the characters which he described;" and by Eusebius he is recorded to have been not a little instrumental, through his labours as an author, to the advancement of Christianity. Hegesippus mentions that he made it his business, in the course of a long journey, to visit the Bishops of the Church; that he "conversed with a very great number; that he found them all unanimous in their faith; and that, in every line of Episcopal succession, and in every city, the same doctrine was received, which was taught by the law, by the prophets, and by our Lord himself1." This venerable writer further informs us that, after the martyrdom of James the Just, Simeon (who was also the son of Cleophas, the uncle of our Lord,) was unanimously appointed Bishop of Jerusalem; which long continued a virgin church, pure from any heresy, till one Thebulis, disappointed that he was not elected Bishop, devised some strange doctrine 2.

We may next adduce the evidence of IRENEUS, an important witness in this cause, from the clearness of his testimony; from the undoubted authenticity of his works; and from the intimacy of his acquaintance with the distinguished Fathers of the preceding age. He was born in Greece, and derived his instruction in Christianity from Papias and Polycarp, (both of them disciples of St. John,) and is understood to have accompanied St. Polycarp to Rome about the year 157. Anicetus, the Roman Pontiff, prevailed upon him to visit France, and proceed to Marseilles, where numbers of his countrymen the Greeks were at that time settled. In his journey, arriving at Lyons, he was persuaded to settle there by Pothinus, Bishop of that city, under whom he performed the duties, for some time, of a Presbyter; and on whose martyrdom he succeeded to the Bishopric, a post of no small danger during that period of persecution. To this danger Irenæus, as he probably anticipated, afterwards fell a victim. He was put to the torture, under the Emperor Severus, about the year 202, and afterwards beheaded. His diligence and ability have been generally admired and applauded. Tertullian in particular calls him omnium doctrinarum curiosissimus explorator;

1 Frag. Comm. Heges. apud Euseb. Eccles. Hist. lib. iv. cap. 21.

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a most diligent searcher into all points of doctrine." We may express the opportunities of information which Irenæus enjoyed in his own language; "I have often seen Polycarp," he says, "and I very well remember his person and behaviour when discoursing to the multitude; as well as his habits of familiar intercourse with St. John, and with the rest of the Apostles, who had seen our Lord." This very competent witness distinctly speaks of Bishops as possessed of diocesan authority; and describes Presbyters as a separate order, exercising an inferior office, and invested with inferior powers. His evidence to this point is decisive. Even the adversaries of Episcopacy admit that about the middle of the second century an episcopal order, vested with peculiar powers of ordination and jurisdiction, existed and was fully established. It should however be observed that the testimony of this ancient Father goes still farther not only proving that Bishops actually existed in his time, but that they unquestionably had existed from the beginning, and were successors to the Apostles. In a work against heretics, "We can reckon up," he says, "those Bishops who have been constituted by the Apostles and their successors all along to our times. And if the Apostles knew hidden mysteries, they would have communicated them especially to those in whose hands they placed even the care of the Churches, and whom they left for their own successors, delivering to them the same office of government which they had occupied themselves." In another place he says, "We have a list of the Bishops in succession to whom the Apostolic Church in every place was committed." And again," All these," he says, (speaking of heretics) are much later than the Bishops, to whom the Apostles delivered the Churches 1."

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Titus Flavius Clemens, commonly called CLEMENT of Alexandria, to whom we next refer, flourished towards the close of the second century. He was brought up in the school of Pantænus, an eminent Stoic philosopher, who had been converted to Christianity, and who had taught the principles of the Christian Faith to the Alexandrian Church

1 Irenæus advers. Hæres. lib. iii. cap. 3. lib. iv. cap. 63. lib. v. cap. 20.

ever since the episcopate of St. Mark, its founder. When his master Pantænus quitted Alexandria on a missionary enterprise to Ethiopia, Clement succeeded him in the catechetical chair, and taught numerous disciples with distinguished success. The work from which we are about to quote he entitled Stromata, from the variety of material which it contains. It must have been a kind of commonplace book, composed of miscellaneous articles, to serve him in his old age, as he said, when his memory should fail him.

This ancient Father not only places the Bishop, the Presbyter, and the Deacon, each in a separate class; but describes the removal from one class to another as a promotion or advancement. So that a Presbyter on being made a Bishop was preferred in the same degree as a Deacon would be when made a Presbyter. To give a livelier impression of these gradations in the Church, he deduces them from corresponding preferments in the celestial hierarchy. "For here also in the Church," says he, "the promotions of Bishops, of Presbyters, and of Deacons, are imitations, as I conceive, of the angelic glory 1."

