The next witness from whom we shall quote is St Ire næus. He was a disciple of Polycarp, and born about the time of St. John's death. Mosheim speaks of his works as being a splendid monument of antiquity."* Listen to his plain declaration with regard to this historical fact-" We can reckon up those whom the Apostles ordained to be Bishops in the several Churches, and who they were that succeeded them, down to our own times . . . . . For the Apostles desired to have those in all things perfect and unreprovable, whom they left to be their successors, and to whom they committed their own Apostolic authority. We have the successions of Bishops, to whom the Apostolic Church in every place was committed. All these [viz. the heretics] are much later than the Bishops to whom the Apostles did deliver the Churches."t

"The true knowledge is the doctrine of the Apostles, and the ancient state of the Church throughout the whole world, and the character of the body of Christ according to the succession of Bishops to whom they committed the Church that is in every place, and which has descended even unto us.”‡

And he afterwards adds, with regard to those who inherited the Apostolic office-" With the succession of their Episcopacy, they have the sure gift of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father."

We will bring forward the testimony of but one more witness. It is that of Tertullian-the most eminent Latin scholar of his day-who lived at the end of the second century. In his work, De Præscrip. Hæreticorum, when arguing against those who had wandered from the faith, he says "Let them produce the original of their Churches; let them show the order of their Bishops, that by their succession, deduced from the beginning, we may see whether their first Bishop had any of the Apostles, or Apostolical men, who did likewise persevere with the Apostles, for his ordainer and predecessor: for thus the Apostolical Churches do derive their succession; as the Church of Smyrna rom Polycarp, whom John the Apostle placed there; the Crch of Rome from Clement, who was in like manner ord: 90 Adv. Hæres. 1. in. c

* Eccles. Hist. v. i. p. 146

Ibid. 1. iv. c. 6.

by Peter; and so the other Churches can produce those con stituted in their Bishoprics by the Apostles." (c. 32.)*

And thus we might go on, age after age, and multiply

* We can show from two early writers how carefully the Church m that day preserved-as Tertullian here states-the succession of the Bishops in the different sees. Thus Irenæus says, "seeing that it is very long, in such a volume as this to enumerate the succession of Bishops in all the Churches," he will give, as an example, that of Rome which he does in these words :

"The blessed Apostles, therefore, founding and instructing the Church, [of Rome,] delivered to Linus the administration of its Bishopric: Paul makes mention of this Linus in his Epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; after whom, in the third place from the Apostles, Clement had the Bishopric allotted to him. He had seen the blessed Apostles, and was conversant with them; and as yet he had the preaching of the Apostles sounding in his ears, and their tradition before his eyes: and not he alone, for at that time there were many yet remaining alive, who had been taught by the Apostles. To this Clement succeeded Evarestus, and to Evarestus, Alexander; and then Xystus was appointed the sixth from the Apostles; and after him Telesphorus, who suffered a glorious martyrdom; after him, Hyginus; then Pius; after him, Anicetus. And Soter having succeeded Anicetus, Eleutherus now has the Bishopric, in the twelfth place from the Apostles. By this order and succession, that tradition which is from the Apostles, and the preaching of the truth, is descended unto us." Adv. Hæres. lib. iii. ch. 3.

In the same way, Eusebius, the ecclesiastical historian, in his Church History, written about the time of the council of Nice, a. d. 325, gives the successions of the four Patriarchal Sees, of Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch, from the beginning down to the year 305. These he copied from the archives and records of the different Churches, which were extant in his day, but have since been lost. We are told, indeed, that by the express command of the Emperor, all these public registers throughout the Roman empire were laid open to him, "and out of these ma erials he principally compiled his Ecclesiastic History." (Cave's Lives of the Fathers, v. ii. p. 135.) The same lists are given by other writers, so as to render the facts with regard to the succession in the primitive Church, indisputable.

There was also in that day a library at Ælia which was founded by Alexander the Bishop there, which has since been destroyed. "From this" says Eusebius-" we have also been able to collect materials for our present work." (Eccles. Hist. lib. vi. chap. 2 §.)

Our witnesses to this truth. The writings of Hegesippus, Polycrates, Dionysius of Corinth,* Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian, Optatus, Ephrem Syrus, and that code of laws called "The Apostolical Canons," are all equally clear and distinct in their assertion of the truth, that through all those ages the Episcopal form of government was the only one existing in the Church.† So evident, indeed, was the pre-eminence of the Bishops, that even the heathen were well aware of the fact. Thus, when the Emperor Maximinus commenced his persecution against the Christians, we are told by Eusebius, that "he commanded at first only the Archontes, or chief rulers of the Churches to be slain."‡ And St. Cyprian tells Antoninus, that so great was the hatred of the Emperor Decius against the Christians, that "he could have heard with greater patience that another prince had set himself up as a rival in the empire, than that a Bishop should have been settled in the city of Rome." The historian Gibbon is forced to admit the existence of Episcopacy even in the apostolic days. His words are- "The

Episcopal form of government appears to have been introduced before the close of the first century." "It had acquired in a very early period the sanction of antiquity." "Nulla ecclesia sine Episcopo, (no Church without a Bishop,) has been a fact as well as a maxim since the time of Tertullian and Irenæus." He acknowledged, that “after we have passed the difficulties of the first century”—which

* The writings of these three authors have perished, and must be included among those ancient records used by Eusebius, which are now lost to the world. We receive, however, their testimony on the subject of the government of the early Church, from the extracts he has incorporated in his own history. Hegesippus in the second cen tury wrote a history of the Church from the beginning to his own day, and having travelled extensively, speaks of the Bishops presiding in the different countries he had visited. (Euseb. 1. iv. c. 8, 22.) For the testimony of Polycrates, see Euseb. 1. v. c. 24.-and for that of Dionysius, Euseb. 1. iv. c. 23.

