoid the confusion of a whole crowd of individuals imposing hands on ordination, two were selected to act on behalf of the assembled office-bearers ; and, that the parties entitled to officiate might be fairly represented, the deputies were to be a bishop and a presbyter. " Eutychius intimates that the Alexandrian presbyters continued to ordain their own bishops till the time of the Council of Nice. It is not improbable that, until then, some of them may have continued' to take part in the ordination, and his statements may be so far correct. " The Canon (of Hippolytus) illustrates the jeal- ousy with which the presbyters, in the early part of the third century, still guarded some of their rights and privileges. In the matter of investing 138 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. others with church authority, they yet maintained their original position, and though many bishops might be present when another was inducted into office, they would permit only one of the number to unite with themselves in the ceremony of ordi- nation. Some at the present day do not hesitate to assert that presbyters have no right whatever to ordain j'but this canon supplies evidence, that in the third century they were employed to ordain bishops." REV. JOHN BROWN, D. D. Dr. Brown, of Scotland, in his " Letters to St. Pusey " (p. 224), writes : " But passing from your Church, I would further remark, that the succes- sion must have been injured in all those instances in which bishops and presbyters were not only baptized, but were ordained by presbyters, and were not reordained. Now that this was the case from the earliest ages is beyond a doubt. It was the case in the important see of Alexandria, when, as Usher stated to Charles I., upon the au- thority of Jerome and Eutychius, the presbyters for a long time made not only presbyters but bishops. ' For even from Mark the Evangelist,' says the first of these authors, etc. " Upon which Willet, as was noticed formerly, remarks : ' So it would seem that the very elec- tion of a bishop in those days, without any other circumstances, was his ordination.' And says TESTIMONY OF BROWN. . 139 Stillingfleet, who answers at considerable length the numerous objections urged by Bishop Pear- son, to this interpretation of the passage : ' It appears that by election, he means conferring avthorityi by the instances he brings to that pur- pose ; as the Roman armies choosing their em- peror, who had no other power but what they received by the length of the sword, and the dea- cons choosing their archdeacon, who had no other power but what was merely conferred by the choice of the college of deacons ' ( ' Irenicum,' p. 274). "And says Eutychius, who is represented by Ebn Abi Osbse, as a ' man well acquainted with the sciences and institutions which were in use among the Christians,' and whose testimony co- incides with that of Jerome, ' Hananias was the first of the patriarchs who was set over the Church of Alexandria,' etc. " And as it was 6bvious that he could have no inducements to make this statement, but a regard to truth, because, as he himself was a patriarch, it was fitted to lessen the respectability of the ruler, inasmuch as it showed a deviation from the mode of creating the patriarchs, which had been recommended by the Evangelist ; and as it is confirmed by Jerome, who was born only about eighty years after the change took place, and who had the best opportunities to become acquainted with the fact, as he lived much in the East, it is 140 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. perfectly capricious on the part of Episcopalians to question ttieir testimony. " Usiier, who was one of the most able and learned of their bishops, examined the evidence of former times with the utmost care, and declared himself to be satisfied, and there appears to be no good reason why it ought not to satisfy them now. If they have perfect confidence in the lists of bishops of some of the churches given by Eusebius, though he lived nearly three hundred years after the time when they commenced, noth- ing but a conviction that it bears so strongly against diocesan Episcopacy and the apostolical succession, could prompt them to doubt the state- ments of Jerome, who lived so much nearer to the event which he reports, corroborated as it is by another individual who himself presided over the see of Alexandria, and might have access to its records, and who will be acknowledged at least to be an impartial witness. " But if the bishops of Alexandria, as Usher affirmed, for two hundred and fifty years, were made by presbyters, either by election without or- dination, or by their laying their hands on their heads, and setting them apart to their office, I would like to be informed whether the succession must not have been broken even at the very be- ginning, during that long period. " And as Alexandria was one of the largest and most populous bishoprics in the early TESTIMONY OF BROWN. 141 Church, I shall leave it to any candid individual to say whether he can estimate the amount of the disorder and confusion which may have been introduced into other sections of the Christian Church, by clergymen coming into them, whose orders, upon your principles, must have been ir- regular and invalid." On page 361, he adds : " I have only further to remark, on the statements of Jerome, that in the only instance which he mentions of the appoint- ment of bishops, after they were first introduced, that of the bishops of Alexandria, he represents them as made by presbyters, just as the Roman army made their emperor, and the deacons made their archdeacon. He does not say whether they ordained them, though this is asserted afterwards by Butychius. And it is evident that if they were ordained, they alone must have performed it ; for before diocesan bishops were adopted by the Church, who did not receive their office by any divine appointment, but by mere human ar- rangement, there could be none but presbyters to consecrate those who were raised to the episco- pate, not only in the Church of Alexandria, but in all the churches. " But if, according to" Jerome, it was presbyters alone who began the succession, and ordained the first diocesan bishop in all the churches, from whom the whole of the bishops of the present day, and the whole of their clergy have derived 142 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON their order, the succession has been vitiated at the very commencement, and cannot be rectified ; and if presbyterian orders have no validity, there cannot, on your principles, be a churchy or a min- ister, or a single individual who has any revealed or covenanted title to salvation on the face of the earth." DR. GEOKGE CAMPBKLJ.. Professor Campbell, of Marischal College, Ab- erdeen, in his " Lectures on Ecclesiastical His- tory " (p. 130), thus writes : " Another witness whom I shall adduce is Jerome, who wrote about the end of the fourth century, and the beginning of the fifth. The testimony which I shall bring from him regards -the practice that had long subsisted at Alexandria. I shall give you the passage in his own words, from the Epistle to Evagrius, ' AlexandrisB a Marco,' etc. " I know it has been said that this relates only to the election of the Bishop of Alexandria, and not to his ordination. To me, it is manifest that it relates to both ; or, to express myself with greater precision,, it was the intention of the father to signify, that no other ordination than this election, and those ceremonies with which the presbyters might please to accompany it, such as the installment and salutation, was then and there thought necessary to one who, had been ordained a presbyter before; that, according to the usage of that Church, this form was all that was requi- TESTIMONY OF CAMPBELL. 143 site to constitute one of the presbyters their bishop. But, as I am sensible that unsupported assertions are entitled to no regard on either side, I shall as- sign my reasons from the author's own words, and then leave every one to judge for himself. " Jerome, in the preceding part of this letter, had been maintaining, in opposition to some dea- con who had foolishly boasted of the order of deacons as being superior to the order of presby- ters : Jerome, I say, had been maintaining, that in the original and apostolical constitution of the Church, bishop and presbyter were two names for the same office. That ye may be satisfied that what he says implies no less, I shall give it you in .his own words: ^ Audio quendam in tantam eru- pisse vecordiam, ut diaconas presbyteris, id est epis- copis, anteferret. Nam, cum apostolus perspicue doceat eosdem esse presbyteros quos episcopos, quid patitu/r mensarum et viduarum minister, ut supra eos, se tumidus efferat.^ " For this purpose he had, in a cursory manner, pointed out some of those arguments from the New Testament, which I took occasion, in a for- mer discourse, to illustrate. In regard to the in- troduction of the episcopal order, as then com- monly understood, in contradistinction to that of presbyter, he signifies that it did not exist from the beginning, but was merely an expedient de- vised after the times of the Apostles, in order the "more effectually to preserve unity in every church ; 144 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. as, in case of difference among the pastors, it would be of importance to have one acknowl- edged superior in whose determination they were bound to acquiesce. His words are, ' Quod ante postea ; ' he had been speaking immediately before of the times of the Apostles ; ' umis electus est, qui cceteris preponeretur, in schismatis remedium factus est, ne unus quisque ad se trahens, Christi ecclesiam rumpereU Then follows the passage, quoted above, concerning -the Church of Alexan- dria. " Nothing can be plainer than that he is giving an account of tjie first introduction of the episco- pate (as the Word was then understood), which he had been maintaining was not a different order from that of presbyter, but merely a certain pre- eminence conferred by election, for the expedient purpose of preventing schism. And in confirma- tion of what he had advanced, that this election was all that at first was requisite, he tells the story of the manner that had long been practiced, and held sufficient for constituting a bishop in the metropolis of Egypt. It is accordingly intro- duced thus : ' Nam et Alexandria^ as a case en- tirely opposite, to wit, an instance of a church in which a simple election had continued to be accounted suflicientfor a longer time than in other churches ; an instance which had remained a ves- tige and an evidence of the once universal practice. " Now, if he meant only to tell us, as some TESTIMONY OF CAMPBELL. 145 would have it, that there the election of the bishop was in the presbyters, there was no occasion to refer to Alexandria for an example, or to a former pe- riod, as that continued to be a very common, if not the general, practice throughout the Church. And though it be allowed to have been still the custom in most places to get also the concurrence or con- sent of the people, this shows more strongly how frivolous the arguments from their being electors would have been in favor of presbyters as equal in point of order to bishops, and consequently su- perior to deacons ; since, in regard to most places, as much as this could be said concerning those who are inferior to deacons, the very meanest of the people, who had all a suffrage in the election of their bishop. " But, understood in the way I have explained it, the argument has both sense and strength in it, and is, in effect, as follows : ' There can be no essential difference between the order of bishop and that of presbyter, since, to make a bishop, nothing more was necessary at first (and of this practice the Church of Alexandria long remained an example) than the nomination of his fellow- presbyters ; and no ceremony of consecration was required but what was performed by them, and consisted chiefly in placing him in a higher seat and saluting him bishop.' " Was ever anything more frivolous than Pear- son's criticism on the distinction between a se and 10 146 THE PKIMITIVE EIRENICON. ex se ? the phrase used in the above quotation (' Vindicise Ignatianse,' p. 1. c. x.). Or could any- thing be conceived more foreign to Jerome's pur- pose than the above passage has thought fit to interpret it? " Add to this, that the very examples this father makes use of for illustration, show manifestly that his meaning must have been as I have repre- sented it. His first instance is the election of an emperor by the army, which he calls expressly making an emperor. And is it not a matter of public notoriety, that the emperors raised in this manner did, from that moment, without waiting any other inauguration, assume the imperial titles and exercise the imperial power? And did they not treat all as rebels who opposed them ? " If possible, the other example is still more- decisive. To constitute an archdeacon, in the sense in which the word was then used, no other form of investiture was necessary but his election, which was in Jerome's L'me solely in the fellow- deacons ; though this also, with many other things, came afterwards into the hands of the bishop. By this example, he also very plainly acquaints us that the bishop originally stood in the same re- lation to the presbyters, in which the archdeacon in his own time, did to the other deacons, and was, by consequence, no other than what the arch-presbyter came to be among the presbyters. " But does not Jerome, after all, admit, in the TESTIMONY OF CAMPBELL. 147 very next sentence, the superiority of bishops in the exclusive privilege of ordaining ? True ; he admits it as a distinction that then actually ob- tained ; but the whole preceding part of the let- ter was written to evince that from the beginning it was not so. " From ancient times he descends to times then modern, and from distant countries he comes to his own, concluding that still there was not one article of moment whereby their powers were dis- criminated : ' Quid enim facit, excepta ordinatione, episcopus, quod presbyter non faciat ? ' This, in- deed, proves sufficiently, that at that time presby- ters were not allowed to ordain. But it can prove nothing more ; for in regard to his sentiment about the rise of this difference, it was impossible to be more explicit than he had been through the whole epistle. I shall only add, that, for my part, I cannot conceive another interpretation that can give either weight to his argument or consistency to his words. The interpretation I have given does both, and that without any violence to the expression. " I might plead Jerome's opinion in the case, I do plead only his testimony. I say I might plead his opinion as the opinion of one who lived in an age when the investigation of the origin of any ecclesiastical order or custom must have been incomparably easier than it can be to us at this distance of time. I might plead his opinion as 148 THE PBrMITlVE EIRENICOlir. the opinion of a man who had more erudition than any person then in the Church, the greatest linguist, the greatest critic, the greatest antiquary of them all. But I am no friend to an implicit deference to human authority in matters of opin- ion. " Let his sentiment be no further regarded than the reasons by which they are supported are found to be good. I do plead only his testimony as a testimony in relation to a matter of fact, both re- cent and notorious, since it regarded the then late uniform practice of the Church of Alexandria, a city which, before Constantinople became the seat of empire, was, next to Rome, the most eminent in the Christian world. " To the same purpose the testimony ot the Al- exandrian patriarch Ij^ntychius has been pleaded, who, in his ' Annals ' of that Church, takes notice of this same practice, but with greater particularity of circumstances than had been done by Jerome. Eutychius tells us that the number of presbyters therein was always twelve ; and that, on an occa- sion of vacancy in the episcopal chair, they chose one of themselves, whom the remaining eleven ordained bishop by imposition of hands and ben- ediction. In these points, it is evident there is nothing that can be said to contradict the testi- mony of Jerome ; all that can be affirmed is, that the one mentions particulars about which the other had been silent. TESTIMONY OF CAMPBELL. 