who presided was considered as corresponding in ecclesiastick matters to their prefect, proconsul, or chief magistrate, by whatever title he was distinguished, the presbytery to their senate or council, and the congregation to the comitia or convention of the people. I make no doubt, as Jerom plausibly supposes, that the acquiescence of the people would be given the more readily, from the consideration of the expediency of such an arrangement for preserving union. When one and the same congregation was under the direction of a plurality of pastors entirely equal, unless there were an umpire, to whose decision they were all considered as under an obligation to submit, there might be some danger of a rupture, in case their sentiments should jar. But we shall see in the sequel, (what is fully as unaccountable) that from causes perfectly similar, to wit, an allowed presidentship in synods and councils to the bishops of the capitals of provinces, kingdoms, regions, and of the empire itself; and from the gradual appropriation of titles, formerly common, arose insensibly the real presidency of metropolitical, patriarchal, and even papal power,

The first ecclesiastical author who mentions bishop, presbyter, and deacon, as three distinct orders of church officers, is Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who is supposed to have written about the sixteenth year of the second century, and by some even sooner. Indeed, several of the epistles ascribed to him are now acknowledged, by criticks of all denominations, to be spurious, and some of the rest are admitted, even by his ablest advocates, to be interpolated; insomuch, that it would not be easy to say how we could with safety found a decision on an author, with whose works transcribers, in the judgment of both sides, have made so free. What makes his testimony the more to be suspected is, first, because the fore-mentioned distinction is so frequently and officiously obtruded on the reader, sometimes not in the most modest and becoming terms, as was the manner of the apostles, when speaking of their own authority; and obedience is enjoined to the bishop and presbyters, even where the injunction cannot be deemed either natural or pertinent, as in his epistle to Polycarp, who was himself a bishop: secondly, because the names bishop and presbyter are never used by him for expressing the same office, as they had been uniformly used by all who had preceded him, and were occasionally used by most of the ecclesiastick writers of that century: thirdly and principally, because Polycarp, a contemporary and surviver of Ignatius, in a letter to the Philippians, quoted in a former discourse, pointing out the duties of all ranks, pastors, and people, makes mention of only two orders of ministers, to wit, presbyters and deacons, in the

same manner as Luke, and Paul, and Clement, had done bes fore him; nay, and recommends to the people submission to them, and only to them in terms, which I must say were nei. ther proper, nor even decent, if these very ministers had a superiour in the church, to whom they themselves, as well as the people, were subject. To me the difference between these two writers appears by no means as a diversity in style, but as a repugnancy in sentiment. They cannot be both made applicable to the same state of the church. So that we are forced to conclude, that in the writings of one, or the other, there must have been something spurious or interpolated. Now I have heard no argument urged against the authenticity of Polycarp's letter, equally cogent as some of the arguments employed against the authenticity of the epistles of Ignatius. And indeed the state of the church, in no subsequent period; can well account for such a forgery, as the epistle of the for mer to the Philippians; whereas, the ambition of the ecclesias ticks, for which some of the following centuries were remark able, renders it extremely easy to account for the nauseous res petition of obedience and subjection to the bishop, presbyters, and deacons, to be found in the letters of Ignatius.

The way in which Dodwell accounts for it, (though in itself not implausible) is very singular, as his sentiments are on many subjects. He says, that it was because the bishop's authority was at that time a perfect novelty, totally unknown in the church, that Ignatius found it necessary to exert himself to the utmost, to recommend and establish it. According to this modern, the power and all the prerogatives of bishops were a mere upstart of the second century, after the death of all the apostles, and after the compilement of the canonical scrip tures. It is in vain, therefore, he acknowledges, to look for any trace of episcopal authority in the New Testament. In the days of the apostles, it was not by prelacy that the church was governed, but by a species of popery, with which, if I mistake not, Mr. Dodwell was the first who brought the world acquaints ed. The pope was not the apostle Peter, but the apostle James: the papal throne was erected not at Rome, but at Jerus salem; and after the destruction of this city by the Romans, trans ferred to Ephesus; and when finally suppressed, the episcopas cy was reared upon its ruins. Yet of this episcopacy, though neither coeval with the christian religion, nor of apostolical institution, for it did not obtain till after the death of John, the last of the apostles, and of which we cannot have scriptural evidence, as it did not exist till several years after the finishing of the canon, the absolute necessity since the sixth year of the second century, and no sooner, is such, that without it there is