1

The distinction manifest in these words, is given still more plainly in those which follow. For having declared these preferments analogous to those which good men "walking in the footsteps of the Apostles, and conforming to the perfect rules of righteousness in the Gospel, look for in heaven;" the venerable Father proceeds to give his notion, "that those who, as the Apostle writes, were caught up into the clouds, should first be in the order of Deacons; and then advance to the Presbyterate by an accession of glory-for glory differs from glory—until they increase unto the perfect man 2:" meaning by the "perfect man " the Bishop, whom he conceives placed in the highest or most glorious station. We must here understand Clement to distinguish in heaven, three orders or degrees of glory; (for glory, he says, differs from

1 Strom. lib. vi. p. 667. The word πрокожai, or gradations, clearly intimates that it was the same advancement for a Presbyter to be made a Bishop, as for a Deacon to be made a Presbyter. For to have described promotion or advancement from one order to the very same order would have been absurd.

glory,) and to consider the three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons to be on earth an imitation of that celestial economy. The first or lowest he represents as occupying the place of Deacons; the second or intermediate, the place of Presbyters; and the highest or most perfect, the place of Bishops. The conjecture certainly of this pious man with respect to the heavenly regions need not be maintained; but his testimony with respect to different orders in the Church on earth, of which he was eye witness, is unexceptionable '.

In another passage of his works, he mentions James, the kinsman of our Lord, as being constituted by St. Peter, and the two sons of Zebedee, Bishop of Jerusalem; and observes that Peter, James, and John, who were held in highest estimation with our Redeemer, did not contend among themselves, after his ascension, for the highest place; but rather made choice of James the Just, to occupy the Episcopal chair in the holy city 2.

To make one further quotation from this author: he elsewhere informs us, that the Apostle John "when he settled at Ephesus, went about the neighbouring regions, ordaining Bishops; and setting apart such persons for the clergy, as were signified to him by the Holy Ghost'.

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Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, more familiarly styled TERTULLIAN, and generally supposed to be the most ancient of the Latin Fathers now extant, was born at Carthage, the metropolis of Africa, about the middle of the second century. His ability and learning called forth the deserved eulogy from St. Jerome vir erat acris et vehementis ingenii-Quid Tertulliano eruditius, quid acutius* ? He devoted all the powers of his mind to the defence of Christianity against Infidels; and presented to the governors of the Roman empire his most celebrated work, called "An Apology for the Christian Faith," written about the year 200. He also for some time directed his talents to the support of the Church against heretics; but in the latter

1 See Bishop Beveridge's Codex Canonum Eccles. prim. illustratus, cap. xi. De Episcopis.

2 Clem. Alex. apud Euseb. lib. ii. cap. 1. 3 Ibid. Strom. lib. vi. p. 667.

Hieron. de Scriptor. c. 53.

part of his life, he separated himself from the Catholic communion, and joined the followers of Montanus, to whose ascetic principles the austerity of his own habits had predisposed him. He attained to an advanced age, and died about A. D. 220, but the precise date of his death is unknown.

This learned and eloquent writer affirms distinctly the institution of the Episcopal order by the Apostles. "The order of Bishops," he says, "when traced up to its foundation, had certainly John (the Apostle) for one of its authors'." He elsewhere gives this challenge to the heretics of his time: "Let them show us the origin of their Churches, let them unrol a catalogue of their Bishops, from the earliest to the latest; by which their first Bishop may appear to have had for his founder and immediate predecessor, either some Apostle, or some Apostolic person, living in the time of the Apostles. For this is the established mode in which the Apostolic Churches count up their pedigree. The Church of Smyrna, for example, counts up to Polycarp, appointed by St. John; the Church of Rome to Clement, ordained by St. Peter: so in like manner the other Churches produce their first Bishops apostolically constituted, that by them the Apostolic succession might be propagated and continued 2. In his treatise on baptism our author declares, "The right of baptizing belongs to the chief Priest, who is the Bishop; and after him to Presbyters and Deacons, yet not without the authority of the Bishop. Thus is the dignity of the Church preserved; on the preservation of which depends the preservation of peace 3." "Reckon up," he says, in another work, " the Apostolic Churches, where the very chairs of the Apostles yet preside, each in its own place; at Corinth, at Philippi, at Ephesus, at Thessalonica 4"

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Among the writers of the third century, no one is more celebrated than ORIGEN, a native of Egypt, born about the year 185, of whom Vincentius Lirinensis, says, that "he was among the Greeks, what Tertullian was among the

1 Tertull. adv. Marcion. lib. iv. cap. 5.

2 Ibid. de Præscrip. cap. 32.

3 Ibid. lib. de Baptis. cap. 17.

Ibid. de Præscrip. c. 36.