very doubtful struggle with passions and habits which the law of Christ condemns, was not regarded as a sufficient reason for suppressing the responsibilities and powers which belong to those who are one with Christ and have received the eternal life which God has given to the world in Him. The Christian Church was organised, not for unbelievers, but for Christians. It was meant to consist of those who are regenerate of the Holy Ghost; who are one with Christ, as the branch is one with the vine; who have received eternal life-the very life of God. This glorious ideal determined the polity of the Church. By its very organisation all Christian men were reminded of the divine wisdom and strength which were their inheritance in Christ.

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Their functions varied, but they had common rights because they had common duties. They were all alike the brethren of Christ; and the honour and joy of receiving into the Christian household those to whom Christ had given "the right to become children of God" belonged to them all. They were all responsible for maintaining the authority of Christ; and if any member of the Church wilfully and persistently disobeyed Christ's commandments, they were under a common obligation to censure the offender, and, if he did not amend, to remove him from the Christian community. They were all taught of God, and had all been entrusted with the defence of the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints "3; and it was the duty of the commonalty of the Church, as well of its officers, to "try the spirits," to "prove all things," and to "hold fast that which is good." The qualifications for official service in the Church were given by the Spirit of God, but the whole Church determined on whom these qualifications had been conferred, and elected them to office; and as the whole Church had power to elect, it also had power to depose. The elders, bishops, pastors, leaders of the Christian community could instruct, warn, admonish, rebuke: they had a large though undefined authority; but their authority was effective only as it secured the consent and support of their unofficial brethren. They did not even form a separate "order," with powers co-ordinate with those of the Christian commonalty. The whole congregation of the faithful was responsible for the whole life of the Church-for 2 John i. 12. 3 Jude 3. 4 1 John iv. 1; 1 Thess. v. 21.

its faith, its worship, and its discipline. The Churches of the apostolic age were Congregational Churches.

And because they were Congregational, they were Independent. Each Christian assembly stood in the immediate presence of Christ, and was directly responsible to Him. It was the body, the organ of His will. When its members were gathered together in His name to worship, His presence made the prayers of the assembly His own. When they were gathered together in His name to determine questions affecting the organisation and government of the Church, His presence gave an august sanction to their decisions: what was bound on earth was bound in heaven; what was loosed on earth was loosed in heaven. The acts of an assembly in which Christ was present could not be subjected to the revision, did not require the ratification, of any external authority.

II

About the fortunes of the Church between A.D. 70 and A.D. 110 we know very little; but as late as A.D. 95 the responsibilities and corresponding powers of the Christian commonalty in the two great Churches of Corinth and Rome were unimpaired. At Corinth the people had deposed some of their elders-men who apparently had been appointed to office by the apostles themselves; and Clement, writing to the Corinthian Christians in the name of the Roman Church, does not tell them that they had gone beyond the limits of their authority. The power of a Christian congregation to depose its bishops is unchallenged, though he thinks that in this particular instance the power has been exercised unjustly.

Nor does he suggest that there was any authority outside the Corinthian Church itself which had the right to receive an appeal from the bishops who had suffered injustice and to restore them to office. In the name of the Roman Church he remonstrates with his Christian brethren at Corinth and condemns them in terms of unmeasured severity. But he claims no authority, either for himself or the Church of Rome, to revise and reverse their decision; nor is there any intimation that the Churches in the immediate neighbourhood of Corinth could reopen the case and redress the wrong. The Church

at Corinth was still an Independent Church, because it was still a Congregational Church.5

Clement's Epistle also shows that as late as A.D. 95 he—a leading bishop of the great Church at Rome-knew nothing of "the threefold ministry " of bishops, presbyters, and deacons. To him "bishop" and " presbyter" are different names for the same office. He himself does not claim to be a bishop at Rome in any other guise than that in which all the other Roman presbyters were bishops. He recognises no bishop as having supremacy over the other presbyters at Corinth. He says that the apostles appointed bishops and deacons ; of any third and intermediate order he knows nothing.

The organisation of the Church of Philippi early in the second century appears to have been the same as when Paul wrote his Epistle to the Philippians forty or fifty years before. Paul speaks of "the bishops and deacons" of the Church at Philippi. Polycarp speaks of its "elders and deacons " the elders were bishops under another name."