149 " But it will be said there is one circumstance — the duration assigned to this custom — where- in there seems to be a real contradiction. Jerome brings it no farther down than Heraclas and Dionysius ; whereas Eutychius represents it as continuing to the time of Alexander, about fifty years later. Now, it is not impossible that a cir- cumstantial custom might have been in part abol- ished at one time, and in part at another. But admit that in this point the two testimonies are contradictory, that will by no means invalidate their credibility as to those points on which they are agreed. The difference, on the contrary, as it is an evidence that the last did not copy from the first, and that they are therefore two witnesses and not one, seems rather as a confirmation of the truth of those articles wherein they concur. And this is our ordinary method of judging in all mat- ters depending on human testimony. That Je- rome, who probably spoke from memory, though certain as to the main points, might be somewhat doubtful as to the precise time of the abolition of the custom, is rendered even probable by his men- tioning, with a view to mark the expiration of the practice, two successive bishops rather than one. For if he had known certainly that it ended with Heraclas, there would have been no occasion to mention Dionysius ; and if he had been assured of its continuance to the time of Dionysius, there would have been no propriety in mentioning Her- aclas." 150 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. (kichaed BAXTER (died 1691). This eminently learned controversial writer in his "Jesuit Juggling" (Am. ed,, 1835, p. 205, chap. xxiv. : on " Evangelical Lawful Ministry,)" in reply to the claim of the Roman Church, " that they only have a true ministry or priest- hood and an apostolical episcopacy and true ordination, and that we and all other Protes- tant churches have no true ministers, but are mere laymen under the name of ministers, be- cause we have no just ordination," thus argues : " What succession of episcopal consecration was there in the Church of Alexandria, when Jerome (Epist. ad Evagrium) tells us, 'At Alexandria, from Mark,' etc. — .... " Thus Jerome shows that bishops were then made by presbyters. In the same epistle he proves from Scripture that presbyters and bish- ops were one. " Medina, accusing Jerome of error, saith that Ambrose, Austin, Sedulius, Primasius, Chrysos- tom, Theodoret, tEcumenius, and Theophylact were in the same heresy as Bellarmin himself reporteth him. So that presbyters now may make bishops as those of Alexandria did. . Jerome there saith : ' All are the successors of the Apos- tles.' Yet apostles as apostles have no succes- sors, as Bellarmin teacheth (lib. 4, ' de Pontif.' cap. 25) " 5. He that is ordained according to the Apos- TESTIMONY OF BAXTER. 151 ties' directions or prescripts of Scripture, hath the true apostolical ordination ; but so are we or- dained. The Apostles never confirmed ordina- tion to those prelates that depend on the Pope of Rome. The bishops to whom the Apostles committed that power, are the same who are called presbyters by them, and they were the overseers or pastors, each but of one single church, and not of many churches, in Scripture times, so Hammond asserts. Such are those ordained among us now. " Gregory Nazianzen, ' Orat.' 18, saith : ' I would there was no presidency nor prerogative of place and tyrannical privileges, that so we might be known only by virtue. But now this right side and left side, and middle and lower degree, and presidency and concomitancy, have begot us many constitutions to no purpose, and have driven many into the ditch, and have led them away to the region of the goats.' " Isidore Pelusiat, lib. 3, ' Epist. 223, ad Hier- acem,' saith : ' When I have showed what dif- ference there is between the ancient ministry and the present tyranny, why do you not crown and praise the lovers of equality ? ' " Refer to Sedulius, Anselm, Beda, Alcuin, Bucer, Peter Martyr, and WicklifFe's argument on the Waldenses. " Cassander (' Consult.' article 14) saith : ' It is agreed among all, that of old, in the Apostles' 152 THE PRIMITIVE EIKENICON. days, there was no difference between bishops and presbyters, but afterwards, for order's sake and the avoiding of schism, the bishop was set before the presbyter.' Occam determineth, that by Christ's institution all the priests of what degree soever are of equal authority, power, and juris- diction. Reynold Peacock wrote a book ' De Mih- istrorum ^qualitate,' which your party caused to be printed." " Eichard Armachan (liber 9, cap. 5, ' ad Qujest. Armen.') saith : ' There is not found in the evan- gelical, or apostolical Scriptures, any difference between bishops and simple priests called pres- byters; whence it follows, that there is one power in all, and equal from their order. Cap. 7, answering the question whether any priest may consecrate churches, etc., he saith, ' Priests may do it as well as bishops, seeing a bishop hath no more in such matters than any simple priest. It seems, therefore, that the restriction of the priest's power was not in the primitive church according to Scripture.' " 6. The chief error of the Papists in this cause is expressed in their reason, 'no man can give! the power which he hath not ; ' wherein they in- timate that it is man that giveth the ministerial power ; whereas it is the gift of Christ alone. Man doth but design the person that shall receive it, and then Christ giveth it, by this law, to the person so designed ; and then man doth invest him, and sol- TESTIMONY OF HOOKER. 153 emnize his introduction. As a woman may choose her husband, but it is not she that giveth him the power over her, but God who determineth of that power by his law, affixing it to the person chosen by her, and her action is but a condition or cause of that capacity of the matter to receive the form. Men do but obey God, in a right choice and designation of the person ; his law doth presently give him the power, with which for order's sake he must be in solemn manner invested. But matters of order may possibly vary ; and though they are to be observed as far as may be, yet they always give place to the end and substance of the work for ordering whereof they are appointed." In this latter statement Baxter has shown the fallacy of our exclusive Episcopal Writers. These have inverted the Scriptural doctrine, giving prom- inence to the human investiture of office, and de- preciating the Spirit's work in the selection of the bishop, in answer to the prayers of his electors. Like other human perversions, the Church has sadly suffered, and the cause of Christ's kingdom been greatly hindered. EICHAED HOOKER (died 1600). This justly celebrated divine refers to the state- ments of Jerome with regard to the Church of Alexandria. He does not object to his testimony as to the presbyters making the bishop by election. 154 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. He simply argues this point: " We cannot with any truth so interpret his words as to mean, that in the Church of Alexandria there had been bishops endowed with superiority over presbyters from St. Mark's time only till the time of Hera- clas and Dionysius." He attempts to reply to the assertion of Jerome, that the authority of bishops over presbyters arose from custom, and not from divine arrangement. He is not pleased with his own argument. He remarks : " This answer to Jerome seemeth dan- gerous. I have qualified it, as I may, by addition of some words of restraint; yet I satisfy not myself; in my judgment it should be altered." These words of Hooker appear to have been plalced by him in the margin, and afterwards in- serted in the text by his editor. Dr. Gauden. In the same fifth chapter of Book Seventh, after a consideration of Jerome's language, he concludes : " Wherefore, lest bishops forget themselves, as if none on earth had authority to touch their estates, let them bear continually in mind, that it is rather the force of custom whereby the Church having so long found it good to con- tinue under the regiment of her virtuous bishops, doth still uphold, maintain, and honor them in that respect, than that any such true and heavenly law can be showed, by the evidence whereof it hiay of truth appear that the Lord Himself hath appointed presbyters forever to be under the regi- TESTIMONY OF HOOKER. 155 ment of bishops, in what sort soever they behave themselves. Let this consideration be a bridle unto them, and let it teach them not to disdain the advice of their presbyters, but to use their authority with so much the greater humility and moderation, as a sword which the Church hath power to take from them." After discussing the arguments for and aga,inst episcopal government, in his fourteenth chapter he writes : " Now, whereas, hereupon some do infer that no ordination can stand but only such as is made by bishops, which have had their ordina- tion by others before them till we come to the very Apostles of Christ themselves To this we answer there may be sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination made without a bishop." Here Hooker concedes the main point, .and justifies the action of his Church, through his whole life. If in the heat of argument with the Puritans he has used stronger language with respect to the authority of Episcopacy, it is an inconsistency necessarily connected with his posi- tion, and a difficulty which all encounter who are led to assert a jure divino claim for the supe- riority of bishops over presbyters, or to assert the necessity of an episcopal consecration to confer the right to ordain. If the great Hooker stumbled, who now can succeed in the attempt? Yet Hooker's claims are moderate, in contrast with modern pretensions. 156 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. BISHOP HOADLBT (died 1761). Bishop Hoadley, in his " Brief Defense of Epis- copal Ordination," argues for such ordination, on the ground that it was the " will of the Apostles " and " the settled method of the Church." He ad- vocates it on the ground of " order, decency, and regularity," — not of " indispensable necessity." The ability and moderation of his work justly entitle him to the encomium passed by Bishop White in " The Case of the Episcopal Churches Considered" (p. 17). " The name of Bishop Hoadley will probably be as long remembered as any on the list of British worthies; and will never, be mentioned without veneration of the strength of his abilities, the liberality of his senti- ments, and his enlightened zeal for civil liberty. He has written in defense of episcopal govern- ment with more argument and better temper than is commonly to be met with in controversial writings. This amiable prelate expresses him- self as follows," etc. From the case of the Church of Alexandria, as stated by Jerome, Bishop Hoadley derives a strong argument for episcopal ordination. His argument is as follows (p. 418) : " First he saith, that in some parts of the Christian Church it is not very difficult to fix the time of this restraint upon presbyters. The only instance he produceth is that of the Church of Alexandria, in which he saith, St. Jerome tells us that for above two hun- TESTIMONY OF HOADLEY. 157 dred years the presbyters chose and set apart their bishops. From whence he argues that if presbyters in this Church of Alexandria invested and conferred power and authority on their bish- ops, and the validity of this act of theirs remained unquestionable, much more might they confer order on presbyters. " And, lest there should not appear reason enough in the argument itself, he adds, that this argument Mr. Baxter often tells us was esteemed unanswerable by as great a man as Archbishop Usher (p. 100). I have often told this author how little I am moved with great names in mat- ters of judgment; nor will he, I well know;, yield to the force of every argument (in other points) which Archbishop Usher thought unanswerable. And therefore I hope he will give me leave freely to examine the force of this argument. For I am so far from thinking it unanswerable, that I cannot help thinking it will be found to prove the very contrary to the design of this author in alleging it. For, " 1st. Either this bishop whom the presbyters of Alexandria constituted from the very time of St. Mark the Evangelist, to the time of Heraclas and Dionysius, was no more than a prime-presby- ter, or president of the council of presbyters, or he was bishop in the peculiar sense of the word. If he were more than a prime-presbyter, it will not follow that because they chose their own presi- 158 THE PEIMITIVE EIRENICON. dent, therefore much more might they ordain other presbyters, which is the argument here used. For it is a much less thing for persons of the same office, met together to choose one of themselves, to practice amongst themselves for the better management of their joint counsels, than to call other persons to their own office, in which they had no part before. But if he was bishop, in the peculiar sense of the word (as I doubt not St. Jerome meant, and this argument supposeth), then here is demonstration of the distinction be- tween bishops and presbyters from the very days of the Apostles. " 2d. This very choosing themselves a bishop is so far from proving that they were not under restraint in the point of ordination, that it is the very putting themselves under that restraint ; as a people choosing any person, from amongst them- selves, to be their king, restrains that right, which was originally in them, of granting commissions of lesser importance ; and is designed to devolve the power of doing this upon this single per- son ; so far is it from proving that they themselves continue to exercise it. And, according to St. Jerome, the presbyters choosing and setting a bishop over themselves, is the thing which put a period to their ruling the churches in common, and with a proper equality ; and from the very time of their doing this, they must, according to him, be under restraint. So that instead of argu- TESTIMONY OF HOADLEY. 159 ing, the presbyters chose their bishop, a superior officer, therefore much more ordained presbyters ; I argue, the presbyters of Alexandria chose to themselves bishops from the very time of the Apostles ; therefore from that time they were re- strained from ordaining other presbyters, suppos- ing they had an original right to that work. " For what, I pray, is that restraint which Blondel and this author contend that the presby- ters voluntarily put themselves under, near the middle of the second century ; but what resulted from their choosing, from amongst themselves, governors whom they called bishops ? And what is that restraint which St. Jerome speaks of, but the very order that one should be chosen from among the presbyters, to whom the care of the Church should be in a peculiar sense committed ? Nay, supposing this person chosen by them to have been only a prime-presbyter, what I am say- ing is so evident, that Blondel himself acknowl- edges such a restraint upon the presbyters by their choice of a prime-presbyter, as that nothing was afterwards to be done, in which he was not to bear a principal part. And St. Jerome's only design being to point out the occasion of that distinction of bishops and presbyters, which pre- vailed in his days, and on which the restraint put upon presbyters, according to him, was settled in the Church ; to be sure he could mean nothing in these words, less than to prove that this restraint 160 THE PRIMITIVE EIEENICOSr. was in the Church of Alexandria from the time of St. Mark, by showing that from that time the presbyters of that Church had chosen bishops and placed them over themselves. " For the sentence going before is to this pur- pose, that though in his opinion the original de- sign was that presbyters should govern by their presbyteries ; yet that afterwards one was chosen from amongst them to be set over the rest ; and that this was designed for the preventing some abuses and schisms. To prove this, he appeals to the Church of Alexandria, in which he saith the presbyters, even from the time of St. Mark, had chosen one from amongst themselvesr whom they called peculiarly by the name of bishop, to be sure for the purpose above mentioned, in reme- dium srMsmatis. If, therefore, the distinction in his days between the offices of bishops and priests was in remedium schismatis, it follows that this election of a bishop (which he here speaks of) was for the same end. For no one can say but that St. Jerome is here speaking of that choice of a bishop which restrained the power of presby- ters, whatever he supposed them to be. " 3d. It doth not in the least follow from the presbyters choosing their own bishops, that they pretended to ordain presbyters ; and yet the whole of this argument is founded upon their choosing their own bishops. Suppose it be" said of any company of men, that they met together and TESTIMONY OF HOADLEY. 