CHAPTER II.

The Primitive Church considered as a System.

IT

SECTION I.

would, doubtless, have excited the admiring surprise of one of S. Paul's early converts, if he could have revisited the Church in which he died, and beheld the fair proportions and systematic form which it had attained two hundred years after he left its little company of faithful men, bound together by a common baptism, a common faith, and common hopes, but little conscious of any precise shape or organization. It could not have been otherwise than marvellous to find a distinct Society; with a complete and definite Constitution; administered by regular and recognised Pastors, no longer owning the allegiance and affection of their flock as a matter of mere course, no longer receiving the simple unquestioning attachment of their children in Christ, but exhibiting well authenticated

credentials, and vindicating their claim to well understood rights by an unbroken and undoubted commission of which they could enumerate every link, even to the very Apostle himself by whom our imaginary spectator had been christened and confirmed. Strange, in many respects, would he deem the change in the magnitude and fortunes of the earthly division of his Communion. Perhaps none would startle him more than to see that fraternity which he left supporting an existence, save for God's promise, entirely precarious; tied together by the simple, yet vital bond of Gospel truth; learning under apostolic guidance the hard lesson of renouncing ancient prejudices, Pagan or Judaic; or referring, with filial submissiveness, their infant difficulties to apostolic adjustment;-now wearing a more majestic mien, and exhibiting in its outward form a manly dignity and the independence of maturity. He might indeed be startled at first sight; but he would soon recognise in all things but the full growth of that order of which apostolic hands had moulded the embryo, or of which apostolic example had suggested the type. He would marvel

with awe and a thankful heart, as he took notice whereunto those things had grown, of which he had accepted the germs as a matter of course. He would perceive that a developement of Apostolic discipline was no less necessary to the being of a gigantic frame, such as that to which the grain of mustard seed had attained, than the maintenance of Evangelical truth was to its well being: and that indeed the preservation of the latter was not possible without the exercise of the former. And on a close examination, he would declare that there was no one element in this wondrous scheme of unity which was not the legitimate expansion of some archetype, perhaps little heeded at the time, in the Apostolic rule under which he had lived.

We shall not linger long on the all-important question, how far Holy Scripture was designed to prescribe any particular form of Church government, or what incidental conclusions are deducible from it on this subject. It is not our task just now to enter into the general argument for Episcopacy, its universal acceptance, and its divine right. But in the brief sketch of the developement of Church

system which this Chapter professes to give, it is necessary to set out by mentioning a few of the earliest traces of its nascent state. Without insisting very strongly on the independent controversial worth of such incidents as the following, the Episcopalian traces with satisfaction and interest the very first symptoms of an Ecclesiastical organization which can be discovered in the New Testament. He does not conceive that it was the purpose of inspired Writ to lay down a definite code of Canon Law or hierarchical subordination; but it is not with unconcern that he notices its incidental support of his theory and the Church's universal system. He marks, as no trifle or accident, but with reverence, that our blessed Lord ever drew a marked distinction between "The Twelve," and His other ordained Disciples. They were distinguished in the time and the manner of their ordination; in the terms of their commission; in the intimacy and the privileges to which they were admitted; in the promise of perpetual guidance and aid. And as it became necessary to fill up or to enlarge the Apostolic College, it is to be observed how carefully the choice

was made, and the commission conveyed. If any man might, from the circumstances and certainty of his divine Call, have dispensed with the ceremonial of outward ordination, that person was surely S. Paul. But favored though he was, he could not be sent to the Gentiles without a regular mission and commission. The Holy Ghost condescended to give express injunctions for the Ordination and after prayer and fasting, the heads of the Church at Antioch laid their hands on him, and he was constituted Apostle of the Gentiles.

a;

It is worthy of remark that the only express treatises on the Pastoral Office which have been left us by inspired authors,-the Pastoral Epistles to two of the immediate successors of the Apostles-emanated from S. Paul. A man, the infirmities of whose judgment were uncorrected by divine aid, would probably have been induced by the special circumstances of his own extraordinary and informal vocation, to underrate the value of systematic order in the appointment of his successors. Not so with the inspired Apostle. The letters to the first Bishops of Crete and