Ghost, through the agency of the laying on of hands; and we know that the bestowal of that stupendous gift of Divine mercy and condescension was confined to the apostles and their successors alone; and was not vouchsafed to ordinary Christians. That, then, which Mr. Greenwood considers to have been the means of the founding of the Church at Rome, is in itself essentially insufficient to that end, and could not have produced it.

Mr. Greenwood indeed, we should state, is doubtful of the sufficiency of his own theory, though not for the reason that forms our objection to it; nor can we assent to the latter portion of the following extract:

'But the reader is reminded, that this explanation of the enigmatical notices in the earlier Christian writers respecting St. Peter's presence in Rome as the founder of that Church, is not offered as a conclusive solution of the doubts which those notices must give rise to. All we say of it is, that it is at least equally probable with that which presumes the apostle to have resided in Rome, and to have independently established a Christian Church there.'-P. 38.

In a word, there is at once a great diversity of witnesses to this fact, and a wonderful unanimity in their traditions. S. Ignatius and Papias prove that it was received in the East; S. Irenæus holds it in Gaul; S. Dionysius mentions it in Corinth; S. Clement shows it to have been known in Alexandria; Tertullian states it as the belief of Africa; Caius records it at Rome: so that we may well say with Cave,

'And now I would fain know what one passage of these ancient times can be proved either by more, or by more considerable evidence than this is; and, indeed, considering how small a portion of the writings of those first ages of the Church has been transmitted to us, there is much greater cause rather to wonder that we should have so many witnesses in this case, than that we have no more.'1

Let us conclude with Pearson's emphatic summary of the whole question:—

'Since by so great a consent, almost from the beginning, it was delivered that St. Peter preached the gospel at Rome, and in the same place suffered; and since no one has ever said that either Peter or Paul received their crown of martyrdom elsewhere; since, lastly, Christ Himself signified with sufficient clearness that He should be crucified: I think that faith may with sufficient safety be given to this history. For who will believe that so great an Apostle could die so obscurely that no one should ever remember the place in which he died? Who will believe, when other countries claimed each for itself its own Apostle, that no city, no country, no Church declared itself to be ennobled by the blood of St. Peter? And when Christ Himself, with so great force declared to St. Peter, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, when thou shalt be old thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not;" and

1 Life of S. Peter, chap. xi. Appendix.

long after his death, St. John the apostle wrote that Christ signified by these words by what death he should glorify God: who will ever suppose that no Christian whatever had any knowledge by what kind of death he suffered, but that all rather were ignorant how he glorified God; or at least that God in his providence was unwilling that it should be known to posterity? Yet in these two last ages there have not been wanting learned men who when they saw so many upholders of the pontifical power glorying chiefly in this succession, doubted at first of this succession itself, and soon even plainly denied that Peter ever was at Rome.'— Dissert. I. vii. v.

But although compelled to differ from Mr. Greenwood on the historical fact of S. Peter's presence at Rome, we thoroughly agree with him in rejecting the exorbitant claims, built on it, of the Romanists. It does not follow, even though S. Peter did with S. Paul personally found that Church, and was its first bishop, as S. Epiphanius says, and did die there, that the Church of Rome should henceforth be the mistress of churches; and we may in historical fact very well hold the one opinion without the other, as the early fathers actually did.