161 chose one from amongst themselves, and having placed him by that means in a higher station, they called him king ; doth it follow because they thus made him king, therefore to be sure they did what is of lesser importance ; that therefore any of them, or all of them, after this, gave coramis* sions to other officers under this king ? No ; from the time of that election he is, by the will of God and the law of nature, invested with all due au- thority ; and it is his business to give commissions to all inferior ofKcers. Just so it is in the case before us. Let it be granted that those presbyters chose one out of their number, and that having by that means placed him in a higher station, they called him bishop, which is all St. Jerome saith, it will not follow from hence that after this elec- tion, they assumed to themselves to give commis- sions to inferior ecclesiastical officers ; but rather that from this time, this was one of his peculiar businesses, as I have just now been observing. " 4th. As there is no consequence in the argu- ment drawn from hence, so neither doth St. Je- rome give the least color to such an argument, but in the same place useth such expressions as abso- lutely overthrow it. He doth not say that these presbyters conferred power and authority upon their bishop ; nor doth it follow from what he saith, any more than it follows from a prince's nominating a person to a bishopric, that such nomination is the sole authority by which he acts 11 162 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. in ecclesiastical matters. He may, notwithstand- ing this, derive his authority from the will of God ; and the instant of the election be the time from whence the will of God concerning his authority must be supposed to take place. And therefore this author doth not well to add such expressions as these to those of St. Jerome, to embellish his argument, which at least must rest wholly upon that father. " Again, he useth the word episcopus in a pecul- iar sense, as signifying an office distinct from presbyters. The same word he useth in the very next sentence in the same sense, and denies to presbyters the right of ordination, as I have shown before, which he here appropriates to bishops. But what is very remarkable, he illustrates the pres- byters choosing their bishop by the similitude of an army choosing their general. Now, from hence it follows, that as the army after such election, pretended not to the granting inferior commissions in it, but did indeed, by means of this election, devolve this upon the person chosen general ; so neither did the presbyters, after the election of their bishop, pretend to the granting commissions to inferior presbyters ; and this for a very good reason, namely, because they had, by this election, devolved this business upon the person chosen bishop, as they had the care of the churches in all cases in a very peculiar manner. But, as I pass, I cannot forbear asking, if this account, the TESTIMONY OF HOADLEY. 163 Alexandrian presbyters choosing their own bish- ops, be true, what becomes of that inalienable right of the laity in elections, of which this author upon another occasion speaks ? " Thus have we seen of how little force this ar- gument, from these presbyters choosing their own bishop, is, to prove that they did all that time ex- ercise their supposed right of ordination ; and how little satisfaction this gives us in our inquiry, how and when the exercise of this right came to be restrained in the Church. From whence I like- wise draw an argument that it was the same (in St. Jerome's opinion) in all churches, as in the Church of Alexandria, because he makes the gov- ernment of churches to be always the same in all places ; and the decree on which he founds the restraint put upon presbyters to be universal and at the same time. " Consequently, therefore, if it was in pursuance of this desire that the Alexandrian Church chose bishops, and that by this choice the presbyters were restrained in the exercise of their original right, this restraint must likewise be as early, according to St. Jerome, in all other churches, that is, from the very days of the Apostles. Con- sequently, likewise, if the learned Blondel be the defender and follower of St. Jerome, he cannot pretend to fix the time of this restraint in any of the churches later than this. Much less can he, consistently with himself, first fix the time of this 164 TBK PRIMITIVE EIEENICON. restraint (which St. Jerome represents as at the same time universal) to the middle of the second century, and afterwards argue from St. Jerome himself, that it could not be in the Church of Alexandria till the end of the third century, " However, this may be palliated ; having ex- amined the so much boasted instance of the Al- exandrian presbyters, and found it so mistaken and so misapplied, I shall not trouble myself to search that dark author for any other less mate- rial instances, but content myself with having considered what is principally urged and depended on by those who have given the latest occasion of the present debate." Thus, with consummate ability, does Bishop Hoadley argue the question of moderate episco- pacy; and Ji the argument could have always been presented with equal wisdom and prudence, many objections would not have been offered to its acceptance. For Bishop Hoadley opposes with equal power the doctrine of an essential, unbroken, episcopal succession, which has so largely brought odium upon the Episcopal cause, and occasioned its re- jection by so many learned and candid persons. On page 489 of this same volume, this author remarks : " I think not an uninterrupted line of succession of regularly ordained bishops neces- sary." In his " Preservative " (p. 75), he more largely TESTIMONY OF HOADLET. 165 argues the point, and thus forcibly expresses his convictions : " I do not love, I confess, so much as to repeat the principal branches of their be- loved scheme ; they are so different, whencesoever they come, from the voice of the gospel. When they would claim you, as their fellow-laborers the Papists do, by telling you that you cannot hope for the favor of God but in the strictest commun- ion in their Church (which is the true Church of England, governed by bishops in a regular suc- cession) ; that God hath himself hung your salva- tion upon this nicety ; that He dispenses none of His favors or graces but by the hands of them and their subordinate priests ; that you cannot be authoritatively blessed or released from your sins but by them who are the regular priests ; that churches under other bishops {i. e., other than in regular succession) are submaterial conventicles, made up of excommunicated persons, both clergy and laity, out of God's Church, and out of His favor : I say, when such arguments as these are urged, you need only to have recourse to a gen- eral answer to this whole heap of scandal and defamation upon the will of God, the gospel of Christ, and the Church of England in particular ; that you have not so learned Christ, or the design of his gospel, or even the foundation of this par- ticular part of his Church, reformed and estab- lished in England. " The following arguments will justify you, 166 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICOIT. which, therefore, ought to be frequently in the thoughts of all who have any regard for the most important point : God is just and equal and good, and as sure as He is. He cannot put the salvation and happiness of any man upon what He himself has put it out of the power of any man upon earth to be entirely satisfied in ; it hath not pleased God, in His providence, to keep up any proof of the least probability, or moral possibility of a regular uninterrupted succession." This language, addressed by this eminent de- fender of Episcopacy, to the Non-jurors of his day, is equally applicable to the Tractarians and Ritualists of our own times, their true successors, and deserves the solemn consideration of every member of our communion who seeks the glory of God in the advancement of the truth, and of a pure gospel. CHAPTER XII. TOLIC SUCCESSION. As a fitting close to this examination of the Institutions of the Church of Alexandria, in their bearing on the doctrine of episcopal succession, we give the views of nearly aU the prominent writers under Edward and Elizabeth, with those of other later standard writers, on this important topic. That the Reformers regarded the succession of Scriptural truth as the succession by which the Church of God was to be distinguished, is clear from their writings. They make no distinct mention of the subject in the Articles, or Ordinal. Inasmuch as many modern writers have asserted that valid succession is ministerial and tactual, and must be episcopal and uninterrupted, in order to find the doctrine of our Church on this subject, and to expose a pernicious error, we must turn to the writings of the Compilers under Ed- ward, and the Revisers under Elizabeth. 168 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. JOHN BRADFORD (d. 1555). A clear statement of the matter is made by John Bradford, Bishop Ridley's chaplain, " whom in my conscience," said Ridley, " I judge more worthy to be a bishop, than many of us that be bishops already, to be a parish priest." He was the man whom, of all others, the Papists labored to reclaim. Dr. Harpsfield, the papal examiner, held the following conversation with Bradford : — " The Church hath also," saith he, " succession of bishops." And here he made much ado to prove that this was an essential point. " You say as you would have it," quoth I ; " for if this point fail you, all the Church you go about to set forth will fall down. You shall not find in all the Scripture this your essential point of suc- cession of bishops," quoth I. " In Christ's Church Antichrist will sit." " Tell me," quoth he, " were not the Apostles bishops ? " " No," quoth I, " except you make a new def- inition of bishops ; that is, give them no certain place." " Indeed," said he, " the Apostles' office was more than bishops, for it was universal ; but yet Christ instituted bishops in His Church, as Paul saith, ' He hath given pastors, prophets;' so that I trow it proved by the Scriptures the succession of bishops to be an essential point." TKUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 169 To this I answered that " the ministry of God's word and ministers is an essential point; but to translate this to bishops and their succession," quoth I, " is a plain subtility ; and therefore," quoth I, " that it may be plain, I will ask you a question. Tell me whether the Scriptures know any difference between bishops and ministers whom you call priests ? " " No," saith he. " Well, then, go on forward," quoth I, " and let us see what you get now by the succession of bishops, that is of ministers; which cannot be understood of such bishops as minister not, but lord it." " The next day," writes Bradford, " Master Harpsfield began a very long oration almost three quarters of an hour long, first repeating what he had said, and how far we had gone over night, and therewith did begin to prove upward succession of bishops here in England, for eight hundred years ; in France, at Lyons, for twelve hundred years ; in Spain, at Hispallen, for eight hundred years ; in Italy, at Milan, for twelve hundred years, laboring by this to prove his Church ; whereto he used succession of bishops in the last Church for the more confirmation of his words, and so concluded with an exhortation and an interrogation : the exhortation that I could obey his Church ; the interrogation, whether I could show any such succession for the demon- 170 THE PKIMITIVE EIRENICON. stration of my Church (for so he called it) which I followed." Now what was the reply to this argument, a facsimile of all exclusive succession arguments since ? — " Unto this, his long oration, I made a short answer, how that my memory was evil for to answer particularly his long oration ; therefore I would generally do it, thinking that because his oration was rather to persuade than to prove, that a general answer would serve. So I told him, that if Christ or His Apostles, being here on earth, had been demanded of the prelates of the Church, then to have made a demonstration of the Church by succession of high priests, which had approved the doctrine He had taught: 'I think,' quoth I, 'that Christ here would have done as I do ; that is: would have brought forth that which upholdeth the Church, even the verity of the word of God taught and believed, not of the high priests (which of long time had persecuted it), but of the prophets and other good, simple men, which perchance were counted for heretics by the ChuVch, that is, with them that were ordained high priests in the Church ; to whom the true Church was not then tied by any succession, but the word of God.' " (Vol. i. pp. 501, 505.) TRUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 1711 BISHOP EIDLBY (d. 1555). This view of Bradford, of great importance in this connection, is maintained by Bishop Ridley, confessedly, of all the Edwardian Reformers, of most influence generally in our communion. In his farewell letter to his Christian friends, written a few days before his martyrdom, Ridley says of the Church of Rome : " It may justly be called Aposlolici, that is, true disciples of the Apostles, and also that church and congregation of Chris- tians an apostolic church, yea, and that, certain hundred years after the same was first erected and builded upon Christ, by the true apostolical doc- trine taught by the mouths of the Apostles them- selves. ... So long and so many hundred years as that see did truly teach and preach that gospel, that religion^ exercise that power, and ordered everything by these laws and rules, which that see received of the Apostles, and, as TertuUian saith, the Apostles of Christ, and Christ of God ; so long (I say) that see might well have been called Peter and Paul's chair and see, or rather Christ's chair, and the bishop thereof Apostolicus, or a true disciple and successor of the Apostles, and a minister of Christ. . . . " For understand, my lords, it was neither for the privilege of the place or person thereof, that that see and bishop thereof were called Apostolic, but for the true trade of Christ's religion, which was taught and maintained in that see at the 172 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICOK. first, and of those godly men. And therefore as truly and justly as that see then, for that true trade of religion and consanguinity of doctrine with the religion and doctrine of Christ's Apos- tles, was called apostolic ; so, as truly and justly, for the contrariety of religion and diversity of doctrine from Christ and his Apostles, that see and the bishop thereof at this day both ought to be called, and are indeed, antichristian. That see is the seat of Patau ; and the bishop of the same, that maintaineth the abominations thereof, is Antichrist himself indeed." Writing to Bradford in reference (" Works," 414, 418) to the discussion on the Church given above, Ridley exclaims : " O good Lord, that they are so busy with you about the Church'.. It is no new thing, brother, that is happened unto you ! for that was always the clamor of the wicked bishops and priests, against God's true prophets. ' The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord ! ' and they said, ' The law shall not depart from the priest, nor wisdom from the elder ; ' and yet in them whom only they esteemed for priests and sages, there was neither God's law nor godly wisdom." The stress that Ridley lays on the necessity of sound doctrine to preserve church character is very observable. TRUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 173 BISHOP LATIMEK (d. 1555). Bishop Latimer, in his conference with Ridley, expresses himself in a similar manner. " The Scripture is not of any private interpreta- tion at any time. For such a one, though he be a layman, fearing God, is much more fit to understand holy Scripture than any arrogant and proud priest, yea, than the bishop himself, be he never so glistening and great in all his pontificals. . . . Let the Papists go with their long faith ; be thou contented with the short faith of the saint, ■which is revealed unto view the word of God "written. Adieu to all popish fantasies, Amen. For one man having the Scripture and good reason for him, is more to be esteemed himself alone, than a thousand such as they either gath- ered together, or succeedi-ng one another" (p. 114). BISHOP HOOPEK (d. 1555). Bishop Hooper — Edward's favorite preacher, and who if Edward had lived would have exer- cised a most commanding influence upon the conduct