And yet with all this array of testimony before him, (for we have only given a mere specimen,) Dr. Miller cf Princeton can say, they refer us to some vague suggestions and allusions of a few of the early fathers." Letters on the Ministry, p. 50.

Eccles. Hist. 1. vi. c. 28.

§ Epist. 55.

would be before he death of St. John-" we find the Episcopal government universally established, until it was interrupted by the republican genius of the Swiss and German reformers."* The skeptical historian found in truth, when he sa down to sketch the progress of our faith in that early day, that the history of Christianity was the history of Episcopacy. To have drawn the picture of our religion in the first three centuries, yet without admitting the government of Bishops, would have been as easy as to have given a view of Imperial Rome in the ages of her "Decline and Fall," without making any mention of her Emperors. The Church with her three-fold ministry met him at every step. From the very first they were inseparable, and could not be dissevered. God had "joined them together," and man could not " put them asunder." Regarding them simply as historical facts, we have the same evidence of the existence of Episcopacy throughout the Church in primitive times, that we have of the use of baptism, or the weekly reception of the Eucharist.†

* Decline and Fall, ch. xv.

+ Palmer in his Treatise on the Church (v. i. pp. 392-4) shows the uniform practice with respect to ordination by Bishops only, and the decision which was at once made with regard to the invalidity of this rite by Presbyters only. "We find several instances in which such ordinations were declared null, but not a single case has been adduced in which they were really allowed. In 324, the council of all the Egyptian Bishops assembled at Alexandria under Hosius, declared null and void the ordinations performed by Colluthus, a Presbyter of Alexandria, who had separated from his Bishop, and pretended to act as a Bishop himself. (Athanas. Oper. t. i. p. 193.) In 340, the Egyptian Bishops, in their defence of St. Athanasius, alluding to Ischyras, who pretended to be a priest, said, 'Whence, then, was Ischyras a Presbyter? Who was his ordainer? Colluthus? For this only remains. But it is known to all and doubted by no one, that Colluthus died a Presbyter; that his hands were without authority; and that all who were ordained by him in time of the schism, were reduced to the state of laymen, and as such attend the Church assemblies." (Ibid. p. 134.) . . . . . . Epiphanius refutes the doctrine of Aërius, observing, that Bishops beget fathers of the Church by ordination, Presbyters seget sons only by baptism, and concludes, 'How can he constitute a Presbyter, who has no right to ordain him by imposition of hands?' Epiph. Hæres. 75. Oper. t. p. 908.). . . . . No difficulties inducea

And this continued to be the case for fifteen hundred years for until the Reformation in the sixteenth century there is no evidence of the existence of any religious community, without a Bishop and Episcopal government. At this time it was, when old customs and rites were broken up, and the restless desire was created to make all things new, that the many parties which we see in the Christian world took their rise. The Church at that period being deformed by the corruptions which had gradually gathered around her as the Middle Ages went by, there was a natural wish in the minds of men to restore her to Apostolic purity. Yet in this, as is often the case in other things, they ran to the opposite extreme. Among the reformers on the continent, the reason let loose from its thraldom, indulged in the strangest extravagances. The followers of Luther, Melancthon, Zuinglius, and Calvin, differed widely, but looked only to their own private views as their guides. And the result was, that instead of retaining what was primitive and apostolic in the Church-retaining in fact the Church herself, relieved from all corruptions-they abandoned every ancient landmark. Thus the expedient was at last resorted to, of forming a new Church and a new ministry of their own, and their followers, to defend its validity, have been obliged since that time to take the ground that Episcopal ordination is not necessary, and that but one order of ministers is required. The door being thus thrown widely open, unnumbered sects arose, each modelled after its particular leader, as he happened to give a prominence to some single doctrine of his creed; and these, or their offspring, form that "mixed multitude" which encircle the camp of the true Israel as it journeys through the wilderness.

That the Reformers at first intended to separate from the Church we do not believe. This step grew out of occur

the Church to break through this rule. Never do we read, even in the height of the Arian persecutions, of an attempt to supply the necessities of the Churches by means of Presbyterian ordinations; no, not though it was held that in a time of such necessity, all the ordinary rules might be dispensed with. Even when the Vandals exiled the whole body of the African Bishops to the number of nearly 500. (Fleury. Hist. Eccl. lib. xxx § 7,) we read of no attempt to deviate from the universal rule."