Summary.

(1) The apostolate.

apostolic direction and ordained by the Apostles with the laying-on of hands and prayer. In these seven we must see (with most authorities, ancient and modern) the prototype of the deacons. In the case of some of these first appointed deacons, their peculiar gifts as preachers sufficed to throw into the shade their humbler functions, but it is to be noticed that, though St. Philip can evangelize Samaria and baptize, he does not share the apostolic power to lay on hands.*

We are now in a position to sum up the results derived from our investigation of the origin, nature, and development of the Christian ministry, as it is presented in the writings of the apostolic period. (1) In the first place we have found that the conception of the apostolate which was derived from the Gospels is confirmed in the apostolic history. The Apostles are empowered by Christ and inspired by the Spirit as the primary witnesses of Christ's resurrection, stewards of the divine mysteries, ambassadors and ministers of the effected reconciliation

1 Acts vi. 1-6.

2'So Irenaeus iii. 12. 10, iv. 15. 1, etc., among ancients: so with most moderns Lightfoot and Renan: 'On donna,' says Renan Les Apôtres p. 120, 'aux administrateurs ainsi désignés le nom syriaque de Schammaschin, en grec diákovo. On les appelait aussi quelquefois "les Sept" pour les opposer aux Douze." On the other hand St. Chrysostom in loc. speaks doubtfully, but implies on the whole that this office antedated both the presbyterate and the diaconate, and was in fact special for this particular need. So (Ecumenius: οὐ κατὰ τὸν ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις βαθμόν. Cf. recently Müller Verfassung, etc., p. 10. See Lightfoot (Dissert. p. 182), who also notes that the office here instituted cannot have been suggested by the unpérns of the synagogue, who was more like a parish clerk. See St. Luke Schürer Gemeindeverfassung der Juden p. 28.

iv. 20.

3 Philip is called 'the evangelist' (Acts xxi. 8). This title is generally used in closer connection with the apostolic office, which Philip had not; cf. Eph. iv. 11, 2 Tim. iv. 5: Euseb. H. E. iii. 37. Either we must suppose the word to have had, like 'presbyter' and 'deacon,' a wider as well as a stricter use, or may suppose that Philip became later what, at the period described in Acts vi., he was not.

4 Acts viii. 12-16.

of man to God. Their function is the ministry of the word or divine message, and inasmuch as the word is the basis of a covenant with a Church which is to be its 'pillar and ground,' so this apostolic ministry is not merely one of preaching. It involves the founding and governing of Churches with Christ's authority, the administration-in-chief of discipline, and the accompanying authority to bind and loose with divine sanction. It involves also a ministry of grace. Besides administering the chief sacraments committed to them by Christ, the Apostles appear (with a reservation to be mentioned afterwards) as alone possessing power to communicate the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying-on of hands. By means of this rite they bestowed both the fundamental grace of the Spirit's indwelling, which made a Christian the temple of God (and frequently carried with it in the first age a variety of special powers or 'charismata') and also the particular charisma which empowered men for the sacred ministry. The Apostles thus appear as the ordainers of an official clergy in the Churches, by communicating to them through the laying-on of hands an empowering gift of the Holy Ghost. The presbyters in some, or all, cases of ordination assisted at this rite, but, as the evidence suggests, to give their assent and witness, not as chief agents.

apostolic

(2) This apostolic ministry is in its essence uni- (2) The subversal. It is true that a temporary agreement ministry. assigned to Paul and Barnabas the evangelization of the Gentiles, while James, Peter, and John kept themselves to the Jews; it is true, further, that of these last-named 'Apostles,' St. James was very early localized at Jerusalem; still, in its primary