of the Reformation — is most forcible in the expression of two views on this point. Hooper had differed with Ridley with respect to the continuance in use of the Roman vest- ment. These differences were settled. Ridley writes, " To my most dear brother, and reverend fellow-elder in Christ, John Hooper, grace and 174 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. peace. . . . Forasmuch as I understand by your works, which I have yet but superficially seen, that we thorovghly agree and wholly consent tO' gether in those things which are the grounds and substantial points of our religion, against the which the world so furiously rageth in these our days, howsoever in time past in swollen waters and circumstances of religion, your wisdom and my simplicity (I confess) have in some points varied," etc. In his " Declaration of Christ and his Office," 1547, Hooper writes : " Such as teach the people to know the Church by these signs : namely, the traditions of men and the succession of bishops, teach wrong." In the " Confession of his Faith," written 1550, he says : " As concerning the minis- ters of the Church, I believe that the Church is bound to no sort of people, or any ordinary suc- cession of bishops, cardinals, or such like, but unto the very word of God ; and none of them should be believed but when they speak the word of God." In 1552, he charges his clergy to in- struct their people : " lest that any man should be seduced, believing himself to be bound unto any ordinary succession of bishops and priests, but only unto the word of God and the right use of bis sacraments." ("Works," i. 82; ii. 90, 120.) TRUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 175 ARCHDEACON PHILPOT (d. 1555). Archdeacon Philpot, an accomplished Can- onist under Edward, and a martyr, when the Archbishop of York urged : " Rome hath known succession of bishops, which your Church hath not ; ergo, that is the Catholic Church, and yours is not, because there is no such succession can be proved in your Church," replied : " I deny, my lord, that succession of bishops is an infallible point to know the Church by ; for there may be a succes- sion of bishops known in a place, and yet there be no church, as at Antioch, and Jerusalem, and in other places, where the Apostles abode as well as at Rome. But if you put to the succession of bishops, succession of doctrine withal (as St. Augustine doth), I will grant it to be a good proof for the Catholic Church ; but a local suc- cession is nothing available. . , . Although you can prove the succession of bishops from Peter, yet this is not sufficient to prove Rome the Cath- olic Church, unless you can prove the profession of Peter's faith, whereupon the Catholic Church is builded, to have continued in his successors at Rome, and at this present time." (" Examina- tions," pp. 37, 137.) ARCHBISHOP CKANMER (d. 1556). It is not necessary to quote Archbishop Cran- mer in this connection, inasmuch as his views on this subject are acknowledged to be as compre- 176 THE PRIMITITIVE EIRENICON. hensive as any of his contemporaries, and have been previously referred to in this volume. We see from the language of these most prominent and influential of the divines under Edward, that the exclusive uninterrupted episcopal succession the- ory, was by all rejected. The translator of Cranmer's " Confutation of Unwritten Verities," a contemporary, writes (p. 11, Parker Society ed.) : « Such gross ignorance (I would to God it were but ignorance indeed) is entered into their heads, and such arrogant bold-v ness possesseth their hearts, that they are bold to affirm no church to be a true church of God, but that which standeth by ordinary succession of bishops, in such pompous and glorious sort as now is seen. ... As sweet agreeth with sour, black with white, darkness with light, and evil with good ; even so this outward, seen, and visible Church, consisting of the ordinary succession of bishops, agreeth with Christ." The name of this author is not ascertained. We pass now to the reign of Elizabeth, the period of the revision of the Prayer Book. BISHOP JEWEL (d. 1571). And first we have Bishop Jewel, the most learned of the bishops, declaring in his " Apol- ogy," a public work: " God's grace is promised to a good mind, and to any one that feareth Him, not to sees and successions." In the " Defense of TRUE APOSTOLIC SDCCESSION. 177 his Apology " (p. 201), he writes : « To be Peter's lawful successor, it is not sufficient to leap into Peter's stall. Lawful succession standeth not only in succession of place, but also and much rather, in doctrine and diligence." Harding, the Romanist, asks Jewel : " If you cannot show your bishoply pedigree, if you can prove no succession, then whereby hold you ? Tell us the original and first spring of your Church ! Show us the register of your bishops, continually succeeding one another from the be- ginning, so as that fails bishops "Bave some one of the Apostles or apostolic men for his author and predecessor. How can. you prove your vo- cation ? By what authority usurp you the ad- ministration of doctrine and sacraments ? "What can you allege for the right and proof of your ministry ? Who hath called you ? Who hath laid hands on you ? By what example hath he done it ? How and by whom were you consecrated ? Who hath sent you ? Who hath committed to you the office you take upon you ? Be you a priest or be you not ? If you be not, how dare you usurp the name and office of a bishop? If you be, who gave you orders ? The institution of a priest was never yet in the power of a bishop ? " To this argument, similar to that of Harps- field, what does this writer of the second " Book of Homilies," and publisher of our Articles, reply, in 12 178 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. ■words which were placed in the parish churches of England ? " If it were certain that the religion and truth of God passeth ever more orderly by succession, and none otherwise, then were succession, where- of he hath told us so long a tale, a very good substantial argument of the truth. But Christ saith, by order of succession, ' The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' chair.' Annas and Caiaphas, touching succession, were as well bishops as Aaron and Eliezar. Of succession, St. Paul saith unto the faithful at Ephesus : ' I know that after my departure hence, ravening wolves shall succeed me. And out of yourselves there shall (by succession) spring up men speak- ing perversely.' Therefore St.. Hierome saith : ' They be not always the children of holy men that (by succession) have the places of holy men.' As the Scribes and Pharisees succeeded Moses, perverting and breaking the laws of Moses ; even so do the bishops of Rome this day succeed Christ, perverting and breaking the laws of Christ. . . . Such affiance some time had the Scribes and Pharisees in their succession. There- fore they said : ' We are the children of Abra- ham;' unto us hath God made his promises: ' Art thou greater than our father Abraham ? ' As for Christ ' we know not from whence he came,' or what can he show for his succession. And when Christ began to reform their abuses TRUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 179 and errors, they said unto him, ' By what power doest thou these things. And who gave thee this authority ? ' Where is thy succession ? Thus to maintain themselves in credit, for that they had continuance and succession from Aaron and sat in Moses' chair, they kept Christ quite out of possession, and said unto Him, even as Mr. Hard- ing saith now unto us : ' "Who ever taught us these things before thee? What ordinary succession and vocation had thou ? What bishop admitted thee ? Who confirmed thee ? Who allowed thee ? ' . . . All other things failing, they must hold only by succession ; and only because they sit in Moses' chair they must claim the possession of the whole. " This is the right and virtue of their succession. . . . We neither have bishops without church, nor church without bishops. Neither doth the Church of England this day depend of them \yhom you often call apostates, as if our Church were no church without them. . . . They are for a great part learned and grave and godly men, and are ashamed to see your follies. Notwithstand- ing, if there were not one, neither of them nor of us, left alive, yet would not therefore the whole Church of England flee to Loraine. . . . Whoso- ever is a member of Christ's body, whosoever is a child of the Church, whosoever is baptized in Christ and beareth his name, is fully invested with their priesthood, and therefore may justly be 180 THE PEIMITrVE EIRENICON. called a priest. And wheresoever there be three such together, as Tertullian saith, 'yea, though they be only laymen, yet have they a church!' . . . God's name be blessed forever! We want neither church nor priesthood, nor any kind of sacrifice that Christ hath left unto his faithful." « Faith Cometh (not by succession, but) by hear- ing ; and hearing cometh (not of legacy or inher- itance from bishop to bishop, but) of the word of God. ' Succession,' you say, ' is the chief way for any Christian man to avoid Antichrist.' I grant you if you mean the succession of doctrine. It is not suiEcient to claim succession of place, it behoveth us rather to have regard to succession of doctrine." (« Works," iii. 320, 38, 48.) BISHOP PiLKiNGTON (died 1575). Bishop Pilkington, one of the Eevisers, remarks (" Works," p. 600), " Succession in doctrine makes them the sons of the prophets and apostles, and not sitting in the same seat nor being bishops of the same place . . . There cannot be proved a suc- cession of their bishops in any one place of this realm since the Apostles. ... So stands the suc- cession of the Church not in mitres, palaces, lands, or lordships, but in teaching some religion and sort- ing out the contrary. . . . He that does these things is the true successor of the Apostles. . . . When they can bripg the Apostles' doctrine or life, for example, to be like their life and teaching, they may say they follow the Apostles." TRUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 181 DR. WHITTAKEE (died 1595). The learned Professor Whittaker, in reply to Bellarmin's " Disputation of Scripture " (p. 570), writes : " Though we should concede the succes- sion of that Church unbroken and entire, yet that succession would be a matter of no weight, be- cause we regard not the external succession of place and persons, but the internal one of faith and doctrine." And elsewhere he says : " Faith is, as it were, the soul of the succession, which faith, being wanting, the naked succession of persons is like a dead carcass without the soul. The Fathers indeed always much more regarded the succession of faith than any unbroken series of men." DR. wiLLET (died 1621). Dr. Willet, in his " Synopsis Papismi" (p. 276), writes : " Every godly and faithful bishop is a successor of the Apostles. "We deny it not, and so are all godly and faithful pastors and ministers. The province of succession, we see, is in the preaching of the Word, which appertaineth as well to other pastors and ministers as to bishops." r>E. FULKE (died 1589). Dr. Fulke, a noted antagonist of Popery, in his answer to Stapleton (p. 74), says : " The Scrip- ture requireth no succession of names, persons, or places, but of faith and doctrine ; and that we 182 THE PEIMITIVE EIRENICON. prove when we affirm our faith and doctrine by the doctrine of the Apostles. Neither had the Fathers any other meaning, in calling upon new upstart heresies for their succession, but by a succession of doctrine, as well as of persons." . • . And against Sanders (p. 26) : " The same au- thority of preaching and ministering the sacra- ments, of binding and loosing, which the Apostles had, is perpetual in the Church, in the bishop and elders, which axe all successors of the Apostles." BISHOP BiLSON (died 1616). Bishop Bilson, appealed to by Keble in support of his views, makes this forcible statement, as quoted by Brown, in his " Letters to Pusey ' (p. 288) : " The succession is of no weight, unless truth of doctrine and purity of life be added to it." DK. SUTCLIPFE (died 1629). Dr. SutclifFe, also appealed to by Keble, thus writes : '' Stapleton asserts that we (the Protes- tant churches) are destitute of the succession. And he thinks we are terribly pressed by this argument ; but without reason. For the exter- nal succession, which both heretics often have and the orthodox have not, is of no moment. Not even our adversaries themselves, indeed, are certain respecting their own succession. But we are certain, that our doctors have succeeded to the Apostles and prophets and most ancient TKUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 183 Fathers. And moreover, if there is any weight in external succession, they have succeeded to the bishops and presbyters throughout Germany, France, England, and other countries, and were ordained by them." (" De vera Eccles." p. 37, 38.) CALFHiLL (died 1570). In his " Treatise on the Cross," p. 230, this divine, bishop elect of Worcester, writes : " 1. And who- soever will be successors unto the Apostles, must use this ministry, this trade of doctrine, which, if they continue in being lawfully called thereunto by God, and have gifts competent to approve their calling unto the world, they care not for the sign of the cross to be imprinted in them, the virtue ■whereof never departed from them. Certain it is that neither Scripture nor any learned father cominendeth the blessing of prayer to us. And how yo«.r wisdom doth esteem the wagging of a bishop's fingers I greatly force not. I looked rather that ye should have commended the oil for anointing, which the greasy merchants will have in every mess. " 2. For the character indelebilis, ' the mark un- removable,' is thereby given. Yet there is a way to have it out well enough, to rub thehct well favorably with salt and ashes, or, if that will not serve, with a little soap." 184 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICOlT. ARCHBISHOP BANCROFT (died 1610). «' It is most apparent, and cannot be denied, but that Irenaeus, Cyprian, Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and divers other ancient writers, do call the bishops the Apostles' succes- sors ; insomuch as some of them, especially the authors of the ecclesiastical histories, do draw long catalogues of the particular bishops' names that succeeded the Apostles, and other apostolical men whom they made bishops, which catalogues and manner of speech of the said Fathers, being used by them very fitly against such heretics as did arise up in their days, have since, in our time, been greatly abused by the Papists. Unto whom the learned men, that have stood for the truth against them, by writing have contirmally an- swered, that the Fathers' arguments, drawn from the said personal succession of bishops, were very effectual so long as the succession of the Apostles' doctrine did concur; wherewithal that the Fathers, in urging of the first, had ever an especial eye to the second, some point of doctrine being ever called in question by the said heretics." (" Survey," chap, xxvii. p. 333.) ARCHDEACON MASON (died 1621). " That assertion of Stapleton's, to wit, that ' wheresoever this succession is, there is also a true Catholic Church,' cannot be defended ; but Bellarmin saith, far more truly : ' It is not necessarily gathered that the Church is always TRUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 185 where there is succession.' For, besides this out- ward succession, there must be likewise the in- ward succession of doctrine to make a true church. IrensBus describeth those which have a true suc- cession from the Apostles, ' to be such as with the succession of the episcopal office have received the certain grace of truth.' And this kind of suc- cession he calleth ' the principal succession.' So Gregory Nazianzen, having said ' that Athanasius succeeded St. Mark in godliness,' addeth, that. ' this succession in godliness is properly to be ac- counted succession ; for he that holdeth the same doctrine is also partaker of the same throne ; but he that is against the doctrine must be reported an adversary, even while he sitteth on the throne, for the latter hath the name of succession, but the former hath the thing itself, and the truth.' There- fore you must prove your succession in doctrine, otherwise you must be holden for adversaries, even while you sit on the throne." (" On the Consecra- tion of the Bishops, &c., in the Church of Eng- land," book ii. chap. i. p. 41-43.) Archdeacon Mason elsewhere remarks : " Seeing a priest is equal tp a bishop in the power of order, he hath equally intrihsical power to give orders." (Tract, p. 160.) It is evident, from these prominent writers of the reign of Elizabeth, that the same view was taken of succession, as was held by the Compilers under Edward. 