k\ 
 
 TWO LETTERS 
 
 IN REPLY TO 
 
 CERTAIN PUBLICATIONS OF THE 
 
 REV. DR. SAMUEL MILLER, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 AT PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 BY GEORGE WELLER, D. D. 
 
 RECTOR OF CHltlST CHtJRCH, NASHVILLE, TENNBSSEi::. 
 
 J 
 
o^ at 2:3 i;a. ^£^ i:a. "^^ 
 
 OF THK 
 AT 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 x> o IV ^'V T I o ::v o ir 
 
 SAMUEL AGNEW, 
 
 OF PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
 
 .^et^ez 
 
 ^flA/c£/ /<ifr^§^^ 
 
 BV 670 .W4 1836 
 v^eller, George, 1790-1841. 
 Two letters in reply to 
 certain publications of the 
 
LETTERS 
 
 IN REPLY TO 
 
 CERTAIN PUBLICATIONS OF THE 
 
 REV. DR. SAMUEL MILLER, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 AT PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 BY GEORGE WELLER, D. D. 
 
 RECTOR OF CHRIST CHURCH, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE. 
 
 NASHVILLE 
 1836, 
 
A LETTER 
 
 TO THE EDITORS OF THE 
 NASHVILLE 
 
 AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN ; 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 AN EXAMNATION OF THE REASONS FOR 
 
 ''REJECTING EPISCOPACY," 
 
 WRITTEN 
 
 BY DR. MILLER, 
 
 REPUBLISHED IN SEVERAL LATE NUMBERS 
 
 OF THAT PAPER. 
 
 BY AN EPISCOPALIAN 
 
 PRINTED BY W. HASELL HUNT if CO. 
 
 1835. 
 

 Your paper purports to be conducted by on association of 
 gentlemen: as I am, however, wholly ignorant as to who are 
 the individual members of that association, no part of these 
 strictures is to be taken with a personal application. 
 
 In the numbers of the American Presbyterian for May 21, 
 28, and June 4th, under the head of Religious, are several 
 columns of matter purporting to be part of a work by Samuel 
 Miller, D. D,, on the truly primitive and apostolical consti- 
 tution of the Church of Christ. The 4th chapter, which you 
 profess to extract, is stated to be entitled ^^on the government 
 of the Presbyterian Churchy 
 
 In our happy country, every man is perfectly free to hold 
 and maintain any principles which may seem to him to be 
 right, provided he concedes to others the same privilege, and 
 does not disturb them in the peaceful exercise of their own 
 opinions. So far, therefore, as Dr. Miller, and you gentle- 
 men, have chosen to state and vindicate your own opinions in 
 relation to the ecclesiastical principles which prevail in your 
 own church, instead of having any censure to bestow upon you, 
 I would rather commend your zeal: Those opinions, on any 
 subject, must have small claim to public and general adoption, 
 which those who hold them fear to bring to light. I have no 
 such fears with regard to the claims of the Episcopal Church, 
 of which 1 am a humble member; and it is because you have 
 chosen, without provocation, while professing merely to defend 
 Presbyterianism, to show reasons why you, in the fulness of 
 your elevation, are pleased to reject prelacy: or,, in other 
 
words, the ecclesiastical principles of your "Episcopal breth- 
 ren," that I desire your attention to the following pages. 
 
 I include you in the application of these strictures, because 
 the statements which you have borrowed from Dr. Miller re- 
 specting Episcopacy, at least in the spirit in which he has 
 made them, were, if information to the members of your own 
 church on the subject of its government, was all that was in- 
 tended, nowise necessary, even to the subject itself: Yet, 
 while those who profess to receive Episcopacy as the primi. 
 tive and apostolic government of the church of Christ, are 
 h\w in number, and living in peace by your side, you have 
 chosen to avail yourselves of his labors to misrepresent their 
 principles, and deny their claims to scriptural sanction for in- 
 stitutions, which, as will be shown, even some of your own 
 side have admitted to be coeval, or nearly so, with the apos. 
 ties themselves; and because, moreover, you have thus unwit- 
 tingly perhaps, become sponsors for the long continued and 
 vehement animosity of Dr Miller towards the Episcopal 
 Church; which may well, in my judgment, be compared with 
 that feeling of the Romans against Carthage, which produced 
 the well known declaration, Delenda est Carthago! 
 
 I purpose, in the following remarks, simply to repel, with 
 what ability I mar, your unprovoked assault upon the Episco- 
 pal Church — your reasons for rejecting prelacy. It is not my 
 intention to copy the example you have set me, by any ani- 
 madversions whatever upon the doctrines or discipline of your 
 own church. 1 am no assailant. I am acting wholly and 
 strictly on the defensive. 
 
 Before proceeding to an examination of Dr. M's allega- 
 tions, the position in which he has, for many years past, pla- 
 ced himself in relation to the Episcopal church, demands 
 some attention to hisclaims in regard to authority and veracity. 
 
 Dr. M. has been repeatedly, by Dr. Bowden, Dr. Cooke, 
 and other writers, publicly charged with misrepresenting the 
 opinions of the authors whom he quotes — with misquoting 
 
their language— with omitting, in the midst of passages quoted, 
 expressionsj differing entirely from the tenor he has given to 
 the passage, and from his own opinions — with substituting ex- 
 pressions, which would serve his purpose, in quotations, for 
 those which would not. Some proofs of the correctness of 
 these charges will be furnished in the following pages, and 
 more can be adduced should they be thought necessary. 
 
 In a kte work, Dr M., for what religious purpose it is not 
 easy to conceive, asserted that a clergyman had been driven 
 out of the Episcopal church for not believing in the doctrine 
 of baptismal regeneration. It was soon ascertained what 
 clergyman was referred to; and the correspondence between 
 him and his bishop having been published, it appeared, what 
 was well known previously to all who had any interest in the 
 matter, (which Dr. M. certainly had not) that his renuncia- 
 tion of the ministry was voluntari) on the part of the clergy- 
 man; and was occasioned by entirely difTerent circumstancog 
 from those, which Dr. M. in his zealous care for ahother 
 church than his own, was pleased to assign! 
 
 In the same work, Dr. Miller undertook to discuss, for the 
 purpose o^ condemning ^ the principles and usages of the Epis. 
 copal church, in regard to baptism, Absurdly enough, he 
 there actually condemns the Episcopal church foi not holding 
 a doctrine, which is plainly asserted in some of the plainest 
 passages, of its book of Common Prayer! The Editor of 
 the PhiladelpJiia Ejnscopal Recorder says of this matter, 
 that "Dr. M. has certainly presented statements on the sub- 
 ject which an hour's examination of the Prayer Book would 
 have satisfied him to be incorrect. — How much is it to be re- 
 gretted that he did not take the pains to ascertain correctly 
 the language oi" the only quotation which he adduces from the 
 Prayer Book, or elsewhere, in confirmation of his statements. 
 — Alas, that Dr. Miller should have been so ready to advance 
 objections to a church of whose peculiarities he is so inexcusci- 
 hly ignorant^ 
 
 A 2 
 
{) 
 
 It is now about twenty years since Dr. M. published a 
 work, entitled. Letters on the Christian Ministry^ of which 
 a new edition has been published within the last 4 or 5 years. 
 Some years after the first edition of this work appeared, he 
 published another work, entitled Letters on Unitarianism. 
 In the first of these works he speaks thus of Ignatius, one of 
 ^\iQ fathers of the prinfiitive church, whom he also quotes in his 
 attack on Episcopacy in your paper: "That even the shorter 
 epistles of Ignatius are unworthy of confidence as the genu- 
 ine works of tho father whose name they bear, is the opinion 
 of some of the ablest and best judges of the Protestant 
 world." Letters on the Ministry, first ed. p. 140. — But 
 when he came to write his Letters on Unitariamsm, he had 
 discovered that Ignatius could yield him some support, and 
 he therefore speaks a's follows of the identical work, which, 
 in the extract above, he considered unworthy of confidence: 
 "The great body of learned men consider the smaller epistles 
 of Ignatius, as, in the main, the real works of the writer 
 whose name they bear." p. 122. — This might be taken to in- 
 dicate a serious and deliberate change of opinion, deserving 
 commeTidalion rather than censure; but lo ! when a new 
 edition of the Letters on the Ministry was to be published, af- 
 ter a careful revision and correction, both of language and 
 sentiments, the original declaration in relation to Ignatius, 
 that his epistles were regarded by the ablest and best judges 
 of the Protestant world as unworthy of ccnfidenee, had again 
 become the ruling opinion; and now, once more, when, as in 
 the extract in 5 our paper, Ignatius could be made to serve a 
 turn, he becomes, in Dr. M's opinion, again worthy of confi- 
 dence ! Whether, after these statements, which any one may 
 verify, Dr. Miller is himself to be considered by the world, 
 learned a?id unlearned, an authority on subjects of this nature; 
 or even worthy of confidence, is left for those who may read 
 these strictures to judge. 
 
 And now a word in regard to the title of Dr. Miller's work. 
 
from which your extracts are rnude. An inJiviJual who was 
 desirous, tor certain reasons, of attracling particuhir attention, 
 to his phice of business, put o/er his door a heelihe, as an 
 emblem of his industry in his profession, and as a sign to those 
 who might be directed to his establishment. One of his 
 neighbors seeing, or thinking that he saw, that his brothei' 
 tradesman was deriving advantage by this mean?, erected over 
 his door also, a beehive, with the inscription, the original bee. 
 hive. The object was understood, and a third individual re-> 
 solved that he would participate also in the trade which the 
 beehive had attracted to the vicinage; accordingly a third 
 beehive w^os soon seen glittering with gold, and bearing the yet 
 more attractive label, ike true original beehive! I leave the 
 application of this anecdote, to those who have read, or may 
 read, the mass of assertion and invective, to which Dr. Mil- 
 ler has given the title of the truly primitive, Sfc. 
 
 Dr. Miller and the editors of the American Presbyterian 
 say ^'We reject the claims cf Prelacif'—'in other words, you 
 favor your "Episcopal brethren'' so far as to tell us that you 
 rfject Episcopacy! You then give us an unexceptionable 
 statement of the received doctrine of Epir>copacy, and add, 
 '■Ho no part of this claim'''' — that is, the claim of Episcopa- 
 lians th;;t their church constitution is primitive and apostolic 
 — "a'oe.s the New Testament afford the least countenance.'^'' — 
 You say that Episcopacy is "« usurpation for ickich there is 
 not the smallest warrant in the word of God:'''* — that ^Hhere is 
 not the semblance of support to be found in Scripture for the 
 alleged l^-ansmission of the p^e-eminent and peculiar power of 
 the apostles to a set of ecclesiastical successors:'''' — that ^Hvhcn 
 we ask the advocates of Episcopacy ichence they derive their 
 favorite doctrine, thai diocesan bishops succeed the apostles in 
 the appropriate powers and pre-eminence of their apostolic 
 character, they refer us to no passages of Scripture asserting 
 or even hinting i/ :''''— that — "z7 is not so much as pretended that 
 a passage is to be found, which gives a hint of this kind:'''' 
 
The plain meaning of these assertions is, that) in'lhe opiil- 
 ion of Dr. Miller, and the editors of the American Presbyte- 
 rian, Episcoimlians not only cannot find any countenance in 
 Scripture for their doctrine of the constitution of the Chris, 
 iian ministry, hut they do not even make pretentions to do so. 
 If these gentlemen have truth on their side, the large majority 
 of Protestant divines have been sadly mistaken, ©r something 
 v/orse; and the Episcopal Church is certainly not entitled to 
 the ground she has long held among a vast multitude of the 
 excellent of the earth! 
 
 And yet, as long ago as the Rfformation, amidst hazards on 
 all sides, such as we, of this age, are unable adequately to 
 conceive, ihe English Reformers, with Cranmer, Latimer, and 
 Ridley at their head; rejecting, at the risk of their lives, every 
 thing in religion which could not be sanctioned by theicriiten 
 vord oyCoJ, announced and persevered in their adherence to 
 Episcopacy as the primitive and apostolic constitution of the 
 church of Christ! In the preface to their Ordinal, (or forms 
 of ordination) they declared, that, "It is evident to all men, 
 diligently reading Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that, 
 from the apostles' times, there have been these orders of min- 
 isters in Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests and Deacons.'''* — 
 They could, in some of the most solemn acts of their religion 
 appeal to Almighty God to witness, that by his "divine Pro- 
 vidence," and "by his Holy Spirit" he had "appointed divers 
 orders of ministers in his church," — that he ]vd^^ inspired 
 his apostles to choose into the order of deacons, the first mar- 
 tyr St. Stephen, with others," and yet not believe — according 
 to Dr Miller — that they derived any countenance for these 
 facts from Scripture! S j anxious were the authors of these ex- 
 pressions, that every thing connected with religion should be 
 brought to the test of Sciipture, that they were the first in all 
 the world to cause the Bible to be translated into their own 
 language, and placed within the reach of all who could read: 
 and yet they did not believe, it seems? — if we are to credit Dr. 
 
Miller — that the stations they held in the Church, the minis- 
 trations they performed, and the principles they avowed and 
 practised, received any countenance from the New Testa- 
 ment! And can Dr. Miller induce you, Messrs. Editors, in 
 these days of light, and knowledge, and common sense, to be- 
 lieve such a wonderful talc as this? 
 
 And now, gentlemen, to make a long story short, — for your 
 patience would be exhausted long before 1 could complete the 
 mound of evidence which I might heap up in this case, — we 
 vvill, if you please, take it for granted, that Episcopalians hrve, 
 from the time of the Reformation, continued to believe, that the 
 Episcopal constitution is sanctioned by Scripture; for they have 
 continued with possibly some variations of opinion among in- 
 dividuals, substantially to maintain and act upon these same 
 doctrines of the Refannationon this subject; for they have, at 
 least, in the published formularies of their Ch'irch, and in ev- 
 ery case of ordination to the ministry, wliether of bishop, 
 priest, or deacon, continued to make the same appeals; and 
 have moreover constantly declared in their Ordinal, in the 
 li.nguage w^iich the martyrs of the Reformation themselves 
 placed there, that "no man shall be accounted or taken to be 
 a lawful Bishop, priest, or deacon in tliis church, or suffered 
 to execute any of its functions, except lie hath had Episcopal 
 consecration, or ordination.*' 
 
 But, at the very time that Dr. Miller made his singularly 
 i;u!d declaration, that when the advocates of Episcopacy are 
 asked whence they derive their favorite doctrine, "they refer 
 us to no passages of Scripture asserting, or even hinting it ; but 
 to some equivocal suggestions and allusions ofseveral Fathers, 
 who wrote within the tirst four or five hundred years after 
 Christ,'' he certainly had bef-re him, for he quotes it just be- 
 fore, a little work by Bishop Onderdonk of Pennsylvania ; 
 which he could not but know, is ex'.ensively approved cf 
 among Episcopalians, in this country; with the very title, 
 Episcopacy tested by Scripture! From the first page of this 
 
10 
 
 work, I quote the following as a point blank contradiction of 
 Dr. Miller's assertion. 
 
 "The claim of episcopacy to be of divine institution, and 
 therefore obligatory on the Church, rests fundamentally on the 
 one question— has it the authority of Scripture? If it has not, 
 it is not necessarily binding. If it has, the next and only 
 other question is — has any different arrangement of the sacred 
 ministry scriptural authority? If there be any such, that 
 also has divine sanction, and must stand with episcopacy. Jf, 
 however none such can be found, then episcopacy alone has 
 the countenance of the word of God.'" 
 
 **Such a statement of the essential point of the episcopal 
 controversy is entirely simple; and this one point should be 
 kept in view in every discussion of the .subject; no argument 
 is worth taking into account that has not a palpable bearing 
 on the clear and naked topic — the scriptural evidence of epis- 
 copacy."* 
 
 * I am not ignorant that this work of Bp. Onderdonk's has received a 
 professed answer from the Rev. Mr. Barnes of Philadelphia. The fol- 
 lowing extract from the New York Churchman of the 6th instant, will 
 serve to show in what light this answer is regarded by Episcopalians. 
 "A writer in the Episcopal Recorder suggests the propriety of publish- 
 ing the tract of Bp. Onderdonk on Episcopacy, and the review of it by 
 Mr. Barnes, as containing the best discussion of the Scriptural argument 
 for Episcopacy. It is admitted by all that the controversy has been con- 
 ducted with much ability, and in a proper spirit by both parties, and we 
 doubt not the publication proposed would essentially promote the cause 
 of truth. We are happy to say that the whole controversy is now publish- 
 ing by the Protestant Episcopal Tract Society of this city. (New York) 
 The work will be stereotyped,and will contain the original tract by Bp. O., 
 -the review by Mr. Barnes,-Bp, O's. reply to the review, and Mr. B's. 
 rejoinder, with the conclusion by Bp. O. An article on the same subject, 
 from the Biblical Repertory, at Princeton, withBp. O's. reply, will also 
 form part of the same volume. Thus the subject of Episcopacy tested 
 by Scripture, will be laid fully and fairly before the public. Episcopa- 
 lians are entirely and universally satisfied with the manner in which Bp. 
 O. has conducted the argument, Presbyterians too, are satisfied, inas- 
 
11 
 
 It would swell these strictures to a very inconvenient length 
 to adduce all the Scripture testimony which Episcopalians 
 are accustomed, openly and freely, in books and conversation, 
 to appeal to on this subject; testimony which Dr. Miller, not- 
 withstanding his assertions, has read and heard on very many 
 occasions. In addition to the following brief statement, I re- 
 fer those who may desire a full acquaintance with it to Bp. 
 Onderdonk's work, above named. 
 
 I must here avail myself, however, of a rule which Dr. 
 Miller has himself laid down in the first edition of his Let- 
 ters on the Christian Ministry, p. 26-27, on this subject. — 
 Speaking of the ministry, he says, "It is proper to premise, 
 that whoever expects to find any formal or explicit declara- 
 tions on this subject, delivered by Christ or his apostles, will 
 be disappointed. — "While the Scriptures present no formal or 
 explicit directions on this subject, we find in them a mode of 
 expression, and a number of facts, from which we may, with- 
 out difficulty, ascertain the outlines of the apostolic plan of 
 church order." I trust this will be a sufficient bar in my fa- 
 vor against the operation of his assertion, in this IVth chapter 
 now before us, that ^Hhe Scripture testimony'''* of his ''Episco- 
 pal brother n, is in no instance, direct and explicit, hvJt all 
 indirect and remotely inferential . — They do not pretend to 
 quote a single passage of Scripture which declares in so 
 many words, or any thing like it, in favor of their claim, but 
 their whole reliance, in regard to Scriptural testimony, is 
 placed on facts and deductions from those facts'! 
 I purpose to be very brief, yet as many persons among us 
 
 much as Scripture has been made the basis of the controversy ; and they 
 will allow that they could not have trusted their cause with a more able 
 and accomplished advocate than the Rev. Mr. Barnes. Episcopalians 
 are so well satisfied vnththe result, that they have published the contro- 
 versy for gratuitous circulation throughout the land. Will Presby- 
 terians do the samel or, if not, will they accept the tract for gratuitous 
 dit tribution7 " 
 
12 
 
 have been led to foim very strange notions of the views of 
 Episcopalians on this subject, I think it necessary, first to 
 state the specific character of the three orders in the minis 
 try, as they are regarded in the Episcopal Church. — The 
 Jirstj or superior order, were entrusted with the general over- 
 sight of the church, and with the power of ordaining, or ad- 
 miiting others to the ministry. The second order derived 
 their authority through the imposition of the hands of the a- 
 postles, conjointly with that of the presbytery, and were au- 
 thorized to preach the gospel, and administer the ordinances. 
 The ildrd were general assistants in the service of the church, 
 occasionally preaching, and baptising, and were charged, also, 
 with the care of the sick and helpless. These three orders 
 are distinguished in Scripture, not only, hy the nature of their 
 duties, but also by their peculiar names. The first order is 
 there called apostles, the second by the names of bishops and 
 elders, — the third by that of deacons. Some time after the 
 death of the original twelve apostles, the name of bishop, 
 which simply means overseer, was given to those who suc- 
 ceeded to the place and authority of the apostles, as overseers 
 of the whole; and the second order has, from that time, been 
 called by the names o^elders or presbyters. This circumstance 
 should be remembered, because those who are more apt to be 
 guided by names than things, have inferred, with Dr. Miller, 
 that because the same name is now given to the first order, 
 which all allow was oiiginally given to the second, therefore 
 there was no such order as the first. The three orders are 
 now called by nearly the whole Christian world, bishops, 
 priests or presbyters, and deacons, Nineteen-twentieths of 
 the whole Christian world are Episcopalians. 
 
 1 . There was an order of ministers governing the church, and 
 ordaining others to the ministry. It is plain that the apostles, 
 while they lived, were such an order; and. Dr. Miller's as- 
 sertion to the contrary notwithstanding, there is much evi- 
 dence in the Scriptures that they associated others with them 
 
13 
 
 ill the same station and work. He says, indeed, that, ^'it is 
 manifest that ordination was not confined to the apostles, ot- 
 ficially and technically so called; for nothing can be plainer 
 than that Barnabas, Timothy, and Titus, who were not apos- 
 tles in the appropriated sense, were invested with the ordain- 
 ing power, and actually and abundantly exercised it. It is 
 equally manifest that when the apostles ceased from the 
 Church, they left no successors in that pre-eminent and pecu- 
 liar office, which they filled during their lives." Now all these 
 points may he equally manifest to Dr. Miller, but he brings 
 no evidence from Scripture to make them manifest to others, 
 nor, indeed, can he. What are the marks of an apostle, in 
 his estimation? What does he mean by an appropriated sense 
 to this term? What constituted their of^ce so pre-eminent and 
 peculiar that they could have no successors? To whom does 
 he limit the apostleship? "The Apostles,"' says Bp. On- 
 derdonk, "were not thus distinguished because they were ap- 
 pointed by Christ personally ; for some are named 'Apcstles' 
 in Scripture, who were not thus appointed, as Matthias, Bar- 
 nabas, and probably James the brother of the Lord,* all or- 
 dained by merely human ordainers; Silvanus also and Tim- 
 othy are called 'Apostles :'t and, besides Andronicus and 
 Junia, others could be added to the list.f Nor were the aoos- 
 
 * Acts i. 26; xiv. 4, 14, Gal. i. 19. Compare the latter with Mark vi, 
 3, and John vii, 5: and see Hammond on St James' epistle, and Bish- 
 op White on the Catechism, p. 431. 
 
 t See 1. Thess. ii. 6, compared with i, 1. Paul, Silvanus, (or Silas,) 
 and Timothy, are aliincluded aa "Apostles." In verse 18, Paul speak* 
 of himself individually, not probably before. It is not unusual, indeed, 
 for St. Paul to use the plural number of himself only; but the words "A- 
 poiitles,'" and "our own souls^' (verse 8.) being inapplicable to the sin- 
 gular use of the plural number, show that the three whose names are at 
 the head of this epistle, are here spoken of jointly. And thus, Silas and 
 Timothy are, with Paul, recognized, in this passage of Scripture, as "a- 
 postles." 
 
 t It will here be sufficient to remark, that in 2 Cor. xi. 13, andRer. ii. 
 
14 
 
 ties thus distinguished because they had seen our Lord after 
 his resurrection; for "five hundred brethren" saw him.* And, 
 though the twelve apostles were selected as special witnesses 
 of the resurrection, yet others received that appellation who 
 were not thus selected, as Timothy, Silvanus, Andronicus, 
 Junia, etc. Nor were the apostles thus distinguished because 
 of their power of working miracles; for Stephen and Philip, 
 who were both deacons, are known to have had this power.f 
 It follows, therefore, or will not at least be questioned, that 
 the apostles were distinguished from the elders because th«y 
 were superior to them in ministerial power and rights." 
 
 The nature of the office which the apostles — comprising 
 within this term all those who are named above — exercised, 
 may be learnt from the book of the Acts of the Apostles, and 
 the epistles of Paul to Timothy and Titus. In the epistle to 
 Titus, Paul, in solemnly charging Titus how to behave him- 
 self in the church of God, tells him "for this cause left 1 thee 
 in Crete, that thou shouldst set in order the things that are 
 wanting, and ordain elders in every city;" (i. 5.) f. e. to act 
 as governor and ordainer of the church in Crete. This 
 plainly sets forth the character and duties of the office. They 
 were to ordain ministers, and govern in the church. This 
 was their pre eminent and peculiar office. In no part of the 
 Scripture are such duties assigned to either elders or deacons. 
 In the only place which will at all admit of such a construc- 
 tion, where Paul speaks of Timothy being ordained "by the 
 laving on of the hands of the presbytery," it is plain, that, as 
 v.i another place he speaks ondmself as the ordainer of Tim- 
 
 2, "false Apostles" are spoken of. These could not have been, or have 
 pretended to be, any of the eleven, or of the five next above mentioned, 
 or Paul. Their assuming therefore the title of 'Apostles' showa that 
 there were enough others who had this title to make their pretended claim 
 to it plausible. And I hose others must have been ordained, not by Christ, 
 hut by vien who had his commission. — Calvin allows Andronicus and 
 .fnnia (Rom. xvi. 7.) to have been Apostles, Instit. b. IV. c. iii. sect. 5. 
 •♦ 1. Cor. XV, 6. t Acts vi. 8; viii. 6. 
 
15 
 
 othvj he can only mean a concurrent act on their part. (2d 
 Tim. r. 6. — 1 Tim. iv. 14.) Surely then, Episcopalians Aar« 
 some Scriptural ground for believing that the apostles did 
 have ecclesiastical successors. 
 
 2. There was also an order of ministers who did not exer- 
 cise government over others, or ordain; but who exercised, in 
 common with the apostolic order, the general duties of the 
 ministry, viz: preaching the gospel, and administering the sa- 
 craments; and who.as occasion required, were placed in charge 
 of particular congregations. Of this class, it would seem, 
 were "the other seventy," sent forth by our Lord, distinctly 
 from "the twelve" — the elders ordained by the apostles— those 
 ordained by Titu?, agreeably to the instructions given himbv 
 St. Paul — those bishops, or overseers of thefoch, who were 
 sent for by Paul from Ephesus to Miletus — those addressed 
 by Peter, in his first epistle — those who were ordained 
 by Timothy according to the directions given him in the 
 first epistle of Paul to him — those whom Paul associated with 
 all the saints, and the deacons at Philippi, in his epistle to the 
 church in that city; and those alluded to in the Acts of the 
 Apostles, in the expressions, "Apostles and Elders"'' — ''Apos- 
 tles and Elders, and brethren." — The apostles were commis- 
 sioned by our Lard to gather, and establish his church, yet no 
 0!:e pretends that such a commission was given io the seventy ; 
 and it is apparent by the manner in which the election of 
 Matthias, (who, in all probability was one of them, for he 
 "had companied with" the apostles "all the time the Lord Je- 
 sus went in and out among them,") into the place of Judas 
 was conducted, that they were not considered as belonging to 
 the same class with the apostles; else, why was an election, 
 with such solemn forms required? The epistles to Timotliy 
 and Titu?, moreover show, that they were vested with authori- 
 ty over the elders, (or bishops) or, as we now call them pres- 
 byters, of the churches in Ephesus and Crete. They were 
 empowered to check errors in doctrine — to rebuke the disobe- 
 
16 
 
 dient elders — to give honor to those who should deserve it 
 and were not to admit any suddenly to the ministry. Of 
 course, the elders were inferior to them in office and authority. 
 There is a very plain distinction between these two classes of 
 men. 
 
 3. There was also a third order in the ministry, who were 
 called deacons. That there was such an order in the church 
 at Jerusalem — that they were chosen by the disciples generaV 
 ly, and were set apart for their office by the imposition of th« 
 hands of the apostles, with solemn prayer, is plain. It does 
 not appear, as some think, that the deacons were limited to 
 the duties which originally caused their separation — taking 
 care of the offerings at the altar for the benefit of the poor, — on 
 the contrary, it is certain, that Stephen, who was one of the 
 first seven deacons, was an open^nd xealous preacher of the 
 gospel, and of Philip we are not only told that he was a 
 preacher, but that he baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, and also 
 men and women in Samaria. The apostles however approved 
 of Philips ministry, for they sent Peter and John to confirm 
 those whom he had baptized ; and the descent o f the Holy Ghost 
 jpon them, was a still higher confirmation of his ministry. He 
 is elsewhere called an Evangelist ; a term probably of nearly 
 the same meaning with missionary. Paul in his epistles to 
 Timothy, speaks twice of the office of a deacon as of one of 
 permanent necessity in the christian church. 
 
