the time of Alexander, about fifty years later. Now it is not impossible that a circumstantial custom might have been in part abolished at one time, and in part at another. But admit that in this point the two testimonies are contradictory, that will by no means invalidate their credibility as to those points on which they are agreed. The difference, on the contrary, as it is an evidence that the last did not copy from the first, and that they are therefore two witnesses, and not one, serves rather as a confirmation of the truth of those articles wherein they concur. And this is our ordinary method of judging in all matters depending on human testimony. That Jerome, who probably spoke from memory, though certain as to the main point, might be somewhat doubtful as to the precise time of the abolition of the custom, is rendered even probable by his mentioning, with a view to mark the expiration of the practice, two successive bishops rather than one. For if he had known certainly that it ended with Heracla, there would have been no occasion to mention Dionysius; and if he had been assured of its continuance to the time of Dionysius, there would have been no propriety in mentioning Heracla.

Some have inferred from a passage in Tertullian, that however general the practice was in the second and subsequent centuries, of settling in every church all the three orders above explained, it was not universal; that, in parishes where there were but a few Christians remotely situated from other churches, it was judged sufficient to give them a pastor or bishop only, and some deacons. The presbyters then being but a sort of assistants to the bishop, might not, in very small charges, be judged necessary. The thing is not in itself improbable; and the authority above-mentioned, before I had examined it, or seen a more accurate edition, led me to conclude it real. But on examination I find, that what had drawn me and others into this opinion, was no more than a false reading of a sentence quoted in a former lecture. In some editions of Tertullian we read, (De exhort. cast.) “ Ubi ecclesiastici ordinis non est consessus, et offert, et tinguit, sacerdos qui est ibi solus." I need not urge, that this expression is quite different in all the best manuscripts and

most correct editions; this being one of those glaring corruptions which, after a careful perusal, betray themselves to an attentive reader of any penetration. The words, as I have now transcribed them, considered in connexion with the subject treated in the context, have neither sense nor coherence in them; whereas nothing can be more apposite to the author's argument than they are in the way formerly quoted: "Ubi ecclesiastici ordinis non est consessus, et offers, et tinguis, et sacerdos es tibi solus." So sensible of this were the two learned critics, Petavius and Dodwell, that though both were violently disposed in their different ways to pervert the meaning, neither thought proper to avail himself of a variation in the reading, which would have removed at once what to them was a great stumbling-block. It is indeed a reading which savours more of art than of negligence, and has much the appearance of those inquisitorial corrections which were made on several ancient books in the sixteenth century, especially those published in the papal dominions, or where the Holy Office was established, in order to adapt the ancient doctrine to the orthodoxy of the day. Now nothing could be more opposite to this, than what seemed to admit that any necessity or exigence whatever could entitle a layman to exercise the functions of a priest.-But this by the way.

The opinion of Dr Hammond, (Annotations, Acts xi. 30.), that the apostles instituted only the office of bishop and deacon, and that the intermediate office of presbyter was soon afterwards introduced, is not materially different from the doctrine which I endeavoured, in a preceding lecture, to prove from the New Testament. Provided it be allowed that the ministry, according to the apostolical arrangement, consisted of two orders, and not of three, the one properly the ministry of the word, the other the ministry of tables, it would be no better than logomachy, or altercation about words, to dispute whether the minister of the former kind should be called bishop or presbyter, since it is evident that these names were used synonymously by the inspired writers. Were we to be confined to one term, I should is the more proper of the two. inspector, strictly expresses the

readily admit that the first The name επισκοπος, bishop, charge of a flock; the term