186 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. BISHOP BABINGTON (died 1610). If we pass to the next generation of divines trained under the Revisers, we find Bishop Bab- ington, of the Commission of 1604, declaring : " They are true successors of the Apostles that succeed in virtue, holiness, truth, etc. . . . Not that sit on the same stool. Faith cometh by hearing, saith St. Paul (not by succession), and hearing cometh (not by legacy or inheritance from bishop to bishop), but by the Word of God." DEAN FIELD (died 1616). Dean Field on the same Commission, writes (Bk. ii. ch. 30) : « Thus still we see that truth of doctrine is a necessary note whereby the Church must be known and discovered, and not ministry, or succession, or anything else without it." Bk. ili. ch. 39, he writes : " It is most evident, that that wherein a bishop excelleth a presbyter is not a distinct power and order, but an eminence and dignity only, specially yielded to one above all the rest of the same rank for order's sake, and to preserve the peace and unity of the Church. If bishops become enemies to God and true relig- ion, in case of such necessity, as the care and government of the Church is devolved to the pres- byters remaining Catholic and being of a better spirit, so the duty of ordaining such as are to as- sist or succeed them in the ministry pertains to them likewise." TRUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 187 BISHOP DAVBNANT (died 1641). Bishop Davenant, a deputy to the Synod of Dort, observes : " All boast about local succession is empty, unless a succession of true doctrine be also proved." (Alport's " Life of Davenant," i. 20.) BISHOP PKANCIS WHITE (died 1624). Bishop Francis White, of Ely (p. 64) : « The true visible Church is named apostolical, not be- cause of local and personal succession of bishops, (only or principally), but because it retaineth the faith and doctrine of the Apostles. Personal or local succession only, and in itself, maketh not the Church apostolical." DR. THOMAS WHITE (died 1604). Dr. White, Prebendary of St. Paul's, in reply to a Jesuit's objection, " The Protestant Church is not apostolic because they cannot derive their pedigree lineally without interruption from the Apostles, as the Roman Church can from St. Peter, but are forced to acknowledge some other, as Calvin, Luther, or some such," replies : " Our answer is, that the succession required to make a church apostolic, must be defined by the doctrine, and not by the place or person. Wheresoever the true faith contained in the Scriptures is properly embraced, there is the whole and full nature of the Apostolic Church. For the external succes- sion we care not." 188 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. AKCHBISHOP LATTD (died 1645). Archbishop Laud, to whom we are indebted for the introduction of exclusive churchmanship into the English Church, makes a remarkable concession with respect to the point we are con- sidering. He writes, in reply to Fisher, the Jesuit : " Be- sides for succession in general, I shall say this : It is a great happiness where it may be had visi- ble and continued, and a great conquest over the mutability of this present world. But I do^not find'^ny one of the ancient Fathers that makes local, personal, visible, and continued succession a necessary sign or mark of the Church in any one place, . . . Most evident it is, that- the succession which the Fathers meant is not tied to place oi person, but it is tied to purity of doctrine." Else- where he says : " I have endeavored to unite the Calvinists and Lutherans ; nor have I absolutely unchurched them. I say indeed in my book against Fisher, according to St. Jerome, No bishop, no church ; and that none but a bishop can. ordain, except in cases of inevitable neces- sity ; and whether that be the case in the foreign churches the world may judge." With regard to the necessity of an uninter- rupted, tactual, episcopal succession, to constitute a valid ministry, we present the opinions of a few modern Episcopal writers of acknowledged eminence. TRUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 189 DEAN PBARSOSr. Dean Pearson, of Salisbury, in his Charge, 1842, objects to " this assertion of the absolute necessity of the apostolic succession of episcopacy to the existence of a Christian Church, or to the validity and efficacy of the Christian Sacrament ; a posi- tion, which, however countenanced by the opin- ions, whether of ancient or modern writers, and consistent as it is with the spirit of Romanism, I venture to affirm, without fear of successful con- tradiction, has never been assumed by the Church of England ; which, while asserting in the preface to her offices of Consecration and Ordination, the apostolic origin of the third order of ministers in Christ's Church, and while lamenting by her accredited writers, as an imperfection and defect, the want of the episcopal order in some of the Reformed churches on the Continent, does not excommunicate, or on that account refuse to ac- knowledge them, while adhering to the orthodox faith, as to all that is essential, as true and living branches of Christ's Universal Church." DEAN ALFOKD. This modern standard commentator, on the proof text of Scripture, upon which the scheme of Apostolic Succession is based. Matt, xxviii. 16-20, writes : — "We are therefore obliged to conclude that others were present (beside the eleven). Whether these 190 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. others were the ' five hundred brethren at once,' of whom Paul speaks, does not appear. ' Go ye therefore and teach^ etc. Demonsttably, this was not understood as spoken to the Apostles only ; but to all the brethren. To understand ' with you ' only of the Apostles and their successors is to de- stroy the whole force of these most weighty words. Descending even into literal exactness, we may see that ' teaching- them to observe all things what- soever I have commanded you,' makes ^them' into ' you ' as soon as they are ' made disciples' The command is to the universal Church — to be per- formed, in the nature of things, by her ministers and teachers, the manner of appointing which is not here prescribed, but to be learned in the un- foldings of Providence, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, who by his special ordinance were the founders and first builders of that Church ; but whose office, on that very accotmt, precluded the idea of succession or renewal." BISHOP o'bkien. Bishop O'Brien, of Ossory, writes, in his Charge, 1842 : "All our great divines, who maintain the reality and advantages of a succession ' from the Apostles' time,' of episcopally consecrated bish- ops, and episcopally ordained ministers to the Church, and who rejoice in the possession of it by our own Church, as a signal blessing and priv- ilege, not only do not maintain that this is abso- TRUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 191 lutely essential to the being of a church, but are at pains to make it clear that they do not hold that it is." BISHOP HOPKINS. Our late presiding Bishop Hopkins, in his " Re- ply to Milner," vol. ii. p. 3, makes a similar state- ment : " Dr. Milner asserts that the Church of England unchurches all other Protestant commun- ions which are without the apostolical succession of bishops. Whereas, on the contrary, not only does Hooker, whom he quotes on the previous page, but all the Reformers, together with Jewel, Andrewes, Usher, Bramhall, and in a word, the whole of our standard divines, agree in maintain- ing that Episcopacy is not necessary to the being, but only to the well-being of the Church; and hence they grant the names of churches to ail denominations of Christians who hold the funda- mental doctrines of the gospel, notwithstanding the imperfection and irregularity of their ministry. . . . This allegation of Dr. Milner, therefore, is founded on anything but truth.' And it is not easy to believe that he was ignorant of his error, because the contrary is apparent in the Thirty-nine Articles of our Church, and in the whole strain of her acts and history." DK. WHARTON. Dr. Wharton, the most distinguished scholar of the Committee on the Revision of the American 192 THE PRIMITIVE EIEENICOIf. Prayer Book, thus expresses his views: "The pretense of tracing up the Roman Church to the times of the Apostles, is grounded on mere soph- istry. The succession which Roman- Catholics thus unfairly ascribe to their Church, belongs to every other and exclusively to none. But that portion of the Christian Church is surely best entitled to this claim, which teaches in the great- est purity the doctrine of the Apostles. , . . » They have not the inheritance of Peter, who have not Peter's faith,' says St. Ambrose " (vol, ii. p. 313). DK. SMITH. Dr. Smith, of the same Committee, says : " There is greater weight and moment of Christianity in charity, than in all the doubtful questions about which, the Protestant Churches have been puzzling ■ themselves and biting and devouring each other since the days of the Reformation. ... It will not be so much a question at the last day, of what church we were, nor whether we were of Paul or ApoUos, but whether we were of Christ Jesus, and had the true mark of Christianity in our lives." ARCHBISHOP MUSGRAYE. We close with the words of the late lamented Primates of England. Archbishop Musgrave, of York, thus charges his clergy, 1842 : " You will exceed all just bounds, if you are continually in- sisting upon the necessity of a belief in, and the TKUE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. 193 certainty of, the apostolical succession in the bishops and presbyters of our Church, as the only security for the efficacy of the sacraments, so that those who do not receive them from men so ac- credited, and appointed to minister, cannot par- take of the promises and consolations of the gospel ; and are, therefore, in peril of their salva- tion, and left to the uncovenanted mercies of God, which may be, in the end, no mercies at all to them. . . . This would be to overstep the limits of prudence and humility, and arrogantly to set up a claim, which neither Scripture, nor the for- mularies and various offices of the Church, nor the writings of her best divines, nor the common sense of mankind will allow. " To spread abroad this notion, would be to make ourselves the derision of the world ; it would be contrary to the mind of St. Paul. . . . With respect to this, and to some other of the questions now brought into prominence, our Reformers appear to have been of the same mind as a pious prelate of former times, who distinguished be- tween what is essential to the being, and what is essential to the well-being of the Church : — a wise distinction, which good sense and Christian charity should lead us all ever to keep in sight." ARCHBISHOP SUMNER. This Christian view of this subject is nowhere more forcibly expressed than by the apostolic 13 194 THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON. Archbishop Sumner, of Canterbury, whose words form a fitting close to this inquiry : " The surest sign of an Apostle is that in which St. Paul took comfort, 'the work of faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope,' which his disciples exer- cised, which resulted from his ministry, and proved that God was with him. To ' turn many to righteousness,' that is real preeminence. To ' win souls to Christ,' that is lasting honor. To ' take heed to ourselves and to the doctrine,^ that is both to save ourselves and them that hear us. To ' preach the Word, to be instant in season and out of season ; to testify, both publicly and from house to house, repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ,' — this is to be a successor to the Apostles,^' APPENDIX A. ADDITIONAL TESTIMONY. The writer has recently met with an interesting work by an anonymous author, entitled " The Rights of the Christian Church, asserted against the Bomish, and all other Priests who claim an independent Power over it." The third edition was printed in London, 1707. The writer com- mences his preface thus : " Nothing is more dis- puted at present, than who is the best Church- man, both High and Low Church laying claim to it." This book, written by a Churchman of exten- sive learning, contains much that bears upon mat- ters discussed in the preceding pages. Among other statements we find, on p. 50 of the preface, that Archbishop Laud forbade the works of Jewel, Willet, and Foxe to be reprinted. He quotes from a remarkable speech of Lord Falkland, a distinguished Churchman and Royalist, delivered in Parliament, Feb. 9, 1640, these words, which apply well to our own times : " Mr. Speaker, — He 196 APPENDIX A. is a great stranger in Israel, who knows not that this kingdom hath long labored under many and great oppressions, both in religion and liberty; and his acquaintance here is not great, or his in- genuity less, who does not know and acknowledge, that a great, if not a principal cause of both these hath been some bishops and their adherents. " Mr. Speaker, a little search will serve to find them to have been the destruction of unity under pretense of uniformity ; to have brought in super- stition and scandal under the titles of reverence and decency ; to have defiled our Church, by adorn- ing our churches ; to have slackened the strictness of that union which was formerly betwixt us and those of our religion beyond the sea ; an action as impolitic as ungodly. « As Sir Thomas More says of the Casuists, their business was not to keep men from sinning, but to' inform them, quam prope adpeccatwm sive peccato liceat accedere ; so it seemed their work (meaning the prelates) was to try how much of a Papist might be brought in without Popery, and to destroy as much as they could of the gospel, without bringing themselves into danger of being destroyed by law. " Mr. Speaker, to go yet farther : some of then* have so industriously labored to deduce them- selves from Rome, that they have given great suspicion, that in gratitude they desire to return thither, or at least meet it half way. Some have APPENDIX A. 197 evidently labored to bring in an English though not a Roman Popery ; I mean not the outside only and dress of it, but equally absolute, a blind obedience of the people upon the clergy, and of the clergy upon themselves ; and have opposed Papacy beyond the sea, that they might settle one this side the water. Nay, common fame is more than ordinarily false, if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to the preferments of England, and to -be so abso- lutely, directly, and cordially Papist, that it is all ,£1500 per Ann. can do to keep them from con- fessing it." " The Church of England," writes this author, " was so far from thinking a succession of bishops necessary to her being, that she did not believe Episcopacy to be of divine appointment ; for the book entitled, ' The Institution of Christian Man,' subscribed by the clergy in convocation, and con- firmed by Parliament, owns bishops and presbyters by Scripture to be the same ; and yet the Vatican thought themselves at liberty to have an order su- perior to that of presbyters, — a sufficient acknowl- edgment that they thought no form of govern- ment fixed by Christ. And what the sense of our Church was in 1610, is plain from Archbishop Bancroft and the rest of the bishops owning the ordination of presbyters to be valid, and therefore refusing to reordain the Scottish presbyters who were then to fie made bishops ; declaring withal, 198 APPENDIX A. that to doubt it was to doubt whether there was any lawful vocation in most of the Reformed churches. " And even till after the Restoration this notion generally obtained, it being declared 12 Car. IL, That every ecclesiastical person or minister, being ordained by any ecclesiastical persons before the 21st of December last, was to enjoy his benefice if he Came into a vacant one ; which it is to be pre- sumed would never have been allowed if ordina- tion by bishops had been thought necessary. And even at this day presbyters with us not only ex- ercise all manner of episcopal jurisdiction, but have, equally with the bishops, a necessary vote in the supreme acts of church government, the mak- ing of ecclesiastical laws ; and before the Act of Uniformity there was nothing I know of to hinder persons ordained by presbyters from being capable of church preferment, — Francis, Master of the Temple, having no other ; and Bishop Morton sent one