 This is only a brief summary of what might be said upon 
 this subject. Enough, however, it is believed has been alleged 
 to show what credence should be given to Dr. Miller's asser- 
 tion that the New Testament does not afford the least coun- 
 tenance to the claims of Episcopalians. 
 
 Dr. Miller quotes a passage from Dr. Isaac Barrow, for the 
 purpose of showing, that Dr. Barrow did not consider the a- 
 postles as having any regular successors. He supposes that 
 this opinion is to have great weight against Episcopacy, be- 
 cause Dr. B. was, as he calls him, a prclatist. I am so un- 
 
17 
 
 fortunate as not to perceive any result of this kind, though 1 
 must certainly admit Dr. B. to have been a man of great abi- 
 lity, and learning, and of good judgment on many points. Dr. 
 Miller has been not a little distinguished for citing writers in 
 this way to sustain his opinions against the Episcopal church, 
 and sometimes with the most unfortunate results to himself, 
 and his cause.* Your assault upon your "Episcopal breth- 
 ren," may have the full benefit of all testimony of this nature. 
 It may be turned against your own cause with powerful 
 force, and to a remarkable extent, as 1 have the means to 
 show. To make no reference at present, to writers of past 
 ages, of your own denomination, what opinion should I be 
 led to entertain of the present state of ihe Presbyterian 
 church, in this country, by a resort to testimony of this char- 
 acter. With a class of divines on one side claiming the ex- 
 clusive validity of presbyterian ordination — (he jure divinoot 
 presbytery, and insisting upon unscrupulous submission to 
 every line of the Confession of Faithj — and another class 
 
 * Dr. M. seems to have intended that his readers should infer that Dr. 
 Barrow did not himself believe in the apostolic origin of Episcopacy. 
 Let the following quotations from the same work bear witness with what 
 justice such an opinion can be formed. "Of the distinction between 
 bishops and the inferior clergy, there was never in ancient times made 
 any question, nor did it seem disputable in the church, except to one 
 malcontent, Aerius: — it standeth upon very firm and clear grounds, upon 
 the reason of the case, vpon the testimony of Holy Scripture, upon gen- 
 eral tradition, and unquestionable monuments of antiquity, upon tha 
 common judgment and practice of the greatest saints, persons most re- 
 nowned for wisdom and piety in the church. — The Holy Scripture doth 
 plainly enough countenance this distinction; for therein we have repre- 
 aented one angel presiding over several presbyters; therein we find epi^ 
 copal ordination and jurisdiction exercised; vee have one bishop consti- 
 tuting presbyters in divers cities of his diocese.'* etc. 
 
 t The following extracts will explain this statement. Dr. M'Leod 
 of New York, in his Ecclesiastical Catechism, p. 29, says, "A peraon 
 who is not ordained to office by a presbytery, has no right to be received 
 as a minister of Christ: His administration of ordinances is invalid: ]\o 
 
 B 2 
 
18 
 
 pouring deiision, without qualification or compassion, upon ail 
 such pretensions, and declaring the whole system to be wax- 
 ing old, and ready to perish,* and yet another class— but I 
 forbear. I have no wish to meddle with the unhappy differ- 
 ence!?, which are well known to exist to a very serious extent 
 in the Church of which Dr. Miller, and the editors of the 
 American Preshyterian are members, but only to intimate the 
 necessity of caution, in the use of such authorities, as Dr. JVI. 
 hcis here called to his aid. 
 
 IJe has however, chosen to rely on Dr. Barrow's ^^judg- 
 merd'''' m this matter, while, he objects to the "judgment" of 
 Theodoret, a Christian Father who lived in the 5th century, 
 snd whose testimony is directly opposed to that of Dr. B.! 
 Theocoret, according to Dr. Miller's quotation, says, "The 
 same persons were anciently called bishops and presbyters; 
 and those whom w^e now call bishops, were then called a- 
 postles. But in process of time, the title of apostle was op- 
 propriated to those, who were called apostles in the strict 
 sense, and the rest, who had, formerly, the name of apostles, 
 
 divine blessing is promised upon his labors: It is rebellion against the 
 Head of the church to support him in his pretensions: Christ has excluded 
 him in his Providence from admission through the ordinary door; and if 
 he has no evidence of miraculous pov\ersto testify his extraordinary mis- 
 sion, he is an impostor." Dr. Green of Philadelphia, in the Christian 
 Advocate for March, 1828, says, "An entire parity and equality of rank 
 and office, among those who are permanently to preach the gospel, and 
 dispense all its ordinances, [ in other woxdiS, 'preshyteriardsin'] is a divine 
 appointment; and, in reference to the gospel ministry, the only divine 
 appointment, which is apparent in the sacred record." And even Dr. 
 iMiUer himself, in the first edition of liis Letters on the Ministry, p. 
 347, Siiys, "It is only so far as any succession flows through the line of 
 presbyters, that it is either regular or valid." It would be exceedingly 
 difficult to say, where higher toned or more exclusive opinions on this 
 subject are to be found. — See also Dr. Duncan's account of the canse» 
 of his expulsion from the Presbyterian church. 
 
 *Seethe Evangelist and other current religious papers of the Presby- 
 terian church. 
 
19 
 
 were styled bieliop?." Now/u must be adinited, that Episco- 
 palians do, frequently, quote this lesiimony of Theodoref ; 
 but it is for the obvious reason, that it is the plain, honest, 
 straight forward statement of a man, who appears to have had 
 no perForral object to serve; and who is speaking, incidentally, 
 of a faci^ considered as established and well known in his 
 day. And why should his testimony not be received? Dr. 
 31. says, "It is not the testimony of Scripture." — No, indeed, 
 nor does it profess to be. It is only to a fact which occurred 
 after the books of Scripture were written. The men whom 
 he refers to, are called, and designated in the Scripture, as a- 
 posiles; and for that fact we have, — as above shown, — Scrip- 
 ture testimony. But Dr. M. says, "It is the dream of a wri- 
 ter four centuries after the apostolic age, in whose time the 
 Church had become very corrupt, etc." Well, suppose it 
 should be said in reply, that the ^^judgment'''' of Dr. Barrow, 
 on this subject, is the dream of a writer more than a thovsand 
 years later still; and at a period, when Dr. M. must allow 
 there was much corruption in the Christian churches in many 
 parts of the earth. Surely, Theodoret's testimony to a histor- 
 ical fact four hundred years after it occurred, is quite as much 
 to be relied o», as that of Dr. Barrow, who lived sixteen hun- 
 dred years after it occurred, and who could have had no bet- 
 ter testimony to it than we have !* 
 
 A second reason assigned by Dr. Miller, why Theodoret's 
 testimony, in this matter, is not to be received, is that, ^-no 
 one doubts that in Theodoret's time, prelacy,'' — by which he 
 mean?, Episcopacy-"had obtained a complete establishment." 
 Indeed! Episcopalians believe that it was not only establish- 
 ed then, but even in the apostles' days. One would suppose 
 that impartial men would consider this fact a strong confirma- 
 
 * In relation to the fact to which Theodoret testifies, that bishops were 
 originally termed apostles, having succeeded to that office, Dr. Miller 
 knows that Episcopalians are also in the habit of quoting Hilary wh© 
 liv«d about 376, and who testifies to the same fact. 
 
so 
 
 tion of his testimony instead of invalidating it. It is a direct 
 admission that Theodoret's testimony was consistent with the 
 universal belief of the Christian church in his day. 
 
 If Dr. Miller fails of convincing his readers, it will net b« 
 for want of bold assertions — bold, beyond those of any other 
 polemic with whom 1 am acquainted — bold beyond any war- 
 rant of testimony, or the previously declaied opinions of any 
 other assailant of Episcopacy. He says, "It is very certain 
 that the Fathers who flourished nearest the apostolic age, gen- 
 erally represent presbyters and not prelates (bishops) as the 
 successors of apostles," and he actually has the rashness to 
 quote Ignatius, — that identical father, whose writings aie 
 genuine, or rot genuine — worthy, or not worthy of confidence, 
 according as he may be made to serve the purpose to which 
 Dr. Miller chooses to apply him! How little he is able to 
 make use of him in assailing Episcopacy, let the following 
 exhibition of the manner in whicli his quotations are made, 
 and of Ignatius' own statements show. 
 
 Dr. Miller quotes him as 
 saying 
 
 The presbyters succeed in 
 the place of the bench of the 
 apostles. 
 
 The passage truly copied is 
 
 I exhort you, that ye study- 
 to do all things in a divine 
 concord : your bishops in the 
 place of God; your presbyteis 
 in the place of the council 
 of the apostles; and your dea- 
 cons most dear to me being 
 entrusted with the ministry of 
 Jesus Christ. — Ep. to Mag 
 nesians. 
 AGAIN. 
 
 In like manner let all rev- 
 erence the presbyters as the 
 Sanhedrim of God, and col- 
 lege of the apostles. 
 
 In like manner let all rev- 
 erence the deacons as Jesvis 
 Christ; and the bishop as tin; 
 Father, and the presbyters as 
 the Sanhedrim of God, and 
 college of the apostles; with 
 out these there is no Church. 
 — Ev . to Trallians. 
 
21 
 
 AGAIN 
 
 Ee subject to your presby- 
 ters as to the apostles of Je- 
 sus Christ our hope. 
 
 It is therefore necessary, 
 that as ye do, so without your 
 bishop you should do nothinn;: 
 also be ye subject to your pres- 
 byters, as the apostles of Je- 
 sus Christ our hope, in whom 
 if we walk, we shall be found 
 in him. The deacons, also, 
 as being ministers of Jesus 
 Christ, &LC.~Ep.to Trallians. 
 AGAIN. 
 
 Follow the presbyters as 
 the apostles. 
 
 See that ye all follow your 
 bishop as Jesus Christ the 
 Father; and the presbyters as 
 the apostles. — Ep. to Smyr- 
 neans. 
 
 The feeblest capacity can judge of the integrity of these 
 quotations of Dr. Miller. Let it be remembered that his ob- 
 ject is to show reasons for rejecting episcopacy; or, as he calls 
 it, prelacy — rejecting the belief that three orders, (bishops, 
 priests, and deacons,) were established in the Christian min- 
 istry by the apostles. Was there ever a more unfaithful ap- 
 plication of any man's written opinions? Dr. M. omits the 
 facts to which Ignatius actually does testify, and changes a 
 high wrought, fanciful, and unreasonable comparison, which 
 the unbridled zeal of Ignatius led him to make, into an alle- 
 gation of /a^^^s; of 5WcA facts too, as stand diametrically op- 
 posed to Ignatius' own testimony! What too, shall we think 
 of Dr. 31., when we find him making Ignatius speak a lan- 
 guage directly opposite to Dr. Barrow, whom he had quoted 
 above: and yet seeking to make them Loth wei^h against 
 Episcopacy! 
 
 He makes Ignatius say 
 
 The presbyters succeed in 
 the place of the apostles. 
 
 But he quotes Dr. Barrow 
 as saying 
 
 The apostolical office, as 
 such, was personal and tem- 
 porary; and therefore, accord- 
 
22 
 
 ing to its nature and design, 
 not successive, not communi- 
 cable to others, in perpetual 
 descendance from them. 
 Dr. Miller makes no quotation from IrencBUS, but contents 
 himself with saying, in his usual bold manner, that '^itis no- 
 torious that Irenoeus repeatedly speaks of presbyters as being 
 the successors of the apostles." But in order to make out this 
 assertion, he must quote from Ireneeus after the same manner 
 which he has used with Ignatius, that is, unfairly and untruly. 
 !t is enough to say, in reply, that Irengeus bears strong testi. 
 mony to Episcopacy, for writers on your own side, who deny 
 the apostolic origin of episcopacy, generally and freely admit, 
 that Episcopacy was in his time fully established; and as Dr. 
 Miller thinks that this circumstance must have influenced the 
 testimony of Theodoret, you cannot but allow it to have in 
 this case, the weight which you both claim for it in the oth- 
 er. Irenaeus, then, by your own rules is to be set down as 
 an unquestioned witness on the side of Episcopacy. Even 
 Dr. M. is compelled to admit, that Irenseus "represents bish- 
 ops as the successors of the apostles,' though he would make 
 us believe, ii we rest upon his assertion, that these bishops 
 were presbyters,* 
 
 ♦"Between Ircnaeus and St. John," says the learned Mr. Faber, "there 
 exists only the single link of Polycarp. Irenoeus was the scholar of Po- 
 ly carp; and Poly carp was the disciple of St. John." 
 
 "Hence, I apprehend, Irenoens may be viewed as an unexceptionable 
 witness, not only of facts which occurred in his own immediate time, but 
 also of any inseparably connected facts (if such there be) which are al- 
 leged to have taken place in the time of the apostles." 
 
 "Now the fact, which Irenaeus mentions as existing in his own time, 
 is the universal establhhmcnt of the episcopate.''' 
 
 "Respecting this naked fact, I perceive not how he could have been 
 mistaken. We all know without a possibility of error, that episcopacy is 
 at this present moment established in England. The fact presents itself to 
 our very eyes: and we are sure that we cannot be deceived. In a similar 
 manner, Irenseus could not but have known with absolute certainty* 
 
23 
 
 Even supposing Dr. Miller''s quotations from Augustine to 
 be true,-which, from what has been shown above, may reason- 
 ably be doubted, andl have not at'present the means, if it were 
 
 what form of ecclesiastical polity universally prevailed at the time when 
 he himself fljiirished. This form, vouching for a mere cognizable fact, 
 he declares to have been the episcopal." 
 
 "On the authority, then, of Irenseus, we may be quite certain respect- 
 ing the naked /acf, that in his days the episcopate was universally estab- 
 lished: and for this early /acf (for the personal testimony of Irenseus runs 
 back to within forty years of the death of St. John) we are naturally led 
 to ask, whence that univerisally-established polity could have originated?" 
 
 "The question is fully answered by the same Irenacus after a manner, 
 which, I think, evinces the moral impossibility of error.-' 
 
 "He assures us, that in every church there had been a regular succes- 
 sion of bishops from the time of the apostles: and he himself, as we have 
 observed, was separated from St. John only by the single intervening link 
 of Polycarp. To enumerate the successions of the churches, he remarks, 
 would occupy too much space and time: he confines himself, therefore, as 
 a siugle specimen of the whole, to the succession of the Roman church. 
 On this topic he is very precise and particular." 
 
 "The Roman church itself, he tells us, was founded by the two most 
 glorious apostles Peter and Paul. These inspired ministers of God, 
 having thus jointly founded that church, jointly delivered the episcopate 
 of it to its first bishop Linus, who is mentioned by Paul in his second 
 Epistle to Timothy.* Linus was succeeded by Anacletus: and, after 
 him, in the third degree from the apostles, Clement received the episco- 
 pate; which Clement, as Irenseus observes, saw, and heard, and confer^ 
 red with the apostles themselves.f Clement was followed by Euaristus; 
 Euaristus, by Alexander; x\lexander, by SLstus; Sixtus by Telesphorus; 
 Telesphorus, by Hygi^ius; Hyginus, by Pius; Pius, by Anicetus; Anice- 
 tu3, by Soter; and Soter, by Eleutherius: who thus, as Irenaeus remarks, 
 held, at the precise time when he was writing the sentence, the Roman 
 Episcopate in the twelfth degree from the apostles." 
 
 "To this succession he incidently subjoins the origination of the episco- 
 pate in the church of Smyrna." 
 
 "At Rom.e, as we have seen, he vouches for the fact, that the episco- 
 pate of that city emanated from the two apostles Peter and Paul: at 
 Smyrna, he vouches for the fact, that the episcopate of that city eman- 
 
 *2. Tim iy. £1. fSe« Philip. > 
 
24 
 
 worth the trouble, to verify it, — Episcopalians would have 
 no difficulty iir assenting to it. 1 presume no one of them 
 doubts, that, in the peculiar circumstances of the apostles, as 
 inspired men, gifted with plenary power to regulate the 
 Church, their office was above that of any bishop It is only the 
 permanent and necessary duties of their office, which Episco- 
 palians believe to have descended to bishops. We agree with 
 Dr. BI. as to what those duties are. The question between 
 us is, whether they were succeeded in those duties by bishops, 
 or by presbyters. 
 
 Neither Dr. Miller, nor the editors of the American Pres- 
 byterian, seem to be aware of the real character of the asser- 
 tion which they make, that "any other view of this subject" 
 than they have chosen to give, "is an imposition on popular 
 credulity ."^^ Nothing is easier than to substitute railing for 
 argument; and suitable epithets, and phrases, are always 
 ready in uncharitable minds. Dr. Miller, in all his controver- 
 
 ated from the apostle John. He himself, was the scholar of Polycarp, 
 and Polycarp had not only been specially the disciple of John, but in his 
 early youth he had received instructions also from the other apostles. — 
 By the apostle John, Polycarp was appointed bishop of Smyrna: and h« 
 presided in that see for the space of half a century, untU he closed his 
 career by martyrdom. Whatever he had learned from the apostles, this 
 venerable man, according to Irenteus, delivered to the church: and the 
 same testimony was borne, by all the churches of Asia, and by those 
 who had succeeded Polycarp, down to the time when Irenseus himself 
 was engaged in writing his work against heresies."* 
 
 "Thus we find, that the closely connected /ad, for which Irenseus 
 vouches in addition to the fact, which he beheld with his own persona] 
 eyes, is the appointment of the first bishops by the apostles themselves: 
 nor, when we consider the circumstances under which he was placed, 
 himself a bishop, the successor of the holy nonagenarian Pothinus, him- 
 self the disciple of the martyr Polycarp, himself in point of actual knowl- 
 edge reaching within forty years of the death of St. John, is it easry to 
 conceive, how he could have been mistaken m the specification of a fact 
 which must at that time have been a matter of public and univeraal no- 
 toriety." — Fader's Difficulties of Romanism. 
 * Iren. adv. HiEr. lib. iii. c. 3. 
 
25 
 
 sies, and they have not been few, nor far between, has been 
 not a little distinguishedin this way. If his feelings towards 
 the Episcopal church are such that he must vent them in thw 
 mode, those who voluntarily republish and circulate his un- 
 charitable denunciations, must be content to share with him, 
 the odium. Enough has been said to show, how far Dr. Mil- 
 ler has a right to charge Episcopalians with imposing on 
 popular credulity. 
 
 It is not a little singular, that, while Dr. Miller's opinions 
 in regard to the competency of the early Christian writers, 
 commonly called the Fathers, have varied so much; and while 
 you, Messrs Editors, also allow him to speak of them so slight- 
 ly, as witnesses of facts in the early history of the Church, 
 you should in the very next column of your paper of May 21st, 
 quote many of these same Fatheis, as competent, nay, un- 
 questioned witnesses in behalf of Infant baptism ! It is a strik- 
 ing example of the manner in which men's views will preju- 
 dice them in regard to matters of fact. Many respectable 
 writers in favor of Episcopacy, have expressed a willingness 
 to let Episcopacy abide by the testimony commonly adduced 
 in favor of Infant baptism, and the Christian Sabbath, and 
 the authenticity of the books of Scripture, The same process 
 of reasoning, which is used to sustain these points, will 
 also amply sustain Episcopacy. As an exemplification of 
 this, let Dr. Woods' able work on Infant Baptism be taken. 
 If Episcopacy, and the necessary corresponding words, be 
 substituted, in his first chapter for Infant baptism, and its cor- 
 responding terms, I believe Episcopalians generally would be 
 quite content with it, as a statement of their views, and of the 
 testimony for sustaining them. 
 
 A large proportion of your extracts from Dr. Miller, con- 
 sist of simple, and wholly unsupported, assertions; the least 
 laborious mode in the world for accomplishing his object a- 
 mong the credulous, and that enormous class of people, who, 
 
26 
 
 content to take any tiling and every thing upon trust, may be 
 described in the significant words, deceiving and being de- 
 ceived ! There is an exemplification of this remark, in the 
 assertion of Dr. M. that the whole argument for the superior- 
 ity of bishops as successors of the apostles, "has been wholly 
 abandoned by a number of the most distinguished divines of 
 the church of England." Dr. M. well knows that he cannot 
 sustain this assertion by adequate proof; but it was easily 
 made — could not be refuted, but by an examination of the 
 writings of all the divines of that church, who have written 
 on the subject; a labor which no one would undertake — and 
 yet, it would certainly be believed by some, for no falsehood 
 is so gross that none can be found to swallow it. These most 
 distinguished divines, if he really had in view any divines 
 whatever, will be found to derive all their distinction, most 
 probably, from his notice of them. "That was excellently 
 observed, say I, when I read a passpge in an author, whose 
 opinion agrees with mine; when we differ, then I pronounce 
 him mistaken. And this," as was said in another case, "is 
 undoubtedly the philosophy of the matter." 
 
 We now come to a very remarkable change in Dr. Miller's 
 course of argument. Before, Dr. M. could say, "when we 
 ask the advocates of Episcopacy whence they derive their 
 favorite doctrine that diocesan bishops succeeded the apos- 
 tles, they refer us to no passage of Scripture asserting or even 
 hinting it." Noiv, however, he seriously sets about replying to 
 ^^ arguments from Scripture commonly urged by our Episcopal 
 brethren'^! What is to bethought of the candor or prudence of 
 such an opponent? Were he sure of the justice of his cause 
 — had he no suspicion of the defects of his own argument, — 
 would he resort to such means, and lay himself open to such 
 imputations as are here implied? Dr. M. well knows that his 
 arguments, even as stated by himself, have aZZ been answered 
 many a time. But assertions may be repeated, blindly re- 
 peated, where arguments cannot be adduced; and he seems 
 
27 
 
 to care but little what cross purposes even his own assertions 
 may be made to play ! 
 
 Dr. M. states that Episcopalians commonly urge "that 
 Timothy was evidently, in fact, Bishop of Ephesus, and 
 Titus of Crete; and that this furnishes a plain example of an 
 order of ministers superior to common pastors." Although 
 he chooses to assert that "there is not a shadow of proof of 
 this in the New Testament," yet I venture to declare that it 
 is as well attested as any similar fact in history! How in- 
 deed, can any one who reads the epistles to Timothy and Ti- 
 tus, doubt it? Is it not evident that both these men were 
 left with delegated apostolic power, in the respective dis- 
 tricts assigned them? Were they not to govern the church, 
 and admit men to the ministry, taking care that improper 
 persons did not impose on them? What need of admitting 
 others to the ministry, if they themselves were only with a 
 pastoral and not a diocesan charge — supposing, as this argu- 
 ment does, that the charge of a single church only was con- 
 fided to them? Or why were they to have power to rebuke, 
 — one of the last and highest acts of government — to rebuke 
 an elder, when not more than one or two elders could, neces* 
 sarily, be connected with them; and even then must be equal 
 or colleagued with them? To rule^ rebuke, and ordain, were' 
 undeniably acts of authority, — can any instance be pointed 
 out, in Scriptuie, where such authority was given to any of 
 those termed elders? Did St. Paul charge those, whom he 
 called from Ephesus to Miletus, with authority to these acts, 
 as he did, solemnly and urgently , Timothy and Titus? Now, 
 it is of little consequence, whatever' Dr.- M. finds it convenient 
 to think about it, whether either of these men had 3. fixed dio- 
 cesan charge at Ephesus and Crete, or not? Episcopalians gen- 
 erally do not claim that they had. Neither is it of any con- 
 sequence to this question, whether they "ever performed the 
 work of ordination alone or not." Modern bishops do not 
 ordain presbyters, without the concurrence of the priesthood, 
 
28 
 
 or presbytery. The question is, simply, a question of fad. 
 Were Timothy and Titus vested with power to perform any 
 acts which imply autfiority, and which power was not, so far 
 as we have evidence, conferred upon others, who were, never- 
 theless, ministers of the word and sacraments? Candid minds 
 need have no difficulty in answering this question in the af- 
 firmative* When Dr. M. says that "there is no hint in the 
 
 * "There were jn the Church at Ephesus three orders of ministers; 
 Timothy, the Presbyters, who are also called Bishops or Overseers, and 
 the Deacons. That Timothy was the ordaining officer in that church is 
 beyond all contradiction. There is not a hint in the directions given to 
 him on that point, to associate Presbyters with himself ; but, on the 
 contrary, it is evident that he was to be supreme and single in the dis- 
 charge of this duty. It certainly is a very extraordinary thing, that 
 when there was a number of Presbyters at Ephesus, St. Paul should put 
 such a mark of reprobation upon presbyterian government, as to send an 
 officer to ordain and govern that church, when those Presbyters were 
 fully competent to the business. And what was their conduct on that 
 occasion? Did they remonstrate against it? Did they oppose Timothy 
 in the execution of his office? Not a hint of that in scripture, nor in all 
 antiquity. What sort of men must those Presbyters have been? Cer- 
 tainly either fools who knew not their rights; or men who had such a 
 superabundance of the "milk of human kindness," that they could not 
 bear the least contention, even in the sacred cause of truth and justice." 
 "If it be necessary to set this matter in a clearer point of light, perhaps 
 the following observations will do it. St. Paul sent from Miletus to 
 Ephesus, and called the elders of the church. When they arrived the 
 Apostle gave them this solemn charge — Take heed, therefore, unto your- 
 selves, and all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you Over- 
 seers, to feed the Church of God, which he hath purchased with his own 
 blood. — Here is not the least intimation to these Presbyters, that their 
 commission implied the power of ordaining. There is no mention of the 
 qualifications requisite for the persons that were to be ordained — nothii<g, 
 but to take care of their own conduct, and to feed with the word of life 
 those oyer whom they were placed. But he gives very particular direc- 
 tions to Timothy concerning the persons whom he should ordain, both 
 Presbyters and Deacons. Is it not wonderful, that St. Paul, when he 
 was about to take hia leave for ever of those Presbyters, did not say on» 
 
29 
 
 New Testament that Timothy and Titus performed any act, 
 to which any regular minister of the gospel is not fully com- 
 petent," he is plainly regardless of obvious facts. 
 
 word to them about so important a part of their duty as ordaining, if they 
 possessed that power? Again — St. Paul charges Timothy, not to receive 
 an accusation against an Elder but before two or three witnesses; but he 
 gives no such charge to the Elders or Overseers of Ephesus. He also says 
 to Timothy, i^TTi (meaning the Elders) that%in, rebuke before all, that 
 others also may fear. Nothing can be more absurd tban to suppose, 
 that those Presbyters who were subject to the censures of Timothy, were 
 possessed of equal powers with him. Had they refused to submit to the 
 just censures of their governor, which, upon presbyterian principles, they 
 .ought to have done, I doubt very much whether their title of Bishop 
 would have been of service to them. 
 
 Further — St. Paul says to those Elders, that some of themselves should 
 arise^ speaking perverse things to draw aivay disciples after them. Now, 
 one would suppose after mentioning this, that he would have told them 
 how to proceed — would have directed them to receive an accusation a- 
 gainst perverse Elders, and have charged them to rebuke such before all. 
 But no such thing: they had no power of that sort committed to them. 
 Besides, I cannot conceive how human ingenuity could have devised any 
 thing more effectual, to make the Elders speak perverse things ( if the 
 Yfoxd perverse could with propriety be used,) than to send Timothy to 
 take out of their hands the power of ordaining, and of governbg the 
 Church at Ephesus, 
 
 Once more — St. Paul gives a very solemn charge to Timothy, / give 
 thee charge in the sight of God who quickeneih all things, and before 
 Jesus Christ, who before Pontius Pilate, witnessed a good confession, 
 that thou keep this commandment, without spot, unrebukeable, until the 
 appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 The Apostle had no expectation that Timothy would live till the day 
 of judgment. Tllis charge, therefore, was not confined to the person of 
 Timothy, but extended to bis office to the end of time. It was of the 
 nature of that promise which Christ made to his Apostles, that he would 
 he ivith them to the end of the world. But the charge given by the 
 Apostle to the Elders of Ephesus was merely personal — it related to notn- 
 ing'beyond their own lives. As they had no power to constitute others in 
 their room, 00 there is no charge given to them to keep what was com' 
 
 c 2 
 
30 
 
 It is true that Dr. Miller quotes "the eminent Episcopal 
 divine. Dr. Whitby," as saying, "the great controversy con- 
 cerning this (epistle) and the epistles to Timothy is, whether 
 Timothy and Titus were indeed made bishops, the one of 
 Ephesus and the proconsular Asia; the other of Crete. Now 
 of this matter, I confess, I can find nothing in any writer of 
 the first three centuries, nor any intimation that they bore that 
 name." This Dr. M. and the Ainerican Presbyterian put 
 in italics, as indicating their great estimation of the impor- 
 
 mitted to them to the coming of Christ, or to commit what they had re- 
 ceived to faithful men. 
 