Burgos, presbyter, elder, senator, is a title of respect, which has been variously applied; and in the ecclesiastic use it has been rendered ambiguous, by having been so long misapplied to a kind of subordinate ministry, which the true presbyterian maintains, with Jerome, was not from the beginning in the church. The only material difference between the Doctor's sentiments and mine, on this article, is the following:-That very learned and pious author, misled, as I imagine, more by the dialect of ecclesiastic writers, when the distinction had actually obtained, than by the practice of the primitive church rightly understood, maintains that there was no more than one bishop or pastor allotted to every church, whereas, in my judgment, there were allotted several. Nothing can be more incompatible than his opinion, in this particular, with the style of the sacred penmen, to which, in support of that opinion, he is perpetually doing violence in his commentary. Admitting that the phrases κατ' εκκλησίαν, and κατα πολιν, may be rendered, as he affirms, church by church, and city by city, and that consequently what is called, in the common translation," ordaining elders or bishops in every city, or in every church," may be understood to imply one in each, what shall be said of the many passages, not in the least ambiguous, wherein mention is made of the pastors in the plural number of but one church? Sometimes they are denominated bishops, sometimes presbyters, sometimes those that are over them, their guides or directors in the Lord. Indeed, what we are told, (Acts xx. 17.), that Paul sent from Miletus to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church, might (if there were not another passage to this purpose) serve as a sufficient confutation of that hypothesis. "Ay, but," replies our annotator, "by the church is here meant, not the single church of the city of Ephesus, but the metropolitical church of Asia." Is it possible, that a man of Dr Hammond's erudition and discernment should have been so little acquainted with, or attentive to, the idiom, not only of all the inspired, but of all the ecclesiastical writers of the two first centuries, as, in support of his interpretation, to recur to such an unexampled phraseology? Where will he find all the churches of a province or country called the church of a particular city?—But

if there were nothing incongruous in the phrase, there is an absurdity in the supposition. How could the apostle expect to find at Ephesus all the bishops of Asia? Or was he, though in so great haste to get to Jerusalem before Pentecost that he could not conveniently go to Ephesus himself, —was he, I say, to wait till expresses were sent thence by the metropolitan throughout that extensive region, and till, in consequence of this summons, all the Asiatic bishops were convened at Miletus? By this strange way of wresting the plainest words, the saints at Philippi (Philip. i. 1.) are in another place made to mean all the Christians in Macedonia; and, by parity of reason, I acknowledge, the bishops and deacons of Philippi are all those in the holy ministry throughout the Macedonian kingdom. But as amplification does not always answer, the opposite method is sometimes found convenient. When James (v. 14.) enjoins the sick person to send for the elders of the church, he means, according to our learned Doctor, the elder, bishop, or pastor of that particular flock. What sentiments might not the words of scripture be made to favour, by this loose and arbitrary mode of interpreting? It is strange that one, whose discernment and impartiality, notwithstanding his prejudices, led him to discover that, in the sacred writings, there was no distinction between bishop and presbyter, was not able to discover (what was fully as evident) that they contained not a single vestige of metropolitical primacy. The language of the fathers of the fourth and succeeding centuries (for then all these degrees were firmly rooted) concerning the offices of Timothy and Titus, and the current maxim, one church, one bishop, which naturally sprang from the distinction of bishop and presbyter, had entirely warped this interpreter's judgment in every case wherein the subject of the ministry was concerned.

I must beg leave to add, that if what this gentleman and I are both agreed in, that there was originally no intervening order between bishop and deacon, be admitted to be just, the account given above of the rise of such an order, has, abstracting from its external evidence, the advantage of his in respect of internal probability. That a middle order (as that

of presbyter is in the church of England and the church of Rome) was, notwithstanding the silence of history, erected at once immediately after the times of the apostles, is, to say the least, much more unlikely, than that it arose gradually out of an inconsiderable distinction, which had obtained from the beginning. Dodwell's hypothesis, that all those ordained by the apostles were no more than presbyters, in his acceptation of the term, labours under the like defect with Hammond's. It is very remarkable, that these two strenuous defenders of episcopacy do, in effect, both renounce its apostolical origin, admitting no subordination among the ministers of the word in the churches planted by the apostles; and that they do not differ more widely from their allies in this cause, than they do from one another. It is a shrewd presumption that a system is ill-founded, when its most intelligent friends are so much divided about it, and, in order to account for it, recur to hypotheses so contradictory ;- a presumption too, let me add, that their judgment would lead them soon to adopt the premises of their adversaries, to which they sometimes approach very near, if their passions would allow them to admit the conclusion.

Thus we have advanced from the perfect equality, in respect of ministerial powers, in the stated pastors of the churches planted by the apostles, to that parochial episcopacy which immediately succeeded it; and which, though it arose gradually from an inconsiderable cause, seems to have assumed the model of a proper episcopate, as the word is now understood, before the middle of the second century. And this I consider as the first step of the hierarchy. I shall continue to trace its progress in the succeeding lectures on this subject.