Furthermore, the appointments of the Apostles, which are actually recorded in Scripture, derive, from that very fact, an importance which does not belong to those which we gather from uninspired testimony, however unexceptionable that testimony may be. We may have equally strong grounds for believing that any two appointments are of apostolic origin; and yet if one rests upon the testimony of Scripture, while the other has been handed down to us by uninspired history, they can by no means be placed in the same category: the difference in the medium of proof making a difference between them, not as regards the fact, but as regards their binding force. This follows from the peculiar place which Scripture holds in the Church of Christ. Scripture contains that portion of the apostolical teaching, and the apostolical appointments, which is necessary either to the being or the well-being of the Church: it is the gift of God to His people, comprehending all the essential principles of Christianity, and belonging, like the Apostles, its authors, to the universal Church of every age; on which account its omissions are as significant as its contents. An apostolical appointment, therefore, which is found recorded in Scripture may be presumed to be of permanent use, and to possess a binding force, not so much because it is apostolic, for this another ordinance not found in Scripture may equally be, as because it is recorded in Scripture, because it forms part of that divinely superintended selection of the apostolic practices which we possess in the inspired Word. The apostolicity of each may be equally undoubted: it is the vehi cle of transmission that makes the difference. The application of this principle admits of degrees. Appointments which are so distinctly stated in Scripture to have proceeded from the Apostles as to need no confirmation of testimony from other quarters, must be considered as more necessary to the Church than those which require extra-Scriptural evidence to establish their claims; for we must believe that even the proportions in which Scripture unfolds divine truth, the relative distinctness with which it records the facts of early church history, are the result of that divine wisdom which presided over its composition. On this ground, it should seem that presbyters and deacons, if a comparison is to be instituted between the three orders, are more essential to the Church than bishops, inasmuch as Scripture records the apostolic institution of the former more distinctly than it does that of the latter. With these limitations, the testimony of the early Church to the apostolicity of a then existing practice may be admitted as readily as any other human testimony to a matter of fact. In the particular case with which we are now concerned, this testimony is as cogent as can well be conceived. It is not merely that the Fathers unanimously ascribe the institution of episcopacy to the Apostles; the moment we pass out of Scripture into the field of uninspired history we are met by the fact of the universal prevalence of that form of church government, a fact which can only be satisfactorily accounted for by the supposition of its having proceeded from the Apostles. The evidence, it has been seen, will not permit us to assign to episcopacy proper an earlier date than A. D. 70, or some period subsequent to St. Paul's martyrdom; and yet it is evident from the epistles of Ignatius (A. D. 107, or, according to others, A. D. 116) that in his time the episcopal polity had become firmly and universally established: how improbable it is that, unsupported by apostolic institution, it would have prevailed so speedily and universally needs not to be pointed out. But this is not all. In the early ecclesiastical historians the succession of bishops in most of the considerable churches is traced up to the very times of the Apostles; traditions the authenticity of which there is no reason, except in those particular points in which they seem to clash with the facts of Scripture, to call in question. Thus we are told that St. Paul appointed Timothy bishop of Ephesus, and Titus bishop of Crete: it is not, indeed, for the reasons previously given, likely that the Apostle himself conferred the episcopal office upon them; but nothing is more probable than that, when episcopacy was introduced, Timothy and Titus were fixed as formal bishops in the churches in which they had already exercised quasi-episcopal functions. The same is very likely to have been the case with Linus and others, whose names occur in the New Testament, and whom history records to have been the first bishops of their respective sees. From among the immediate companions of the Apostles the first bishops would naturally be chosen. The reasons why we retain episcopacy may be briefly summed up as follows when we open the ecclesiastical remains, say of the 4th century, we find no other form of polity anywhere existing, whether in the Catholic Church, or in the bodies dissident therefrom. The same fact meets us in every preceding century, up to a period when one at least of the Apostles, St. John, - *Not, however, by the accurate Eusebius, who merely records the tradition that they were the first bishops of Ephesus and Crete, without mentioning from whom they derived their appointments. Τιμόθεός γε μὴν τῆς ἐν Ἐφέσῳ παροικίας ἱστορεῖται πρῶτος τὴν ἐπισκοπὴν εἰληχέναι ὡς καὶ Τίτος τῶν ἐπὶ Κρήτης ἐκκλησιῶν. — Lib. iii. c. 4. -must have been surviving. We find the Christian writers of each age unanimous in assigning to that form of church polity an apostolical origin. At length we come to Scripture itself. Here, indeed, it seems difficult to discover a formal episcopate; nevertheless we find presbyters and deacons, and the Apostles over both : we find St. Paul delegating to individuals a portion of his apostolical authority, the functions which they were to exercise closely resembling those which formal bishops afterwards exercised. If the Apocalyptic angels are to be considered as individuals in ecclesiastical office, we may fairly infer, from the mention of them, that, at that time, each church was presided over by one chief pastor. So far, then, from there being anything in the episcopal regimen which, from its disagreement with Scriptural precedent, might lead us to hesitate in giving credence to the witness of tradition affirming it to be of apostolical institution, there are positive data in Scripture which, if not conclusive on that point, are yet sufficient to warrant us in saying that it is agreeable to the mind of the Apostles. Thus, no antecedent objection standing in the way, full scope is left to the force of the uninspired testimony which, under such circumstances, becomes irresistible. No reasonable doubt can be entertained that episcopacy proper took its rise at some period between