 It is now I think'as clear as the great luminary of the day, when not a 
 cloud obscures his disc, that the Church of Ephesus, consisting of Pres- 
 byters, Deacons, and laity, were committed to the oversight, superin- 
 tendance and government of Timothy; and that the title of Bishop given 
 to the Presbyters of that church, as having a subordinate oversight of 
 the laity under Timothy, in no respect or degree impaired his superiority. 
 He was the Overseer of Overseers — the Bishop of Bishops. To the office 
 which Timothy held, succeeded that order in the church to which, from 
 the beginning of the second century, the title of Bishops has been appro- 
 priated, and not to the second order indifferently styled, in the apostolic 
 times, Bishops or Elders. If our Bishops had succeeded to the second 
 order, they could possess no more power than that order did. 
 
 That the ofuce which Timothy held did not expire with him, is evident 
 from its very nature; for there is the same need of an officer now in the 
 Church who can ordain,''a3 there was in the days of Timothy; and ac- 
 cordingly, we find from the testimony of antiquity, that he had his suc- 
 cessors, and that at the time of the council of Chalcedon, twenty-seven 
 Bishops had governed that church. 
 
 The Church of Crete will affijrd us another instance of Episcopal pre- 
 eminence. But there is really no necessity of going over this ground. 
 The instances of Timothy and Titus are so parallel, and rest so much 
 upon similar authorities, that v^'hat has been said concerning the former, 
 may generally be applied to the latter. To the testimoay from the epis- 
 tle itself may be added, the concurrent testimony of the primitive wri- 
 ters, who assert that Titus was the first Bishop, or Chief Ruler of the 
 Church of Crete. — Two Letters to the Editor of the Christians Maga- 
 zine. 
 
31 
 
 tance of the admission. It is truly wonderful that Pr. M. 
 did not see, or seeing, should have adduced this admission 
 on his own side, that Dr. Whitby is here speaking, not of 
 their office as bishops, nor of their power as such, but of 
 their local jurisdiction, i. e. whether they were fixed bish- 
 ops of the provinces of Ephesus and Crete. No candid 
 man who will read Whitby's Commentary on the epistles 
 to Timothy and Titus, will say, that he meant to sanc- 
 tion the slightest suspicion of the Episcopal character of 
 Timothy and Titus ; to sustain which he has collected a very 
 large amount of testimony. As soon would he deny the light 
 of the sun when he is blazing in the firmament. Even at the 
 end of Dr. Miller's quotation, Dr. Whitby adds, what Dr.M. 
 did not choose to copy, the words, ^'but this defect is abun- 
 dantly supplied hy the concurrent suffrage of the fourth and 
 fifth centuries'^'' * 
 
 Dr. M. gives us "a regular syllogism'' as containing the 
 arguments of Episcopal writers on this subject; such as he 
 might put into their mouths, if he could, for a moment, sup- 
 pose, that they were incompetent as scholars or logicians to 
 perceive the effect of their own reasoning. I shall have oc- 
 casion, hereafter, to try, in a legitimate way, the force of Dr, 
 M's. regular syllogism on some of his own arguments. In 
 the mean time, Messrs. Editors, 1 offer you the following 
 
 * The following is Dr. Whitby's own synopsis of the testimony col- 
 lected by him, and his argument founded on it. 
 
 "Timothy and Titus were not bishops fixed to a diocese, but yet they 
 had episcopal jurisdiction over presbyters. 
 
 Hence it follows, — 1. that this superiority cannot be coBtrary to the 
 gospel rule, — 2. that it is not repugnant to the constitution of churches in 
 the apostle's times, for men to have jurisdiction over more than one par- 
 ticular congregation, — 3. that the apostolical power of governing church- 
 es, might be committed to others whom they would entrust with it, — 4. 
 th~at they did commit thbtruist to others, is proved-from Scripture, tradi- 
 tion, and reason." 
 
32 
 
 t^^hich is quite as regular, and much more correct and appli- 
 cable, as a substitute for his. — The power to ordain and gov- 
 ern elders necessarily implies superiority to them: Timothy 
 and Titws had that power: Therefore, Timothy and Titus 
 were superior to elders. 
 
 Dr. M. proceeds: ^^ another argument from Scripture, 
 commonly urged b)' our Episcopal brethren, is derived from 
 the angels, addressed in the epistles to the seven churches of 
 the lesser Asia." In his usual presumptuous manner he adds 
 that this argument is destitute of plausibility. He rightly 
 says, however, that "the term angel signifies messenger. As 
 an ecclesiastical title, it is derived from the old Testameat. 
 In every Jewish synagogue there was an angel of the church 
 whose duty it was to preside and take the lead in public wor- 
 ship." But Dr. M. has in his usual manner, omitted to add, 
 as he should have done, that this angel was assisted by a body 
 of presbyters or elders, over whom he presided. Although 
 this fact sustains the Episcopal theory; and was, for that rea- 
 son probably, omitted by Dr. M., yet he asserts, that, "if we 
 suppose each of these angels to be the ordinary pastor of a 
 Mngle church or congregation, it will perfectly accord with 
 rvery representation concerning them in the epistles in ques- 
 tion." But how will you, Messrs. Editors, reconcile the fart 
 Jijf there being but "a single pastor of a single congregation,'' 
 'it this time, at Epkesus, when, years befjre, Paul had sent 
 for the elders of that church, to Miletus? Had the church al- 
 ready become so reduced as to have but one pastor? Even this 
 epistle bears witness, that there had been some among them 
 who claimed to be apostles, which implies that there was a de- 
 mand at Ephesus for more ministerial labor th-n one could 
 supply; but take the case, presented above, that it had, as in 
 the time of Timothy and Paul, a bishop and presbyters, and 
 the comparison will hold with the angel, who presided, and 
 the ministering elders. But, certainly, in each of these epistles 
 anindkidual is addressed; and it must be very difficult in- 
 
33 
 
 deed for those who look at the known circumstances "of the 
 churches in that region, at that time, to believe, with Dr. M., 
 that there was but one pastor in each of the seven populous 
 churches, indeed Dr. M. himself says below, that "nothing 
 is plainer than that there was a plurality of bishops in the 
 same church." "What can be more plain," says good old 
 Bishop Hall, "than that in every one of these churches, there 
 were many presbyters, yet but one angel. If that one were 
 not in place above the rest, and higher by the head than they, 
 how comes he to be noted in the throng? Why was not the 
 direction to all the angels of the church at Ephesus? All 
 were angels in respect to their ministry; one was the angel in 
 respect of his fixed superiority. There were thousands of stars 
 in this firmanient of the Asian churches; there were but sev- 
 en of the first magnitude; who can endure such an evasion, 
 that while one is mentioned, many are meant." "In support 
 of the opinion that Episcopacy was established during the 
 lifetime of the apostles, and with their approbation," says the 
 learned historian Mosbeim, "we are supplied with an argu- 
 ment of such strength, in those angels to whom St. John 
 addressed the epistles, which by the command of our Saviour 
 himself, he sent to the seven churches of Asia, as the presby- 
 terians, as they are termed, let them labor and strive as they 
 may, will never be able to overcome." — Commentaries on 
 the first three Centuries. VidaVs translation : p. 227. So 
 strong indeed is the testimony borne to Episcopacy by the 
 case of the seven angels, that even Baxter was led by it to 
 admit that "there were fixed bis^hops in the time of St. John." 
 Dr. Miller leads you, gentlemen, to make very light of the 
 belief of Episcopalians that James was bishop of Jerusalem. 
 Lightly, however, as he treats it, when to his own statement 
 we add the testimony of Eusebius, the ecclesiastical historian, 
 and indeed of all antiquity, it is impossible for you to set it 
 aside. Dr. M. does not attempt an argument on the subject.* 
 
 ♦How great mast have been the irritation on Dr. M's. mind agaiuit 
 
34 
 
 When Dr. Miller asserts that "the learned Jerome, in the 
 fourth century, declares concerning prelacy, as having no 
 foundation in divine appointment, and as gradually brought 
 in hy human ambition," he gives us a most strange perver^ 
 sion of Jerome's language. Jerome actually represents 
 Episcopacy as brought in, not hy, but as a needed cure for 
 human ambition — to prevent strife among the presbytery; 
 and in the very passage to which Dr. M. alludes, he refers 
 the introduction of Episcopacy, to the time when jealousies 
 began among the presbyters of Corinth in the absence of 
 Paul. (I Cor. i. 12.) — His own language is, "Till through the 
 instinct ot the devil, there grew in the church, factions; and 
 among the people it began to be professed, I am of Paul, and 
 1 of Apollos, and I of Cephas; churches were governed by 
 the common advice of presbyters; but when every one began 
 to reckon those whom he had baptized as his own, and not 
 Christ's, it was decreed in the whole world, that one, chosen 
 out oi the presbyters, should be placed over the rest, to whom 
 all care of the church should belong, and so the seeds of 
 schism be removed." What a misrepresentation of this lan- 
 guage is Dr . M's . statement ! Besides, how, if Jerome were 
 on his side, could he quote him, when he is liable to the same 
 objection which he brings against Theodoret, of living 
 three or four centuries after the apostles? Will Dr. Miller 
 never be consistent with himself? Jerome says, elsewhere, 
 "all bishops are the successors of the apostles:" — he saysj 
 that "others were ordained apostles by those [apostles] 
 whom our Lord had chosen" — that there were bishops in 
 Alexandria from the time of St. Mark — that St. James was 
 the first bishop of Jerusabm — that Timothy ^and Titus were 
 
 his "Episcopal brethren," when he could say, as he does at this point, 
 of the sources of proof which ihey allege from Scripture, that, ^Hhey 
 are just as destitute of force, and just as delusive, as the popish doctrine 
 that Ihe primacy of St. Peter, and ike transmission of that primacy to 
 the bishops of Rome, may be proved from the word of God.'\' 
 
35 
 
 bishops of Ephesus and Crete — that Ignatius was bishop of 
 Antioch, etc. etc. But Dr. M. says, that the sense in which 
 he represents Jerome's opinion, is the same in which it was 
 understood by the famous English bishops, Jewel, "Whitgift, 
 Stiilingfleet,and others. He does not tell us, however, wh€re,m 
 their writings, the proofs that they so understood Jerome are 
 to be found. There is no hazard in saying, that he could not 
 so refer to ihem, as the following actual quotations will serve 
 to show. Bp. Jewel says in his preface to his Apology for the 
 Church of England that ^'Episcopacy was settled in all the 
 churches in the very days of the apostles and hy them-^'' and in 
 the same work, chap, xiii.sect. 10., he actually quotes Jerome 
 as saying, that ^'all bishops are the successors of the apostles.*' 
 Abp. Whitgift, in a letter to Beza, (1553) says "the Bishops 
 were successors of the apostles, especially in certain points of 
 their function." Bp. StilUngfleet in his Unreasonableness of 
 Separation, says, "the bishops succeeded the apostles in the 
 government of the churches :" — "There is as much reason to 
 believe the apostolical succession to be of divine institution, 
 as the canon of Scripture, or the observation of the Lord's 
 day" — again, "the case of Timothy is an uncontrollable in- 
 stance of diocesan Episcopacy." Quotations of this tenor 
 directly opposed to Dr. Miller's assertion, might be largely 
 increased. How little could Dr. M. know of those men, and 
 th»ir writings, when he alleged, that they understood Jerome 
 as saying^ithat Episcopacy was brought in by human inven- 
 tion, and had no foundation in divine appointment! 
 
 And now Ignativs again crosses our path. Dr. M. has 
 now discovered that this writer, concerning whom his opin- 
 ions have been as various, as the shades of the forest 
 leaves in autumn — this writer, "who is commonly regarded 
 and resorted to as the sheet anchor of the Episcopal claim," 
 is no longer to be considered as such; for, the opinions of all 
 learned men, and common sense, to the contrary notwith- 
 standing. Dr. Miller gravely says that he does "not wish, a 
 
36 
 
 more distinct and graphic description of presbyterianism 
 than the epistles of Ignatius represent as existing in all the 
 churches which he addressed"! Let us see how this strange 
 argument will apply. Dr. M. says "Ignatius speaks express- 
 ly of a bishop, elders, and deacons, existing in every worship- 
 ing assembly-Presbyterians are the only denomination who 
 have in every worshiping assembly, a bishop, presbyters, or 
 elders, and deacons." But by turning back to page 20 it will be 
 seen that Dr. M. contends earnestly, and absurdly misquotes 
 Ignatius to show, that bishops are not, and presbyters alone 
 are, the true successors of the apostles: "the presbyters suc- 
 ceed in the place of the bench of the apostles." If, however, 
 Ignatius is a witness not for Episcopacy, but Presbyterianism, 
 then the presbyters he refers to, are the present ruling elders 
 of the Presbyterian church. You will not, Messrs, Editors, as- 
 sert, that your ruling elders exercise now, or at any previous 
 time have exercised, all the duties of the ministry, — that they 
 have in these duties succeeded the apostles. Yet Dr. M. 
 says, in the former part of this fourth chapter, that "as minis- 
 ters of Christ, empowered to go forth preaching the gospel and 
 administering Christian sacraments, they had successors, and 
 these stccessors were, manifestly, all those who were empow- 
 ered to preach the gospel, and administer the sacramental 
 seals: for, in the final commission which the Saviour gave to 
 the apostles, — they are sent forth to disciple allnations, and to 
 baptise them, etc." Ruling elders, I believe, do none of these 
 things, and therefore, by Dr. Miller's own testimony, are not 
 successors to the apostles. If it be said, that Dr. M. means 
 that these elders "succeed to the bench of the apostles" as 
 ruling only J it may be answered again, in Dr. M's. own 
 words, that "the least hint cannot be produced from the New 
 Testament, that the powers possessed by the apostles were af- 
 terwards divided?'^ If, moreover, the ruling elders of the 
 Presbyterian church, are to be regarded as the successors of 
 ihe apostles, with their limited duties; and if the apostles had 
 
57 
 
 no successors superior to them, (as is the obvious inference, ia 
 Dr. M^'s. application of the testimony of Ignatius to presby- 
 terianism,) to whom it may be asked, do the pastors of that 
 church succeed? If it be answered, to'the bishops of Ignatius, 
 I again inquire, but of whom are the bishops of Ignatius suc- 
 cessors? Not of the apostles, upon Dr. M's. own showing, 
 for they are succeeded by the elders. Into \\hat a dilemma 
 has he thus brought you, Messrs Editors! Your elders suc- 
 ceed the apostles, but j-our pastors, who, upon this principle, 
 have no prototype, and are plainly without divine institution, 
 preside over the successors of the apostolic bench! But what 
 does your Form of Church Government say on this subject? Its 
 5th chapter is in these words : "Ruling elders are properly 
 the representatives of the people, chosen by them, for the 
 purpose of exercising government and discipline, in conjunc- 
 tion with pastors or ministers. This office has been understood 
 by a great part of the Protestant Reformed churches, to be 
 designated in the Holy Scriptures, by the title of governments, 
 and of those who rule well but do not labor in the word and 
 doctrine."— Neither, in declaring the nature of the office of 
 pastor, does the Form of Government, make any reference to 
 apostolic succession for its ministers. Dr. M. is not there- 
 fore sustained by the constitution of his own church, in his 
 attempt to show, that presbyters, whether pastors, or ruling 
 elders, were successors of the apostles. Is it possible that be 
 did not see the absurdity of attempting to make Ignatius a 
 witness against Episcopacy, whose testimony to a hierarchy 
 is so plain, and incontestable, and often repeated, as to have 
 been itself the cause of inducing some learned men, and a- 
 mong them Episcopalians, to reject his authority altogether! 
 But allow me, in relation to this question, to quote a writer 
 whom you will, I am sure, at once allow to have no induce- 
 ment whatever to represent it favorably to the view which 
 Episcopalians have always taken of it, if not compelled to 
 do so, by the controlling force of indisputable teslimony. 
 
38 
 
 The Rev. James Smith, of the Cumberland Presbyterian 
 Church, has recently written and published in our own city, a 
 "FJistory of the Christian Church." On p. 49 of that work 
 the following impartial statement occurs. 
 
 "It must not be dissembled that different ranks and degrees 
 appear to have been established from the very first among the 
 ministers of religion. It is impossible to consider the Apos- 
 tles, or even such eminent peisons as Timothy, Titus, &.c. as 
 upon an entire footing with the generality of presbyters, or 
 teachers in the different churches. From the Epistles of the 
 primitive fathers, and particularly from those of St. Ignatius, it 
 appears incontestably that the church government by the three 
 distinct orders of bishops, presbyters and deacons, was fully 
 established in the course of the first century: as each of these 
 orders is particularly addressed, and as that father does not 
 mention the institution as a novelty, there is the utmost rea- 
 son to believe that this arrangement was made by the Apos- 
 tles themselves. It must be remembered that Ignatius was 
 the disciple of St. John, and suffered martrydom at Rome so 
 early as 107." 
 
 This statement is not only impartial, but, under the cir- 
 cumstances of his position, highly creditable to the author,* 
 
 But, after all that has been said on this subject, what is the 
 value of all Dr. Miller's arguments about succession, if he 
 gives the slightest degree of credit to the assertion of "the 
 
 *In the Ecclesiastical History of EusobJus, composed within two hun- 
 dred years of the apostolic age, are regular lists of the Bishops of Jeru- 
 salem, of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, and other principal cities, 
 copied from the records of those churches by Eusebius himself. He 
 names thirty-two Bishops as having presided in the church of Jerusalem 
 down to his own time, beginning with St. James. The first Bishop of 
 Rome was Linus; of Alexandria, St. Mark; of Antioch, Evodiu^, of 
 Ephesus, Timothy; ol Crete, Titus; of Smyrna, Polycarp, the mar- 
 tyr — all of them ordained, and constituted Bishops of those places, by 
 the apostles themselves. 
 
39 
 
 eminent episcopal divine," — ''the lerimed and able prelatist," 
 Dr. Barrow, that "the apostolical office in its nature and de- 
 siorn, was not successive, not communicable to others.'^ Into 
 such amazing inconsistencies is Dr. Miller driven by his in 
 veterate animosity to Episcopacy. 
 
 Dr. Miller is so careless of his reputation for discretion and 
 judgment, as to make deliberately the declaration, that, '^even 
 if prelacy*''* — a terra, which, in defiance of the usage of all 
 good writers- and of all Episcopalians especially, he contin- 
 ually substitutes for Episcopacy — ^^^even if prelacy was found 
 unequivocally represented as existing, by the Fathers, in fifty 
 years after the last apostle, yet, if it be not found in the Bible, 
 such testimony would by no means establish its apostolical ap- 
 pointment?''^ Again : "we know iivdeed that no such 
 
 TESTIMONY EXISTS." 
 
 It is more because of the air of confidence with which these 
 assertions are made, than any power they have in themselves. 
 
 * "If from the very days of the apostles downwards, for more tlian 
 fifteen hundred years, the order of the Church was uninterruptedly episco- 
 pal, as many advocates of episcopacy maintain," says the late eminent 
 presbyterian. Dr. Mason, of New York, in his Plea for Sacramental 
 Communion, p, 76, "although even such an argument could not be ad- 
 mitted against Scriptural proof, yet it would be extremely embarrassing 
 to their opponents. The difficulty of explaining so strange a phenome- 
 non, would create in conscientious men a fear that there must be some 
 mistake in such a construction of holy writ as should be thwarted by it; 
 and incline their minds to an interpretation with which it should be 
 found to accord." He denies indeed, that any such difficulty exists, 
 but upon this subject let me cite a disinterested witness, who treats it 
 M a mere historical fact. Gibbon in h\3 Hid. of the DecHne and Fall 
 of the Roman Empire, vol. ii. p. 3S2, says, "after we have passed 
 the difficulties of the first century," — which terminated but little more 
 than sixty years from the Crucifixion, about the time of the death of 
 St. John, and fifty years before the canon of Scripture was made — "we 
 find the Episcopal government universally established, till it was inter- 
 rupted by the republican genius of the Swiss and German refomers." 
 
40 
 
 that they are noticed here. The testimony of Jerome, even 
 as given by Dr. M. himself, will be sufficient, with candid men, 
 to refute the last; and he can have small pretensions to a ra- 
 tional judgment, who would insist upon the first. Let us see 
 how writers of authority on his own side, i. e. writers who ei- 
 ther were themselves Presbyterians, or not Episcopalians, con- 
 sider this matter. 
 
 Dr. Durell, an English writer of authority, in his Fieto of 
 the Foreign Reformed Churches, (p. 161.) says of the celebrated 
 Calvin: "For all that I have either seen of, or in him, or pro- 
 duced out of his writings, I am of this mind, that Ejnscovacy 
 was the government that he approved most, and that he took 
 it to be of apostolical institution.'^* 
 
 Martin Bucer, one of the most eminent of the continental 
 Reformers, said; "By the perpetual observation of all church- 
 es, even fro7n the apostle's times, we see, that it seemed good 
 to the Holy Ghost, that, among presbyters, to whom the pro- 
 curation of churches was chiefly committed, there should be 
 one that should have the care or charge of divers churches, 
 and the whole ministry committed to him; and by reason of 
 that charge, he was above the rest; and therefore, the name 
 of bishop was attributed peculiarly to those chief rulers*" 
 How's Vindication, p. 196. 
 
 Daille, the author of a celebrated work on the Right use of 
 //^e Fa/Zier^, speaking of the English Bishops, said, "We confess 
 that the foundation of their charge is good and lawful, estab- 
 lished by the apostles according to the command of Christ."" See 
 Bingham's French Church's Apology. 
 
 Du Moulin, another eminent and learned French Protea- 
 
 * The following passages from Calvin and Beza have been often quoted 
 in controversies of this nature. "If they would give us," says Calvin, 
 "such a hierarchy, in which the bishops have such a pre-eminence as that 
 they do not refuse to be subject unto Christ, then I will confess that they 
 are worthy of all anathemas, if any such shall be found, vi'ho will not rever- 
 ence it, and submit themselves to it with the utmost obedience. "And Beza 
 says, "if there be any who reject the whole order of Episcopacy, God 
 forbid that any man of a sound mind should assent to the madness of 
 
41 
 
 tant, ia a professed defence of presbyterian government, yet 
 admits, that, *'/Ae Episcopal form of government, was receiv- 
 ed by all churches, every where, presently after the apostles^ 
 limesy or even in their lime, as ecclesiastical history witness- 
 eth." Adam's Religious World, vol. 2. Art. Episcopacy. 
 
 Grotius, one of the most illustrious ornaments of the church 
 of Holland, said, in his treatise on Church Government: "£- 
 piscopacy had ils beginning in the apostolical times. This is tes- 
 tified by the catalogues of bishops left us by Irenaeus, Euse- 
 bius, Socrates, Theodoret and others, who all begin with the 
 apostolical age." Le C/erc, also a member of the church of Hoi- 
 land, and editor of the celebrated work of Grotius on the Truth 
 of Christianity y in his additions to that work, book i. sect. xi. — 
 thus testifies on this subject: "They, who, without prejudice 
 have read over the most ancient Christian writers that now re- 
 main, very well know, that the Episcopal discipline , prevailed 
 every where in the age imnVfdiately after the apostles; whence we 
 may collect, that it is of apostolical institution. The other 
 which they call Presbyterian, was instituted in many places of 
 France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland, by those who in 
 the sixteenth century made a separation from the church of 
 Rome." These, be it remembered, are forced, not voluntary, 
 admissions of men of unquestioned learning belonging to the 
 Presbyterian churches, in those countries where such church- 
 es originated. Writers ©n the same side, that is, in favor of 
 Presbyterianism, in England, Scotland, and our own country, 
 though they have professed to speak of Episcopacy as intro- 
 duced afier the apostles' times, have never been able to agree 
 upon the period of ils introduction. Campbell, Baxter, Dod- 
 ridge, and Dr. Miller assign very different periods. This fact 
 is notorious. They also disagree as to the causes which pro- 
 daced the change. Dr. Miller chooses, in the abundance of 
 his charity, to impute it to corruption; although it occurred, 
 according to him, at a period, when, as history testifies, even 
 the heathen enemies of the gospel speak of .uncommon purity 
 of life and principle, as the universal characteristic of its fol- 
 lowers, and when eminence in the gospel cause only opened 
 the way to persecution, suffering, and the flames! 
 
 D 2 
 
42 
 
 The learned Bisop Jeremy Taylor, in allusion to tbe 
 testimony of Blondel, who fixed the introduction at thirty-five 
 years after the death of St. John, eloquently and truly says; 
 "Now then, Episcopacy is confessed to be of about sixteen hun- 
 dred years continuance;* and if before this they can show any 
 ordination by mere presbyters; by any but an apostle, or an 
 apostolical man;f and if there were not visibly a distinction 
 of powefs and persons relatively in the ecclesiastical govern- 
 ment; or if they can g'ive a rational account, why they who 
 are forced to confess the honor and distinct order of Episco- 
 pacy for about sixteen ages, should, in the dark interval of 
 thirty-five years, (in which they can pretend to no monument, 
 or record, to the contrary) yet make unlearned scruples of 
 things they cannot colourably prove; if, I say, they can rea- 
 sonably account for these things, I, for my own part, will be 
 ready to confess, that they are not guilty of the greatest, and 
 most unreasonable schism in the world ;| but else they have 
 no colour to palliate the unlearned crime!" Sermons vol. 3* 
 ;?. 97. 
 
 Such also was the light in which the Immortal Chillingworth, 
 the author of the noble axiom, /Ae Bible^ and the 'Bible only is 
 the religion of Protestants, regarded this subject: " When"-3aid 
 he — "I shall see all the fables of the metamorphosis acted, 
 and prove true stories, when I shall see all the democracies 
 in the world lie down and sleep, and awake into monarchies; 
 then will I begin to believe, that presbyterial government, 
 having continued in ^the Church during the apostles' times, 
 should presently after, against the apostles doctrine and the 
 will of Christ, be whirled about like a scene in a mask, and 
 transformed into Episcopacy. — Episcopacy being granted to 
 be ancient and universal, must be granted also to be apostol- 
 ic." Works vol. 2. p. 537. 
 
 The learned Richard Hooker, who, is on all sides, admitted 
 to be the ablest writer on ecclesiastical subjects in our lan- 
 guage, offered long since, in his profound work on Ecclesias- 
 
 *Thi3 was writtea in 1660. fSuch as Barnabas, Timothy, &c. 
 $This was written durbg the time of the Puritans, in England. 
 
43 
 
 tical Polity, the following well known challenge, which, to this 
 day, remains unanswered. "We require you to find out but 
 one church, upon the face of the whole earth, that hath been 
 ordered by your (presbyterian) discipline, or hath not been or- 
 dered by ours, that is to say, by Episcopal regiment, since the 
 time that the blessed apostles were here conversant."* Il is 
 an indisputable fact that the opponents of Episcopacy hare 
 never yet been able. to produce from Scripture, or antiquity, 
 an instance of the joint action of a presbytery; or any act can- 
 sisteut with the idea that presbyters were only responsible to 
 each other, and not to bishops. f There is a material differ- 
 
 *Th'e learned and pious Heber uses very nearly the same language. 
 See his Sermons in England p. 249-252. 
 
 t The only case ever pretended to be discovered, is alluded to by Dr. 
 M. in another part of this chapter. The narrative in the beginniiJg of 
 Acts xiii. is alleged to have been an ordination of Paul and Barnabas, by 
 men, none of whom were prelates. Those who participated in this act, 
 are certainly not called apostles, nor bishops, but ^rop^e/s and teachers. 
 But is it possible, that men who examine into the facts of this case, can 
 seriously maintain that it was an ordination to any office of the minb- 
 try? What then does Paul mean when he says of himself, that he was 
 "an apostle, not of men, neither hymen, but by Jesus Christ and God 
 the Father." (GaL i. 1.) Had not both Barnabas and Saul exercised 
 their ministry before this time, in other places, as well as a whole year in 
 the very city of Antioch, where this act took place? Are you prepared, 
 Messrs Editors, to admit, in defiance of all Dr. M's. previous statements 
 on that point, that Barnabas had now, by this act, become the equal of 
 the apostles, and admitted jointly wiih Paul to that "peculiar and pre- 
 eminent" rank? Or must Paul be now denied, for theory's sake, in op- 
 position to his own claims oft repeated, to be himself, an apostle? But 
 is it not more reasonable to suppose, that this was 720 ordination to a min- 
 isterial office, but merely a designation and separation to a special mis- 
 sion — the performance of which is fully recorded in Acts xiii. and xir. 
 "The Holy Ghost said separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work 
 ivhereuiito I have called them: — So they being sent forth by the Holy 
 Ghost departed" — visited sundry places where the gospel, probably, had 
 not been preached — gathered churches — revisited some of them — ordain- 
 ed eiders in every church, and then returned to Antioch, "from wher .^ 
 
44 
 
 ence between a mere 'plurality of presbyters, as in Ephesus, 
 (Acts XX.) and their acting together as a body having corporate 
 authority. — Nor is there, prior to the Reformation, an instance 
 recorded in Ecclesiastical history, of any pretensions to the 
 presbyterian mode of church government, as opposed to the 
 episcopal, except that of Aerius, a presbyter of Sebastia in 
 PontuS; a follower of the Arian heresy; and even he failed in 
 his attempt to give currency to his opinions. Episcopacy has 
 never been, in any instance, deliberately a-nd voluntarily l^id 
 aside by any body of men on the face of the earth, with the 
 exception of the English and Scottish presbyterians. The 
 European continental reformers always justified their depar- 
 ture from episcopacy by the plea of rigorous necessity. 
 