";

A remarkable document, The Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, published by Bryennius, Metropolitan of Nicomedia, and assigned to the last years of the first century or the early years of the second, contains additional proof-though additional proof is unnecessary-that towards the end of the obscure period between A.D. 70 and A.D. 100, there were Churches in which episcopacy was as yet undeveloped. The only church officers mentioned in this ancient fragment of Christian literature are bishops and deacons."

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It is very possible, indeed, that it had been customary in Rome, in Corinth, and in Philippi, long before the close of the first century, for one of the elders" or bishops" to preside regularly in the assemblies of the Church and in the meetings of the church officers. But the presiding elder was only an elder; or, if he was called a bishop, he had colleagues who were also bishops.

5 Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers (Part 1), S. Clement of Rome, i. 82–83, 378-381; and ii. 131 foll.

• Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers (Part 2), S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp, i. 427-428, and ii., section 2, 897 foll, and 914-918.

7 Didache (Bryennius), 51, and Introduction, lxi.

III

But in the course of the second century the president of a Church received a distinctive title, and came to be regarded as holding a higher rank than that of his fellow presbyters. He was the bishop: his colleagues were described as elders or presbyters, and their original equality with their president was gradually lost. Instead of the two classes of officers which existed in the apostolic Churches-bishops and deacons, or presbyters and deacons—there were three-bishops, presbyters, and deacons.

It seems probable that this innovation began in the Church at Antioch; it may have been suggested by the unique position of James, the brother of our Lord, among the elders of the neighbouring Church in Jerusalem. From the epistles of Ignatius it appears that the distinction between bishop and presbyter was recognised-perhaps as early as A.D. 107, certainly as early as A.D. 117—not only in the Church of Antioch but in the Churches of Ephesus, Smyrna, Magnesia, Tralles, and Philadelphia. These five Churches, however, were all situated in one small district in Asia Minor; and there is no contemporary evidence no trustworthy evidence of any kind-that at this early date any distinction between bishop and presbyter was acknowledged in other parts of the world. There is decisive evidence that ten or twenty years before these epistles were written the distinction was unknown in Rome, Corinth, and Philippi.8

And the bishop of the Ignatian letters is not a diocesan bishop he is the president of a single congregation. No authority over the presbyters is attributed to him corresponding to that of a modern bishop over his clergy; but the Ignatian bishop and the Ignatian presbyter share between them the government of the Church, and the powers of the Christian commonalty are altogether suppressed. If the language of the Ignatian letters is to be taken seriously, if no allowance is to be made for mystical and rhetorical exaggeration, the authority claimed for church rulers is enormous, not to say blasphemous. And though this authority

8 For a brief discussion of the origin of episcopacy see R. W. Dale, Manual of Congregational Principles: Appendix, Art. III.

is shared by all the presbyters, it is concentrated in the bishop, who, to use Dr. Lightfoot's felicitous phrase, is the "visible centre of unity in the congregation." To separate from the bishop is, therefore, to separate from the communion of saints, and to separate from the communion of saints is to separate from Christ.

IV

In the writings of Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons (A.D. 177), there is another representation of the idea of the episcopate. "If you wish," he argues, "to ascertain the doctrine of the apostles, apply to the Church of the apostles. In the succession of bishops tracing their descent from the primitive age and appointed by the apostles themselves, you have a guarantee for the transmission of the pure faith, which no isolated, upstart, self-constituted teacher can furnish. There is the Church of Rome, for instance, whose episcopal pedigree is perfect in all its links and whose earliest bishops, Linus and Clement, associated with the apostles themselves there is the Church of Smyrna again, whose bishop, Polycarp, the disciple of John, died only the other day.

" 10

To Ignatius the supremacy of the bishop was the great protection of the Church against schism: it was by the recognition of episcopal authority that each individual congregation was to be held together, and that divisions originating in personal wilfulness and ambition were to be prevented. To Irenæus the supremacy of the bishop was the great protection of the Church against heresy: the episcopate was regarded by him "not so much as the centre of ecclesiastical unity, but rather as the depositary of apostolic tradition.” "

Lightfoot, Philippians, 233; Dissertations, 198-199.

10 But we have seen (pp. 5-6) that Clement himself did not claim that he was a bishop in any sense in which his colleagues in the eldership were not bishops. And Polycarp, too, was unaware, when he wrote to the Philippians, that a bishop was anything more than a presbyter. The translation of the passage from Irenæus is in Lightfoot, Philippians, 237; and also in Dissertations on the Apostolic Age, 203-204.

11 Lightfoot, Philippians, 237-238; Dissertations, 204.