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no church of Christ, no salvation of men. Damnation or an. nihilation is all the prospect that remains even for those who believe and obey the gospel. For the rejection of an innovation which has no place there, and of which all the sacred writers were ignorant, can never imply either disbelief or disobedience of the gospel. But why, it may be said, detail extravagancies, more like the ravings of a disordered brain, than the sober deductions of a mind capable of reflection? I should indeed have thought the task unnecessary, if experience had not proved, that even such extravagancies have sometimes been productive of infinite mischief. If Dodwell, with all his learning, had not been a perfect idolater of his own eccentrick imagination, he could not have acquiesced in a system so chimerical, so ill-compacted, so destitute of every kind of proof, external or internal, and to which all the sources of evidence, hitherto known in theological controversy, reason, scripture, and tradition, are equally repugnant. If it had been his express object to produce a scheme which might outdo even the Romish, not only in absurdity but in malignity, he could not have succeeded better. His unceasing cry was schism; yet in the scriptural sense a greater schismatick than himself the age did not produce. Whose doctrine was ever found more hostile to that fundamental principle, declared by our Lord to be the criterion of our christianity, mutual love? Whose doctrine ever was more successful in planting, by means of uncharitable and self-opinioned judgments, the principle of hatred in its stead? The test to which Scripture points is, Does the teaching in question alienate the hearts of christians, or unite them? Does it conciliate the affections where differences have unhappily arisen? or does it widen the breach? If the former, the spirit is christian; if the latter, schismatical. The former is not more productive of charity, the end of the commandment, or gospelcovenant, and the bond of perfectness, than the latter is of its opposite, malignity, the source of discord, the parent of intolerance and persecution. It would be unjust not to add, in extenuation of the guilt of those who mistake bigotry for zeal, what our Lord pleaded in behalf of his murderers, They know not what they do. This charity, where there appears the smallest scope for it, is due even to the uncharitable. In regard to vital religion, it is to be regretted, that men, even of talents and science, often show little penetration, rarely going deeper than the surface. The natural man, (saith Paul, 1 Cor. ii, 14, more properly the animal man, Luxin, not quoix. av.&pwx) receiveth not the things of the spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Their acquaintance is merely with the outside:

they break their teeth upon the shell, without reaching the kernel.

But to return to Ignatius, I say not that the epistles in question ought to be rejected in the lump, but that undue freedoms have been used even with the purest of them, by some over zealous partisans of the priesthood. They have, in many things, a remarkable coincidence with the sentiments repeatedly inculcated in the apostolick constitutions, a compilation probably begun in the third century, and ended in the fourth or fifth. Among the writers of the second age, I shall mention also Ireneus, who is supposed to have written about the middle of the second century, and in whose writings the names, bishop and presbyter, and others of the like import, are sometimes used indiscriminately. I acknowledge, however, that the distinction of these, as of different orders, began about this time generally to prevail: the difference was not indeed near so considerable as it became afterwards. Accordingly, Ireneus talks in much the same style of both. What at one time he ascribes to bishops, at another he ascribes to presbyters: he speaks of each in the same terms, as entitled to obe dience from the people, as succeeding the apostles in the ministry of the word, as those by whom the apostolick doctrine and traditions had been handed down. Thus (lib. iii, chap. 2,) he says, concerning the hereticks of his time, " Cum autem ad eam iterum traditionem quæ est ab apostolis, quæ per success "siones presbyterorum in ecclesiis custoditur, provocamus eos, qui adversantur traditioni, dicent se non solum presby"teris, sed etiam apostolis existentes sapientiores, synceram "invenisse veritatem." Here not only are the presbyters men. tioned as the successours of the apostles, but in ranging the ministries, no notice is taken of any intervening order such as that of the bishops. It is not always easy to say, whether by the two appellations, bishop and presbyter, Ireneus means the same order, or different orders. In the former case he would appear to make no distinction, and in the latter very little between them. Dr. Pearson admits, (which by the way is contradicted by Dodwell) that the names, bishop and presbyter, are often interchanged by this father, and others of his time, even to the end of the century. This, however, he maintains, happened only when they spoke of the ministry in general terms, or mentioned those ministers in particular who had preceded them; affirming, that in regard to their own contemporaries, the offices of individuals are never thus confounded. A man, who was in their time a bishop, is not called a presbyter, nor is a presbyter called a bishop. I admit the truth of this remark, and consider it as a very strong confirmation of the

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doctrine I have been defending. For what reasonable ac count can be given of this manner otherwise chargeable with the most unpardonable inaccuracy) but by saying, that, in the time of the predecessors of Ireneus, there was distinction worthy of notice in the ministry; whereas, in his own time, the distinction began to be marked by peculiar powers and prerogatives. If this had not been the case, it was as little natural as excusable, to be less accurate in speaking of those that went before, than in speaking of the people of his own time. Was it ever observed of writers in the fourth and fifth centuries, to come no lower, that they in this manner confounded the different ecclesiastical of. fices of the third? Is Cyprian, for instance, in any suc ceeding age, styled a presbyter of Carthage, or Rogatian the bishop? Are not their respective titles as uniformly observed in after ages as in their own?

But to return to the epistles of Ignatius, it is not only what we find singular in them, for so early a period, relating to the different orders of ministers in the church, which has raised suspicions of their authenticity, or at least of their integrity; there are other causes which have co-operated in producing the same effect; one is, the style in many places is not suited to the simplicity of the times immediately succeeding the times of the apostles. It abounds with inflated epithets, unlike the humble manner of the inspired writers; and in this, as in other respects, seems more formed on that which became fashionable after the acquisition of greater external importance, which opulence never fails to bring, and after the discussion of certain theological questions agitated in the third and fourth centuries, to which we find, sometimes, a manifest allusion. What I am going to observe has much the appearance of anachronism, which often betrays the hand of the interpolator. The expression, the church which is in Syria, occurs twice. Now nothing can be more dissimilar to the dialect which had prevailed in the apostolick age, and which continued to prevail in the second century. Except when the church denoted the whole christian community, it meant no more than a single congregation. Of this I shall have occasion to take notice presently. Now there were many churches in Syria in the days of Ignatius, and many bishops. Indeed when, through the increase of converts, a bishop's parish came to contain more people than could be comprehended in one congregation, the custom continued, in contradiction to propriety, of still calling his charge a church, in the singular number. But it was not till after the distinction made between the metropolitan and the suffragans, which was about a century later, that this use. originated, of calling all the churches of a province the church