 Dr. M. says that he can not only establish that there is no 
 evidence in favor of diocesan episcopacy to be found in 
 Scripture, but also that he can show that the testimony in fa- 
 vor of ministerial parity found in the New Testament, is clear 
 and strong. As I do not intend to become the assailant of 
 your system, I shall notice what he says on this subject, 
 in a very brief way, and only as it has a bearing on Episco- 
 pacy. — He alleges that "nothing is plainer than that our bless- 
 ed Lord severely rebuked, and explicitly condemned all con- 
 tests among his ministering servants about rank and pre-emi- 
 nence." Undeniably : — but how does this prove that there 
 was no ranker pre-eminence? On the contrary it rather 
 takes for granted that there wa?. Why should men contend 
 aboiit what was neither in existence, nor in prospect ? 
 
 Dr. M; perseveres, notwithstanding the contrary has beerj 
 many times proved to him, in speaking of the Waldenscs as 
 not being Episcopalians, and as sustaining his views. A few 
 brief quotations will be sufficient on this point. Mosheim 
 says: (Cent. xii. chap. 5. sec. 13.) "The government of the 
 church was committed, by the Waldenses to bishops, presby- 
 ters, and deacons ; for they acknowledged that these three ec- 
 clesiastical orders were instituted by Christ himself." Mr. 
 
 ihey had been recommended to the grace of God /or the work which they 
 had fulfilled,^' and for which of course iheir commission was at an end. 
 
45 
 
 Gilley in his account of his visit to the Waldenses, says: "Up- 
 on mj enqiiiriog of M. Peyrani whether there had not for- 
 merly been bishops, properly so called, in the Yaudois Church, 
 he answered, yes." — la a communication made by M. Pey- 
 rani, then at the head of the Waldensian Church, to the Lon- 
 don society, for propagating the Gospel in 1820, he expressed 
 his regret at those misfortunes which had deprived the Wal- 
 densian Church of the benefit of an Episcopal government. 
 [Christian Observer, 1820 p. 874.) — "The proofs which Mr. 
 Sims adduces of there having been the three orders of bish- 
 ops, priests, and deacons, among the ancient Vaudois, are 
 ample and conclusive." [Christ. Ohs. 1828. p. 254.) The 
 late Dr. J. P. Wilson an eminent, and learned Presbyterian 
 minister of Philadelphia, says of them : "The Waldenses — 
 were covertly Episcopal, though after Claude, not papal : but 
 never pre sbyterial, prior to the Helvetic abjuration of popery. — 
 The Syrian Christians, the Culdees, and the Waldenses 
 were all of Episcopal origin." Christian Spectator, J^ew 
 Haven, 1828, p. 57, 58. 
 
 Again: — Dr. M. says, without any qualification whatever: 
 "It is acknowledged, by the great mass of learned and pious 
 men, of all Protestant denominations, that it is plain from 
 the apostolical writings, that the ecclesiastical order of the 
 synagogue was transferred by inspired men to the christian 
 church." It is difficult to suppose that Dr. M. could have 
 been mistaken upon this subject; yet, if otherwise, his reading 
 
 must have been very limited in relation to it ; so much so in- 
 
 if . . . 
 
 deed as to render his opinion worthy of little confidence on 
 
 the subject. "All impar^io-Z judges" — says the Christian Ob- 
 server (1804.) "will admit that he has the best of the argu- 
 ment, who contends that the government of the primitive 
 church was formed upon the model of the Jewish Priesthood. 
 That this was understood by the early Christians to be the 
 case, is not denied even by the prejudiced Mosheim." (See his 
 Ecc. Hist. cent. 2, chap. 2. sect. 4.) The Synagogue was, in 
 fact, only a human institution made for the purpose of extending 
 a knowledge of the law among the people: its officers were 
 an angel, rulera or presbyters (a kind of civil magistrate) and 
 
46 
 
 deacons, but it had no sacrifices or sacraments. Its ministers 
 had no sacred character, and performed no duties of divine 
 institution. Its analogy with the Christian Church is therefore 
 much more than doubtful.* But even if the Church had been 
 modeled upon the plan of the Synagogue, the opponents of 
 Episcopacy would gain no advantage, for there would still be 
 a great and necessary difference between them* The Jews 
 had in every large city, for instance, many synagogues, each 
 of which had its distinct government; but still the temple 
 with its priesthood was the centre of unity ; and although it 
 is obvious that there were several Christian congregations in 
 the larger cities, yet in Scripture we always read not of 
 churches, but the Church. Take the case of Jerusalem, for 
 instance ; when Paul and Barnabas visited that city, there 
 must have been a much larger number of Christians than could 
 have assembled in any one place, yet we find that, however 
 many congregations there may have been, there was but one 
 Church; and though there were many e/cZcr*, there was but 
 one president or bishop. No one will say that we are told of 
 iny such thing as an organized presbytery in the Church at 
 Jerusalem. It is the opinion of the ablest, and soundest wri- 
 ters on the subject, that the Church at Jerusalem was model- 
 ed from the temple^ and, that that Church served as the'model 
 for all others .Nevertheless, Dr. M. perseveres in saying that: 
 *'It is evident on the slightest inspection of the New Testament 
 history, that the names and functions of the church officers 
 appointed by the apostles, were derived, not from the temple, 
 but from the synagogue" ! 
 
 Again. "It is explicitly granted, by our Episcopal breth- 
 ren themselves, that in the New Testament, the titles Bishop 
 and Presbyter were used interchangeably, to designate the 
 same office, and that the names were then common." True, 
 but they also assert, and prove, moreover, that there was a 
 superior order c&Ued Ajiostles, which had jurisdiction over the 
 Bishops or Presbyters^ and thatthe names of these officers were 
 subsequently changed; of which I have given evidence, in the 
 former part of this Letter. 
 
 Again, "It is manifest, that Tiinothy received his designa> 
 
47 
 
 tioD to the sacred office "by the laying on of the hands of the 
 presbytery.^ It cannot be manifest that he was so designated 
 by their hands only, while such a passage remains as that in 
 Paul's second epistle to Timothy, 1.6. '•'Stir up the gift of God 
 which is in thee, by the laying on of my hands.^' This passage 
 must first be obliterated from our Bibles. 
 
 "It is well known," says Dr. M. that, "at the era of the Re- 
 formation, the leaders of the church of England stood alone, 
 in reforming their church upon prelatical (i. e. Episcopal) prin- 
 ciples."* Indeed 1 I have hitherto supposed, and certainly all 
 
 * Dr. M. gives a very unjust account of "the principles which formed 
 the dividing lines between the Puritans of England, and the Prelates and 
 others by whom the Reformed church was organized in that land." He 
 says that "the Puritans CDntendedJthat the Bible was the only infallible rule 
 of faith and practice, that it ought to be regarded as the standard of 
 church government and discipline as well as of doctrine etc., -But the Bish- 
 ops and court clergy — [by which courteous appellation he means ^he 
 Episcopalians] — openly maintained that the Scriptures were not to be con- 
 sidered as the only standard of church government and discipline: that 
 the Fathers and tl>e early councils were to be united with them as the 
 rule; that the Saviour and his apostles left the whole matter of church 
 order to be accommodated to the discretion of the civil magistrate, etc." 
 Every intelligent reader of the history of that period will at once perceive 
 the manifest injustice of this statement. The Puritans contended "that 
 God had given in the Scriptures, a complete and unchangeable form, 
 for the government both of Church and State.^^ "The Chur<ch," said 
 Cartwright, their great leader, "wherein any magistrate, king, or empe- 
 ror, is a member, is divided into some that are to govern, as pastors, 
 doctors, and elders, and into such as are to obcij, as magistrates of all 
 sorts, and the people." — The Episcopalians contended, on the other hand, 
 that there is not, in Scripture, any detailed and prescribed system of 
 church government, but that the form of church government, may differ, 
 and has differed, in different ages, and countries, without affecting the faith, 
 or the ministry of the gospel ; and that it is the duty of all Christians, in 
 «ivil matters, to submit to the powers that be, as ordained of God. Epis- 
 copalians still distinguish between the essential character of the ministry 
 in three orders. Bishops, priests, and deacons, and church govern- 
 ment; they hold the former to be a divine institution, but church govern- 
 
48 
 
 history confirms the supposition, that the churches of Den- 
 mark and Sweden were also reformed upon Episcopal princi- 
 ples. Whatever may be said of Knox, and some others whom 
 
 ment with these may comprise other offices, — as in this country, wardens 
 and vestrymen for attending to the temporal business of the Church: — It 
 may comprise also the mode by which ministers are vested with juris- 
 diction; and the particular organization of her legislative, executive and 
 judiciary powers. As these latter things are left to human expediency, and 
 may be ordered diiFerently in different churches, they do not contend, 
 strictly speaking, for the divine institution of Episcopal governme7it. The 
 Presbyterian church in this country, carries this subject mucn fariher than 
 the Episcopal, for it asserts in its Form of Government, that; "the char- 
 acter, qualifications, and authority of church officers are laid down in 
 the Holy Scriptures, as well as the proper method of their investiture and 
 institution," and reference is u)ade to Scripture for the purpose of sus- 
 taining its claim to divine right for its vhole system of government, in all 
 its parts, officers, presbyters, synods, etc. etc. 
 
 It may be well to add here, to prevent misunderstanding, that by di- 
 vine rights or appointment^ we do not mean an express command of 
 God, or of our blessed Saviour; nor, in this sense, can the Christian fe'ab- 
 bath, nor infant baptism, nor the canon of Scripture, be said to haA'e the 
 sanction of divine institution ; but that may be said to be divinely insti- 
 tuted which is delivered by men divinely inspired; as are all the preceptg 
 and ordinances which we have received from the prophets and apostles 
 by divine inspiration ; and the same may be said of whatever is founded 
 upon a divine commission, as the preaching of the gospel, and the admin- 
 istration of the sacraments. It must be conceded, on all sides, that the 
 Christian ministry is in these two last senses a divine institution, and this 
 is all we claim for Episcopacy. 
 
 Calamy, inhis Life of Baxter, vol. i. p. 141, says that the Presbyteriao 
 ministers who met at Sion college in 1660, on the restoration of Charles 
 II., after much deliberation, presented to the king a paper in which *'they 
 ofl^ered to allow of the true ancient primitive presidency [Episcopacy] 
 in the Church, with a due mixture of presbyters" — and that for reform- 
 ing existing evils "they proposed Bishop Usher's Reduction of Episcopa- 
 cy." Neal also mentions the same circumstance. He says, ( Hist, of 
 the Puritans, vol. ii. p. 567.) "the well meaning presbyterians" offered 
 as a plan of accommodation with the Episcopalians, Archbishop Usher's 
 mode of primitive Episcopacy. Dr. Mason, in his Plea for Sacramtn- 
 
49 
 
 he names, it is a fact, which any reader of ecclesiastical histo- 
 ry may verify, that Lsither, Melancthoo, and Bucer did not 
 interpret the New Testanrieat as plainly teaching Ihe doc- 
 trine of parity, nor "regard every kind of imparity in the gos- 
 pel ministry as the result of human contrivance, and not of 
 divine appointment." Lulher himself declared that '■^'d the 
 popish bishops would cease to persecute the gospel, we would 
 acknowledge them as our Fathers, and willingly obey their 
 authority, which we Jiad supported by the word of God:'*^^ and 
 Melancthon, in the Apology for the Augustan Confession, says, 
 '*I would to God it lay in me to restore the government of 
 bishops." And Mosheim says ; f '"The internal government 
 of the Lutheran Church seems equally removed from episco- 
 
 al Communion , p. 275, in describing this ^?(zn, says, "its chief feature 
 is, that, without destroying the distinctive titles of archbishop, bishop, 
 and presbyter, as known in England, they [the presbyters] might be 
 conjoined in the government of the Church; a bishop being perpetual 
 president in the ecclesiastical assemblies made up of presbyters." It is a 
 curious incident in the history of parties, that while this plan of Usher's^ 
 which has been, at times, so much lauded by anti-episcopalians, and 
 which would have satisfied the English loell rneaninj presbyterians, al- 
 thoaghit certainly would have been a reduction of English Episcopacy as 
 it then stood, takes undeniably higher ground in regard to government 
 than the Episcopal church of this country. Usher's plan excluded from the 
 government of the clm.-ch all but bishops and presbyters. Neither dea- 
 con, nor layman, would have bean allowed to interfere or associate with 
 them, and the decrees of such synods might have been expected to be 
 as absolute and as. tyrannical as those of any bishop in Christendom. 
 Oligarchies have surely been found to be as oppressive to the rights of 
 the governed, as any monarchy or despotism that ever existed. The 
 American Episcopal Church contending for divine right simply for it 
 three orders of ministers, allows each of those orders, and the whole body 
 of the laity by delegates of their own annual choice, to share in its gov- 
 ernment. Its bishops, who constitute, severally, in their own dioceses, 
 its executive, are bound by written law, and can no more exercise 
 power beyond that law than the humblest member of the flock. 
 
 * See How's Vindication, p- 176. t Hist. cent. xvi. part 2. chap. 1. 
 0eet. 4. 
 
50 
 
 pacy, on the one hand, and from prebyterianism on the other; 
 if we except the kingdoms of Sweden and Denmark, who re- 
 tain the form of government (episcopal) which preceded the 
 Reformation, purged indeed from the abuses and superstitions 
 that rendered it so odious." 
 
 In reference to Dr. M's. assertion that Episcopalians also 
 ''depart from the apostolic mode in respect to the deacon's 
 office," perhaps enough has been said in the previous pages of 
 this Letter. One circumstance only deserves noticehere. Dr. 
 Miller is put to much difficulty to reconcile the fact of Philip, 
 the deacon, "being found preaching and baptising in Samaria 
 and other places," with the character, which he chooses to 
 consider as properly belonging to the office of deacon. In 
 this situation, he imagines, without the slightest ground for it, 
 that Philip must have received ordination to the presbytery; 
 "for," he absurdly asks, "are not cases frequently occurring in 
 the presbyterian church, in which youug men, after serving a 
 year or two as deacons, or ruling elders, are set apart as min- 
 isters of the gospel!" True, Philip is called an Evangelist. But 
 Evangelists were not an order: deacons might be such. Is it 
 not strange, after so much said of the inability of his Episco- 
 pal brethren to produce direct testimony from Scripture — after 
 asserting that their testimony was only indirect and remotely in- 
 ferentiaV^ — that Dr. M. should hazard a mere, literal, wholly 
 unsupported, conjecture, as conclusive testimony! Letus try 
 him with his own "regular syllogism," which he made for the 
 benefit of Episcopalians, in the case of Timothy and Titus, 
 in the former part of this chapter. "None but presbyters can 
 preach and baptise; but Philip preached and baptized; there- 
 fore Philip must have been a presbyter!" But, as Dr. M. said 
 in the former case, "is not the very thing to be proved;" 
 viz: that deacons could not preach and baptise "here taken 
 for granted] Can there be a more gross begging of the whole 
 question than tlys argument exemplifies^" — '^Untilit he prov- 
 ed that Philip preached and baptized as adeacon!" — why, it is 
 most abundantly proved, not by indirect and remote, but by the 
 direct testimony of Scripture, that he was ordained a deacon — 
 that he did preach and baptise, and that he is called at the same 
 
51 
 
 time a deacon and evnn^elist: — '^Ph\\\p the evangelist, one of the 
 seven''' (Acts xxi. 8.) What other proof does Dr. M. desire? 
 Much, it AvoLild seem; for he now quotes — reckless of his owa 
 denunciation of all such testimony, in the former part of this 
 chapter, — Origen, and Ambrose, and Chrysostom, and even the 
 apostolical constitutions ^ as testimony in relation to the Scrip- 
 ture office of deacon! The actual perusal of his statements, 
 alone, can make it credible, that he has resorted to such a 
 manifest inversion of his own declared principles! 
 
 But allow me to introduce here another brief extract from 
 Mr. Smith's History of the Church; in relation to the office of 
 deacon. Belonging himself to a religious body, which, like 
 that of which Dr. Miller is a member, takes a different view of 
 the duties of this office, from that which is taken by the 
 Episcopal church, yet he has regarded truth, as more valuable 
 than a mere party or sectarian triumph, and has given, accord- 
 ingly, such an account, as is consistent alike with Scripture, 
 and the uniform testimony of ecclesiastical history. 
 
 "An inferior order of ministers, called deacons, were ap- 
 pointed from the first institution of the Church, whose office it 
 was to assist in the administration of the Lord's supper, to 
 carry the elements to the sick and absent, to receive the ob- 
 lations of the people, to rebuke those who behaved irreverent- 
 ly during divine service, to relieve the distressed, and to watch 
 over the conduct of the people. In some churches they also 
 read the Gospels, and were allowed to baptise and to preach. 
 The number of these ministers was not limited, but was gen- 
 erally in proportion to the wants of the Church. Some, how- 
 ever, after the example of t|je church at Jerusalem, confined 
 their number to seven; and the church of Rom9 thought this rule 
 so obligatory, that, when the number of presbyters amounted 
 to forty-sis, that of the deacons was limited to seven." p. 49. 
 
 Dr. Miller tells us in this fourth chapter, that the burthen of 
 proof in relation to Episcopacy, rests Aviih Episcopalians. If 
 this were admitted to be just, with reference to the world at 
 large, yet upon what grounds can it be thrown upon us, 
 with reference to Presbyterians'? They were challenged, more 
 than one hundred and fifty years ago^ in that immortal work 
 
52 
 
 of Hooker, which, at this day, is found upon the desk of every 
 divine, to show aa instance in the whole world, of a churcli 
 governed otherwise than episcopally, from the apostles' times 
 to the Reformation, and the fact yet remains to be shown! 
 There is no probability that such a fact ever can be shown. 
 Episcopalians have a right to take the ground, — that, as in the 
 case of the Scriptures, on which they found all their doctrines, 
 and all their hopes, — as an existing institution, through its 
 whole period claimed to be co-existent with Christianity, 
 (whose enemies, and in later times they have not been iew , 
 have never yet been able to agree on any period subsequent 
 to the apostles for its origin,) they have the presumption in their 
 favor, and such a pre-occupation of the ground, as that Episco- 
 pacy must stand good, till some suflSicient reason is adduced 
 against it; in short, that the burden of proof lies not with us, 
 but with our adversaries.* 
 
 A brief recapitulation, or arrangement of some of Dr. Mil- 
 ler's propositions will close what I have to say at this time. If 
 a ^y one should think it diflScult to reconcile these propositions, 
 as they are here presented, I beg it may be remembered, that 
 'a 9 fault is not mine. I believe they faithfully represent his 
 :-u n declarations. The references are to the pages of this 
 'ecter. 
 I. The apostolical office was not successive (p. 21.) — the pres- 
 ers succeeded in the place of the bench of the apostles (p. 
 ) —Presbyterian ruling elders are such presbyters (p. 36.) 
 U who are empowered to preach the gospel and administer 
 s icramental seals are successors of the apostles, (p. 36.) 
 The writings of Ignatius are unworthy of confidence as 
 e works (p. 6.) — they are in the main, the real works of 
 'isr whose name they bear (p. 6.) — agtiin, they are un- 
 of confidence (p. 6.) — contain a graphic description of 
 Tiauism as existing in all the churches he addresses. 
 
 ^oret lived four centuries after the apostolic age, and 
 ne not to be trusted as to a fact which occurred dur- 
 
 'laiely^s Rhetoric, p. 79. 
 
53 
 
 ing that age (p. 19.) — the learned Jerome, and Origen, and Au- 
 gustine, and Ambrose, and Cbrysostom, and the apostolical-con- 
 stitutions, of about the same time; and Dr. Barrow sixteen cen- 
 uries after, are authorities for facts during the apostolic age 
 p. 51 &D 16.) 
 
 4. Episcopalians do not pretend to quote a single passage 
 of Scripture which declares in so many words, in favor of 
 their claim (p. 11.) — whoever expects to find any formal or 
 explicit declarations on the subject of the ministry delivered 
 by Christ or his apostles, will be disappointed — the Scriptures 
 present no formal or explicit declarations on the subject, (p. 
 11.) 
 
 5. The advocates of Episcopacy refer us to no passages of 
 Scripture asserting or even hinting that diocesan bishops suc- 
 ceed the apostles in the appropriate powers and pre-eminence 
 of the apostolic character (p. 7.) — Episcopalians commonly 
 urge from Scripture that Timothy was bishop of Ephesus, and 
 Titus of Crete, — that the angels addressed in the epistles to the 
 seven churches, were bishops, — that the apostle James was 
 bishop of Jerusalem; — that the New Testament holds forth as 
 existing in the apostolic church, and intended to be perpetual, 
 an order of men superior to presbyters — they would persuade 
 us not only that the New Testament bears them out in main- 
 taining the actual existence of such an order in the apostolic 
 church, but also that it warrants them in contending for it as 
 perpetually and indispensably binding, p. 23 &c. 
 
 6. No testimony of the Fatiiers exists which unequivocally 
 represents Episcopacy as existing within fifty years from the 
 last apostle, (p. 39.) — Jerome declares it was brought in at the 
 time when jealousies began among the presbyters of Corinth 
 in the absence of St. Paul. (p. 31.) 
 
 I have referred to the previous pa<^es of this Letter for such 
 passages as I have found occasion to quote in my replies. One 
 or two of them, which I have not previously quoted, you can 
 find, without difficulty, on examining your own columns. 
 
 I have been led to extend this letter, only intended origin- 
 ally to comprise a few paragraphs, to a considerable length. 
 It is time I should bring it to a close. 
 
54 
 
 i trust, however much I may have been tempted by the 
 recklessness of Dr. Miller's assertions and invective, to depart 
 from my avowed design of acting on the defensive only, I shall 
 be found to have strictly adhered to it. I have been anxious 
 only to vindicate the church of which I am a member, from 
 the sweeping reproach, which you have assisted Dr. M. in at- 
 tempting to fix upon her, of being utterly destitute of Scriptur- 
 al warrant for her lovg established institutions. I trust, that 
 the effort will not have been made in vain. What advantage 
 Dr. Miller's oft repealed assaults upon his "Episcopal breth- 
 ren" as he calls them, may have brought to your own church, 
 I have no means of knowing, but I can safely declare, that 
 there is, probably, no man living, who has been the means of 
 attaching so many individuals to the Episcopal church, as Dr. 
 M.: not intentionally — I fully acquit him of that charge — 
 but indirectly. His writings have undeniably led more per* 
 sons to investigate the subject of the ministry, than those of 
 any other person of our day. I freely state the fact, that there 
 are annually admitted to the ministry of the Episcopal church 
 not a few persons whose religious education was acquired else- 
 where. No small portion of the present ministers of the Episcopal 
 Church; including four of her present bishops, were educated 
 in other denominations, and have attached themselves to her 
 from convictions formed in manhood, and after an examina- 
 tion of the points of controversy connected with ecclesias- 
 tical history. Some of these passed through the halls of the 
 seminary, where Dr. Miller himself dogmatizes, — they heard 
 his arguments from his own lips, and were led by the 
 manifestations of his feelings, similar to those of which I 
 have spoken in this Letter, to examine the subject, fully and 
 deliberately, for themselves. We have among us some, who 
 had even exercised the ministry elsewhere, for longer or 
 shorter periods, and who upon th.eir examination of this sub- 
 ject, were induced to change their connexions and eccle- 
 siastical allegiance. Of the eleven ministers of the Episco- 
 pal Church now in this State^ eight have been led by their 
 convictions, at the sacrifice of some feeling, so far to separate 
 from their early connexions, as to cast in their lot among us* 
 
55 
 
 I do not mention these facts as cause of triumph ; the subject 
 is unfit for the manifestation of such a feeling; but to show 
 that we do not think ourselves likely to lose ground, even by 
 the vt'idest possible discussion of the subject. 
 
 And now allow me, Messrs, Editors, to ask of you a candid 
 consideration of what I have now felt it my duty to lay be- 
 fore you. I have not written in an angry or sectarian spirit,^ 
 and I trust that what I have written may not excite any such 
 spirit in others. May the great Head of the Church overrule 
 all our differences for its advancement, and for setting forward 
 the salvation of all men. 
 
 AN EPISCOPALIAN. 
 
 June 12th, 1835. 
 
 P, S. After a considerable portion of the above Letter wag written, a 
 friend put into my hands, a copy of the work of Dr. Miller, the repub- 
 lication of the fourth cl apter of which has called forth these strictures. A 
 single glance over its pages is sufficient to show, that it fully sustains the 
 allegation of Dr. Miller's motives made by me on page 4th of this Letter. 
 To make no reference to the first three chapters, or to what has been said 
 above of the fourth chapter, the following heads of the fifth, will be 
 sufficient evidence of the aggressive character of the whole. This- 
 chapter, though bearing the title of "the worship of the Presbyterian 
 church," is divided into sections with the following titles, — Presbyterians 
 REJECT prescribed Liturgies: — do not observe holy days: — reject 
 godfathers and godmothers in baptism: — the sign of the cross in baptism: 
 — the rite of confirmation: — kneeling at the Lord's supper: — admin- 
 istering the Lord's supper in private: — bowing at the name of Jesus: — 
 reading the apocryphal books in public worship. As, under all these 
 heads, the burden of reference and of defence, is thrown upon the Epis- 
 copal church, it would seem that Dr. Miller supposes thatPresbyterianism, 
 is only to be sustained by the destruction of the Episcopal church. His 
 determination seems to hi that of "the children of Edom in the day of 
 Jerusalem, who said. Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof." 
 It is not easy to conceive why the Editors of the American Presbyterian, 
 themselves connected with one of the most influential denominations in 
 this region of country, should find it needful to join in such a warfare a- 
 gainst a mere handful — comparatively — of Episcopalians. They seem, 
 however, disposed to avail themselves thoroughly of Dr. Miller's wea~ 
 
56 
 
 pons, and to iiUow their paper to be the vehicle of gross imputations up- 
 on the principles and practices of those, who, at the same time, they 
 call their "Episcopal brethren!" Anxious only for truth, when they 
 shall have accomplished their weekly task of giving circulation to Dr. 
 Miller's charitable labors, I may find it convenient to trouble them witk 
 another letter. 
 
LETTER 
 
 TO THE MEMBERS OF THE 
 
 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 
 IN NASHVILLE; 
 
 CONTAINING A REPLY TO A PUBLICATION OF THE 
 
 REV. SAiMUEL MILLER, D. D. 
 
 [N THE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN OF SEPTEMBER 3d. 
 1835, AND IN SOME OTHER PAPERS. 
 
 BY GEORGE V^ELLER, D. D. 
 
 RECTOR OF CHRIST CHURCH, NASHVILLE. 
 
 NASHVILLE: 
 
 PRINTED BT S. NYE & CO. 
 
 1836. 
 
A LETTER 
 
 To the mnnbcr.s' of the Proicstant Episcopal Ckurch, in 
 Nashville. 
 
