THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH THE following extracts have been taken from a lecture delivered at the Wakefield Church Institution, November 23, 1848: This lecture is intended chiefly to enforce the grand principle, that, in a religious society such as the Church, God must, immediately or mediately, be the foundation of all ministerial authority, and that there must be some visible channel in which that authority must be traceable to its Divine source. Those who reject the visible channel, exhibited in our branch of the Holy Catholic Church, are in reason bound, before they call on us to prove a title attested by the very existence as well as history of our Church, to show us the primitive existence of some other visible channel; and to, at least, agree among themselves in which of all their multifarious sects it is to be found in the present day. Fifteen hundred years after the coming of Christ questions are raised, not upon mere modifications, but on the very nature and authority of Church government; and upon those institutions without which no example of any Church could be produced from the earliest records. At first the opposition was merely against the pre-eminence of the episcopacy, as a separate order;-but it has advanced from one step to another till the multitudes of modern sects have set up endless varieties of governments and authorities agreeing only in reviling and pulling down the Church, but altogether at issue as to what is to be built up in the place of it. And now, in the nineteenth century, we are challenged to put in issue that form, and those principles of Church government which, (we contend, from the death of Christ, and our most learned opponents admit, from the year 140,) was, down to the sixteenth century, universally received and adopted without question by the Church. We are called upon to prove afresh from the Bible the Divine authority of episcopacy, of the government of the Church by bishops, priests, and deacons. Now it is evidently obvious that the nature and development of government in the early Christian Church cannot be the subject of demonstration, as a problem in mathematics, but must be proved by moral evidence; evidence such as a respectable man may require, under all the circumstances of the case. It is therefore only justice in our case, that, before we come to the question of scriptural evidence, we should carefully consider what kind of evidence the advocates of episcopal policy may expect to find in scripture, and what its opponents, according to the principles of fair reasoning, have a right to claim. This preliminary state of the question must have a very important bearing upon the strength of arguments alleged on either side. It may be discussed under two general heads. First, what was the state of the Church when the question was raised in this country, and what has been the state of our branch of the Church to the present day? Second, what principles of Church government have prevailed, and were universally recognised, from the beginning of the world down to the time when the facts occurred and the directions were given, on which we contend for the Divine institution of the Church government by bishops, priests, and deacons ? Under the former of these heads we may judge whether what we see in the present state of our Church, and whether the notorious facts of its history, may be satisfactorily accounted for, on the presumption that our polity is identical in substance with that instituted by Christ and His Apostles, or on the presumption that the Apostolic and primitive Church was governed on the model of all or any of the modern sects. Under the latter head we may judge what principles of Church government would be familiar to those to whom the Christian polity was to be presented by its first propagators, and whether the notices of that polity are such as we should expect to find in the New Testament, if those principles were to be adapted to change of circumstances, but not themselves changed; or if they were to be altogether abolished and new principles substituted. First, to begin with the first head-what was the state of the Church when the question was raised in the country ;what has been the state of our branch of the Church to this present day? No man, with the least knowledge of the subject, can dispute that the Anglican Church as it now exists is not a new Church but simply a branch of the Catholic Church, cleared from certain parasitic excrescences (no part of the primitive Church) which in the course of ages had grown over some of its institutions. At the time of the Reformation the whole Church was, and had been from the earliest ages of Christianity, governed by bishops, priests and deacons, claiming a Divine commission, an authority derived in orderly succession from Christ and His Apostles. Those who deny the supremacy of the Pope and the necessity of some orders set up by his authority, did not deny the commission of these bishops, priests, and deacons in the Romish Church. They received through them, their own episcopacy and priestly succession. Even of those, who at a later period, raised in this country the controversy upon episcopacy, few or none went to the extreme of irreverence and self-will displayed by schismatics of our times. They freely acknowledged that from the year 140 Episcopacy had overspread the Church, that the testimony and practice of the Church was almost unanimous in distinguishing the office of Bishop, and giving it its present pre-eminence over that of the ordinary presbyter. Nay, they did not deny that even before the year 140 the Apostles had such pre-eminence, and that certain presbyters afterwards had the same, and that such pre-eminence