Calendrini, who \yas unknown to him, to the ministers of the Walloon Church in London for ordination, who being met in a coUbque or synod, did ordain him, and he had a brothership of the Savoy conferred on him as a minister of the Church of England ; the account of which may be seen at large in the records of the Walloon Church in London. "And this ought not to be thought strange, since the Papists at this day allow the ordination of Abbots Sovereign, who are only presbyters, to APPENDIX A. 199 be valid and regular ; and the famous Alexandrian Church for the first 235 years had no bishops, but who had hands laid on them by presbyters only. Eutych. ' Annals,' Pococke's ed. p. 328 ; Jerome, ' ad Evagr.,' p. 85. And it is very probable that those bishops who converted so many of our northern parts to Christianity, were ordained by the Abbot of Nye, a presbyter, to whose ecclesias- tical jurisdiction Scotland was subject ; although some who cannot agree about the person, suppose he had a journeyman bishop to ordain for him. Bed., ' Eccl. Hist.,' lib. iii. c.4; Usser, ' Eccl. Hist.,' prim. org. p. 707. . . . " ' Tis certain, the opinion of bishops being necessary to the Church did not prevail, even with the clergy, till the treaties of marriage with Spain and France ; but then such unhappy notions gen- erally obtained as tended to disunite Protestants, advance Popery, and establish slavery. " And when our ambassadors went no longer to Charenton, and other such meetings, and the Lau- dian faction would no longer own them for churches of Christ, it was then no wonder they suffered persecution ; for with what grace could we quarrel with the Papists whom we own to be a true Church, for their sake, whom we accounted no Church ! " And how fatal our breaking off comtnunion with the Reformed churches was to the common Protestant cause, we may learn from our famous 200 APPENDIX A. historian, who gives an account (Clarendon's 'flis<.,'vol. 2, pp. 74, 75),— " ' That in the reign of Edward VI., when the Reformed churches were persecuted abroad, great numbers of French, Dutch, and Walloons came over to England with their families, and settled many useful manufactures here ; how that king, with great piety and policy, granted them many immunities, the free exercise of their religion, and churches in London, Norwich, and Canterbury, whereby the wealth of those places rnarvelously increased.' He adds, 'that Queen Elizabeth en- larged their privileges, and made great use of these people in her transactions with France and Hol- land, and by their means kept up an useful inter- est in all foreign dominions, where the Protestant religion was tolerated.' " He then goes on and says : ' That some years before the troubles, when the power of the Churchmen grew more transcendent, and indeed the faculties and understanding of the lay coun- selors more dnll, lazy, and inactive (for without the last the first could have done no hurt), the Church grew jealous that the countenancing of another discipline here by order of the State would at least diminish the reputation and dignity of the Episcopal government, and give countenance to the factious and schismatical party here to ex- pect such a toleration. And therefore the State conniving, or not interposing, the bishops pro- APPENDIX A. 201 ceeded against them ; so that many left the king- dom, to the lessening the manufacture there of kerseys and narrow cloths ; and what was worse, the transporting the mystery into foreign ports.' " He further shows, that whereas our ambassa- dors and foreign ministers, in any part where the Reformed religion was exercised, frequented their churches, gave all possible countenance to their profession ; and particularly the ambassador at Paris had constantly frequented the Church at Charenton; whereby he kept up necessary corre- spondence with the most active and powerful per- sons of that persuasion, to the great benefit of this kingdom, by being let into their secrets of state, and deriving all necessary intelligence from them ; the contrary to all this was then practiced, and some advertisenients, if not instructions, given to the ambassadors there, to forbear any extraordinary commerce with men of that pro- fession ; and the Lord Scudamore, then ambassa- dor, not only declined going to Charenton, but furnished his own chapel with such ornaments (to wit, candles on the communion table, and the like) as gave great offense and umbrage to those of the Reformation there who had not seen the like ; besides, he was careful to publish that the Church of England looked not on the Huguenots as part of their communion, which, my Lord Clar- endon says, was too much and too industriously discoursed at home." (p. 337). 202 APPENDIX A. " And this favorite author of High Church, through the whole course of his history, cannot forbear owning, that almost the whole body of the people, as well as the inferior clergy, were scandalized and offended at the behavior of the bishops and their followers, which was then thought to have a tendency to Popery, especially the worse part of it, — the dominion and tyranny of the clergy ; and it was this which drew so many petitions and remonstrances from several Parliaments, both in England' and Scotland, all aloud complaining that Popery was fomented and encouraged, and the Protestants persecuted and oppressed, by those very laws designed against the Papists ; nor was this the opinion only of the people at home, but of the Protestant dhurches abroad, who all took part against the king on that account. And my Lord Clarendon, notwithstand- ing all his palliating, is forced to own that the bishops, by this extraordinary conduct of perse- cuting the Protestant churches at home, and by separating from the foreign churches abroad, did it with a design, if not to unite with the common adversary, yet to show their good inclinations. And those ridiculous innovations, brought into the Church by Laud, could have no other end than to make our separation greater from other Protestants, and to bring us to a nearer conform- ity to the Church of Rome, but the people not enduring those innovations, it put a stop to fur- ther attempts of that kind." APPENDIX A. 203 Elsewhere he writes : « Our first Reformers were as Low for church, as they were High for religion. And as they owned all for their brethren who separated from the errors of Popery, how- much soever they differed from them in forms of ecclesiastical government ; so they did what was possible to root all claim in the clergy to an independent power. . . . 'Twas by virtue of this communion of saints which obtained among the Reformers, that they so justly censured the uncharitableness of the Papists. But are the Highflyers, who confine the Church of Qhrist to a smaller number, and are so far from communicat- ing with other Reformed churches either at home or abroad, that they claim those who do so as schismatics and heretics, more charitable ? Is not this acting in defiance of the Apostles' Creed, which requires communion of saints ; except they suppose the Catholic Church in so deplorable a condition, as that there are no saints except among themselves ? " With reference to Cranmer, this author writes, on p. 178 : " That great Reformer and glorious martyr, Archbishop Cranmer (at a consult of the most eminent divines of the nation, in 1540, where, to avoid the inconvenience of verbal dis- putes, they gave their opinions in writing), affirms: ' That the ceremonies and solemnities used in admitting bishops and priests, are not of neces- sity, but only for good order and seeming fashion, 204 APPENDIX A. and that there is no more promise of God that grace is given in committing of the ecclesiastical than civil office. He that is appointed to be a bishop or a priest (between vi^hom, he says, there was at first no distinction), needs no consecration by the Scripture, for election or appointing there- unto is sufficient.' " There is no proof that Cranmer ever changed his mind on this subject. We have shown it was the vievr of the Alexandrian Church, as it was, most probably, of all the Primitive churches. On p. 349, we have this interesting statement : " It was thought so little a crime for laymen to preach in Queen Elizabeth's time, that, as Dr. Langham and Mr. Fuller report, the High Sheriff of Oxford, Mr. Tavernour, with his gold chain about his neck, and his sword by his side, preached before the University of Oxford in St. Mary's ; and that he did, not out of ostentation, but of charity to the scholars. So that the Uni- versity have as little reason as the Presbyterians to preach up the necessity of being united to a bishop ; and they are, though they rail at the thing, at the best but occasional conformists when they communicated with churches subject to bishops. And nothing can better show the sense of the clergy in former times as to these points, than modeling the University after this APPENDIX A. 205 This volume shows clearly how the same con- troVesies are reproduced in after ageg, and that the weakness of human nature makes true the old adage, that " Eternal vigilance is the price of religious and civil liberty." APPENDIX B. CONFIRMATORY EVIDENCE. Through the kindness of a friend who has re- cently imported the book, the attention of the writer has been directed to a volume of singular interest and value, entitled " Whose are the Fathers? By John Harrison, Curate of Pits- moor, Sheffield. London: 1867, pp. 728." In it are given a catena of fifty-four Fathers of the first six centuries, with three later writers, to- gether with thirty-seven divines of the Church of England of the Reformation period and later, all more or less bearing on the questions concern- ing the Church and ministry, at present in dis- pute. In fullness we have seen nothing equal to it. Let our laymen of worldly means give this and similar works a wide circulation ! We make a few extracts fi:om writers not hitherto quoted, and bearing on our subject. On p. 226 we read : " But Jerome does give some account of a person in some respect superior to an ordinary presbyter from the time of St. Mark : ' For at Alexandria,' " etc. APPENDIX B. 207 " Mr. Percival says : ' Observe, the utmost that can be made of this passage, by itself, is, that presbyters at Alexandria had a voice in the ap- pointment of the patriarch, which, in other places, rested with the bishop of the province, and even this is not distinctly stated. Jerome does not say the bishop was chosen by the presbyters, but from among them, nor does he say by whom he was placed in the higher degree.' " Mr. Palmer also states : ' But St. Jerome does not say that the bishop thus elected was not after- wards consecrated by bishops.' (B. vi. ch. iv. vol. ii. p. 314.) " Both Percival and Palmer would fain make a fool of this learned presbyter. For, if bishops performed their parts, as was customary in the time of Jerome, in these promotions of all these Alexandrian bishops, where could have been the relevancy of bis referring to them ? Let the whole of the Epistle of Jerome to Evagrius be well considered as given above, and the reader will be quite certain that the promotion of the Alexandrian bishop, whatever it was, came from the presbyters, and that bishops, such as existed in the time of Jerome, had no part in it. This is strongly confirmed both by Amalarius and Eutychius. " Nothing can be plainer firom the context than that Jerome teaches that the bishop was chosen by the presbyters, though he does not use the exact 208 APPENDK B. words : < Just as deacons may elect one of them- selves . . . and call him archdeacon,' so did the presbyters choose one of themselves, and name him bishop, Mr. Palmer so translates the pas- sage, ' The presbyters always chose one of them- selves,' " Amalarius did not consider the presbyter so promoted to be a bishop at all, in the modern sense of the term. Hence he adduced the case as relating to the consecration of presbyters, and having adduced it, remarks : ' The consecration of an archdeacon is well known to us. An arch- deacon has the same consecration as the others have, but by the election of his brethren he is placed first,' " It is plain Amalarius understood that this Al- exandrian presbyter, placed in a higher rank, and called bishop, had no consecration different from his brethren." AMALARIUS. The writer, here introduced for the first time, was not, according to Chalmers, Amalarius, Archbishop of Treves, but Amalarius Symphosius, who, according to the " New American Encyclo- pasdia," flourished in the eighth century, and was a Roman Catholic writer of great influence in France, Quoting Jerome, Amalarius proceeds : " Let us see why the name of presbyter passed over to that of bishop, Ambrose says, on the Epistle to APPENDIX B. 209 Timothy, ' But what is the cause ? . . . The blessed Apostles having departed, in subsequent times, they who were ordained after them to rule the churches could not compare with those chiefs ; nor had they the testimony of miracles equal to them, but seemed also in many other things to be inferior to them. They thought it to be a weighty affair to claim to themselves the name of the Apostles, therefore they divided the names', and some of them left the name of the presbytership to the presbyters. But others who were endued with the power of ordination were called bishops, so that they might most fully know that they were the rulers of the churches.' " Jerome explains, ' What more has a bishop than a presbyter,' saying in the Epistle to Evag- rius, often repeated, ' For what does a bishop do, except in the case of ordination, which a pres- byter may not do ? ' And he explains by what appointment a bishop should be appointed, in his tract upon Titus, saying, ' Therefore, as presby- ters know that it is by the custom of the Church that they are to be subject to him that is placed over them, so let the bishop know that they are above presbyters rather by custom than divine appointment,' etc. . . . "According to the authority of the Fathers, that is to say, the Apostle Paul, Ambrose the Arch- bishop, and Jerome the Presbyter, the consecra- 14 210 APPENDIX B. tion for a bishop to sacrifice was made in the ordination of a presbyter. " The office of bishop and priest is almost one." (" Whose are the Fathers," pp. 599, 600.) Harrison quotes, moreover, the Bishop of Seville, A. D. 600 : " To presbyters as well as to bishops is committed the dispensing of the mysteries of God ; they are set over the churches of Christ, and in the mingling of the body and blood of Christ, they are alike with the bishops, and in the office of preaching to the people ; only for the greater honor of the bishop, and preventing schisms, the power of ordination was restricted to him." Also, he quotes the Canon Law : "A bishop is the same as a presbyter, and by custom alone bishops are over presbyters — as Jerome saith. ... A bishop should not regard himself as a lord, but as a colleague of the presbyters." The Fourth Council of Carthage, a. d. 398, « In whatsoever place the bishop sits, it is not allowed the presbyters to stand. The bishop may sit on a higher seat in the church, and in the session of the presbyters ; but within the house should re- gard himself as a colleague of the presbyters." TOSTATUS. An important extract is given from the works of Tostatus, Bishop of Avila in the fifteenth cen- tury, as quoted by the celebrated Huguenot Claude, to show that this writer held that episco- APPENDIX B. 211 pal power came from the Church and not from consecration by prelates : " That it is the same in the keys of the Church, that Jesus Christ gave them to the whole Church in the person of St. Peter, and that it is the Church that communicates them to the prelates, but which, notwithstanding, communicates them without depriving itself of them ; so that the Church has them in respect of origin and virtue, and the prelates have them in respect of use ; the Church has them virtually be- cause she can give them to a prelate by election, and she has them originally also. For the power of a prelate does not take its origin from itself, but from the Church, by means of the election that it makes of him. The Church that chose him gives him that jurisdiction, but as for the Church, it receives it from nobody after its having once received it from Jesus Christ. The Church, therefore, has the keys originally and virtually, and whensoever she gives them to a prelate, she does not give them to him after the manner she has them, to wit, originally and virtually, but she gives them to him only as to use." (In " Numer." cap. XV. quest. 