(3) Presby. ter-bishops

character, the apostolate is not a localized but a 'general ministry of the word.' And in this general ministry others share. St. James himself was not an apostle in the sense of being one of the twelve. Further, side by side with the Apostles, we hear of 'prophets' and 'teachers' and 'evangelists'-names somewhat indefinitely used—who shared the apostolic function of teaching. And, though they never appear as clothed with the same primary authority as the twelve, yet 'prophets and teachers' share also the ministry of worship and the laying-on of hands. We recognise then an extension of the apostolic function in some of its main features (a) to 'prophets,' whose authority was guaranteed by the permanent possession of those miraculous powers which in the first age witnessed to the inner presence of the Spirit. Such men would have received either Christ's own commission before or after He left the earth, or, failing this, the recognition, as by the laying-on of hands of those who were apostles and prophets before them, of that divine mission which their miraculous 'gifts' evidenced: (b) to apostolic men like Timothy and Titus, known probably as 'teachers' and 'evangelists,' who without, as far as we know, sharing miraculous power, had yet imparted to them by the laying-on of apostolic hands what was essentially apostolic authority to guard the faith, to found and rule Churches, to ordain and discipline the clergy.

(3) Under this general ministry of the Apostles and their fellow-workers we find a local ministry of 'presbyters' or 'bishops,' who are appointed by the Apostles and ordained by the laying-on of hands to share in some particular community the pastorate

and stewardship which Christ instituted in His Church. They are the local ministers of discipline -this being the function which was attached of old to the Jewish presbyterate-but they are as well the 'superintendents' in general of local affairs, the administrators of the Churches; and as the Churches are spiritual societies, so their function is spiritual. These local pastors are called also 'teachers' in the Epistle to the Ephesians, and we have no reason to suppose that they were not from the first, in a sense, 'ministers of the word,' though in subordination to apostles, prophets, and teachers. Again, since the earliest subapostolic writers speak of 'the offering of the gifts' or the ministry of the eucharist as the special function of the bishop,' and St. James presents the presbyters to us as exercising a ministry of healing, both physical and spiritual, we need not hesitate to regard them as having been from the first ministers of the sacraments.

(4) We are also presented with a subordinate (4) Deacons ministry of deacons. If their primary function was to administer alms, yet they are also presented to us as baptizing and teaching,—at least when they were endowed with qualifying gifts, though probably this function did not belong to their office. Besides we find a female 'diaconate' as well as instances of and 'prophetesses' in the Church, with regard to whose public ministry however we have no certain information. We also hear of other leading Christians who specially addicted themselves to works of mercy and received a corresponding authority.

deaconesses.

ception of

(5) Finally the Pastoral Epistles give us an un- (5) The conmistakable picture of the conception attached by ordination. the Apostle St. Paul to the ceremony of ordination.

Evidence is lacking as to

(i) exact division of functions:

(ii) form of the future ministry.

He regarded the laying-on of his hands as the instrumentality through which Timothy received a special empowering gift of the Holy Ghost, which in virtue of this ceremony was 'in him' as a thing he might neglect or use, but which in either case was in him as at once his power and his responsibility. And we cannot but extend this conception to the ordinations of other clergy which Timothy is commissioned in his turn to make by the same ceremony of the laying-on of hands. Here we have the sacerdotal conception of a special order in the Church, differentiated by a special endowment.

Two points may be mentioned in which the witness of the New Testament needs supplementing by the witness of the Church.

First. We have no clear information as to the limitation of the functions of the different orders in the Church, except that to the 'viri apostolici' alone is the power attributed to impart the gift of the Holy Ghost by laying-on of hands. We have no clear information as to who exactly can celebrate the eucharist or who can baptize. But we must remember that the New Testament does witness to a binding or loosing power in the Church and to a continuity in the Church's life. This enables us to rest satisfied with the fact that the principle of a ministry with different grades of function and power is given us in the apostolic age, and to accept in detail the mind of the Church, as soon as it declares itself, as representing the mind of the Spirit.

Second. We have no determining evidence as to the exact form which the ministry of the future was to take. True the ministry of 'bishops' and deacons does appear in the New Testament as an almost