 Dear Brethren — An article or communication of unusual 
 length for the mode of publication, by the Rev. Dr. Samuel 
 Miller, Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the Presbyte- 
 rian Theological Seminary at Princeton , New Jersey, ap- 
 peared in the American Presbyterian of this City, on the 
 3d of September last, and since, I learn, in some other re- 
 ligious papers, — to which I think it necessary in this man- 
 ner to call your attention, 
 
 I had at first contemplated only a brief reply to Dr. Mil- 
 ler's animadversions upon our church and myself, through 
 the columns of the same paper in which Dr. Miller's commu- 
 liiration was published. Permission to do this, was, how- 
 ever, discourteously refused by the Editors of the American 
 Presbyterian, on the alleged ground that they did ''not know 
 how far the proposed reply would be respectful to Dr. Mil- 
 ler or themselves!'''^ As the existing controversy, in our vi- 
 cinity, according to their own admission, as will be seen in 
 the sequel, had been commenced by themselves, it would 
 seem that civility, apart from justice and christian charity, 
 would have allowed me the use of those columns, through 
 which, alone, my defence against accusations of a personal 
 
and serious nature, could reach those before whom those ac- 
 cusations had been fully spread. I must, however, do the 
 editors the justice of believing, that they may have conceived 
 it difficult for me to make any suitable reply to Dr. Miller's 
 numerous personalities, which should be respectful to Mm 
 without departing from the respect which I owed to myself. 
 
 You are, of course, aware, that a work written by Dr. 
 Miller, and containing many uncharitable, unjust, and even 
 false, imputations upon the principles and practices of our 
 beloved church, had been unnecessarily brought before this, 
 community, by the Editors of the American Presbyterian 
 through the columns of their paper during many successive 
 weeks, to the disturbance of our peace, and leading to the 
 formation, with those who should give credit to Dr. Miller's 
 statements, of very unfavorable opinions, in relation to our 
 religious principles, practices, and character. 
 
 It was impossible that a publication of this nature, and un- 
 der these circumstances, could have been passed by unno- 
 ticed by us, consistently with self respect, or with the desire 
 to obtain and hold the respect of the community around us. 
 ]f the allegations thus applied directly to us and our princi- 
 ples by those editors were true, it would only have been an 
 honest act in the community to deprive us of their confidence, 
 and hold us up to the world as a reproach upon the Gospel. 
 A writer, believed to be one of the editors of the American 
 Preshyterian, did indeed subsequently endeavor to do this 
 through the columns of that paper, in an article evincing lit- 
 tle else than ignorance and malignity, with the signature of 
 A Catholic. 
 
 It was under these circumstances, that, with the concur- 
 rence of some among you, 1 wrote hastily, for as you know 
 I have little leisure for such employment, a Letter to the Edi- 
 tors of the American Presbyterian, in which I examined, 
 censured, and, as is believed, refuted, so much of Dr. Miller's 
 
allegations as related to the episcopal constitution of the 
 christian ministry. 
 
 To leave no doubt upon the minds of their readers, that 
 these editors were desirous to produce an unfavorable im- 
 pression on the public mind, in relation to our principles and 
 practice; and of their disposition to begin a controversy, the 
 effectf: of which they have since shown an unequivocal de- 
 sire to avoid, they distinctly admitted in their paper of July 
 9th, that such was their object. At least their language 
 was so understood both here and elsewhere. They certainly 
 endeavored, with far less knowledge of our institutions than 
 Dr. Miller has shown, to strengthen his statements by very 
 gross misrepresentations of our church, in their papers of 
 July 9th and 23d last; which, though entirely disproved to 
 them, they have not had the magnanimity to retract. 
 
 My Letter to the Editors met with no reply from them. 
 It is understood that a copy was sent to Dr. Miller, with a 
 request that he would come to their aid. More compassion- 
 ate than Hercules in the fable, he does not seem even to have 
 asked of them to put their own shoulders to the wheel, but 
 forthwith undertook, with characteristic alacrity, the whole 
 labor. The result of his efforts was the communication 
 above referred to, in the American Presbyterian of Septem- 
 ber 3d, and which I now propose to examine. 
 
 Dr. Miller commences his communication by a palpable 
 misrepresentation. He says that I "fee-o-m by representing 
 him as entirely the aggressor in all that he has written on 
 the episcopal controversy for twenty years past, as well as 
 recently." He says that I speak othim "as guilty of an 
 'unprovoked assault,'' on the Episcopal Church; as having 
 "cherished a long, continued and vehement animosity towards 
 it." Any man who has perused the Letter of "a/i Episco- 
 palian'^'' may readily perceive how far this statement varies 
 from the fact. That I asserted his long continued and ve- 
 1* 
 
* 6 
 
 hement animosity to the Episcopal Church is true, and I am 
 amazed that he would even seem to deny a fact, so well known 
 to all who are at all acquainted with his history. I now delib- 
 erately repeat it, and shall, I think, before I close these stric- 
 tures, make it abundantly evident to all who may doubt it. 
 But a reference to the Letter p. 4. will show that it was the 
 Editors of the American Presbyterian whom I accused of 
 the unprovoked assault, because while Episcopalians were 
 few in number and living in peace by their side, they had 
 chosen to avail themselves of Dr. Miller's labors to misrep- 
 resent our principles, and deny our claims to scriptural 
 sanction for them; and, if I understand the language of 
 these Editors in their paper of July 9th last, they distinct- 
 ly admit that it was an assault on their part. They sup- 
 pose some one to ask the question, "why have we republished 
 Dr. M"'s. tract in which the validity of Episcopacy is ques- 
 tioned and impugned ?" Their chief object, they reply, was 
 to show that Presbyterians stood on as good ground as others; 
 and the next, that Episcopalians hold some opinions which 
 they thought it necessary to assail. I repeat that the re- 
 publication of Dr. Miller's Tract was, on the part of these 
 Editors, an unprovoked assault upon their Episcopal breth- 
 ren. 
 
 But in what part of the Letter is Dr. M. charged with being 
 entirely the aggressor in all that he has written on this con- 
 troversy during the twenty years past? I am unable to 
 find any such passage. There is no such assertion in it. 
 I do indeed charge him with being the aggressor in this 
 Tract; and I refer to the contents of the Tract itself to prove 
 my charge. The following passage occurs, not as he states, 
 at the beginning, but in the postscript of the Letter. 
 
 "To make no reference to the first three chapters (of Dr. Miller's 
 Tract,) or to what has been said above of the fourth chapter, the fol- 
 lowiog heads of the fifth, will be sufficient evidence of the ▲ggiie»- 
 
81 VE character of the whole. This chapter, though bearing the 
 title of "the worship of the Presbyterian church," is divided into 
 sections with the following titles, — Presbyterians reject i^rescri- 
 bed Liturgies: — do not observe holy days: — reject godfathers 
 and godmothers in baptism: — the sign of the cross in bap- 
 tism: — the rite of confirmation: — kneeling at the Lord's sup- 
 per: — administering the Lord^s supper in private: — bowing 
 at the na7ne of Jesits: — reading the apocryphal books in pub- 
 lic worship. As, under all these heads, the burden of reference 
 and of defence, is thrown upon the Episcopal church, it would seenn 
 that Dr. Miller supposes that Presbytorianism is only to be sustained 
 by the destruction of the Episcopal church." 
 
 In this short paragraph then, the second in his communi- 
 cation, Dr. M. has made no less than three misrepresenta- 
 tions. 
 
 1st. I did not charge him with an unprovoked assault on 
 the Episcopal church, but the editors of the American Pres- 
 byterian. 
 
 2d. 1 did woi charge him "with being entirely the ag- 
 gressor in all that he had written on the Episcopal contro- 
 versy for twentv years past." 
 
 3d. And though I didasserl, that his Tract was aggressive, 
 it was not in the beginning of ray Letter, but in the post- 
 script. 
 
 The purpose for which Dr. M. charges me with represen 
 ting him as entirely the aggressor in all that he has written 
 on the Episcopal controversy for twenty years past, is, to en- 
 able him to make an attempt to justify his course of opposi- 
 tion to our beloved church during that long period. He then 
 makes a statement of his views of the cause and origin of 
 this controversy, from about the year 1805; which is such 
 a view as rione but a man prejudiced, and deeply commit- 
 ted in its character, could have taken, or could have consen- 
 ted to lay before the public. It furnishes another strong 
 proof of his persevering animosity towards the Episcopal 
 
church. While he admits, that, if I have read the books 
 which I have quoted in my Letter to the Editors of the Amer- 
 ican Preshytej'ian, I '^ must have been acquainted with the 
 facts;" he says, that his statement "cannot be disputed, be- 
 cause the evidence of it is on record, and open to the exami- 
 nation of every honest enquirer." It is true, that the evi- 
 dence is on record ; and that I am acquainted with it, not 
 from the records only, but also from the fact, that, about the 
 time of the commencement of his assault upon the Episco- 
 pal church, I was very near what he chooses to call the very 
 focal heat of this controversy — felt at the time, as a young 
 enquirer, no httle interest in it — was not then sufficiently- 
 connected with either party to be divested of the capacity 
 for impartial observation, — and yet preserve a tolerably fresh 
 recollection of the occurrences of the time, f shall now 
 give, with occasional references to "evidence on record," my 
 view of these matters, which will be seen to differ essenti- 
 ally from Dr. M's. representation. 
 
 "The point of the focal heat" was the city of New York. 
 
 Between the years 1803 and 1805, the late Bishop Ho- 
 bart, of New York, then a young man, and holding the 
 station of aijsistant minister of Trinity church, in that city, 
 revised and published in that city, two works, which had 
 long before been published, and passed through many edi- 
 tions, in England, viz: Stevens' Essay on the nature and 
 constitution of the Christian Church; and Nelson's (Com- 
 panion for the Festivals and Fasts. To these he added a 
 Companion for the Altar. These books were published by 
 him expressly for the use of members of the Episcopal 
 churcn. There was nothing in them which was not to be 
 met with in hundreds of English works, in free circulation, 
 both in England and this country, at that period. These 
 identical works are now to be seen in every corner of our 
 land, and I am confident that those of you who are acquaint- 
 
ed with the last two, and have used them in your devotional 
 exercises for a series of years, will hear with increduhty, that 
 these are the "books and pamphlets" which, Dr, Miller 
 says, "had been sent abroad with much assiduity for more 
 than a year before they were noticed by any Presbyterian," 
 and have led to near thirty years of unrelenting hostilities on 
 the part of Dr. Miller! 
 
 What, it may be asked, was the tenor of any part of these 
 publications, that they should stir up such enduring strife? 
 Simply that any reference was made in them to Episco- 
 pacy, as a valid and apostolic form of the ministry; a doc- 
 trine which Dr. M. and his friends had chosen to consider as 
 exploded. Conversely, it was the same with the 4lh art. of 
 the xxvii ch. of the Presbyterian Confession of Faith : which 
 says, ^' There be only two sacraments ordained by Christ ovr 
 Lord, ill the Gospel: neither of which may be dispensed by 
 any but by a minister of the word, lawfully ordainedP 
 Episcopalians and Presbyterians equally admit this doc- 
 trine, and only disagree as to what order of men are the 
 lauful ordainers : the first contend that it is the order of 
 Bishops alone; the olher that it is the order of Presbyters 
 alone. Dr. Hobart asserted the Episcopal opinion, and in 
 thus doing he committed a sin, which, in the eyes of Dr. 
 Miller, is never to be forgiven or forgotten. At this period, 
 when the heat of that day, at least, has passed, any one 
 may see, that those works contain nothing in regard to other 
 churches, resembling the view, which Dr. M. has chosen to 
 spread through the columns of the American Presbyterian. 
 
 The works above named, had been but a short time in 
 circulation, before they attracted the attention of Dr. J. B. 
 Linn, a Presbyterian clergyman of distinguished talents, 
 then residing in the city of Albany. He saw fit to attack 
 them, and the whole Episcopal system, through a public 
 political newspaper. This was the tocsin — the first overt 
 
10 
 
 act in the controversy. Episcopacy, it had been supposed, 
 was slowly and surely descending to its grave. For a long 
 time, none had dared to lift up a voice in favor of that re- 
 ligious system, which, both before and after the Revolution, 
 hands almost gigantic, had been raised to crush. But vigor 
 was now demonstrated to be yet remaining in the system, and 
 it had displayed itself in the very spot, where, if sustained at 
 all, it must acquire power and influence. The young Epis- 
 copal aspirant was therefore discovered to be a dangerous 
 man. Dr. Linn was an accomplished scholar, and an emi- 
 nent man. He was, therefore, placed in the front rank. 
 Doubtless to his surprise. Dr. Linn was soon himself beset 
 by two other opponents. Dr. Beasley, since Provost of the 
 University of Pennsylvania; and a layman of Utica,in the 
 saBie State, of distinguished talents, of the name of How. 
 The several papers of these three writers were soon after 
 collected into a volume, by an Episcopal editor, with the 
 title of Essays on Episcopacy. A powerful alarm was 
 now excited, and the late Dr. John M. Mason, of New 
 York, another distinguished Presbyterian minister, was in- 
 duced to establish a magazine, for the purpose of carrying 
 on the warfare to better advantage, in "the very point of the 
 focal heat." Much of this publication was occupied with 
 assaults on every tower of Episcopacy. The first and se- 
 cond numbers containsd severe reviews of Hobart's Com- 
 panion for the Altar, and the Essays on Episcopacy. Those 
 who remember the distinguishing traits of the editor's char- 
 acter, will easily believe that this publication was not very 
 likely to contribute to peace, or exhibit any considerable 
 degree of respect for either the opinions or the persons of 
 those whom he opposed. Yet Episcopal writers of that 
 period were of opinion, that the cause of Episcopacy derived 
 strength from the assaults of Drs. Linn and Mason. — As- 
 sailed, personally, by such powerful talenis, Dr. Hobart was 
 
11 
 
 compelled to appear in self-defence. This he did, in an 
 eloquent Apology for Apostolic order] and this, in the year 
 1807, was followed by Dr. Miller'^s celebrated Letters on 
 the Ministry. Of this work, it was said, on its first ap- 
 pearance, and by one who it is believed had opportunity for 
 knowing the fact, that there was "good reason to believe, it 
 had been the labor of some years. We shall not demand," 
 said the same writer, "as long to answer it; and if it cannot 
 be proved to be full of sophistry, inconsistency, misstate- 
 ments, and misrepresentation, let Episcopacy forever hide 
 its head. The advocate of Episcopacy fears only that pre- 
 judice, which hears one party, and turns a deaf ear to the 
 other." 
 
 Dr. Miller's work received, soon after its publication, 
 three several replies from the pens of Dr. Bowden, Dr. 
 Kemp, and Dr. How. So little was he himself tJien satis- 
 fied with the result, that he closed his second volume, in 
 which he attempted an answer to the sweeping proofs of 
 Bowden and How, with the expression of a resolution, that 
 he would engage no more in the Episcopal controversy. 
 
 Such is a brief, but faithful sketch of the history of this 
 controversy, which Dr. Miller has so much misrepresented. 
 Dr. Hobart's books, to which Dr. M. traces its origin, were 
 not controversial, or intended to excite any controversial 
 feelings in others. Two of them were indeed devotional, 
 and strictly intended for the appropriate use of Episcopa- 
 lians. The controversy began with Dr. Linn, on the 
 Presbyterian side. There was no ^^aiiack by Episcopalians 
 on non Episcopal churches," as Dr. M. asserts; and, on the 
 other hand, his own language, in the very article now before 
 us, in the American Presbyterian, with regard to his share in 
 the controversy, is, that he wrote his Letters on the Ministry 
 "not to assail or injure his Episcopal brethren; but simply to 
 show that their exclusive claims were unfounded.'*^ Very 
 
12 
 
 kind of him, indeed! but Dr. Hobart's books, which, he says, 
 commenced the controversy, were not even written to show- 
 that the exchisive claims of his Presbyterian brethren were 
 unfounded; but simply to instruct Episcopalians in their 
 own religious duties. 
 
 Enough has been said to show where the controversy 
 began, and who are to be charged with any trouble it may 
 have produced; but it may be well to add Dr. Miller''s own 
 plain testimony on this subject, written at a time when 
 there was no necessity for disguising the truth in the mat- 
 ter; a testimony which Dr. M. himself seems to have for- 
 gotten, for it adds another to his many very strange incon- 
 sistencies in connexion with Episcopacy. On p. 51 of his 
 Continuation of Letters on the Ministry, written more than 
 twenty years ago, he deliberately recorded the following 
 declaration in reference tu the Episcopal and other churches: 
 ''^Preshyterians have been in the habit of writing, 'preach- 
 ing, and printing against their corruptions;'''' and if this 
 does not mean that Presbyterians had been in the practice, 
 for years previously to the publication of Dr. Hobart's 
 books, of assailing the Episcopal church, I should be glad 
 to be informed what it does mean. This, his own declara- 
 tion, in my judgment, fully refutes all he has said upon the 
 subject of the origin of the controversy, in the columns of 
 the American Presbyterian. 
 
 The result of this controversy on the public mind, was a 
 large immediate increase of members of the Episcopal 
 church, in various parts of the country, especially in the 
 more eastern States, and the accession from other bodies of 
 several who have since ranked among the most useful and 
 talented of her clergy. These facts are within my own 
 personal knowledge. 
 
 One would suppose from Dr. Miller's statements, that 
 the Episcopal principle had never been asserted or contend- 
 
13 
 
 ed for till the publications of Dr. Hobart. Yet he himself 
 admits that Episcopacy existed in the church as early as 
 the fourth century. — and the principle has been ever since as- 
 serted and contended for, almost, indeed, universally; and 
 to the full height to which it was carried by Dr. Hoban's 
 publications ! In England, especially, has this been the case. 
 Moshcim^ a Lutheran, tells us, that ''the church of England 
 has constantly insisted on the divine origin of its govern 
 ment and discipline.*' These facts are well known to every 
 one who has any knowledge of ecclesiastical history. How 
 can any one, then, have the assurance to assert, tliat the free 
 and open declaration of a principle which has prevailed in 
 the world as long as Christianity itself, and among by far 
 the larger proportion of the followers of Christ in the whole 
 world, can be in any sense of the word, an assault, or an ag- 
 gression? It is by Dr. Miller and his coadjutors, and sup- 
 porters, that the assault and aggression is made, for they, 
 and not Episcopal writers, have asserted new and strange 
 principles, have dissented from, and endeavored [^to overturn, 
 the universally received doctrine. 
 
 Dr. Miller says, that he had no sooner made the publica- 
 tion of his Letters on the Mimsfri/ — which, let it be remem- 
 bered, were, by his own admission, intended to show his 
 Episcopal brethren that their ejcclusite cJaiins were unfound- 
 ed— ih<in' *he was vehemently attacked, and in some instances 
 with gross indecorum, by three or four assailants whose 
 works abounded with what may not improperly be called 
 personal abuse.-' This is much in Dr. Miller's own man- 
 ner. He does not aim so much, in general, to show that his 
 adversary is wrong, by fair and manly argument, as by 
 bold assertion, and unsparing and reproachful imputations. 
 He is more anxious to wake up in the mind of the reader a 
 feeling against his opponent, than to prove him, by conclu- 
 sive and allowed testimony, to be in the wrong. Specimens 
 
 2 
 
14 
 
 of his talent in this way abound in the article now before us 
 in the American Preshytcrian. They are to be found 
 throughout his controversial writings. And they have con- 
 tributed, in a large degree, to the very unenviable character 
 he now sustains as a controversialist, among Episcopa- 
 lians, and some other religious denominations. Any one who 
 has read the replies, to which Dr. M. refers, must, I think, 
 admit this imputation of personalities on the part of their 
 authors, to be totally unfounded. They are not now in the 
 way, Dr. M. well knows, to vindicate themselves. But, 
 even' if their replies may be thought by some to be at all 
 subject to Dr. M's. imputation, a very brief examination of 
 Dr. M's. Letters would, doubtless, satisfy them that there 
 was much provocation on his part. Dr. M. himself cannot 
 deny that in his own Letters he indulged in the utmost se- 
 verity of personal remark."^ 
 
 Although Dr. Miller declared in the Continuation of his 
 Lett(rs,ihdii is, inihe second volume which he published in 
 the controversy, that he would engage in it no more, yet he 
 renewed the attack upon Episcopacy and Episcopalians in 
 ditierent forms, at several subsequent periods, and down even 
 to the present time. In nearly every work he has published 
 since that period, he has contrived to make manifest in some 
 way, his enduring animosity to Episcopacy. In 1830 he 
 published a second edition of his Letters on the Ministry, 
 accompanied by a preface, in which he re-affirmed, with 
 much additional matter directly offensive to Episcopalians, 
 all that he had previously written; and now, more recently, 
 he has repeated it in the Tract, which was reprinted in the 
 American Presbyterian. 
 
 In justification of the publication of this Tract,he says, 
 that the request of those for whom he prepared it, was 
 
 *See Hobart's Apology, Letter V, and How's Vindication,. Let- 
 ter VL for a full refutation of this charge of aggression. 
 
15 
 
 founded on "the known fact, that pamphlet after pamphlet 
 was sent forth^almost every week from the Episcopal camp 
 intended to show the invalidity of Preshyterian ordination 
 and ordinances, and to recommend all the peculiarities of the 
 Episcopal church, as alone supported by Scripture." That 
 numerous publications have been issued, in defence and ex- 
 planation of the principles of Episcopacy, is certainly the 
 fact; and this constitutes the gist of this complaint. The in- 
 tention, which he imputes as their origin, is obviously a mere 
 conceit of his own, arising from the morbid condition of his 
 feelings upon the subject. That Episcopalians should un- 
 dertake to advocate Episcopacy has always been a sin in 
 his eyes. What pamphlets or books, in particular, he alludes 
 to, it is impossible for me to say ; but he well knows that 
 while very few, if any of them, assail Presb\terianism, 
 yet those, on his own side, and they have not been a few, do, 
 in almost every instance, directly assail Episcopacy and 
 Episcopalians. 
 
 Let Dr. INIiller read asrain his Life of Dr. Rogers — his 
 Letter to a gentleman in Baltimore, on the case of the Rev. 
 Mr. Duncan — his Essay on the office of Ruling Elder — or 
 his Letters to Presbyterians* — in reference to which works, 
 it might reasonably be asked, what ground there could be 
 for making them the vehicles of assault upon Episcopalians, 
 or Episcopacy. Let him recollect the terms of reproach 
 
 *I make the following extract from p. 300, of the last named 
 work, as a sufficient specimen of the whole: *'When a Presbyterian 
 ventures into a Protestant Episcopal place of worship, he may 
 sometimes^ indeed, hear nothing offensive; h\xi much more gen- 
 erally he will find himself revolted by claims of being the only 
 true church; by the most extravagant praises of their Liturgy and 
 prescribed forms; and by intimations that all who are out of the 
 Episcopal pale are to be regarded as not churches of Christ at all, 
 and as out of the covenanted way of salvation!" Credat Judceus 
 Apella! 
 
16 
 
 upon Episcopalians which he has compressed into his pre 
 face to the second edition of his Letters on the Ministry — 
 let him notice the offensive expressions of his recent Tract — 
 let him call to mind the language on this subject, which he 
 has for years accustomed himself to use, in the high places 
 of the General Assembly — to his classes in the Seminary — 
 and in his general intercourse with society, and there will 
 be proof enough of efforts, directly and strongly made, to 
 put down Episcopacy. 
 
 The examination of the publications referred to, will con- 
 vince any intelligent and impartial reader, that I am fully 
 justified in imputing to Dr. Miller the feeling towards Epis- 
 copacy which the Romans entertained against Carthage — 
 that his animosity against Episcopacy is both inveterate and 
 enduring. When Dr. Rice, of Virginia, declared, that "by 
 the help of God, he would wage a warfare against Episco- 
 pacy while his life should last," he did not give stronger evi- 
 dence of his animosity, than Dr. Miller has by his repeated 
 denunciations and proscriptions. It has been said, however, 
 and perhaps with some truth, that his recent Tract would 
 not, probably, have seen the light, had it not been for the 
 immediately precedent erection of an Episcopal church al- 
 most under the eves of the Seminary in which Dr. M. is a 
 professor; where other principles, more agreeable to his 
 mind, were supposed but a short time since to have had per- 
 petual and exclusive possession.* 
 
 *I do not, at this time, recollect a single passage of any Episco- 
 pal writer, in this controversy, which can be construed, by any effort, 
 to mean any thing more disadvantageous to Presbyterians, than a 
 remark of Dr. Miller's substantially repeated times without num- 
 ber, in his publications, is to Episcopalians, that "the doctrine, order, 
 and worship of the Presbyterian church are solidly founded in scrip- 
 ture, and the parest christian antiquity, and that all departures 
 from them are unauthorized innovations.^^ I repeat, that I 
 
17 
 
 But, as I have stated above, it was not of the original 
 publication of his Tract that I have complained in my Let- 
 ter to the Editors of the American Presbyterian. In this re- 
 mote region, far distant from the place of its origin, and 
 equally so, in a good degree from the active discussion of 
 the questions it involves; occupied with employments quite 
 sufficient for any powers which I may possess; I might and 
 should have contentedly left to the pens of my brethren of 
 the East, to give it such notice as they might suppose it to 
 require. That nothing has yet appeared in that region in 
 reply to it, where, according to Dr. M. "for a page of this 
 character from a Presbyterian pen, at least five hundred 
 have appeared from his Episcopal neighbours," is perhaps 
 
 do not recollect any passage of aiii/ Episcopal writer which car- 
 ries the principle of exclusiveness further than this. Yet for Epis- 
 copalians to pretend to say as much as this on behalf of Episcopacy, 
 Di , Miller has ever considered to be a grevious sin, never to be for- 
 given — he represents it as "a violent attack on non Episcopal 
 churches" — as "representing such churches as institutions founded 
 in rebellion and schism, and all who are in communion with such 
 churches, aliens from Christ, out of the appointed road to heaven, 
 having no interest in the promises of God, and no hope but in his 
 uncovenanted mercy, which may be extended to them in couimou 
 with the serious and conscientious heathen." So too, the Editors 
 of the American Presbyterian, quite indifferent, it would seem, 
 whom the slander might wound, or how far the great enemy of 
 souls might derive benefit to his cause by such unfounded reproaches, 
 could deliberately tell their readers that "the clergy of the Episco- 
 pal church would unchurch other denominations, and deny them 
 the honor and consolation of being an integral part of the christian 
 church." The assertion has been shown to them to be unfounded, 
 but they have not had the right feeling to retract it, and their 1200 
 subscribers, and more than 1200 readers are allowed, on their au- 
 thority, to believe it to be true. I certainly do not envy them any 
 satisfaction, which they, as professing christians, looking forward to 
 the last great account, may derive from such a course of conduct. 
 
 2* 
 
18 
 
 proof sufficient, that Dr. Miller's controversial character and 
 habits are too well known to call for any particular attention 
 at this late day. What I complained of was the uncalled 
 for republication of this offensive controversial Tract,, by 
 the Editors of the American Presbyterian, in a community 
 which was at peace upon the subject; thereby applying all 
 the obnoxious imputations it contained to the Episcopalians 
 of this city and region. 
 
 After all this, Dr. Miller really has the confidence to say, 
 that he has never published a sentence in anywise respect- 
 ing the Episcopal denomination, but what was drawn from 
 him by repeated previous assaults on her part, and in the 
 purest selfdefence. What does he mean, then, by his recent 
 admission that his object in his Letters on the Ministry was 
 to show his Episcopal hrethren that their claims were un- 
 founded? Was this pure selfdefence? Was it in pure self- 
 defence that he urged those to whom he addressed his Let- 
 ters on the Ministry in allusion to Episcopalians, to hear 
 with bigots — to regard hightoned Episcopalians in the same 
 light with those who ^^consistently believe that transubstan- 
 tiojt is a doctrine of Scripture; that the Pope is irifallible; 
 that images are a great help to devotion; and that there is 
 no salvation out of the church of Rome f'''' Was it in pure 
 selfdefence that he described the religious doctrines held by 
 Episcopalians generally, "«s nearly if not quite as likely 
 to land the believer in the abyss of the damned as in the pa- 
 radise of God?'''' Or, more recently, as ^Heading to blank and 
 cheerless AtheismV Was it necessary in pure selfdefence, 
 (as he does in all his publications on the subject) to carry the 
 war into the Episcopal camp ? And if so, does it not show 
 that my assertion was well founded, that in Dr. M's. be- 
 lief, the destruction of Episcopac)^ is needful to the esta- 
 blishment of his own system? Is it indeed necessary, in 
 order to show that the claims of his own church are just. 
 