'Plain it is,' (says Cave,) that they who set themselves to undermine this story, design therein to serve the interests of the Protestant cause, against the vain and unjust pretences of the see of Rome, and utterly to subvert the very foundations of that title whereby they lay claim to S. Peter's power. This indeed, could it be fairly made good, and without offering violence to the authority of those ancient and venerable sages of the Christian Church, would give a mortal blow to the Romish cause, and free us from several of their groundless and sophistical allegations. But when this cannot be done without calling in question the first and most early records of the Church, and throwing off the authority of the ancients, non tali auxilio, truth needs no such weapons to defend itself, but is able to stand up, and triumph in its own strength, without calling in such indirect artifices to support it. We can safely grant the main of the story, that S. Peter did go to Rome, and came thither ev téλet (as Origen expressly says he did 1) about the latter end of his life, and there suffered martyrdom for the faith of Christ: and yet this is no disadvantage to ourselves; nay, it is that which utterly confounds all their accounts of things, and proves their pretended story of S. Peter's being twenty-five years bishop of that see to be not only vain, but false, as has been sufficiently shown in the foregoing section. But to deny that S. Peter ever was at Rome, contrary to the whole stream and current of antiquity, and the unanimous consent of the most early writers, and that merely upon little surmises and trifling cavils; and in order thereunto to treat the reverend fathers, whose memories have ever been dear and sacred in the Christian Church, with rude reflections and spiteful insinuations, is a course, I confess, not over ingenuous, and might give too much occasion to our adversaries of the Church of Rome to charge us (as they sometimes do, falsely enough) with a neglect of antiquity and contempt of the fathers; but that it is notoriously known, that all the great names of the Protestant party, men most celebrated for learning and piety, have always paid a most just deference and veneration to antiquity, and upon that account have freely allowed this story of S. Peter's going to Rome, as our author, who opposes it, is forced to grant.' 2-Life of S. Peter, chap. xi. Appendix.

1 Expos. in Genes. ubi supra.

2 Spanh. Diss. ut supra, c. I. n. 11.

From this point Mr. Greenwood proceeds to consider, as bearing of course on his main question, the original Church constitution; tracing out its growth and increase, as he conceives, from the first germ planted by the apostles, with its gradual development, down to the close of the fifth century. His remarks extend over so many pages (they may, in fact, be said to take up the whole work from the third chapter), that to give a brief and concise synopsis of them, will be matter of no small difficulty:

'Our subject,' (he says,)' deals with a highly organized and complicated hierarchical scheme, springing from very unapparent and simple beginnings. We have therefore to examine those beginnings with a view to ascertain, if possible, the birth or first appearance of principles of outward government and polity, of which we have no apparent intimation either in the works or the acts of the primitive preachers of the gospel. We say "apparent intimation," because it cannot be denied that if a consistent series of declarations and acts proceeding from the first followers of the Apostles were found unequivocally leading to a single construction upon their words and acts, with reference to a particular outward form of church-government or polity, we should probably find it difficult to deny that the germ at least of such a form of outward government and polity is traceable to the sources of Christian tradition; though the discovery might not materially affect our view of the religious obligation, as applicable to ourselves, of a scheme framed probably upon considerations of immediate and temporary expediency. And it is perhaps as well to state in this place, that we cannot evade the inquiry into the origin of that hierarchical principle which gradually pervaded the whole framework of Church government. We cannot avoid asking, when did the first sharp severance of the ministering from the non-ministering sections of the Church-the great distinction between clergy and laity-take place? Can we discover when and how the first pretensions of the clergy to a properly sacerdotal commission were known and received by the Christian world? And how did they at length work their way up to the altitude of a sacrificing and mediatorial priesthood? We have here nothing to do with any speculative development. Our duty is only to examine facts; and, in the first instance, to ascertain, as well as we can, what was thought, said, or done by the apostles and their immediate followers in relation to these questions; and whether in point of fact any specific provision was made with a view to that complicated scheme of church-offices and government which gradually grew out of the simple unorganic directions left behind them by the Apostles-or perhaps, to speak more properly, by S. Paul, in his Epistles to Timothy and Titus.-Pp. 55, 56.

Thus, Mr. Greenwood considers the Church to be merely a human body, a strictly voluntary association,' as he defines it; having originally few, if any, laws for its government, and a discipline anything but strict or well-defined. In some places (as Philippi) he considers that the governing body was a college of presbyters; in others (as in Asia), that it was the Bishop, with presbyters and deacons. But we must not lay too much stress on what are not intended to be dogmatical assertions: but are merely inquiries on which the author's opinion may yet undergo change, and on which, indeed, he is not always con

sistent with himself. Thus we are told at page 6, that we hear of no Bishop of Rome till long after the death of S. Paul; from which

'We must conclude either that the office did not exist at all, or that it was held by some person of whom no notice is taken in the Christian Scriptures, or in any other contemporary record.'-Page 6.

While, on the preceding page, he had said that at no great distance of time after S. Paul's Epistles to Timothy and Titus, few Churches were found without Bishops; and further on,

that

The Roman congregation had adopted episcopal management long before the death of S. Paul. Immediately afterwards, we find it under the superintendence of two bishops, Linus, and Cletus or Anencletus.'-Page 78.

