In view of the whole course of the argument, then, have we not good and sufficient reasons, for regarding the Episcopal claim of an original distinction between bishops and presbyters, as a groundless assumption? The existence of such a distinction has been denied by prelates, bishops, and learned controversialists, and commentators, both in the Eastern, and Western churches, of every age down to the sixteenth century. It was unknown to those early fathers, who lived nearest to the apostolical age, and some of whom were the immediate successors of the apostles. It was wholly unauthorized by the apostles themselves. On the contrary, they assign to bishops and presbyters the same specific duties. They require in both the same qualifications. They address them by the same names and titles interchangeably and indiscriminately. Are not bishops and presbyters, then, one and the same?-the same in office, in honor, and in power; possessing equally all the prerogatives, rights, and privileges of those pastors and teachers, to whom the apostles, at their decease, resigned the churches, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ? Or must we believe that the presbyter after all is a mere subaltern of the bishop; ordained of God to perform only the humbler offices of the ministry, and to supply the bishop's lack of service? Must we believe moreover, that

dissertatt. theologic. Lib. 1, in his theolog. dogmat. Tom. 4. p. 164. On the other side, Walonis Messalini, (Claud. Salmasii) diss. de episcopis et presbyteris. Lugd. Bat. 1641, 8vo. Dav. Blondelli apologia pro sententia Hieronymi de episcopis et presbyteris., Amstelod. 1616, 4to. Against these Henr. Hammondus dissertatt. IV. quibus episcopatus jura ex sacra scriptura et prima antiquitate adstruuntur. Lond. 1651. The controversy was long continued. On the side of the Episcopalians, Jo. Pearson, Guil. Beveridge, Henr Dodwell, Jos. Bingham, Jac. Usserius. On that of the Presbyterians, Jo. Dallaeus, Camp. Vitringa; also the Lutherans, Joach. Hildebrand, Just. Henn. Bochwer, Jo. Franc. Buddeus, Christ. Math. Pfaff, etc. Comp. Jo. Phil. Gabler de episcopis primae ecclesiae Christ. eorumque origine diss. Jenae, 1805, 4to.

the bishop, this honored and most important dignitary of the church, in whom all clerical grace centres, and to whose hands alone has been intrusted all that authority and power, the proper transmission of which is essential to the perpetuity of the ministry and the just administration of the ordinances,-that this important functionary is but a nameless nondescript, known by no title, represented by no person, or class of persons in the apostolical churches, and having no distinct, specific duties prescribed in the New Testament? All this may be asserted and re-affirmed, as a thousand times it has virtually been; but it can never be proved. It must be received, if received at all, with blind credulity; not on reasonable evidence. Verily this vaunting of high church Episcopacy is an insult to reason;-a quiet compla cent assumption, which makes "implicit faith the highest demonstration." If any assertor of these absurd pretensions finds himself disquieted, at any time, by the renewed remonstrances of Scripture, truth and reason, in order to repel these impertinent intruders and restore the equilibrium of his mind, he has only to "shake his head and tell them how superior after all is faith to logic!"

The foregoing chapters give us an outline of that ecclesiastical organization which the churches received from the hands of the apostles, and which was continued in the primitive church for some time after the apostolic age. The government is altogether popular. The sovereign authority is vested in the people. From them all the laws originate; through them they are administered. The government guarantees to all its members the enjoyment of equal rights and privileges, secures to them the right of private judgment, admits of their intervention in all public affairs. It extends to all the right of suffrage. Each community is an independent sovereignty, whose members are subject to no foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Their confessions, formularies and

terms of communion are formed according to their own interpretation of the laws of God; and if the deportment of any one is subject to impeachment, the case is decided by the impartial verdict of his brethren. Their officers are few; and their ministers, equal in rank and power, are the servants, not the lords of the people. The entire polity of the apostolical and primitive churches was framed on the principles, not of a monarchical hierarchy, but of a popular and elective government. In a word, it was a republican government administered with republican simplicity.

This exhibition of the original organization of the Christian church suggests a variety of reflections, some of which we must be permitted, before closing this view of the apostolical and primitive church, to suggest to the consideration of the reader.

REMARKS.

1. The primitive church was organized as a purely religious society.

It had for its object the promotion of the great interests of morality and religion. It interfered not with the secular or private pursuits of its members, except so far as they related to the great end for which the church was formed,—the promotion of pure and undefiled religion. Whenever the Christian church has let itself down to mingle or interfere with the secular pursuits of men, the only result has been her own disgrace, and the dishonor of the great cause which she was set to defend.

2. It employed only moral means for the accomplishment of religious ends.

The apostles sought, by kind and tender entreaty, to reclaim the wandering. They taught the church to do the same; and to separate the unworthy from their communion.

But they gave no countenance to the exercise of arbitrary authority over the conduct or the consciences of men. They neither allowed themselves, nor the church, to exercise any other authority than that of the word of God and of Christ, enforced by instruction, by counsel and by admonition. They had ever before them the beautiful idea of a religious fraternity, its members united in the bonds of faith and mutual affection, and striving together in purity and love for the promotion of godliness.

3. The church was at first free from all entanglement with the state.

It had no affinity with the existing forms of state government, and no connection with them. It vested the church power in the only appropriate source of all social power,—in the people. It is only in this voluntary system, in which neither state-power nor church-power can interfere with the religious convictions of men, that the church of Christ finds a guaranty for the preservation of its purity and the exercise of its legitimate influence.

But the church soon began to be assimilated to the form of the existing civil governments, and in the end a “hierarchy of bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs arose, corresponding to the graduated rank of the civil administration. Ere-long the Roman bishop assumed pre-eminence above all others."157 United with the civil authority in its interests, assimilated to that power in its form of government, and secularized in its spirit, the church, under Constantine and his successors, put off its high and sacred character, and became a part of the machinery of state government. It first truckled to the low arts of state policy, and afterwards, with insatiable ambition, assumed the supreme control of all power, human and divine.

4. It was another advantage of the system of the primitive

157 Ranke's Hist. of the Popes, Eng. Trans., Vol. I. p. 29.

church, that it was fitted to any form of civil government, and to any state of society.

Voluntary and simple in their organization, entirely removed from all connection with the civil government, with no confederate relations among themselves, and seeking only by the pure precepts of religion to persuade men in every condition to lead quiet and holy lives, these Christian societies were adapted to any state of society and any form of government. This primitive Christianity commended itself, with equal facility, to the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, the high and the low; whether it addressed itself to the soldier, the fisherman or the peasant, it equally suited their condition. It gathered into its communion converts from every form of government, of every species of superstition, and of every condition in life, and by its wholesome truths and simple rites trained them up for eternal life. Stern and uncompromising in its purity and simplicity, it stood aloof from all other forms, both of government and of religion. It neither sought favor from the prejudice of the Gentile, nor the bigotry of the Jew. It yielded compliance neither to the despotism of Rome, nor to the democracy of Greece, while it could live and flourish under either government and in any state of society. Can the same be said with equal propriety of Episcopacy? Are its complicated forms and ceremonials, its robes and vestments, its rituals, and all its solemn pomp, equally adapted to every state of religious feeling, or suited alike to refined society, and to rude and rustic life? Are all its complicated forms of government, its grades of office, its diocesan and metropolitan confederacies, and its monarchical powers, equally congenial with every kind of civil government ?

5. It subjected the clergy to salutary restraints by bringing then, in their official character, under the watch of the church.

The apostles, as we have already seen, recognized their