19 
 
 that he should first prove that the claims of his Episcopal 
 brethren are unfounded? The fact is, that Dr. M. holds 
 conversely the identical proposition of the Episcopalian; 
 and he seems perfectly sensible, and through his whole con- 
 troversial life has acted strenuously upon the principle, that 
 his own system could not be well founded while Episcopacy 
 was allowed to stand. Hence it is, that what he calls pure 
 selfdefence,has been, in truth, direct assault — that his efforts 
 have been invariably directed to pull down and destroy — 
 that the whole force of his arm, the whole power of his intel- 
 lectual battery have been usedeto that end; and though he 
 may have conceived all this to be but pure selfdefence, pro- 
 bably no other man in the country, acquainted with the 
 subject, has been so deceived as himself. 
 
 A remarkable instance of the manner in which Dr. 
 Miller allows himself to conduct his controversy, is shown 
 in the following paragraph: "What, he says, would be 
 thought of a ruffian who would, without the least pro- 
 vocation, assail with personal violence a neighbor of the 
 most unexceptionable character and deportment, and when 
 that neighbour resented and repelled his violence, should say, 
 why did you attack me." Apart from the fact that this is a 
 mere begging of t-he question, so far as reasoning is con- 
 cerned, yet it is obvious that his opponent, perhaps myself, is 
 here compared to a ruffian, and Dr. Miller is himself the 
 "gentleman of the most unexceptionable character and de- 
 portment 1" His opponent, too, is farther described as "a 
 compound of meanness, insolence and falsehood!" No 
 comment, surely, can be necessary here, further than to 
 ask, with what propri ety such a writer can complain of inde- 
 corum on the part of his opponents ! 
 
 Lest, however, Dr. M's. gross misrepresentations of the 
 principles of Episcopalians, in the opening of his communi- 
 cation, should not have made an impression sufficiently 
 
20 
 
 strong, he repeats it at the close of his remarks on the origin 
 and causes of this controversy . I repeat that this represen- 
 tation is untrue; and I must either behevehim, notwithstan- 
 ding all he has written on the subject, to be yet very igno- 
 rant of our opinions, or else that he wilfully misrepresents 
 them. I again repeat, and every one at all acquainted with 
 the subject will confirm my statement, that the doctrine of 
 the Episcopal church is identically the same, on this sub 
 ject, with the 4th art. of the xxvii. chap, of the Preshyte- 
 rian Confession of Faith, as is stated on page 9 I repeat, 
 that any view of our doctrine which makes it more exclusive 
 than is there stated, is unwarranted by the Episcopal church, 
 whatever opinions any individuals may be shown, or suppo- 
 sed, to have held. The position of Episcopalians towards 
 Presbyterians is, in fact, literally the same with that of the 
 Presbyterians themselves towards the Cumberland Presby- 
 terians. 
 
 No stretch of credulity will enable us to credit Dr. M's. 
 assertion — which was doubtless written adcapiandum — that 
 he ''yet loves and honors Episcopalians as brethren in Christ, 
 and is ever ready to treat them as such V Dr. M's conduct 
 towards our church has been hitherto that of unrelenting 
 hostility, without the slightest indication of even a desire for 
 peace. It is too late in the day to palm such language as 
 this upon us. It is, however, even yet more surprising, that 
 after the publication of his Tract on Presbyterianism; nay, 
 after the gross misrepresentations of the principles of Epis- 
 copalians which I have now been employed in noticing, he 
 should have the confidence to assert that "even in respect to 
 those points in which he cannot concur with Episcopalians 
 he condemns them not: but simply assigns the reasons why 
 he is constrained to deviate from their practice;" an asser- 
 tion plainly contradicted by almost every line he has writ- 
 ten on the subject in the last quarter of a century. And he 
 
21 
 
 claims to have had injustice done to his motives by me, when 
 I charge him with a hostility, enduring and unvarying, evi- 
 denced by his own admissions, to the church to which I be- 
 long! He claims the sympathy of the community against 
 me, for daring to repel his unmeasured imputations and 
 misrepresentations I If his account of our opinions and con- 
 duct be true, we are, plainly, little better than the ruffians 
 he intimates us to be; and for repelling such assaults, — for 
 claiming to be understood in our true character, — for being 
 unwilling to be cast out and trodden under foot of men, we 
 are to be spoken of as "a compound of insolence, and false- 
 hood, and meanness!" 
 
 Severely has Dr. M. tried our patience, and difficult is it 
 to restrain ourselves from speaking of his conduct as every 
 impartial man will admit that it deserves. 
 
 But this topic has already engrossed too much of your at- 
 tention. Let us pass to his second point, which is in rela 
 tion to his treatment of the epistles of Ignatius. 
 
 II. The second point to which Dr. Miller directs the at- 
 tention of his readers, is one which he is reasonably anxious 
 to exhibit in a light more favorable to himself, than that in 
 which it appears in my Letter to the Editors of the American 
 Presbyterian. He has been often accused "of deliberately 
 pronouncing opposite judgments concerning the same writer, 
 as it happened to serve his purpose.'^'' The charge was re- 
 peated in the Letter to the American Presbyterian, accom- 
 panied by sufficient evidence, in my judgment, to sustain it. 
 Since that time I have had access to other writings of Dr. 
 M. then not in my possession, and I am now, therefore, able 
 to present a still stronger view of Dr. Miller's variations of 
 opinion'or expression, in regard to the Epistles of Ignatius. 
 
 The following are faithful extracts from his Letters on the 
 Ministry, first published in 1807, and reprinted about live 
 years since, with the same expression unaltered — his Letters 
 
22 
 
 on Unitarianisjn, publislied in 1821 — and his Essay on the 
 offieeof Lay Elder, published in 1832. 
 
 1807. I 1821. ] 1832. 
 
 That even the short-} The author is aware' Intelligent readers 
 er Epistles of Ignatius that the authenticity ofare no doubt aware 
 are unworthy of confi- the Epistles of Ignatius that the genuineness of 
 dence as the genuine has been called in ques- the Epistles of Igna- 
 works of the father tion. — It is sufficient tins has been called in 
 whose name they bear, /or his purpose to question by a great 
 is the opinion of some say, that the great bo-; majority of the Protes- 
 of the ablest and best dy of learned men con-.tant divines, and is not 
 judges of the Piotes-sider the smaller Epis- only really but deeply 
 tant world. ities of Ignatius, as in, questionable. 
 
 'the main the realj 
 
 'works of the writer! 
 
 iwhose name they bear. 1 
 
 I now deliberately ask you whether an intelligent reader 
 can at all reconcile these discordant opinions? A short solu- 
 tion of the ditliculty is, that in the first and last instances he 
 was arguing against Episcopalians, while the almost unani- 
 mous voice of the christian world has been, that, if the Epis- 
 tles of Ignatius are genuine, they bear unequivocal testimo 
 ijy to Episcopacy beyond all power of evasion. In his con- 
 troversy with us, therefore, they are a mountain in his 
 way which must be uprooted but cannot be passed. In 
 the other instance, they bear an equally unequivocal 
 testimony against Unitarians, and are an equally im- 
 passable barrier to them. In the first case it is student for 
 his jmrpose to deny — in the next to admit — and then again 
 to deny, their genumeness. Notwithstanding his attempt to 
 explain these discrepancies, the solution I have given, is, as 
 I verily believe, the only one which can be made capable of 
 satisfying any honest enquirer. 
 
 It is to be remarked that in his late Tract on Presbyte- 
 rianism, he does n(jt call in question the authority of Igna- 
 tius, in any sense,- but sensible, without doubt, from his past 
 experience, that the testimony of Ignatius, as a witness to a 
 
23 
 
 matter of fact, cannot now be effectually questioned, he ex- 
 hibits his utmost ingenuity in striving to make him h witness 
 for Presby terianism ; though, even in this effort, any one ac- 
 quainted with the controversy will easily perceive, that in 
 the way Dr. M. presents the testimony of Ignatius, it 
 is in fact much more on the side of independency or Congrega- 
 tionalism, than of his own church. Yet Dr. M. says in the 
 American Presbyterian, that, when he quotes Ignatius in that 
 tract as authority, he is not "at all inconsistent with the judg- 
 ment expressed in either of the foregoing publications!" 
 
 But Dr. M. contends, that, notwithstanding these occa- 
 sional denials of the competency of the testimony of Igna- 
 tius, he had a right to quote him against Episcopalians, as 
 such. For, he asks : 
 
 *'Do not Episcopalians regard him as both a genaine and authen- 
 tic witness? Was it not perfectly fair to adduce his testimony to 
 fAem, upon the principle of i\\e argumentum od hominem? Is 
 this writer incapable of understanding the principle, that a writer in 
 whom / have no confidence, may be fairly quoted by me in contro- 
 versy with those who profess to have entire confidence in him? 
 Surely your correspondent is too ignorant to undertake to discuss 
 a subject of this kind." 
 
 Of my ignorance — which he repeatedly imputes to me, — 
 I shall leave others to judge. I have not, however, denied his 
 right to quote Ignatius against Episcopacy, unless he may so 
 construe my language when I say (page 20) that Dr. M. "has 
 the rashness to quote Ignatius, — that identical father, whose 
 writings are genuine, or not genuine — worthy or not worthy 
 of confidence, according as he may be to serve the purpose to 
 which Dr. M. chooses to apply him." If Dr. M. can, by 
 any fair means, produce passages from the shorter Epistles 
 of Ignatius adverse to Episcopacy, it is undeniably proper 
 that he should do so; and Episcopalians, — allowing, in com- 
 mon with almost every distinguished scholar who has exam- 
 
24 
 
 ined the question, as will be shown, the integrity oFthese Epis- 
 tles, — and claiming, as they do, that they bear strong and pow- 
 erful testimony to their principles, — must submit to have 
 their testimony turned against Episcopacy whenever an ad- 
 versary shall be found capable of doing it. But that Dr. M. 
 has not such capacity, — that the Epistles themselves cannot 
 be so interpreted, — no candid enquirer needs to be informed. 
 Let us, however, try Dr. Miller by the rule which he thus 
 broadly lays down. He has a right, even when denying 
 the integrity of the Epistles of Ignatius, to turn their testi- 
 mony, if he can, against Episcopacy. In his Letters on 
 Unitarianism, he makes free use of quotations from these 
 same Epistles. In the text where this testimony is cited, 
 there is nothing to imply that he did not think himself quoting 
 a writer of unquestioned authenticity. All that he says, 
 admitting a different construction, is in a brief note at the 
 foot of page 122, which I have quoted above, and which any 
 one may perceive could not have been intended to cast any 
 very deep shade of doubt, over the very important testimo- 
 ny with which he had been furnished by those Epistle?. 
 Nay, he even says, (page 124,) of Ignatius, and others whom 
 he had previously quoted: "JlZZ the witnesses [Ignatius in- 
 cluded] whom I have quoted, lived in the first century, and 
 were personally acquainted with some of the Apostles. 
 Their testimony, therefore, is weighty, and ivorihy of pe- 
 culiar attention?'' I am not about to dispute that Dr. M. is 
 right in this view of the testimony of the apostolic fathers^ 
 including Ignatius, but I ask, whether Dr. M. could have 
 been ignorant of the fact, that Unitarians have, very 
 generally, denied the genuineness of the Epistles of Ig" 
 natius, not, like himself, for the support which tney 
 give to Episcopacy, merely; but because they also powei- 
 fully sustain the doctrine of the Trinity, for which, in his 
 Letters on Unitarianism, he quotes them. Did he — who 
 
25 
 
 professes to be a master in Israel, and contemptuously imputes 
 to me ignorance of the matter in controversy, not know that 
 Lardner says that "even the smaller Epistles of Ignatius 
 may have been tampered w'lih by the Arians, or Orthodox, 
 or both," and that, of course, on the very points at issue be- 
 tween Dr. M. and the Unitarians? Did he not A'/iozr, that 
 Priestley, in his controversy with Horsley, labored hard to 
 disprove the credibility of those Epistles, on this very point; 
 asserting, almost in Dr. M's. own language when arguing 
 against Episcopacy, that "their genuineness is not only very 
 much doubted, but generally given up by the learned'* ? Or, if 
 he did know this, by what rule of logic does he profess to quote 
 Ignatius against them, as testimony weighty and worthy of 
 peculiar attention? Dr. Miller has surely placed himself in 
 a very strange dilemma. Episcopalians admit the authenti- 
 city of the shorter Epistles of Ignatius, and therefore while 
 Dr. M. denies that authenticitj^, he may nevertheless, quote 
 them against Episcopacy. But both Dr. M. (supposing 
 him to be in the slightest degree consistent,) and Unitarians 
 deny their genuineness, and yet he quotes them against Unita- 
 rians as testimony weighty and worthy of peculiar attention! 
 Who can doubt, that, in truth. Dr. M. denies their authenti- 
 city, when, as in the case of Episcopacy, their testimony is 
 plainly against him ; and admits their genuineness when he 
 can use their testimony against others. He may say. it is 
 true, that he, and some others, believe the testimony which 
 these Epistles bear to the existence of Episcopacy in the first 
 century, to be interpolated, and that their testimony to 
 the doctrine of the Trinity is genuine; but the Unitarian 
 meets him with the assertion, that they were tampered with 
 by the Orthodox and the Arians against each other, and 
 therefore are of no authority against Unitarianism ! He may 
 say that, if all such passages, as he has quoted in favor of 
 the Trinity, be struck out from those Epistles, it would be 
 
26 
 
 impossible to make sense of the remainder; and we say the 
 same of those which go to sustain Episcopacy j remove them^ 
 and what is left will be wholly unintelligible. The passages 
 which sustain Episcopacy, and the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 are absolutely necessary to the sense, and if these are struck 
 out as interpolated, the Epistles would serve no purpose to 
 Dr. Miller, or any one else. Let him make the effort. 
 
 Dr. Miller is not content with simply charging me with 
 being too ignorant to undertake to discuss a subject of this 
 kind, but he also asserts, in the vituperative manner of 
 which every opponentyl believe, without exception, in his 
 numerous controversies has complained, that my ignorance 
 is profound. He says, that I discover ^^profound ignorance 
 of the whole state of the case and controversy concerning the 
 Epistles of Ignatius." 
 
 I am not able to see that I was called on, either by any- 
 thing which was contained in his Tract, as published in the 
 American Presbyterian ; or, in the brief space of a page or 
 two in the hastily prepared Letter to the Editors of the Amer- 
 ican Presbyterian, to exhibit any great show of knowledge 
 on the subject. Neither does such an imputation come with 
 ver> good grace from one, who is familiarly reported to have 
 quoted for many years from a mutilated copy of Ignatius, 
 without being sufficiently acquainted with "the state of the 
 case and controversy" to be aware of the mutilation; or who 
 could express himself in regard to ^'the state of the case and 
 controversy," with such irreconcileable variety as has been 
 shown above. But let us test his own knowledge of this sub- 
 ject more fully. He undertakes to enlighten my ignorance, 
 by informing me that "some of the most competent judges and 
 writers of the Episcopal church, confess that the Epistles of 
 Ignatius have been corrupted with respect to the subject of 
 Episcopacy." I certainly admit my ignorance of this fact, 
 and, until he informs us who those judges and writers are, must 
 
27 
 
 believe that his ignorance is as profound as my own. 1 will 
 go farther, and unequivocally deny the truth of his assertion. 
 The only writer to whom he refers in support of this opinion, 
 which, if well founded, could be easily sustained, is the au- 
 thor of an anonymous communication in the Christian Ob- 
 server for the year 1803. Dr. M''s. professed object in 
 this single reference is to enlighten my profound igno- 
 rance-, when, then, in this matter, he brings in the Christ- 
 ian Observer as authority, which it certainly well deserves 
 in many respects to be considered, 1 must ask whether he 
 did not hnow that a translation of the Epistles of Ignatius, 
 had been actually mac^^-^or and published in the previous 
 volume of the same work, and recommended to its readers as 
 the remains of a pious father of the church, and martyr, 
 without any other intimation of doubt in regard to any por- 
 tion of them, than is contained in the following brief note to 
 the seventh ; "the authenticity of all the superscriptions may 
 be doubted of, without any injury to the credic of the Epis- 
 tles themselves"? All the testimony, then, which Dr. M. 
 adduces to sustam his assertion, that ^'some of the most com- 
 petent judges and icriterso^ the Episcopal church confess 
 that the Epistles of Ignatius have been corrupted on the sub- 
 ject of Episcopacy," is that of a single anonymous writer, in 
 a work, whose editors had caused those very Epistles to be 
 translated and published as genuine! 
 
 But of what value is the testimony of this anonymous 
 writer in the case? Are we to rely upon his bare opinion, 
 without any proof to sustain it? What facts does he allege 
 to convince us, that "the language of Ignatius on the Episcopal 
 question is, at the earliest, the language of the fourth centu- 
 tury"? None whatsoever. Is the language of Ignatius con- 
 tradicted by any other early writer? Evidence of this, nei- 
 ther is, nor can be adduced. Is it contrary to known facts 
 in the history of that period? It certainly is not. Gibbon^ 
 
28 
 
 a disinterested witness, tells us plainly that "after we have 
 passed the difficulties of the Jirst century, we find Episcopa- 
 cy every where established;" and the inference which this 
 selfsame anonymous writer in the Christian Observer draws 
 from the writings of the other primitive fathers generally, is 
 that '"Episcopacy was instituted by the Apostles, and there- 
 fore comes from God;'*' an inference, in my judgment, 
 decidedly against his view of the credibility of the Epistles 
 of Ignatius. No writer who has impugned the veracity of 
 these Epistles has yet attempted to point out distinctly the 
 passages v.hich he supposes to be interpolated; a fact which 
 alone bears with irresistible weight against their opinions. 
 In his late "Tract on Presbyterianism," written, as he declares 
 in the preface, "solely for the instruction of Presbyterians," 
 Dr. M. repeatedly quotes Ignatius, without the slightest impu- 
 tation upon the genuineness of the Epistles; and, of course, al- 
 lowing his Presbyterian readers to infer, that no such impu- 
 tation can be made. The passages which he quotes, more- 
 over, are parts of the very same which Episcopalians cite on 
 the subject of the ministry : that identical subject on which, 
 lie says above, he has no confidence in Ignatius, but which 
 he may quote against Episcopalians who profess to nave en- 
 tire confidence in him. 
 
 These remarks bear equally against the opinion of Nean- 
 der, a modern Ecclesiastical historian, of Germany, whom 
 Dr. M. quotes, with evident gratification at the acquisition 
 of what he seems to think a new witness to his cause. It 
 will be time enough to admit its force, when testimony to the 
 actual interpolations is produced. In the meantime, as the 
 knowledge of "the whole state of the case and controversy," 
 does not involve any vast amount of learning, it will be very 
 easy for any man of a little research, to form an opinion of 
 it, as competently as Neander, or any other writer, whom Dr 
 M. chooses to commend as Icarnedj when their opinions are 
 
29 
 
 on his side, or to condemn asprofoundly ignorant when they 
 happen to differ from him. 
 
 The facts in regard to these Epistles are simply these : 
 Ancient writers mention seven Epistles of Ignatious, as writ- 
 ten by him, when on the way from Antioch, of which he 
 had been bishop, or prelate, for forty years, to Rome; where 
 he was taken, by order of the Emperor Trajan, to be torn to 
 death by wild beasts. These Epistles are quoted, or referred 
 to by Polycarp, Ireneeus, Origen, Eusebius, Chrysostom, Je- 
 rome, Theodoret, and Gelasius; and others of the fathers. 
 Le Clerc, in his Apostolical Fathers, and Pearson in his 
 Fmc?ic«^/on of these Epistles, quote testimonies in their favor 
 down to the fourteenth century. There are, at present, two 
 editions of these Epistles extant, which are familiarly called 
 the larger, and the smaller, or shorter. The former were 
 first printed in 1498, in an old Latin version, and in 1557 in 
 Greek. The shorter Epistles were first printed m a Latin 
 version by Abp. t/isAer, from two MSS, in 1644, and t>vo 
 years later in Greek, from a MS. in the Medicean Library at 
 Florence, by Vossius. Wkiston, an English author, and pos- 
 sibly, as some may think, Mosheim, are the only writers, of 
 whom I have heard, who have set up any pretension in favor of 
 the iategrity of the larger edition. But the quotations iu the 
 ancient fathers, are found to correspond perfectly with the 
 shorter edition, as well as the Latin and Greek copies with 
 ench other. Usher, Vos?ius, Hammond, Petavius, Grotius, 
 Pearson, Bull, Cave, Wake, Cotelerius, Grabe, Dupin, Til- 
 lemont, Le Clerc, Fabricius, Bochart, Jorlin, Horsley, 
 Bowden, with several of the more learned modern German 
 critics, and others,have asserted, and most of them rmd/ca^erf, 
 the authenticity of the shorter Epistles. Mosheim in his 
 Ecc. Hist, says : "The most learned of men acknowledge 
 these [the shorter Epistles] to be genuine, as they stand in 
 the edition published from a MS. in the Medicean Libra- 
 s' 
 
30 
 
 ry," by Vossius. Paley in his Evidences of Christianity 
 says: *'What are called the smaller Epistles, are generally 
 deemed to be those which were read by Irenoeus, Origen, 
 and Eusebius." Even Lardner says : that they "are allowed to 
 be genuine by a great number of learned men, whose opin- 
 ion I think to be founded on probable arguments;" and that 
 he will not himself "affirm that there aie in them any con- 
 siderable corruptions or alterations." On the other hand I 
 believe the only Protestant divines, who have called in ques- 
 tion the authenticity of these Epistles, are Blondel, Daille, 
 Salmasius, Priestley, and in our own country, Dr. Rice and 
 Dr. Miller. Burton, in his very learned work on the Testi- 
 monies of the anti-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of Christ, 
 calls the assertion of Priestley that "the genuineness of the 
 shorter Epistles of Ignatius is not only very much doubted 
 but generally given up by the learned," a ^^presumptous 
 falsehood,'''' — a strong but merited expression. And the Edi- 
 tors of the British Critic (1827) say : "we strongly suspect, 
 that when Priestley made this rash assertion he was unac- 
 quainted with the writings of those other great divines, 
 whose names Bishop Horsley furnished for his instruction." 
 In fact, the key to all the opposition with which these Epis- 
 tles have met, is to be found in the following assertion of 
 Mosheim : "Those who wish to have the Epistles of Igna- 
 tious rejected, are principally mcited to this desire, by the 
 frequent occurrence in these Epistles, of exhortations to obey 
 the bishops, to honor the presbyters, and to remain in com- 
 munion with both :" in other words — the testimony which 
 they bear to Episcopacy. 
 
 Dr. M. asserts that my charge against him of varying in 
 his opinions on the subject of the authenticity of Ignatius 
 "is much more adapted to disgrace myself than to implicate 
 his veracity." I doubt, whether, after what I have said 
 above, any intelligent reader will agree with him. I did 
 
31 
 
 but quote his own language, and left it to the reader of the 
 Letter to judge of it He has, however, thought it necessary 
 to make an attempt to explain his opinions. Let us see how 
 he has succeeded. He says : 
 
 **That a little more discernment would have shown him that the 
 inconsistencies between the two statements,* on the face of them, 
 without further explanation, is not so entire and irreconcileable as 
 he seems to suppose. May it not be true that the Shorter Epistles 
 of Ignatius are ''deemed unworthy of confidence, as the genuine 
 (i. e. unadulterated — free from spurious admixtures) works of the 
 author whose name they bear, by some of the ablest and best 
 judges of the Protestant world; and yet, at the same lime, that 
 the great body (i. e. the majority) of learned men consider them 
 as in the main (i. e, as to the great mass of their contents) as 
 the real work of Ignatius?" 
 
 However little may be the discernment which he allows 
 to me, he is obliged tacitly to admit, that there is inconsis- 
 tency, though he thinks not entire and irreconcileable, be- 
 tween the two opinions I had quoted from his writings in re- 
 lation to Ignatius. His inuendoes, however, will serve him 
 but little. As the passages stand in connexion with the con- 
 text — in the sense in which they are used by him in the 
 books from which they are quoted, they are discordant, and 
 entirely irreconcileable. In the first case, his object plainly 
 was to depreciate the authority of the Ignatian Epistles. In 
 the second, he classes them with testimony weighty, and 
 worthy of peculiar attention, and introduces the quota- 
 tion thus: "The author is aware that the authenticity of the 
 Epistles of Ignatius has feeen called in question. It is suffi- 
 cient for his purpose to say that the great body of learned 
 men consider them," &c. If there be any way of recon- 
 ciling these two passages, it is by saying that the great body 
 (the majority) of learned men admit, in the main, while 
 
 ♦His opinions on this subject as expressed in 1807 and 1821. 
 See page 22. 
 
S2 
 
 some (a f^ew) of the ablest and best judges deny, the au- 
 thenticity of the Epistles. But, unfortunately for Dr. M., 
 such an explanation of his expressions will only show that 
 he was in doubt on which side to lean, and that he adopted, 
 for the time, that which would be sufficient for his immedi- 
 ate purpose. But, yet more unfortunately for him, only a 
 few years later, either' himself, or his "great majority of the 
 learned," had changed their views, for then he was confident 
 that "intelligent readers were aware that the genuineness of 
 these Epistles had been called in question [not by some\ 
 but by a great majority of Protestant divines ; and is not 
 only really but deeply questionable^^'* And more unfortu- 
 nately still, in the last work which came from his pen, to 
 satisfy the members of his own church that "the system by 
 which they are distinguished, is throughout, truly primitive 
 and apostolic," he cites portions of those very passages, on 
 which, if Episcopalians should ask him to point out interpo- 
 lations, he would place his finger, because they are cited 
 truly and entirely by them on behalf of Episcopacy — he 
 cites portions of those very passages without the expression 
 of the slightest doubt of their authenticity! It is true, he 
 says in his communication to the American Presbyterian, 
 that when he so quotes Ignatius in his late Tract as au- 
 thority, "there is nothing at all inconsistent with the judg- 
 ment expressed by him in either of the foregoing publica- 
 ions," but he is probably the only man living who will think 
 so. 
 
 III. The third point in Dr. M's. communication in the 
 American Presbyterian is ihws stated by him: 
 
 "Another charge, which your correspondent alleges with much in- 
 dignant zeal, and apparent astonishment, IS, that I have said, in my 
 Tract on Presbyterianism, that Episcopalians not only are not able to 
 find any warrant for their claim in Scripture, but that they do not so 
 much as pretend to find any. And this he alleges I have done in a 
 Tract which contains a distinct reference to a little work by an 
 
33 
 
 Episcopal writer, entitled 'Episcopacy tested by Scripture.* The 
 charge is a slander. I have said no such thing as he ascribes to me, 
 in the passage to which he refers; although, for want either of 
 attention or discernment, he, no doubt, so construed the passage. 
 The following is my language; 'When we ask the advocates of 
 Episcopacy whence they derive their favorite doctrine that diocesan 
 bishops succeed the apostles in the appropriate powers and pre- 
 eminence of their apostolic character, they refer us to no passages of 
 scripture, asserting or even hinting it; but to some equivocal sug- 
 gestions and allusions of several fathers, who wrote within the first 
 four or five hundred years after Christ." 
 