was necessary to the good order and edification of the Church. Only they contended that all presbyters in turn took it, and that it did not belong to a distinct and separate order of presbyters. Though we think them mistaken, they were learned, as well as pious men,-read in the history, and imbued with reverence, of the primitive Church. They would have recoiled with horror at the assumption of the priestly office by self-constituted ministers, or of its being conferred by persons not having authority from Christ or His Apostles. Had they foreseen such consequences they would probably have at once distrusted their cause, seeing in its results a sin parallel to that of Jeroboam, whose rebellion against the State and apostacy from the Church branded him with the title of the man that made Israel to sin, and was especially distinguished by its fruit:'That he made priests of the lowest of the people which were not sons of Levi.' Passing over the period in which the judgment and practice of the Church is not to be questioned, we have a right to call upon those, who so late in the day set up a new theory, or pretend to bring to light one so long and so entirely lost; to produce some very clear testimony in this 140 years, that the Church was then governed differently. For the universal adoption of episcopacy in the year 140, agreeing with its present existence, affords a strong presumption that it existed, as we contend, from the beginning of the Christian Church. But we ask in vain the opponents to bring this clear testimony. Not a single record has been produced of a Church governed before the year 140 upon any other model than that which, after that year, is admitted to have prevailed in every Church. Not a single passage is adduced showing distinctly that any writer of the primitive Church dreamed of any other form. The only evidence to which they can refer, is that of some ambiguous passages and circumstances, which admit of the solution, that the greater contained the less, and that a bishop, being a Presbyter, might sometimes be spoken of under that name. It does not follow that because a bishop is sometimes spoken of as a Presbyter, there was no distinction between the two offices. As Bishop Taylor pointedly puts the case: 'The Apostles, we know, were called Elders, but we also know that there were Elders who neither were Apostles nor pretended to Apostolical functions.' The question is not one of names, but of offices and jurisdictions. But on the other side are to be found churches in existence from the earliest ages, under episcopal government, and the whole Church continuing unanimous till the sixteenth century, the earliest historians (particularly Eusebius, who is styled the father of Church history) testifying that this Government was derived from Christ and His Apostles, and even giving catalogues of the bishops of different churches,-bishops who were declared to be appointed by the Apostles, and others who carried down the succession, in lists known and recorded, from the Apostolic appointment. Now in the face of this, is it admissible on any principle of fair discussion that some fifteen or sixteen hundred years after the death of Christ, a set of gainsayers should start up, and call upon us to establish anew the title of our form of government? May we not fairly reply,-Our title is possession; the present state and the whole history of the Church Before you venture to assail such agree with our position. a title, produce your own. man long in possession of an estate. The law does not call him to prove his title, his possession is presumptive evidence, it is for him who disputes that possession to produce a better title. We may perhaps embody under the following heads, a view of the chief principles connected with this subject, which would be axioms in the Church at the coming of Christ,-facts to be assumed from the deductions of common sense, or apparent upon the face of the previous history of the Church,-facts as well known to the Jewish people as it is known to the English people, that we are, and have been governed (however varied circumstances may have varied the application of that constitution) by Kings, Lords and Commons. These axioms may be thus stated: (1) That the Church being a society must, in common. with all other societies, need laws and rulers. (2) Being a society in which eternal salvation and the means of salvation were to be offered and received, the only source of authority must be God. (3) That the natural inference that those who were to minister in these religious offices would derive their appointment directly or indirectly from Him, is confirmed by the uniform practice and records found in sacred history; that not only are due appointments, and due succession provided, but penalties are denounced against persons attempting to take upon themselves the ministry; and that in some cases signal and miraculous punishments were inflicted as tokens of Divine displeasure, as warnings for all future offenders of the sinfulness of such conduct. (4) That God varies the application of the great principle of His being the source of all authority, according to the varied circumstances of the Church, sometimes Himself directing and superintending and at others delegating to a certain order of men His authority, but He never varied the principle itself. (5) That God, in His own government and institutions, sanctioned the relations of State and Church, and the mutual support due from one to the other; and that while He exemplified the lawfulness and the duty of the State (if it be the State acknowledging the true God) to maintain the Church, He also set forth the precedent, which our branch of the Catholic Church this day, and always, followed |