48, 49.) This Roman writer takes the view of the Alex- andrian Church, that the authority of the bishop comes from his election, not the mistaken view of many, that the consecration by the hands of other bishops confers it, — an error which has led to so much division and evil in the Church. 212 APPENDIX B. After a thorough examination of all that the Fathers have written on succession, this able writer thus gives his conclusions: — HAKRISON. " We believe that a moderate Episcopacy is more in accordance with Scripture and antiquity than any other form of church government. Our own views on this point will be given in a dis- tinct chapter. ... It is true, as we have seen, that the person who among his fellow-presbyters was a primus inter pares, in process of time, and especially in the fourth century, became devel- oped into one who had absolute authority over the presbyters. But we believe that the Church, in departing so generally, if not universally from primitive practice, departed also from that which was of divine institution." . . . " At present it is sufficient for our purpose to show that the doctrine of apostolical succession as held by these Anglicans, has no foundation in the present ordinal. The ordinal itself does not teach it. . . . " It is not to be doubted that there has been a succession of bishops, and presbyters, and dear cons, and laity, from the time that some apostle or apostolic man laid the foundation of a Chris- tian Church in this country. But this is not what these Anglicans mean by succession. There had been in these realms, from a very re- APPENDIX B. 213 mote period, a succession of kings, with more or less interruption. But this is not the kind of suc- cession held by these Anglicans. For this, in the strictest sense, is hereditary ; whereas in the suc- cession of bishops, there is no hereditary title to the office ; for the series of bishops has not fol- lowed the line of any family or class of Christians, but has been taken indiscriminately from the mass. If then none of these senses can be at- tributed to this Anglican succession, what does it really'mean ? As far as its meaning can be ob- tained from the mists of confusion and the mazes of sophistry, it denotes an unbroken continuation of the commission first given to the Apostles, accompanied with a certain exclusive spiritual aptitude contained in the transferred commission to discharge the office of an apostle, in modern times called a bishop ; and this aptitude, or spirit- ual qualification, is supposed to be transmitted in unbroken continuity from one bishop to another, through the channel of a form called ordination. It will be found that the Fathers, though they occasionally use the terms equivalent to ' succes- sion ' and ' successors,' have not given the re- motest hint that by these terms they mean what these Anglicans mean by them. . . . " These Fathers (Tertullian and Epiphanius) did not place the validity of the Christian ministry upon the supposed uninterrupted succession of any class of men from the Apostles, which, in 214 APPENDIX B. fact, is a fanciful and comparatively modern notion, and was unknown to the Fathers of the first six centuries. . • . The succession they appealed to in the apostolic churches, was not a succession of men deriving a commission from the Apostles through an unbroken line of ordainers, but a succession of pastors, each one entering into the vacated charge of his predecessor, and all maintaining the Christian doctrine ; and this fact of succession they used as an argument against the novel opinions of the heretics of their time. " But certain Anglo- Catholics lay the whole stress upon a succession of men receiving a com- mission from the Apostles in an unbroken line, and suppose an indelible character fixed upon them, which neither heresy in doctrine, idolatry in worship, immorality in life, nor schism in prac- tice, can efface. The Fathers, and Irenseus in particular, did not consider even their own kind of succession as a necessary mark of a true or Catholic Church ; they rather urged it as an argu- ment of the truth of their doctrine." THE VIA MEDIA. Speaking of the exclusive successionists, Har- rison forcibly remarks : " By a favorite expression they define their position to be via media, that is, midway between Lambeth and the Vatican, Canterbury and Rome. The fact is, they want to be at Borne without leaving Canterbury. The APPENDIX B. 215 golden cords that bind some of them to the latter place, are five thousand five hundred fold strong, as well as other ties equally binding on the less ethereal part of human nature. Tc adopt, then, the Romish theory of apostolical succession would be to make their present position an open disguise to their consciences. So they have adopted their via media, or via sua theory of suc- cession, by which the more substantial part of their nature can be at Canterbury and their souls at Rome. ... In fact, they are a via media off- spring of two opposing qualities, like their father, Archbishop Laud. But what is most marvelous is, that these hybrids should increase, and instead of becoming less incongruous to the mixture, of their natures, should become more so. But it should be borne in mind that we are speaking of what is moral and not what is physical, and that there is no accounting for the freaks of the human mind when it once becomes unhinged. As good Bishop Hall addressed Laud, their father, so we, in the same words, address his still more degenerate offspring : — " ' I would I knew where to find you ; then I could tell how to take a direct aim ; whereas now I must rove and conjecture. To-day you are in the tents of the Romanists ; to-morrow, in ours ; the next day, between both, against both. Our adversaries think you ours ; we, theirs ; your con- science finds you with both and neither. . . . 216 APPENDIX B. Cast off either your wings or your teeth ; cloth- ing this bat-like nature, be either a bird or a beast. . . . God cryeth with Jehu, " Who is on my side, who ? " Look at last out at your window to Him, and in a resolute courage, cast down this Jezebel that hath bewitched you.' " We earnestly commend this book to all who desire a thorough exposure of the sophistries by which Pusey, Palmer, Percival, Hook, Sewell, Wordsworth, Keble, the Bishops of Exeter and Oxford, have poisoned and perverted the minds of the clergy of our Church. Here will be found all the patristic authorities, and a complete answer to this whole scheme of diluted and modified Popery, which has slidden off the base of the Ref- ormation, and is surely approaching the slough out of which our martyred Reformers dragged and purged it. May God give us the spirit, and preserve to us the principles of those heroes and saints of whom the world was not worthy. APPENDIX C. FURTHER LAY TESTIMONY. We have met with a work of such value by a layman of the Church of England, that we can- not forbear to present a few extracts from it. This work is for the laity, for on them, we think, as Bishop Griswold often remarked, now rests, as far as mau is concerned, the only hope for our Church. This volume is entitled, " Essays on the Church. By a Layman, pp. 486. Seeley & Burnside, London, 1840." The dangers which threaten our Church from the Sacramentarian and Traditionary party are here calmly and thoroughly considered. The writer says : " Most entirely and unreserv- edly, then, may we assent to the decisions and practice of the Church of England, with refer- ence to the episcojial form of church government. But with equal satisfaction may we accompany her in her cautious abstinence from dogmatism, as well as in her simple following of the footsteps of the Apostles. 218 APPENDIX C. " Using her ojvn liberty with the greatest dis- cretion, she was not inclined to refuse the same freedom to other churches, or to prescribe rules of Christian communion of a stricter kind than those set forth in Holy Writ. And therefore it is that, while she adopts and prefers the episcopal form herself, — " 11. She carefully abstains from making Episco- pacy an indispensable requisite in a Christian Church. " Her cautious abstinence on this point can riot be ascribed to inadvertence, or the absence of oc- casion. When the Articles of the Church of England were drawn up, discussed, and finally settled, the question of Episcopacy was one of the most prominent topics of discussion among theo- logians. In the neighboring kingdom of Scot- land, and in several of the Protestant churches of the Continent, the government by bishops had been discontinued. The English Church adopted a different course, and adhered to that form of Church order. In forming her articles, or confes- sion of faith, the question must needs have oc- curred, ' Whether Episcopacy was to be regarded as essential, and therefore to be included in that formulary; or as merely expedient, and therefore passed over in silence ? ' This question, we know, did occur, was brought under the consideration of the framers of our Confession, and was decided according to the latter of these two views. We APPENDIX C. 219 learn from Bishop Burnet, that in framing the 23d Article, which describes those ministers to be 'lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work * — not by bishops of the apos- tolic succession, but by men who have public au- thority given unto them in the congregation to call and send ministers into the Lord's vineyard. We learn from Bishop Burnet that 'those who drew it had the state of the several churches before their eyes, that had been differently reformed ' frorh our own. He adds, ' The general words in which this part of the article is framed seem to have been designed on purpose not to exclude them.' And herein we can unreservedly approve the judg- ment of our Reformers, inasmuch as it exactly coincides with that of Holy Writ. The Church leaves the question precisely where the Bible leaves it. " This moderate and cautious view of the ques- tion, however, is not at all palatable to the modern race of High Churchmen. With them, Episco- pacy is nothing less than a divine law,_a positive and distinctly enunciated institution of Christ; an institution, too, of universal obligation, under all possible variety of circumstances ; and, in fact, an indispensable condition, an essential point, in the very being of a Christian Church. And, of course, if it be of this rank, it follows that diso- bedience to it is not only criminal, but highly dangerous." 220 APPENDIX C. After quoting from Dr. Pusey's writings his opinion, that none but an Episcopal minister could administer the communion, and that, — " refer- ring to ' non-episcopal societies,' — as there is hope for the unconverted heathen, there may be also a similar hope for the Presbyterians and Lu- therans," this author proceeds to give the lan- guage of the best divines of the English Church, in which is presented the moderate view of the 23d Article. Among others, he quotes Dean Field, Archbish- ops Whitgift, Parker, Grindal, Cranmer, Usher, Wake, Synge, Seeker, and Howley ; also Bishops Hall, Andrewes, Tomline, and Bloomfield, with Hooker and Bacon. " And thus," he says, "frorn Cranmer down to the present hour, we find one unbroken line of witnesses to the fact, and of supporters of the principle, that the Church of England, to use Mr. Keble's own words, ' thinks it enough to assert that the government of arch- bishops and bishops is ancient and allovjable, without attempting to assert its exclusive claim, or to connect the succession with the validity of the sacraments.' " Our author proceeds : " And this is the wisest, because the safest, ground to take. The moment stricter and more lofty pretensions are urged, dif- ficulties and questions begin to open upon us. Human nature, indeed, blind to its own innate and irremovable imperfection, is very fond of APPENDIX C. 221 seeking that unattainable possession, a perfect human institution. "When the circle has been squared, when the atmosphere has been brought under rule, when the musical scale shall be per- fected, then may we begin to dream of a human society of faultless symmetry. Meanwhile let us be sure that the admission of a Judas among the Apostles of our all-seeing Lord, and of a Demas among the fellow-laborers of the chief of the Apostles, were both designed to yield instruction to future ages. Above all, let us remember that the only ' laying on of hands ' recorded to have been received by Paul himself, was that of a ' cer- tain disciple ' (Acts ix. 17), and that while he evi- dently places the preaching of the Word above baptism, as the higher and more important func- tion (1 Cor. i. 17), we find it said that ' they^ without any distinction, ' which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Ste- phen, travelled, preaching the Word ' (Acts xi. 19). " The principle, then, should be Order ; the regulator, a Catholic Spirit. Those who would strain matters to an extremity, and strive' to frame, out of human weakness, folly, and infirmity, a perfect system, are merely copying the builders of old, who essayed, out of Babylonish bricks and the slime of Shinar, to build a tower ' whose top might reach unto heaven' The AUwise rebuked their overweening pride and arrogant attempt by ' confounding their language ; ' and a like fate 222 APPENDIX C. attends the efforts of those who, in our own times, would rather side with Bonner and Gardiner, two prelates in ' the holy apostolic line,' ' in making havoc of the Church,' than with the Presbyterian Knox, in building up a spiritual temple of God, by the instrumentality of which ' there were added to the chwch daily of such as should be saved.' . . . " And let those who cannot be content with this general and catholic view take care, in their fur- ther inquiries, to discriminate carefully between two things, which are often very irrationally inter- mingled, namely, the unbroken succession, and the form of church government. •' These two things are perfectly distinct from- each other, and yet the question is often argued as if they were so conjoined that the decision of either must decide both. (Here the clear head of this layman stands out so strongly in contrast with the confused utterances of extravagant ec- clesiastics !) But the erroneousness of this sup- position is seen in the fact that many firm sup- porters of an unbroken apostolic succession are also stanch maintainers of the Presbyterian scheme of government. They tell us that the Apostles constituted the Christian Church, ordain- ing elders (or presbyters) in every place, and that each local church was governed by these elders or presbyters. The existence in some cases of an overseer, or delegate of an Apostle, as in the cases of Timothy and Titus, they do not admit to es- APPENDIX C. 223 tablish a general rule. But still, while they ad- here to Presbyterianism, they maintain, as firmly as the highest Episcopalian, the necessity of a commission, handed down in regular and unbroken succession from the Apostles, to enable any man lawfully to exercise the ministerial office. " The number, then, of those who contend for the succession is much larger than of those who consider that such succession can only exist in the line of the episcopacy. And this was to be expected. Every man's reason, and the obvious fitness of things, is against the idea that the Christian ministry is an office and function which it is at any man's option, at any moment and un- der any circumstances, to confer upon himself. " The Church of England, therefore, in this matter, speaks clearly and decidedly : ' It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching, or ministering the sacraments in the congregation, before he be lawfully called and sent to execute the same.' (Art. xxiii.) But when she comes to define the term ' lawfully called,' she is far less positive. She says that ' we ought to judge those to be lawfully called and sent which be chosen and called to this work by men who have . public authority given unto them in the congregation to call and send minis- ters into the Lord's vineyard.' Here she deliber- ately refuses, — for there is no other view to be tak-en of it, — she refuses to assert that those only 224 APPENDIX C. are lawfully commissioned who have received episcopal ordination. Adopting Episcopacy itself, as the best system of church government, and as a system, the foundation of which she can trace in the apostolic writings, she yet refuses to assert that it is only from episcopal hands that the com- mission to preach the gospel can be lawfully received. " It was the judgment of her founders — perhaps unanimously, but at all events generally — that the bishop of the Primitive Church was merely a presiding elder, a presbyter ruling over presbyters ; identical in order and commission ; superior only in degree and authority. Cranmer's recorded ' opinion and sentence ' (though on this, as well as on other questions, his mind underwent vari- ous changes) was, ' that bishops and priests were not two things, but were both one office in the be- ginning of Christ's religion.' " The judgment and the practice of Archbish- ops Parker, Grindal, and Whitgift we have al- ready noticed ; and Mr. Palmer, as we have seen, confesses that it was the opinion of Jewel, Hooker, and Field, ' that a mere presbyter might confer every order except the episcopate ; ' in other words, that the apostolic succession of the presbyters might be continued by presbyters, the episcopate being laid aside or lost. . . . '' Common sense, if we could banish the school- men, the councils, and the system-makers, . . . APPENDIX C. _ 225 would tell us, — Rest not in long descent, or in indubitable succession from the Apostles, or in general concurrence with the whole body of Chris- tians, or in any other external marks ! Christ founded a Church ; He commissioned a body of preachers of His gospel, and He left them a few plain and simple rules. Try every church, then, that professes to be following His injunctions, by the record and injunction He has left : To the law and to the testimony ; if they speak not accord- ing to this word, it is because there is no light in them.' * " And such is the course distinctly pointed out in Scripture. Not a syllable is there to tell us that a divine commission, regularly transmitted in strict succession, or an external unity of profes- sion, is to be our guide in reposing our confidence in a priesthood or a church. Nothing could be clearer than the divine institution of the Old Tes- tament priesthood ; and yet, how many threaten- ings and reproaches does God Himself direct against these, his commissioned ministers ! " Then, quoting largely from the Scriptures of both covenants, our author proceeds : " Many other passages might be adduced, if space per- mitted, to show that the grand point pressed by all the Apostles was, continuance in sound doctrine. This was with them the chief note or mark of a true or faithful church. . . . " The one question, then, in the Scriptures, 15 5i5itj APPENDIX C. touching any church, is, h it faithful ? — faithful to the doctrine intrusted to its care ? Is the gos- pel preached the same gospel which the Apostles declared, or is it ' another gospel,' against which St. Paul fulminated his anathemas ? This is the chief and almost the only point suggested in Holy Writ as the marii or note of a true church." Our author sustains his view by quoting the two Reformers of greatest influence. Bishops Rid- ley and Jewel. We leave him here, with the remark that his work will repay the most careful perusal of any one who would read a thorough examination and exposure of the errors which now are spreading through our Church. " Bishop Ridley, in his second conference, quotes Chrysostom to this effect : ' In times past, there were many ways to know the Church of Christ, that is to say, by good life, by miracles, by char- ity, by doctrine, by ministering the sacraments. But from the time that heresies took hold of the churches, it is only known by the Scriptures which is the true Church. They have all things in out- ward show, which the true Church hath in truth. They have temples like unto ours,' etc., etc., ' wherefore only by the Scriptures do we know which is the true Church.' " Bishop Jewel says : ' Our Lord, knowing that there should be &uch confusion of things in the latter days, commandeth that Christians, who live APPENDIX C. 227 in the profession of Christian faith, and are de- sirous to settle themselves upon a sure ground of faith, should go to no other thing but the Scrip- tures.^ ' But whereas they (the Papists) make the Holy Scriptures like silent masses, dumb and useless ; and appeal rather to God Himself, speak- ing in the Church and in councils, that is, to their own senses and opinions ; that is a very uncertain and dangerous way of finding out truth, and in a sort fanatical.^ " (" Essays on the Church," pp. 227-51, 151-52.) DR. IRA WARREN. We turn now to the testimony of an American layman, who has written a work of great research and value, entitled, " The Causes and Cure of Puseyisni. By Ira Warren. Boston, 1847." On p. 258 he writes : " My conviction is that government, civil and ecclesiastical, is of divine appointment ; but that its particular form, in the one case as in the other, has not been made the subject of any positive divine enactment, but has been left to the molding, under Divine Provi- dence, of times and circumstances, in accordance with the wants of the race in its various moral and physical conditions. " I believe, therefore, that the preface of the Prayer Book is right in referring to discipline all things not clearly included under the term ' doc- trine,' and in declaring that, without exception, 228 APPENDIX C. they are — Episcopacy and the form of church government of course included — alterable at the pleasure of the Church. I have never seen the fact that our Church takes this ground before stated; but here it is in the Prayer Book. It cannot be evaded. " The exclusive views growing out of the divine right of Episcopacy have no support, then, either in the Bible or in the Prayer Book. No real progress can be made towards the cure of Pusey- ism, until evangelical men shall have discarded from their minds every vestige of the divine right of Episcopacy. " Moreover, if we would get rid of our tracta- rian tendencies, we must cultivate Christian union. We must abandon all our lofty notions, and step right upon the platform of Christian brotherhood, taking every Christian man by the hand as a brother and an equal, and, according to the true gospel rule, esteeming others better than ourselves. The spirit of the age demands this of us. With- out it we shall, in the great race of love and char- ity, on which the Protestant Church is entering so earnestly, be left far in the rear. Our own life as a denomination demands it of us. Without it, we shall be thrown practically, in spite of us, into the society and fellowship of the apostate Church of Rome. Our loyalty to Christ requires it of us. Without it, our position will more and more be found, of necessity, to be one of antagonism to Him and His cause." APPENDIX c. 229 In his preface (page 12), this author writes: " Having studied, to some ejctent, the history, doc- trines, formularies, and usages of the Episcopal Church, I find there are many things which, in my humble opinion, ought to be reformed or given up, but which are growing worse and worse", with no prospect of amendment, unless those in high places can be reached with reproofs which we have all hitherto failed to apply, either for want of courage or lack of the means of doing so. . . . " My aim, therefore, in the following pages, is to reach the laity, and to press upon their atten- tion a succession of topics, which, by great effort, and to the manifest injury of our denomination, have been kept out of view. No doubt the theme, to many of our people, will be a new one, but not, I trust, the less inviting on that account. If I am not mistaken, it will awaken the more atten- tion from the care with which it has hitherto been concealed. At any rate, my desire is to see it awaken a general concern among us for the purity of the gospel. I would have an interest in this matter reach all the borders of our denomination, and the General Convention made to feel so heavy a pressure of public sentiment from with- out, and so imperative a prompting from within, as to be willing to take the matter in hand, and revise the Liturgy, making it thoroughly Protest- ant. . . . 230 APPENDIX C. " Bishop Griswold, the wisest man our Church in this country has ever had, and who was better acquainted than any other man with the condi- tion and prospects of the Episcopal churches in New England, thus speaks in his Address delivered before the Convention of the Eastern Diocese in 1837 : ' The prejudice in these Eastern States against forms of prayer, and the objections so gen- erally made to some parts of ours particularly, and to the length of our morning service, are powerful obstacles to our increase. , . . When there shall have been a judicious revision of our Idtu/rgy, in the manner wisely recommended by our venera- ble brother, Bishop White, deceased, I doubt not but our churches will more rapidly increase.^ " To these testimonies of our first two presiding bishops, we may add the emphatic words of a kindred spirit, the late Archbishop Sumner : ' Let me remove twenty words from the Prayer Book, and in one day I will reunite to the Church twenty thousand dissenters.' " On this point, our author quotes on his title-page the strong language of another eminent Episcopal layman, Isaac Taylor : " How little did the vener- able men — the martyrs of the English Church — imagine what they were doing, and what a har- vest for their country they were preparing, when, from a mistaken anxiety to conciliate the adher- ents of the ancient idolatry, they professed their submission to the very authors of that idolatry, APPENDIX C. 231 and admitted into the constitution they formed, the roots of the ancient delusion, and the germs of an after growth of polytheism ! " LORD BACON. We close the testimony of these noble lay brethren with the words of the most distinguished man of the age in which our Prayer Book was revised and settled, one thoroughly familiar with the principles upon which his Church was based, and with the great men who reformed it, Lord Francis Bacon. He writes : " For the second point, that there should be but one form of discipline in all churches, and that imposed by necessity of com- mandment and prescript out of the Word of God, it is a matter volumes have been compiled of, and therefore cannot receive a brief redargution. I for my part do confess, that in searching the Scriptures I could never find any such thing, but that God hath left the like liberty to the church government as he hath done to the civil govern- ment ; to be varied according to time, place, and accident, which nevertheless His high and divine providence doth order and dispose. ... So like- wise in church matters, the substance of doctrine is immutable; and so are the general rules of government ; but for rites and ceremonies, and for the particular hierarchies, policies, and discipline of churches, they be left at large ; and, therefore, it 232 APPENDIX C. is good we return to the ancient bounds of unity in the Church of God, which was one faith, one baptism, and not one hierarchy, one discipline." Speaking of the party which, when he wrote (1609), under Bancroft, Andrewes, and Laud, were gradually advancing more extreme views, Bacon continues :-" The other part, which maintaineth the present government of the Church, hath not kept one tenor neither. First, those ceremonies which were pretended to be corrupt, they maintained to be things indifferent, and opposed the examples of the good times of the Church to that challenge which was made unto them, because they were used in the later superstitious times. Then they were also content mildly to acknowledge many imperfections in the Church, as tares come up amongst the corn ; which yet, according to the wisdom taught by our Saviour, were not with strife to be pulled up, lest it might spoil and sup- plant the good corn, but to grow on together till the harvest. " After, they grow to a more absolute defence and maintenance of all the orders of the Church, and stiffly to hold that nothing was to be inno- vated, partly because it would make a breach upon the rest. Hence, exasperated through con- tentions, they are fallen to a direct condemnation of the contrary part, as of a sect. Yea, and some indiscreet persons have been bold, in open preach- ing, to use dishonorable and derogatory speech APPENDIX C. 233 and censure of the churches abroad ; and that so far, as some of our men, as I have heard, ordained in foreign parts, have been pronounced to be un- lawful ministers. Thus we see the beginnings were modest, but the extremes are violent, so as there is almost as great a distance now of either side from itself, as was at first the one from the other. . . . " To my lords the bishops I say, that it is hard for them to avoid blame in the opinion of an indifferent person, in standing so precisely upon altering nothing. Laws, not refreshed with new laws, wax sour. Without a change of ill, a man cannot continue the good. To take away many abuses supplanteth not good orders, but estab- lisheth them. A contentious retaining of custom is a turbulent thing as well as innovation. A good husbandman is ever pruning in his vineyard or in his field — not unseasonably indeed, not un- skilfully, but lightly ; he findeth ever somewhat to do. . . . " But if it be said to me, that there is a differ- ence between civil causes and ecclesiastical, they may as well tell me that churches and chapels need no reparations, though castles and houses do ; whereas, commonly to speak truth, dilapida- tions of the inward and spiritual edifications of the Church of God are, in all times, as great as the outward and material. Sure I am, that the very word and style of reformation used by our 234 APPENDIX C. Saviour, Ab initio non fuit sic, was applied to church matters, and those of the highest nature, concerning the law moral." (" Considerations con- cerning the better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England." By Francis, Lord Bacon.) How remarkably is the history of the Church of England reproduced in our own day ! . May we have grace to see it, and profit by the experi- ence of the past! We venture the assertion that there is more scriptural truth, sound philosophy, and true churchmanship, as to the point in question, in the words of these five learned and judicious laymen we have given — Garrat, Bowdler, Warren, Bacon, and the author of the Essays — than in all the vol- umes written by the Tractarians, Ritualists, and their followers, English and American, for the last generation. O Almighty God, who hast built Thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the head corner-stone ; grant us so to be joined together in vjnity of Spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable unto Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. — Collect for St. Simon and St J Jude's Day. INDEX. PAGE Alford, Dean, Testimony of 189 Amalarins, " 208 Ambrose, " 21 Anonymous Author, " 195 Babington, Sp., Testimony of 186 Bacon, Lord, * 231 Bancroft, Abp., ' 184 Bangs, Dr., ' 114 Baxter, Richard, ' 150 Bingham, ' 17 Bowdler, ' 78 Bradford, John, ' 168 Brown, Dr., ' 138 Bullinger, ' 26 Burnet, Bp., ' 4 Calfhill, Testimony of 183 Campbell, Dr., " 142 Coleman, Lyman, " 121 Cosin, Bp., " 4 Cranmer, Abp., Liberality of 7 " " Testimony of 175 Gumming, Dr., " 127 D. Davenant, Bp., Testimony of 187 E. fAQE Edward VI., Patent granted by .... 6 Essays on the Church, Notice .of .... 217 Eutychius, Testimony of . 19 Field, Dean, Testimony of 186 Fleetwood, Bp., " 5 Fulke, Dr., " 181 G. Garratt, W. A., Argument of 69 Giesler, Testimony of . 108 Goode, Dr., " . 56 Griswold, Bp., " . 320 H. Hall, Bp., Testimony of . 3 Hallam, " . 5 Harrison, John, Confirmatory evidence of 212 Hase, Dr., Testimony of 15 Herzog, ' - 111 Hilary, 21 Hoadley, Bp., 156 Hooker, Richard, 153 Hooper, Bp., 173 Hopkins, Bp., 191 Hospinian, 15 Howe, Prof , 14 236 INDEX. Jarvis, Examination of . 94 Jerome, St., Testimony of . 22 Jewel, Bp., " . 176 Keble, Testimony of . . 3 KiIlen,Dr., " . . 131 L. Latimer, Bp., Testimony of 173 Laud, Abp., " 188 Layman, A., " 217 Litton.Prof., " 55 Lord, Dr., " 10 M. Macaulay, Testimony of . 5 Mahan, Dr., Examination of 96 Mason, Francis, Testimony of 184 Morinus, " 81 Musgrave, Abp., " 192 N. Neale, Eev. J. M. Argument of .... 87 Neander, Testimony of . 110 O. O'Brien, Bp., Testimony of . 190 Pearson, Dean, Testimony of 189 Percival, Dr., Examination of .... 87 Philpot, Archdeacon,' Testi- mony of ... 175 Pilkington, Bp., Testimony of 180 Powell, Thomas, " 111 E. PAQE Rainolds, Dr., Testimony of 30 Riddle, Rer. J. E., " 69, 64 Ridley, Bp., " 171 "Eights of the Christian Church," Notice of 195 S. Schaff,Dr., Testimony of 107 Severus, " 21 Smith, Dr., " 192 Stanley, Dean, " 16,54 Stevens, Abel, " 116 Stillingfleet, Bp., " 47 Strype, " 3 Sumner, Abp., " 193 TertuUian, Testimony of . 63 Tostatus, " . 210 Tyler, Prof., " . 12 U. Usher, Abp., Testimony of . 45 Via Media, Theory of . W. 214 Warren, Dr., Testimony of 227 Wharton, Dr., " 191 White, Francis, Bp., " 187 White, Thomas, " 187 Whitgift, Abp., Order of . 27 " " Testimony of 24 Whittaker, Dr., " 181 "Whose are the Fathers?" Notice of . ■ . .206 Willet, Dr., Testimony of 34, 181 Wilson, Dr., " 116