We hold that it did not belong to the Roman congregation, in themselves, either to adopt or to reject any form of Church government; but that they received that which it pleased the Apostles to give them.

Mr. Greenwood, then, as we have seen, denies that our Saviour Himself, or His Apostles either, introduced or observed any proper form of Church government; and he continues, further on, as follows:

If the views we have adopted of the government of the Church in the apostolic age and that which immediately followed it be correct, we are justified in concluding that the church-constitution of that period was not grounded upon any properly hierarchical principle. The power imparted, whatever it was, called for no other than a voluntary and spontaneous obedience; and put forth no claim to any external means or appliances for its support. We do not regard it as a definitive or unalterable provision, or, like the Levitical priesthood, invested with that "divine right" which attaches to ordinances of positive precept. It was, in short, inchoate and preparatory, and expressly calculated to leave a wide margin for future adaptation-a free scope for all such changes as the state of the Christian world might from time to time require.'-Page 76.

Both these assertions we are compelled to deny. Our blessed Lord instituted His Apostles to be the governing members of His Church, in symbol of which he gave them the keys; and they instituted others in their room. As afterwards, so in the canon of Holy Scripture there are three orders; Apostles, in the first, and under them that class termed presbyters or Bishops; and lastly, deacons. What obscurity there is in the question, arises less from any difficult passages of the inspired writings, than from their silence. We find an order mentioned there sometimes under the title of Bishops, at others under that of presbyters and we do not know in each case whether they held the first rank in the Church, or the second. But the mere fact of these different titles having been applied to the same

offices during the life of the Apostles, proves nothing more to a candid mind, than that the two titles, since distinguished, were. then used synonymously. It does not show that there was no office of ordinary Apostle,' or angel, or (as since termed) Bishop, like that of S. Timothy and S. Titus; under the Apostles, but above the presbyters. Indeed, nothing can be concluded from the mere titles used in the New Testament: for the Apostles themselves are termed presbyters by S. Peter, 1 Pet. v. 1; and deacons by S. Paul, 1 Cor. iii. 5; and Bishops, Acts i. 20. And others than the twelve are called Apostles: S. Barnabas, Acts xiv. 4, 14; Andronicus and Junia, Rom. xvi. 7; Epaphroditus, Phil. ii. 25; Titus and others, 2 Cor. viii. 23: and the presbyters are termed Bishops, Phil. i. 1; Titus, i. 7, and elsewhere. Hence we may judge of the intrinsic worth of the conclusion of Salmasius from the word Bishops or overseers, in Acts xx. 28; That the 'Church of Ephesus was then governed exclusively by a college of presbyters (called Bishops), and that there was no particular 'Bishop over them with peculiar authority;' or that because the presbyters laid hands on S. Timothy, and, as he admits, 'presbyteri simplices' have not power so to do, therefore that these presbyters were, as it were, Bishop-presbyters, or presbyters who could lay on hands; according to his twofold distinction elsewhere laid down, of presbyters who could and who could not ordain; or that, lastly, because S. Paul sends greetings, in his Epistle to the Philippians, only to Bishops and deacons, therefore there was no order of Bishops proper, these Bishops being presbyters. Salmasius, and those who have argued with him, have overlooked the fact, that even if it could be proved that the term níoкоTоç is in every case applied to the priesthood alone, there were at that time Apostles over them, who formed that first order, which after their generation was filled by those who were first termed angels and then Bishops.

But there are certain documents of the apostolic age, which bear witness to a state of things very different to that which Mr. Greenwood's sympathies and theories lead him to consider the true one. Thus S. Clement of Rome describes the orders of the Church in his time, both as prescribed and settled by Divine authority. He commences his epistle by exhorting the Corinthians to be subject to their rulers, nyovμévoie, and to pay due honours to their presbyters. By the former term, he would surely mean those who succeeded the Apostles in the first rank of ecclesiastical government; in fact, the Bishops. And in a later section of the epistle he says (tracing the manner in which, so far, the Christian Church was a continuation and fulfilment of the Jewish Church) :