 On this point Dr. M, obviously labored under no small 
 degree of irritation. He accuses me of gross misrepresenta- 
 tion — he calls me a reckless adversary, &c. and yet, in the 
 Letter to the Editor of the American Presbyterian, I only 
 quoted his own language, just as he has quoted it above, as 
 the following extract from page 7th will show : 
 
 "You give us an unexceptionable statement of the received 
 doctrine of Episcopacy, and add, 'to no part of this claim;' that is, 
 the claim of Episcopalians that their church constitution is primitive 
 and apostolic; 'does the New Testament afford the least counte- 
 nance.' You say that Episcopacy is 'a usurpation for which there 
 is not the smallest warrant in the word of God:' that 'there is not 
 the semblance of support to be found in Scripture for the alleged 
 transmission of the pre-eminent and peculiar power of the apostles 
 to a set of ecclesiastical successors: that 'when we ask the advo- 
 cates of Episcopacy whence they derive their favorite doctrine, 
 that diocesan bishops succeed the apostles in the appropriate 
 powers and pre-eminence of their apostolic character, they 
 refer us to no passages of Scripture asserting or, even hiyxting 
 it:^ that, Ht is not so much as pretended that a passage is to 
 be found, which gives a hint of this kind -.^^ 
 
 I make, it is true, the following inference from these ex- 
 pressions, and you can judge whether it is, in the smallest 
 particular, unwarranted: 
 
 "The plain meaning of these assertions is, that, in the opinion of 
 Dr. Miller, and the editors of the American Presbyterian, Episco- 
 
34 
 
 palians not only cannot find any countenance in Scripture 
 for their doctrine of the constitution of the Christian ministry, 
 but they do not even make pretensions to do so.^^ 
 
 And I add, on 'a subseqnent page: 
 
 "But, at the very time that Dr. Miller made his singularly bold 
 declaration, that w' en the advocates of Episcopacy are asked 
 whence they derive their favorite doctrine, *they refer us to no 
 passages of Scripture asserting, or even hinting it; but to some 
 equivocal suggestions and allusion of several Fathers, who wrote 
 within the first four or five hundred years after Christ,' he certainly 
 had before him, for he quotes it just before, a little work by Bis hop 
 Onderdonk of Pennsylvania; which he eould not but know, is ex- 
 tensively approved of among Episcopalians, in this country, with the 
 very title Episcopacy tested by Scripture.^' 
 
 Yet Dr. M. calls my inference a slander! He says that 
 he has said no suck thing as I ascribe to him! This 
 charge surely requires no farther notice from me. Let us 
 pass to the next. 
 
 IV. Dr. MiUer says: 
 
 •"Your correspondent further represents me as misquoting Igna- 
 tius, and as making a disingenuous use of my quotations* from 
 the Father. The same charge was made by Dr. Cooke, of 
 Kentucky, five or six years ago; and though clearly shown, in 
 the Biblical Repertory, in a review of Dr Cooke's work, to be 
 false, it has been since copied and repeated, by almost every 
 Episcopal writer who has been pleased to notice me, from that day 
 to this. The charge however, I again assert, is false — utterly false; 
 and those who have repeated it, have lent themselves to the propa- 
 gation of slander. 
 
 This paragraph certainly does not manifest much of that 
 christian spirit and conduct which Dr. M. highly commends 
 at the conclusion of his paper; and contains some evidence 
 that the subject is one on which his mind has become very 
 sensitive. Tliore is siaie r.^as )n for this, perhaps, in the 
 fiict, that his great disingenuousness in his quotations from 
 Ignatius, has had a very great influence in depriving him of 
 
35 
 
 that respect, which men of all sorts are generally ready to 
 extend to a fair and reasonable opponent. Dr. M. has cer- 
 tainly long ceased to be regarded as such by Episcopalians 
 throughout the country. This is manifest from his own 
 language in the above extract. 
 
 Dr. M. says that this charge, as originally made by Dr. 
 CooJce of Kentucky, was clearly shown to be false, in the 
 Biblical Repertory. But Dr. M. is a little too hasty in this 
 matter: the charge is, unfortunately, too true to be dis- 
 proved ; and so Dr. Cooke showed in his Reply to the Bibli- 
 cal Repertory, which is accessible to every reader. But 
 Dr. Cooke needs no assistance from me in this matter, and I 
 shall only notice this charge so far as I am concerned. The 
 following is the passage of the Letter which has brought this 
 phial of wrath upon my head : 
 
 "If Dr. Miller fails of convincing his readers, it will not 
 be for want of bold assertions — bold, beyond those of any 
 other polemic with whom I am acquainted — bold beyond 
 any warrant of testimony, or the previously declared opinions 
 of any other assailant of Episcopacy. He says, *It is very 
 certain that the Fathers who flourished nearest the apos- 
 tolic age, generally represent presbyters and not prelates 
 (bishops) as the successors of apostles,"' and he actually 
 has the rashness to quote Ignatius — that identical father^ 
 whose writings are genuine, or not genuine — worthy, or not 
 worthy of confidence, according as he may be made to 
 serve the purpose to which Dr. Miller chooses to apply him I 
 How little he is able to make use of him in assailinn- 
 Episcopacy, let the following exhibition of the manner in 
 Nvhich his quotations are made, and of Ignatius' own state- 
 ments show : 
 
36 
 
 Dr. Miller quotes him as 
 saying 
 
 The presbyters succeed in the 
 place of the bench of the upos- 
 tles. 
 
 The passage truly copied is 
 
 I exhort you, that ye study to 
 do all things in a divine concord: 
 your bishops in the place of God; 
 your presbyters in the place of the 
 council of the apostles; and your 
 deacons most dear to me being 
 entrusted with the ministry of 
 Jesus Christ* — Ep. to Magne- 
 sians. 
 AGAIN. 
 In like manner let all rever- 
 ence the presbyters as the San- 
 hedrim of God, and college of 
 
 the apostles. 
 
 In like manner let all rever- 
 ence the deacons as Jesus Christ; 
 and the bishop as the Father, 
 and the presbyters as tho Sanhe- 
 drim of God, and college of the 
 apostles; without these there is 
 no Church, — Ep. to Trallians. 
 AGAIN. 
 
 Be subject to your presbyters 
 as to the apostles of Jesus Christ 
 our hope. 
 
 It is therefore necessary, that 
 
 as ye do, so without your bishop 
 
 you should do nothing: also be ye 
 
 subject to your presbyters, as the 
 
 apostles of Jesus Clirist our hope, 
 
 in whom if we walk, we shall be 
 
 found in him. The deacons, 
 
 also, as being ministers of Jesus 
 
 Christ, &c. — Ep. to Trallians 
 
 AGAIN. 
 
 Follow the Presbyters as the See that ye all follow your 
 
 apostles. bishop as Jesus Christ the Father; 
 
 and the presbyters as the apos- 
 tles. — Ep. to Smijrneans. 
 The feeblest capacity can judge of the integrity of these 
 quotations of Dr. Miller. Let it be remembered that his 
 object is to show reasons for rejecting Episcopacy; or, as he 
 calls it, prelacy — rejecting the belief that three orders, 
 (bishops, priests, and deacons,) were established in the chris- 
 tian ministry by the apostles. Was there ever a more un- 
 faithful application of any man's written opinions? Dr. M. 
 omits the facts to which Ignatius actually does testify, and 
 changes a high wrought, fanciful, and unreasonable com- 
 
37 
 
 parhon, which the unbridled zeal of Ignatius led him to 
 make, into an allegation oi^ facts; of such facts too, as stand 
 diametrically opposed to Ignatius* own testimony'.'' 
 
 Yet Dr. M. says: "It is still my deliberate conviction that 
 I gave a fair specimen of that testimony from the father in 
 question, which Episcoj^al writers are accustomed to quote 
 as favoring their cause"! 
 
 2. He says, tiiat "a ground of this charge of unfair deaU 
 ing with Ignatius is, that I allege that he every where re- 
 presents the Presbyters, and not the Bishops, as the suc- 
 cessors of the Apostles. Bat is it not literally and strictly 
 true that Ignatius does, in every instance, make the precise 
 statement which I have alleged? He often speaks of Bi- 
 shops, Presbyters and Deacons ; but, so far as I recollect, 
 in all cases in which he speaks of succession at all, he re- 
 presents the Presbyters as succeeding in the place of the 
 Apostles."' 
 
 In the parts of sentences which Dr. Miller has quoted 
 from Ignatius in his Tract — and it is proper that I should 
 state that the above four are all which I could find in that 
 part of the Tract which treats of church government — it 
 would, most probably, be inferred, by readers generally, 
 that Ignatius did mean to represent presbyters as successors 
 of the apostles J but will any reader say, that such an infer- 
 ence can be drawn from the entire sentences, as presented 
 above? Does Ignatius really represent presbyters as the 
 successors of the apostles in any other sense than he re- 
 presents bishops as successors of God, the Father; and 
 the deacons as the successors of Jesus Christ? Does he, in 
 fact, speak of succession at all in those passages? Is not 
 the very language of the first quotation, unwarrantably al- 
 tered by Dr. M., that it may express that idea ? 
 
 Dr. M. asks if he has, in these quotations from Ignatius, 
 
3S 
 
 "kept back any thing which he ought to have stated ?" Un- 
 deniably he has. Could he have been ignorant that he was 
 not givingj^air and full quotations from Ignatius, when he 
 has actually quoted the same passages in full, as above given 
 by me, when it suited his purpose, in his Essay on the office 
 of Ruling Elder? (p. 78-79.) 
 
 Dr. M. is, it seems, very thoroughly convinced, that Igna- 
 tius "is every where describing pi^eshyterianism and not dio- 
 cesan episcopacy, as the form of church government which 
 existed in his day." He is, indeed, so deeply persuaded, 
 that he^has entirely overlooked the absurdity of such a view, 
 though often pressed upon him. It is sufficient to say here, 
 that common sense repels the idea, that presbyters could be 
 at the same time successors of the apostles, whose exercise 
 of the ministry is unquestioned, and yet be, on Dr. M's. 
 theory — mere lay elders — representatives of the people — not 
 entitled to exercise the ministry . that the office of pastor 
 should be necessary to the church, and yet have no prototype 
 in the apostolic age. But I refer you to my observations on 
 this point, at p. 36, of the Letter to the American Presbyte- 
 rian, as a conclusive answer, in few words, to all that Dr. 
 M. can allege on this subject. 
 
 Dr. M. concludes his fourth charge, with the following 
 very singular statement: "If your correspondent does not 
 understand how the Presbyters or Elders spoken of by Igna- 
 tius could have been 'Ruling Elders,'' on the Presbyterian 
 plan, as most of them, if not all, probably were, (an idea 
 which, it would seem, appears to him unspeakably ridicu- 
 lous) I can only say that he is not yet competent to discuss 
 the subject on which he has undertaken to instruct the pub- 
 lic." Perhaps my discernment may be at fault, but I can 
 only understand him as declaring here, that, if I cannot 
 adopt his views, in relation to Ignatius, I am incompetent to 
 discuss the subject of Episcopacy; or, in other words, that 
 
39 
 
 lam incompetent to defend the opinions which I have delib- 
 erately and understandingly adopted, against an assailant 
 who is inaccessible to argument— contemptuous to his op- 
 ponents — unfaithful in his quotations — variable in his own 
 opinions to suit his purpose — and intolerant of all opinions 
 but his own! 
 
 V. The next point on svhich Dr. M. dilates is an incidental 
 remark in the Letter &c. that he uses the term prelacy, in 
 reference to the simple form of apostolical Episcopacy, as 
 contended for by us, "in defiance of the usage of all good 
 writers and of all Episcopalians especially." I laid but 
 little stress on this matter; and it must have required some 
 diligence on his part to hunt it out, amidst much other mat- 
 ter which called for his attention, but which he has thought it 
 expedient to overlook. My allegation, howeve r, was — though 
 it did not suit him so to present it — that "in defiance of the 
 usage of all good writers, and of all Episcopalians especially, 
 he continually substitutes it for episcopacy P He could 
 not, whatever he may say ad captandum on the subject, have 
 supposed, that I meant to insinuate that this term is not used 
 occasionally by good writers, especially in reference to cer- 
 tain modifications of episcopacy. But he does not give me 
 credit for perceiving, what requires no very strong vision, 
 that he earnestly covets the term Episcopacy for his own 
 church system; and that he has discovered that the fathers 
 and founders of English and American presby terianism, the 
 Westminster Assembly, made a very great mistake when 
 they, warily as they thought, but unwarily as Dr.M. doubt- 
 less thinks, adopted a name, which forever compels their 
 successors to defend their ecclesiastical system apart from 
 the testimony of ecclesiastical history. This is apparent in 
 his laborious struggles to wrest Ignatius as a witness on his 
 own side. He knows, and every one knows, who has read 
 the Epistles of Ignatius, that they testify to a form of epis- 
 
40 
 
 copacy wholly distinct from the form of preshytery as ori- 
 ginally established: that he speaks of bishops, priests, and 
 deacons, as orders o^the ministry, actually exercising its 
 offices; and does not, like the Westminster Confession and 
 the Form of Government of his own church, term the last 
 two, representatives of the people merely. But, in his book 
 on the office of Lay Elder, he strives hard, both to bring 
 scriptural and other testimony in favor of that office; and to 
 elevate it by forms of ordination, and by strong descriptions 
 of its importance, dignity, and necessity, into a much nearer 
 alliance with the presbyters of Ignatius, that it has ever yet 
 had. Hence it is that he is now desirous of availing him- 
 self of a term consecrated to an invariable sense by eccle- 
 siastical history, and by the uniform usage of ecclesiastical 
 writers. What writer before Dr. Miller ever dignified parity 
 with the title of episcopacy? Who does not know that the 
 English puritans, of the days of the Westminster Assembly, 
 gloried in the name of Presbyterian as opposed to Episco- 
 pal? And even in the Constitution of the American Presby- 
 terian church, so far from claiming the term bishop as in- 
 disputably indicative of the pasto7'al office, it is modestly, de- 
 clared that this title ^^ought not be rejected.'''' Note to ch. IV. 
 But Dr . M. also very well knows, that, while in "its deriva- 
 tion and meaning," the term prelacy has the sense of epis- 
 copacy, yet a sense has been attached to it, such as he ap- 
 pears to desire should continue with it, conveying odium 
 to the popular mind. He, lam confident, has not forgotten 
 the Covenant made in a certain country, "against popery, 
 prelacy, and superstition, and to uphold the gospel f nor 
 can he need to be reminded of the definition given to it by 
 the Westminster Assembly, of "church government by arch- 
 bishops, bishops, deans, and chapters, and all other ecclesi- 
 astical officers depending on that hierarchy;" or even of the 
 more recent distinction, made by the Idte commentator Tho- 
 
41 
 
 mas Scott, Avhen he said, in one of his letters : "I am an Epi^ 
 copalian, but not a prelatist." Neither can Dr. M. suppose, 
 that he makes the term more acceptable to us, at his hands, 
 though he calls it respectful, when the analogy which he 
 presents, is that of the application of the terms Papist and 
 Socinian, to bodies which uniformly resent their use. He 
 says, however, that in some form a distinction '^ougJit to be 
 made, and must be made in the use of the term Episcopacy ;" 
 an assertion which proves yet more strongly, the difficulties 
 which press on his mind, when he reflects, that in its 
 long contmued and exclusive application, by writers of 
 every description, to what he calls the prelaiical church, 
 that church has an advantage, which his own, by the 
 deliberate disavowal of it can never hope to possess. — 
 Dr. M. has no warrant whatever, for applying this term to 
 the Presbyterian system, nor is the word to be found at all 
 in the Form of Government of the Presbyterian church.* 
 
 Dr.M. drags in, rather awkwardly, — for the sake probably 
 of giving more point to his remarks on this head, — from 
 some querulous puritan, whom he calls, "a venerable 
 old writer," the following classification — "Divine Episcopa- 
 cy," — by which, it seems, is meant, not episcopacy, but 
 presbytenanism: "2d. Human episcopacy," — by which he 
 
 *I am suslaiiied, I think, in tiiis viiw of the subject by Dr. M. 
 himself, when he says: "Our Episcopal brethren are food of having 
 a title applied to them which would convey the idea that they 
 alone have Bishops. Now it is v?ell known that Presbyterians 
 claim to have bishops as well as they. And what is worthy of par- 
 ticular notice, Presbyterians now use the title, not to designate 
 prelates, but plain pastors of churches." It is believed that there is 
 no instance on record of the European Presbyterian reformers desig- 
 nating their "plain pastors of churches" by this title. Through all 
 ecclesiastical history, from Clement of Rome down to our own 
 times, this term has but one sense — 'hat now givsa to it by Episco- 
 palians, and by most Presbyterian writers also. 
 4* 
 
42 
 
 means that episcopacy, which the Fathers and ecclesiasti- 
 cal history represent as established by the Apostles: and 
 "3d. Diabolical Episcopacy — referring to the papal sys- 
 tem." Dr. Miller certainly explains the terms according to 
 his theory, while I have ventured to conform them to the 
 facts. Perhaps he will be willing to take a quotation from 
 another "venerable old writer," who says, that "some pre- 
 tended in his day to derive presbytery from Jelhro, in his 
 humble petition and advice to Moses concerning the govern- 
 ment of the Jews. It is well that we see from whence it 
 came, even from Midian, an heathenish place, and unac- 
 quainted with the true worship of God, then confined only 
 to the Jews," S^c. Suppose that I should apply to Dr. M. 
 his own remark, and ask him whether the expression applied 
 by this "venerable old writer" to his system, "would suit 
 him better"? 
 
 In relation, however, to the use of the term Bishop, I 
 must mention a fact, which, in this connexion, it seems 
 to me, deserves to be recorded. Previously to the American 
 Revolution, the members of the Episcopal church in this 
 country, were obliged to send all their candidates for the 
 ministry to England, for ordination; being prevented by ac- 
 tive and persevering efforts on the part of some in this coun- 
 try, and in England, from having resident Bishops. The 
 evil was deeply and strongly felt, as it deprived them of some 
 of their dearest religious privileges. At a period immediate- 
 ly before the Revolution, there was some probability that their 
 repeated petitions, appeals, and remonstrances, would be 
 heard, and that they would be allowed to place themselves on 
 an equal footing with other religious denominations. It was 
 expected that one of the bishops who were then to be appoint- 
 ed, would reside at Burlington, on the eastern bank of the Dela- 
 ware. Such, however, was the feeling excited among tiie 
 opponents of episcopacy, that threats were openly made in 
 
43 
 
 Philadelphia, that, instead of a Bishop being allowed to re- 
 side on the banks of the Delaware, he should actually be 
 put into the river! When, after the revolution, the General 
 Convention of the Episcopal church determined to obtain 
 the Episcopal office, it was seriously proposed to change the 
 name of Bishop tor one less odious to the opponents of epis- 
 copacy; and when the present venerable Bishop White re- 
 turned home, after having been consecrated a. Bishoj), he 
 was earnestly advised, even in the city of Philadelphia, to be 
 cautious how, with his new character, he exposed his person'. 
 What a change has he lived to see in this respect I The ab- 
 horred name is now coveted on every side ! x-ili who pretend 
 to the ministry among the sects of which our country may 
 be said to be fertile, are willing now at least to share with us; 
 and Dr. Miller, it seems, is even desirous todeprive us of a name, 
 which, a generation since, all were equally willing to leave 
 to our exclusive possession; and were equally ready to rep- 
 resent as too odious to be endured I 
 VI. Dr. x\I. says that 
 
 "Ax Episcopalian" utterly misconceives and misrepresents 
 the use which I make of Dr. Barrow. I never thooght of intima- 
 ting that he was not a behever in the divine right of Prelacy. It 
 never entered in my mind that such a construction would be pnt up- 
 on what I said concerning him, by any human being. It was 
 enough for tny purpose to cite his opinion and his proof, that the 
 apostles, as such, and in their pre-eminent character, had and could 
 have, no successors. This was my sole object in quoting him. And 
 whatever your correspondent may think of his judgment as bearing 
 on this point, I am confident that no impartial inquirer will fail to 
 feel its force, and admit i:s conclusiveness." 
 
 Now the truth is, that so far from my misconceiving and 
 misrepresenting Dr. M, it is himself who misconceives and 
 misrepresents both Dr. Barrow and myself, as the "impartial 
 inquirer" may easily perceive. 
 
 Ist. He misconceives and misrepresents Dr. Barrow, for 
 
44 
 
 Br. B. in the very passage which Dr. Miller quotes, when he 
 represents the ^^apostolical office''' as "not successive, not 
 communicable to others," means,, as he himself states, "that 
 such an office, consisting of so many extraordinary privileges, 
 and iniraculous powers, which were requisite for the founda- 
 tion of the church, was not designed to continue by deriva- 
 tion, for it contained in it divers things which apparently were 
 not communicated, and which no man, without gross impo- 
 siture and hypocrisy, could challenge to himself P Now 
 Dr. M. must certainly well know, that Episcopalians have 
 never contended that Bishops were the successors of Apos- 
 tles in their extraordinary privileges and miraculous powers, 
 but only in the peculiar and pre-eminent po»vers of ordina- 
 tion and government. He ought to know, also, that Dr. Bar- 
 row cannot be understood to mean, that the Apostles had no 
 successors in these two "peculiar and pre-eminent" parts of 
 their office. If, therefore, he understands Dr. B. in the 
 quotation he makes from him, as denying that Bishops are 
 the successors of the Apostles, except in their extraordinary 
 privileges and miraculous powers, he certainly misconceives 
 him; and when he represents, as he plainly does in his Tract, 
 "the judgment of this able and learned prelatist, concerning 
 the foundation of the whole argument" of Episcopalians, as 
 opposed to their doctrine that Bishops succeeded the Apostles 
 in the peculiar and pre-eminent powers of ordination and 
 government, he certainly very grossly misrepresents him. 
 Dr. Barrow unquestionably maintains this doctrine; and any 
 Episcopalian may very safely subscribe to the sentiments in 
 Dr. M's. quotation, when viewed apart from the statements 
 with which Dr. M. has introduced it in his Tract. 
 
 2d. But Dr. M. misconceives and misrepresents me also. 
 He says, "I never thought of intimating that Dr. Barrow was 
 not a believer in the divine right of prelacy. It never en- 
 tered my mind that such a construction would be put upon 
 
45 
 
 what I said concerning him, by any human being/' It is 
 sufficient in reply to say, that I did not charge him with de- 
 nying that Dr. B. did not beheve in the divine right of jm- 
 lacy. My language was: "Dr. M. quotes a passage from 
 Dr. Barrow for the purpose of showing that Dr. B. did not 
 consider the Apostles as having a«3^ regular successors: — 
 Dr. M. seems to have intended that his readers should infer 
 that Dr. Barrow did not himself believe in the apostolic ori- 
 gin of Episcopacy." If Dr. M., when he represents Dr. B. 
 as denying that the Apostles had successors in their pre-em- 
 inent and peculiar powers, meant merely to show, that "as 
 men endowed with the gifts of miracles and inspiration, who 
 were, prior to the completion of the canon of the New Tes- 
 tament, constituted the infallible guides of the church, they 
 had no successors;*'' as Episcopalians participate with him 
 in this opinion, there was no reason for his quoting Dr. B., 
 or any one else; but his evident jnirpose was, to rep- 
 resent Dr. B. as opposed to the Episcopal view of apos- 
 tolic succession; — he evidently designed that his reader 
 should so understand it; and I have of course neither mis- 
 conceived nor misrepresented him. 
 
 VII. We come now to the case of the Waldenses. Dr. 
 M. says that I "still insist that the Waldenses had episcopa- 
 cy established among them." He adds: "It really surpri- 
 ses me that after the testimony which has been adduced, 
 that point should be any longer questioned." Wonderful in- 
 deed, that any one should presume to question what Dr. Al. 
 chooses to think settled! But w^here, let me ask, is this testi- 
 mony adduced? Is it by Dr. M. himself, in his Letters on 
 the Ministry? SureH that had received a sufficient refuta- 
 tion, for any mind open to conviction, by Dr. Bowden, Ion;; 
 since. At any rate. Dr. Bowden quoted competent authori- 
 ties against Dr. M. of whom he now takes no notice. In my 
 Letter to the American Presbyterian^ I quoted in favor of 
 
46 
 
 the episcopal character of the ancient Waldensian church, 
 Mosheim; Pep rani, one oi^ their own writers; the London 
 Christian Observer, the same work which Dr. M. refers to 
 in what he says of Ignatius; and the late Rev. Dr. Wilson, 
 a Presbyterian clergyman, of great talent, industry, and re- 
 search, formerly of Philadelphia. As only one of these 
 writers, (the Observer) was Episcopal, I supposed I had 
 quoted learned, impartial, and competent authorities. Dr. 
 M. says, that he considers the witnesses he has addu- 
 ced, "as better authority than any which 1 have arrayed 
 against them.'" I propose therefore briefly to examine this 
 subject. 
 
 It is necessary to state, in the first place, that in the year 
 1630, the vallies of Piedmont, where the Waldenses dwell, 
 and from which they derive their name, were visited by 
 a plague, which swept off a large proportion of the peo- 
 ple, and all their ministers, with the exception of two 
 who had retired from the work, in extreme age. At 
 this period, they obtained an immediate supply of Presby- 
 terian ministers from France and Switzerland, who belonged 
 to the Calvinistic church. It is distinctly admitted, that, sub- 
 sequently to that period, the form of the ministry among 
 them has been Presbyterian. Butihatit was so previously to 
 this period, and through the most important part of their 
 history as a church, is as distmctly denied. From that per- 
 iod upwards, to the time of Pope Sylvester, and the Emper- 
 or Constantino the Great, as far as they can trace their his- 
 tory, their ministry was Episcopal."^ Dr. Miller wholly 
 overlooks this distinction; and finding that all accounts agree 
 
 *The only historian of the Waldenses prior to this period was Per- 
 rin, pastor of a church at Lyons, in France. As the subject before 
 ns was not a disputed one in his day, his work containa no precise infor 
 mation in regard to it. 
 
47 
 
 that their ministry^ is now, and through its modern portion 
 substantially Presbyterian, he infers that it has always been 
 so, and will meddle with no testimony which cannot, in some 
 way, be made to sustain his views. For this reason the 
 learning of such men as Usher, Allix, Peyrani, Mosheim 
 and Sims, has been arrayed before him to no purpose. 
 
 I propose to present such testimony as I have been able to 
 collect from the few works within my reach, to the episco- 
 pal character of the Waldenses, and then to examine the 
 weight of the opposing testimonies on which Dr. Miller re- 
 lies for denying that character to them. 
 
 1st. The earliest writers, in relation to the Waldenses, 
 were Roman Catholics, and consequently their enemies. 
 Their testimony on the point before us varies much. Usher, 
 in his work on the succession of the Western churches, has 
 collected and compared their conflicting assertions, and has 
 shown that, according to one, they permit laymen to con- 
 secrate the elements; according to another, consecration is 
 the work of the priesthood ; of which according to another, 
 there were actually three orders. Bresse, one of their 
 own historians, says in his History, that Pope Eneas Sylvi- 
 us said of the Waldenses, that one of their doctrines was 
 that "the Bishop of Rome, is not superior to other Bishops.'^'* 
 Jones, an English anti-episcopal writer, professedly quoting 
 the same work of Eneas Sylvius, represents him as alleging, 
 that the Waldenses held "that the Pope of Rome is not su 
 perior to Bishops, and that there is no difference among 
 priesU?'' 
 
 Bresse, in his History above quoted, in the chapter on the 
 Discipline of the Vaudois church, distinctly marks the change 
 which occurred at the'period above named. He says : "The 
 public worship was always celebrated in the Vaudois lan- 
 guage, till 1630, when a pestilence swept off the whole of 
 the barbes (pastors) with the exception of two, who wer« 
 
48 
 
 inefficient from age. In consequence, pastors were invited 
 to come from France and Geneva. — In the holy^sacraments, 
 the bread v/as, until 1630, broken into three parts, and the water 
 thrice sprinkled in baptism, in remembrance of the Trinity. 
 The parishioners, without exception, assembled at the house 
 of their respective elders, [see quotation from Moshemi 
 below] for communion, which was celebrated four times a 
 year; when before Easter, and sometimes before Christmas, 
 each person was required by his pastor to give his reasons 
 for his faith. — Before the time of the plague, the pastors 
 were subject each year, to a visit from the moderator, 
 and two members of the Synod, who, after minute enquiries, 
 made their report to the Synod. The foreign clergy would 
 not submit to this ordinance." Any one acquainted with 
 ecclesiastical history, must, I think, perceive that he 
 speaks here of an Episcopal jurisdiction, though he uses 
 the termm odcrator, consistently perhaps, with the modern 
 ideas of the Waldenses; and that such jurisdiction was dis- 
 allowed by the French and Swiss Presbyterian ministers, 
 when they took the charge of the Waldensian churches. 
 
 Mosheim, referring to Perrin, Leger, Usher, and Basnage, 
 says, that "the government of the church was committed by 
 them to Bishops — who were also called major ales or elders 
 —presbyters, and deacons; and that they acknowledged that 
 these three ecclesiastical orders were instituted by Christ 
 himself." 
 
 In an apology for their faith, presented to Francis I. of 
 France, (1554) from the Waldensian church, it is said that 
 Bishops and pastors ought to be irreprehensible in their 
 manners." 
 