a. D. 70 and A. D. 100; and as little that it was either established or sanctioned by the Apostles then living, especially the survivor of the whole body, -St. John, whose residence in Asia Minor, where tradition fixes the beginnings of the episcopate, points him out as in all probability that one of the twelve to whom the Church owes this extension of her polity, the only one, beyond presbyters and deacons, which can make any pretence to an apostolical origin. - As long as the advocates for episcopacy are content to rest their cause upon post-apostolic testimony, their position is impregnable: it is only when they attempt to prove it from Scripture alone that the argument fails to convince. Better at once to acknowledge that the institution is traceable to the Apostles chiefly through the channel of uninspired history than, by insisting upon insufficient Scriptural evidence, to bring discredit upon the whole argument, as an injudicious advocate, by undertaking to prove too much, often damages a really strong cause. True it is that, in making such an acknowledgment, episcopalians abandon the high ground of a divine law, perpetually binding; but they only abandon what is untenable, while the argument for the retention of the episcopal polity remains unaffected. For it does not follow that because we cannot pronounce this polity to be essential to the Church, and are even compelled to prove its apostolicity by extraScriptural evidence, we are therefore at liberty to reject it. Every institution which we have reason to regard as an apostolical one, by whatever road we may have arrived at that conclusion, comes to us with a primâ facie claim upon our acceptance, and may not be lightly rejected. "It is clear that the whole argument should be confined to the Scriptures;" so writes a recent opponent of episcopacy,* availing himself of the concession of his antagonist, bishop Onderdonk, that, "the claim of episcopacy to be of divine origin, and therefore obligatory upon the Church, rests fundamentally on the one question, Has it the authority of Scripture? If it has not, it is not necessarily binding." We shall hereafter examine whether, even if it had the express authority of Scripture, the inference could be at once drawn that it is immutably binding upon the Church; meanwhile it may be observed that no episcopalian who understands the strength of his own position will concede that, when the question is not concerning the perpetual obligation of episcopacy as a divinely prescribed polity, but concerning its apostolicity, the argument is to be confined to Scripture alone. Nothing can be more irrational than entirely to disconnect ourselves from the early Church, as if in each successive age Christianity had to be begun de novo; or as if there were no other evidence of apostolic practices but that which is derivable from Scripture, and no medium between affirming an institution to be necessarily binding, and rejecting it. The indispensable part which the testimony of the early Church bears in authenticating Scripture itself, proves that it never was the Divine intention that, annihilating the intervening centuries between ourselves and the Apostles, we should confine our attention solely to Scripture, and reject as worthless whatever cannot be found there recorded: only let us bear in mind that the moment we pass beyond the inspired Word, we pass from the region of what is divine and essential to the lower ground of what is, or is not, as the case may be, probably apostolical. By descending from the higher, and, as it should seem, untenable ground of a divine prescription to this lower one, the episcopalian gains immensely in the real strength of his argument; and as long as he is content with maintaining that episcopacy is an apostolical institution, and therefore to be retained by churches which would follow the apostolical model, it will be impossible to dislodge him from his position. • Barnes' Apostolic Church, p. 10. Nor is it a fair statement which the same writer makes that "it is a point of essential importance in this controversy, that the burden of proof lies on the friends of episcopacy;" unless, indeed, by the "friends of episcopacy" be meant those who put forth claims respecting it which virtually consign all non-episcopal churches to the uncovenanted mercies of God. Here, again, moderation is strength. If we are content to take the lower ground, and to maintain that episcopacy is to be retained because, though not expressly recorded in Scripture, the apostolicity of its origin may be otherwise established, the burden of proof is unquestionably thrown upon the opponent. We retain episcopacy because it has been handed down to us, without a break, from the times of the Apostles: the presumption that we are right in doing so is entirely with us: we are in possession of the field: and he who would introduce another form of polity must be prepared to prove that episcopacy is intrinsically, and without reference to the abuses to which, in common with all forms of church government, it is liable, unscriptural. But we have not yet fully mastered the subject in all its bearings. Let it be supposed that it had been distinctly recorded in Scripture that episcopacy, like the presbyterate and diaconate, proceeded from the Apostles; could we, even then, at once infer that it is of divine institution, and a matter of perpetual obligation? Or, to put the same question under a more general form, is every appointment which can be proved from Scripture to have emanated from the Apostles to be ipso facto deemed a divine law? So much depends upon our entertaining just views respecting the nature of the Apostolic appointments, and so illustrative of the spirit of Christianity is the mode in which those appointments have been transmitted to us in Scripture, that it is worth our while to consider this point more attentively. Every one acquainted with our elder apologists for episcopacy will have observed that when they have, as they conceive, proved from Scripture that the Apostles instituted that form of church polity, they take for granted that they have proved it to be of divine original, and of perpetual obligation.* Nor is this mode E. g. Bishop Hall indites a treatise which he calls "Episcopacy by Divine Right;" but all that he really proves is that it is apostolical. So bishop Taylor. In a subsequent work, however, on the same subject, bishop Hall does seem to recognise the distinction between a divine law and an apostolical institution: -"Let me beseech the reader to consider seriously of this difference, in the mistaking of which I have not a little unjustly suffered: and to remember how I have expressed it in my 'Remonstrance,' fetching the pedigree of episcopacy from apostolical (and therefore in that right, divine) institution, and interpreting |