 The late moderator Peyrani, of a family distinguished 
 through a long period of Waldensian history; himself a man 
 of unquestioned talent and erudition ; and undeniably better 
 acquainted with their history, than any other man of modern 
 
49 
 
 times, on being asked by Mr. Gillyj whether there had not 
 formerly been bishops, properly so called, in the Vaudois 
 church, expressly answered, yes. — Tn a communication, 
 made by him to the London Society for propagating the Gos- 
 pel, in 1820, he expressed his "regret at the misfortunes 
 which bad deprived the Waldensian church of the benfit of 
 episcopal government/' — In his second Letter to Cardinal 
 Pacca^ coutamed in his Historical Defence of the Walden- 
 ses, he says, that Peter Waldo admitted the three orders of 
 Bishops, priests and deacons^ 
 
 Dr. Miller admits that the Bohemian protestauts were a 
 branch of the Waldenses. He represents their historian, 
 Comenlus, as saying, that "there were certain seniors, who 
 performed certain duties for the sake of order, but claimed 
 no superiority, by divine right." It is true, he does not give 
 this as an actual quotation from Comeniusj but the infer- 
 ence he wishes drawn, if the remark has any bearing on the 
 subject before us, is, that the Bohemians were woi episcopal; 
 yet he had certainly seen the following passages which are 
 directly opposed to his theory. Comenius says in his His- 
 tory: "The protestanls of Bohemia, who were apprehensive 
 that ordinations, in which presbyters, and not a Bishop, 
 should create another presbyter, would not be lawful; and 
 wereiii doubt how they should be able to mamtain such an 
 ordination, either to others whom they opposed, or to their 
 own people when they questioned it — sent deputies to the 
 remains of the ancient Waldenses, by whose Bishops* these 
 deputies were consecrated to the episcopaZ office, which they 
 have ever since transmitted to their successors." Certainly, 
 this is a very different view of the case from that presented 
 by Dr. MiPer. The same fact is stated in the Bohemian 
 Book of Order and Discipline : "Whereas, the said Walden- 
 ses, affirming that they have lawful Bishops and a lawful 
 uninterrupted seccession from the Apostles to the present 
 
 5 
 
60 
 
 day, did solemnly create three of our ministers Bishops, 
 and confer on them power to ordain ministers." These 
 Bishops, so ordained, did not, however take that name, but 
 were called (Semors, or superintendants; and from this trivial 
 circumstance, in opposition to the fact of their receiving a 
 new ordination, when a\rea.dy priests, Dr. M. would have his 
 readers infer that they were not Bishops in fact But Co- 
 menius gives us a reason for this. He says: "They did not 
 take upon them the name of Bishop,on account of the anti- 
 christian abuse of that name," by the papal bishops around 
 them; just as it was proposed, as I have stated above, in our 
 own General Convention, that the American Bishops should 
 have a different title because of the odium then thought to 
 be attached to that of Bishop; or just as some of the Bishops 
 of Denmark and Sweden, have, since the Reformation, borne 
 the name of superintendants, while all the rest are called 
 Bishops. Surely Dr. M. should be cautious how he accu- 
 ses others of incovipetency to discuss the subject of Episco- 
 pacy ! 
 
 But again ; Crantz in his Ancient History of the Mora- 
 vian Brethren says : "The Waldenses traced the succession 
 of their Bishops from the Apostles'* times. The Bohehiians 
 sent three of their priests, already ordained, to Stephen, 
 Bishop of the Waldenses, who consecrated them, with the 
 assistance of his co-bishop, to be Bishops of the BreihrerCs 
 church." — And again : In the Compendiun of the History 
 of the Brethren's church, written by one of their Bishops, and 
 translated by La Trobe, it is said that "the Vallences traced 
 their doctrines, and the succession of their Bishops, from the 
 Apostles, and the primitive christians." And yet again : "A 
 persecution arose against the Waldenses in Austria, by 
 which they were totally dispersed, and their Bishop Ste- 
 phen, was burnt at Vienna. Thus the wonderful provi- 
 dence of God spared this last Bishop of the Waldenses, un- 
 
51 
 
 til he transmitted regular episcopal ordination to the Breth- 
 ren." Cmn^z names 67 Bishops of the Moravian Brethren 
 from 1735 back to Stephen, Bishop of the Waldenses in 
 1497. 
 
 Dr. JablowsJfy, chaplain to the King of Prussia, in the 
 beginning of the last century, and a Senior or Bishop of the 
 Bohemian church in Poland, in a letter printed in the second 
 volume of the Life of Archbishop Sharp,* after asserting 
 the existence of episcopacy in the christian church for 
 1500 years, "in all ages and times, down from the Apostles, 
 and in all places where there were christians," adds: "be- 
 fore the great Reformation, when the followers of Huss in 
 Bohemia separated themselves from the Romish church, 
 they made it one of their first cares to preserve an episcopal 
 svjccession for their little church, and that by the means of 
 some Bishops of the Vaudois, at that time there in exile, 
 which happened in 1497." 
 
 But the writer, who, until recently at least, has examined 
 the most thoroughly' into this question, was Dr. AlliXj of 
 whom Jones, in his History of the Waldenses, has said, "that 
 his researches into the history of the Waldensian churches 
 entitle him to the gratitude of posterity." Dr. Miller has 
 certainly reason to know something of this writer, but he 
 has carefully abstained from any reference to him. Now, 
 
 ♦The author of this work says of the Protestant (Bohemian) 
 church in Poland: "Under the title of Seniors that church has 
 kept up a character very much resembling our (English) Bishops. 
 These Seniors received a second ordination or consecration to their 
 office, and none can be received into the ministry but ly the impo- 
 sition of their hands." This Dr. Jablowsky is the same Bishop 
 who conveyed the episcopal succession to the Bohemian brethren, 
 who fled from Moravia to Hernhutt, from which the United Breth- 
 ren, or Moravians, of this country derive their ministry. There are 
 now several Moravian Bishops in America. No one can question 
 the lawfulness of their episcopacy. 
 
52 
 
 Dr. Allix asserts positively, that the Waldensss distinguished 
 their cler^jy into three orders, Bishops, priests, and deacons. 
 And he produces numerous unquesiionable proofs of this 
 assertion. The following will suffice here. He quotes an 
 ancient writer as saying, that "they hold that no other or- 
 ders ought to be retained in the church, but those of priests, 
 deacons, and Bishops:"" a })assagc evidently written against 
 the Roman Catholic pretensions. 
 
 Sleidan, in his History of the Reformation, says, that the 
 Bohemian people were divided into three classes, or sects. 
 Of the third sect, (or Waldenses,) he says that they admitted 
 nothing but the Bible, as the ground of their doctrine, and 
 that they chose their own priests and bishops. 
 
 The Christian Observer, 1815, page 65, in noticing Sims' 
 Memoir of the Waldenses, says, expressly: "The ancient 
 Waldenses were Episcopalians.'^'' In the same work for 
 182S, page 254, in a review of several authors on the Wal- 
 denses, it is said: "Some modern publications have claimed 
 the authority of the Waldenses, as far as that is of weight 
 in controversy, as unfavorable to episcopacy; but we con- 
 ceive the fact is far otherwise. The subject is discussed at 
 some length by Mr. Sims, the editor of Peyran. The proofs 
 he adduces of there having been the i/iree orders of Bishops, 
 priests, and deacons, amongst the ancient Vaudois, are am- 
 ple and conclusive. Peyran asserts in his second letter to 
 cardinal Pacca,jthat Peter Waldo of Lyons admitted these 
 tJiree orders. From the Lyonese branch of the Waldenses, 
 many of whom together with Waldo, settled finally in Bohe- 
 mia, the United Brethren, received episcopacy into their in- 
 fant church. In ihe year 1715, a branch of this church, in 
 Great Poland and Polish Russia, was recommended for re- 
 lief to the British government, by Archbishop Wake, after 
 an inquiry into its episcoj)al character, and its present and 
 former state, in a correspondence between that prelate and 
 
53 
 
 Dr. Jdbloioshj. At a later period Archbishop Potter ex- 
 pressly stated, respecting the Hernhutt branch of the Bohe- 
 mian and Moravian brethren, that "no Englishman who had 
 any notion of ecclesiastical history could doubt of their epis- 
 copal succession." 
 
 The Dublin Christian Examiner, vol. iv. p. 355, in giv 
 ing an account of Abp. Usher^s collection of Waldensian 
 MSS. deposited in the Library of Trinity College in that 
 city, says; "The Episcopal Reformed church is eminently 
 bound to assist the VValdenses, not only the witnesses of the 
 truth of the doctrines which v.e hold in common with other 
 prolestants, but they are evidences of the high antiquity of 
 our form of church government, which they claim to have 
 been transmitted to them from the apostolic times." Again: 
 the same work, conducted with unquestioned talent and 
 learning, in a review of Gilly's Excursion to Piedmont, vol. 
 1. p. 527, says, "The episcopal succession and character 
 were retained in acknowledged purity for centuries after the 
 establishment of the Vaudois church, as independent of 
 Rome." 
 
 The British Critic, 1826, p. 386, says, "the Vaudois 
 church was actually episcopal till the distresses of the times, 
 augmented by a dreadful pestilence, in the early part of the 
 seventeenth century, threw them into the arms of Switzer- 
 land." 
 
 The late Rev. Dr. Wilson, an eminent Presbyterian di- 
 vine, of Philadelphia, whose talents and learning need no 
 commendation from any one, and who evidently had patiently 
 examined this question, says of the VValdenses, that they 
 "were covertly episcopal, though after Claude (of Turin) 
 not papal; but never preshyterial prior to the Helvetic abju- 
 ration of popery." 
 
 And, lastly, I think I may adduce here a reluctant and 
 awkward testimony from Dr. Miller himself. In hisEisay 
 6* 
 
54 
 
 on the office of Lay Elder, speaking of tlie Bohemian brancti 
 of the Waldenses, he distinctly admits that those churches had 
 some features in their system of church order, which were 
 not sincily Preshyierian: *' That those churches gave the 
 title of Seniors, but more frequently of Antistitea to certain 
 elderly clergymen, who were pecuharly venerable in their 
 character, and who chiefly took the lead in all ordinationSy 
 i?, no doubt true," — When this statement is compared with 
 the quotation above from Comenius, and with the extract 
 from the Life of Abp. Sharp, in thenoteon page 51 it will be 
 plainly seen that the Bohemians not only were not Presbyte- 
 rian, but certainly were Episcopal, and that Dr. Miller might 
 as well have distinctly said so. 
 
 You may now judge, with what propriety I insisted, in the 
 Letter to the Editors of the American Presbyterian that "the 
 Waldenses had episcopacy established among them." 
 
 Let us now examine the testimony which Dr. M. adduces 
 to show that the Waldenses were not, at any period of their 
 history. Episcopalians, but were always Presbyterians. He 
 quotes or refers to Eneas Sylvius, Medina, BellarminCf 
 Perrin, Moreland, Rainolds, Scott, Heylin, Locke, and 
 Comenius, and says that "aZ/ these witnesses were prela- 
 tistsP Is Dr. Miller indeed serious in this declaration? He 
 well knows that the first three were Roman Catholics, and 
 yet he seems to desire (hat his readers should understand 
 them to be prelatists, in the sense in which he applies that 
 term to the members of our Protestant church! What are 
 we to think of the candor or justice of such a representation? 
 Perrin was a Waldensian, and he cites him to show that they 
 were Presbyterians, yet he too is here called a i)relatist! 
 Sir Samuel Moreland, was a Presbyterian, employed by 
 Oliver Cromwell, as his agent among the Waldenses, yet 
 Dr. M. calls him too a prelatisti And did he not know that 
 
55 
 
 the faiiiilv o( Locu-e were dissenters; and that, though he was 
 connected with ihe English church through a portion of his 
 life, vet, he never expressed an attachment to episcopacy, but 
 rather the contrary ? How then can he be called a prclatisti 
 Rainolds,\v<is a puritan f hut no EpiscopaHan, as Dr. M's. 
 quotation from him would be quite sufficient to prove; and 
 yet he too is now aprelatist! Of the whole number, Heylin 
 ^nd Comenius are the only two who have ever, T believe, 
 in any sense advocated the principle of protestant Episcopa- 
 cy; and yet, when it will in some way, serve Dr. Miller's 
 purpose, they are all — all prelatists! 
 
 And now let us notice the manner in which he cites them, 
 and the value of their testimony. 
 
 He quotes Eneas Sylvius as saying, that the Waldenses 
 "deny the hierarchy; maintaining that there is no difference 
 among priests, by reason of dignity of office." This is 
 another specimen of his own manner of quoting. Allix and 
 Jones, severally quote the passage thus: "They hold that 
 ihe pope of Rome is not superior to the bishops, and that 
 there is no difference as to rank and dignity among priests.''' 
 Br esse quotes it in nearly the same manner. (See page 47.) 
 This passage, when fairly quoted, has a sense precisely op- 
 posite to that which Dr. Miller, by a 'partial quotation, seeks 
 to give to it. Is it difficult then to understand, what Eneas 
 Sylvius, and Medina, and Bellarmine, mean by charging 
 the Waldenses with denying the hierarchy? Dr. Miller, in- 
 deed, suppresses their own explanation of what they mean 
 by the charge ; but other and honorable writers tell us that 
 Eneas Sylvius says, that they denied the hierarchy by main- 
 taining that the Bishop of Rome is not superior to other Bi- 
 shops, and that there is no difference among priests. In 
 what sense is this a denial that the Waldenses were Episco- 
 pal? Dr. M. says, that "no impartial man who reads the ac- 
 counts of Perrin and Moreland, can hesitate to admit that 
 
56 
 
 th3 Waldenses were Presbyterians in church government;" 
 but yet he adds, "I know that a different construction is put, 
 by some, on their account; but in my opinion, by the hlind- 
 eat 'prejudiced This is Dr. Miller's gentle and charitable 
 jnode ot^ admitting that there are persons who think differ- 
 ently from him en the subject, and is sufficient of itself to 
 cause candid readers to distrust his judgment. The fact is, 
 that though Perrin vvas one of the Waldensian ministers, and 
 wrote a history of their church, (which has been much cen- 
 sured by later writers for its many errors,) yet it is believed 
 that there is no unequivocal expression in it, from which a 
 fair inference can be drawn in favor, either of episcopacy, 
 or presbytenanism. Sir S. Moreland was himself a Pres- 
 byterian, and visited Piedmont after the plague, and when 
 the French and Swiss Calvinistic ministers had charge of 
 the churches; he could not therefore be expected to see ought 
 like episcopacy among them; and copying Perrin, even in 
 his errors, is not to be elevated above him as authority. — 
 Dr. Miller's next witness is Dr. Rainolds, whom he calls 
 "an eminently learned Episcopal divine.'*' Dr. M. quotes 
 him as saying, that "all those who have for five hundred 
 years past endeavored the reformation of the church, have 
 taught that all pastors, whether called Bishops, or priests, 
 are invested with equal authority and power: as first the 
 Waldensesj next Marcius Petavinus; Wicklifte and his dis- 
 ciples; Huss and the Hussites,'''' &c. To this, it is suffi- 
 cient to reply, in the language of Dr. Bowden, in reference 
 to the same assertion : "Very well. Rainolds was as liable 
 to mistake as Dr. Miller. What either asserts, in opposition 
 to numerous and positive testimonies, has not the weight of 
 a feather in the scale of evidence." It is amazing, that, in 
 the face of his quotation. Dr. Miller should call him an 
 Episcopalian. Dr. Miller himself admits, in his Treatise 
 on the office of Ruling Elder, that the churches of Bohemia, 
 
57 
 
 who, Mosheim says, were descended from the better sort of 
 Hussites, were not strictly Presbyterian; nay, more, he 
 proves in the quotation which I have made from this same 
 work above, (p. 54") the existence of a decided wiparity among 
 them. — It is very obvious from the testimony which I have 
 adduced above, in relation to the actual episcopacy of the 
 Waldenses, that Mr. Scott, Dr. Miller's next witness — proba- 
 bly, from not being aware of their occasional substitution of 
 other terms for that of Bishop^must have misconceived 
 Maurel, the Waldensian pastor, when he understands him as 
 saying in a letter, that the ordeis of Bishops, priests, and dea- 
 cons, did not exist in their ministry. Scott's work is not, 
 however, within my reach at present. — Dr. M. next extracts 
 from Locke'^s works, a statement, that it was said by some 
 one — in reply to a very correct assertion of a Bishop ot 
 Winchester, that "there was no christian church before Cal 
 vin that had not Bishops" — that "the Albigenses (Waldenses) 
 had no Bishops." As the debates in the House of Lords, 
 in which these remarks were made, occurred as late as 1675, 
 near half a century after the change of discipline introduced 
 by the French and Swiss ministers, it was doubtless true: 
 the Waldenses and Albigenses had then no Bishops. But 
 Dr. M. quotes Locke himself as remarking on this discus- 
 sion, that "it was very true what the Bishop of Winchester 
 replied, that they [the Albigenses] had some among them 
 who alone had power to ordain; but that was only to com- 
 mit that power to the wisest and gravest among them, and to 
 secure ill and unfit men from being admitted to the ministry; 
 but they exercised no jurisdiction over the others." But 
 surely Locke ought to have added, that this power committed 
 to the wisest and gravest men, was so committed by special 
 election and ordmation, for such was the fact; and that this 
 fact, though it does not prove the existence of such a hierar- 
 chy as was then, and still is in England, yet establishes the 
 
58 
 
 existence of a simple, primitive Episcopacy, in three orders; 
 by what name soever the superior, or ordaininc; order, may be 
 called, and whether with greater or less jurisdiction. That it 
 had 5ome jurisdiction! have shown above from Bresse; and 
 the express language of so diligent and accurate a historian as 
 Mosheim, in regard to a matter of fact, is sufficient quite to 
 overturn the construction or inference of Locke in relation 
 to it. — From his next witness, Comenius, Dr. Miller makes 
 no quotation. The quotations from him above (p.49-50) will 
 sufficiently show that his testimony is decidedly adverse to 
 Dr. M's. opinion. Yet, as showing upon what varied testi- 
 mony Dr. M. is willing to rely, and as furnishing a contrast, 
 almost ludicrous, when we remember Dr. M's. object in 
 citing them, let us view his last three witnesses together. 
 He represents Locke as saying, "that they had some among 
 them who alone had the power to ordain" — Comenius, ns say- 
 ing expressly that they had "certain Seniors [so called] who 
 performed certain duties [ordination] for the sake of order"- — 
 and Heylin, that they had fallen upon a "way of ordaining 
 ministers among themselves, imthont having recourse to the 
 Bishop, or an^/ such superior officer as a superintendant." 
 Is Dr. M. incapable of seeing that such discordant testimo- 
 nies as these can be of no service in testifying to a matter 
 of fact? And yet he speaks of a "marvellous harmony 
 among these learned and unbiassed witnesses." I marvel 
 much where he finds that harmony, and so, I doubt not, will 
 my readers! 
 
 You can no\,^ judge what reliance can be placed on Dr. 
 Miller's testimony against the episcopacy of the Waldenses; 
 and whether that fact is not as well attested as any in his- 
 tory. 
 
 VIII. To Dr. Miller's last topic, I do not see that any reply 
 is required other than the speedy publication, and extensive 
 circulation of the volume to which it refers — Bishop Onder-- 
 
69 
 
 donk's Episcopacy tested by Scripture, and the various re- 
 plies and rejoinders it called forth. Dr. M. meant, undoubt- 
 edly, to be very severe in the expression of his opinion, re- 
 specting what he is pleased to call my "singular gasconade." 
 ButDr. M's. opinion on any subject connected wilh episco- 
 pacy, will, I think, not have much weight with those who 
 have accompanied me thus far, in the examination of his 
 arguments and proofs. It is, however, singular in him to 
 be found concurring at all with Episcopalians in relation t(j 
 episcopacy ; and as both parties seem satisfied with this pro- 
 posed publication of their several arguments; although, as in 
 some former cases of the kind, the work of editing and pub- 
 lishing is left to Episcopalians; it is hoped that it will be 
 generally read, and thoroughly understood by ail who read 
 it. 
 
 These eight points are all, in reference to the Letter, whicn 
 Dr. M. conceived to call for his attention. I pointed out in the 
 Letter numerous inconsistencies in opinions, and statements, 
 and arguments, of which he has noticed those only on which, 
 as he confesses, he has been often pressed, — his opinions 
 of, and quotations from, Ignatius. He has not at all attempted 
 to vindicate himself from the inconsistency of disallowing 
 Theodoret'^s testimony in relation to a fact in primitive his- 
 tory, because he was distant four centuries from the fact-- 
 and yet quoting Dr. Barrow, who lived sixteen centuries 
 later, as authority in reference to the same fact — or of de- 
 nying, in the words of Barrow, that the apostolical office 
 was at all succeesive, and yet professedly quoting Ignatius to 
 show, that presbyters were the successors to '•Hhe bench of 
 the apostles"— wor, to mention no others, the following ; which, 
 that it may be more plainly seen, I now place in paralell 
 columns : — Dr. Miller says, in relation to the ministry — • 
 
60 
 
 Jn his Tract 1835. ( In his Letters on Ministry 
 
 The scripture testimony of our 1805 & 30. 
 
 Episcopal brethren is in no one in- j Whoever expects to find 
 stance direct and explicit, but j any formal or explicit decla- 
 all indirect and remotely infer- ! rations on this subject, delivered 
 rential. — p. 55. by Christ or his apostles, will 
 
 Again: be disappointed. — p. 26. 
 
 They (Episcopalians) do not : As^ain: 
 pretend to quote a single passage While the scrip'.ures present 7J0 
 of scripture which declares in so formal or explicit directions 
 many words, or any thing on this subject, we find in them a 
 like it, in favor of their claim, tnode of ■ expresnon, and a 
 but their whole reliance in re- number of facts ^ from which 
 gard to scriptural testinjony, is we may without difficulty, as- 
 placed on /if/f /s a^nd deductions ' certain the outlines of the aposto- 
 from those facts. — lb. i lie plan of ci»urch order.— 2?. 27. 
 
 These, certainly, are gross inconsistencies; and if Dr. 
 M. wishes that his opinions and arguments should have 
 weight with men to whom principle is of more value than 
 party, it largely behoves him to explain them. All his rail- 
 ing at my ignorance or incompetency, will not remove the 
 impressions which such discrepancies are calculated to make 
 on men who are really impartial, and love the truth. 
 
 Had not sufficient been already alleged to show the dispo- 
 sition of Dr. Miller in relation to the Episcopal church, I 
 might proceed to a much greater extent in the collection of 
 facts from his own writino-s. Yet I cannot avoid a few ad- 
 
 o 
 
 ditional remarks, in reference to the manner which this gen- 
 tleman has so long accustomed himself to exhibit towards 
 those who differ from him, that it is, perhaps, now not easy 
 to himself to be aware of it. Notwithstanding the earnest 
 love of peace, which he professes to inculcate, at the close 
 of the article in the American Presbyterian which has 
 occasioned this Letter, he has been more engaged in theo- 
 logical controversies, than, perhaps, any other man of our 
 age and country; and has never, I believe, passed by any 
 plausible occasion for a controversy with Episcopalians, or 
 on the subject of episcopacy. In every instance, I believe 
 
61 
 
 without exception, his opponents have complained of his sin- 
 gularly positive and dogmatical manner; of his negligence in 
 making quotations; and of his general want of candor to- 
 wards an adversary. He appears to consider it as a con- 
 ceded and settled principle, that he alone, of all men, is 
 placed on the pinnacle of truth, beyond the possibility of er- 
 ror, or of correction. He very seldom, if at all, manifests 
 any respect whatever for the opinions of those who differ 
 from him. If they charge him with error, misconception, 
 misquotation, or inconsistency, however plain may be the tes- 
 timony, the charge is a slander. If they take a different 
 view of any facts or opinions from his, it is only by the 
 blindest 'prejudice. If any historical fact is alleged to have 
 been stated by authors, even of established reputation, in a 
 way to militate with any theory of his, they are not candid 
 or well informed men; are of had faith, or little reflection:^ 
 the very language — the identical expressions which he him- 
 self applies to the systems or doctrines of others, when ap- 
 plied to his own, are unsparing calumny — blind and unhal- 
 lowed abuse.] He freely applies such terms as bigots., de- 
 
 *See his Tract on Preshyterianism, p. 31, and also his Letter 
 *o a Gentleman of Baltimore in reference to the case of the Ret. 
 Mr. Duncan. 
 
 tin his Tract on Preshyterianism, p. 24, speaking of the Cal- 
 vinistic system of religious doctrine, he says: "It has been by 
 multitudes rlefamed, as an abominable system, revolting to every 
 dictate of reason, f/isAonora&J to God, unfriendly to christian 
 comfort', adapted to beget discouragement and despair on the one 
 hand, or presumption and licentiousness on the other." He terms 
 this, and such like language, "unsparing calumny" — "blind and 
 unhallowed abuse." — Yet in his Continuation oj his Letters on 
 the Ministry p. 338, he says of the Anti-Calvinistic system, that 
 •'it is inconsistent with itself, dishonorable to God^ and comfort- 
 leu to man.** How remarkable is the correspondence between 
 these expressions and those which he complains that the opponeote 
 of Calvinism are in the habit of applying to his creed! 
 
 6 
 
62 
 
 luded, sectarian, profoundly ignorant, disgraceful, narrow 
 views, sinister purpose, abettors of popish doctrine, ruffian, 
 insolence, falsehood and meanness, upon his opponents, and 
 yet connplains of personal indecorums towards himself.* 
 He nnay term the pretensions of Episcopalians in regard 
 to the ministry an imposition upon popular credulity — he 
 may declare that their religious doctrines lead to blank and 
 cheerless atheism — that they are quite as likely to land the 
 believer in the abyss of the damned as in the paradise of 
 God, and none must deny, object to, or complain of such 
 bitter imputations and proscriptions; but a word in behalf of 
 episcopacy — the assertion that it was exclusively of apos- 
 tolic origin — is an unchurching of the residue of the christian 
 world, and casting them out to uncovenanted mercy. — He 
 may represent episcopacy as the idol ofhighchurch men; to 
 the worship of which they are willing to give their days and 
 nights, and ihemsehes umvearied worshipers of sect, but any 
 attempt to disprove, or evade the effect of such imputations, 
 is misrepresentation, slander, and vengeance J 
 
 In the article which I have now been employed in noticing, 
 published as it was in a religious paper, edited by highly 
 respectable gentlemen, he does not scruple to apply, nor they 
 to publish in reference to me, many of the expressions above 
 quoted- He accuses me of having lent myself to the propa- 
 
 ♦Let us observe how he regards such language when appHed to 
 himself. In the dissensions, which have for some time past pre- 
 vailed in his own church, some of these terms have been annexed 
 to his name. In his Letters to the Presbyterians (1833) he 
 writes thus on the subject: "To call a man bigoted, a sectarian, 
 or a high—churchman, because he decisively prefers to all others 
 the church to which he lias solemnly pledged his membership and 
 his affection: and to insist that he is equally bound to approve, 
 and equally bound to sustain, all other denominations; — is as per- 
 fect an affront to commoa sense, as it is to every sober eeclesias- 
 ieal principle." 
 
63 
 
 gation of slander i of being actuated by a spirit of toen- 
 geance: —he compares me to a ruffian j — he intimates that 
 the course pursued towards him is a compound of insolence, 
 falsehood and meanness, deserving the indignation of every 
 decent man] he charges me with profound ignorance — with 
 having repeated a charge, which (though previously made 
 against him by accomplished and pious scholars), was adap- 
 ted to disgrace myself: — he calls me a reckless adversary :- 
 he intimates that I have not intelligence enough to understand 
 the plainest sentence, &c. 
 
 It was in consequence of his frequent and continued ex- 
 hibitions of such feelings, and of a conduct towards his op- 
 ponents so ungenerous, and unbecoming his profession as a 
 minister of the Gospel, that it was said of him, more than 
 ten years since, by one of his opponents, who was not an 
 Episcopalian, that "of all the theological writers of the pres- 
 ent time, in this country, he has the distinction of being the 
 most bitterly and perseveringly illiberal,- we know not of 
 what kind of fame he may be ambitious, but if he continues 
 much longer in the course which he is pursuing, he will be 
 regarded by all the moderate and juoicious, and he will go 
 down to posterity, as the arch bigot of his day. If that is a 
 reputation which he covets he is m a fair way of acquiring 
 
 it;' 
 
 His exertions to this end do not appear to have been in- 
 termitted since that period. 
 
 Whether you shall adopt this judgment of Dr. Miller, or 
 not, I am confident you will approve the expression, with 
 which I conclude, of my determination to take no further 
 notice of the productions of Dr. Miller's controversial pen. 
 
 December, 1835. 
 
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