on his part to speak as he does of the Syriac; and we must decidedly protest against such a manner of dealing with the subject. We beg our readers' pardon for entering at so great length on the subject, but these confident assertions of Mr. Greenwood leave us no alternative but to repeat much of what has been more ably stated by others. It is not possible to deal particularly with Mr. Greenwood himself on the subject, for he gives no arguments of any kind for his opinion. With him it results (as he almost admits in terms, page 74 and note z) that the Greek must be rejected, and the Syriac received and considered genuine, because the former makes mention of ecclesiastical officers, which he considers in advance of S. Ignatius's times; and contains statements opposed to his own and Chevalier Bunsen's views as to the nature of the constitution of the early Church.

The Syriac being then worthless and untrustworthy, and the Greek confessedly against him, we might here leave S. Ignatius and pass on to other authors. But we maintain that even this imperfect relic of its author, as far as it speaks at all on the subject, is against Mr. Greenwood's theories on the original constitution of the Church, and in essential harmony and agreement with S. Clement of Rome, S. Irenæus, S. Clement of Alexandria, and others of the early ages: for S. Ignatius in his epistle to Polycarp addresses him as Bishop, condemns separation from, or even opposition to the Bishop as a sin, and speaks of presbyters and deacons :

'If a man have made himself notorious, apart from the Bishop, he has corrupted himself; for it is becoming to men and women who are married that they be married by the counsel of the Bishop, that the marriage might be in the Lord, and not in lust. Let every thing therefore be for the honour of God. Look to the Bishop, that God also may look upon you. I will be instead of the souls of those who are subject to the Bishop, and the presbyters and deacons with them may I have a portion with God.' And the same doctrine is pointed at in the other two epistles of the version.

Mr. Greenwood refers, as might be expected, to the wellknown passage of S. Jerome on which Blondel, Salmasius, and their followers have based their opinion in support of presbyterian as opposed to episcopal supremacy. S. Jerome certainly does say that there was a time when there was no Episcopate, and that it was instituted to heal the schisms and divisions of the Church.

"The presbyter' (he says) is the same as the Bishop; and before that, by the instigation of the devil, heats were caused in religion, and it was said among the people, "I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas," the churches were governed by the common counsel of the presbyters. But after each

considered those he had baptized as his own, and not as Christ's, it was decreed throughout the whole world, that one of the presbyters should be chosen and preferred to the rest, to whom should pertain the whole care of the Church, and the seeds of schism should be removed.'

Bringing in favour of this opinion the second verse of the first chapter of Philippians, he comments on it as follows:—

'Philippi is one of the cities of Macedonia, and certainly in one city, more Bishops (as so called) than one there could not be. But since then the Apostle terms those Bishops whom he is also styling presbyters, he speaks indifferently of Bishops as of presbyters.'-Comment on Titus, chap. I.

In his letters to Oceanus the presbyter, and Evangelus (printed erroneously by Blondel 'Evagrius'), he says that the term episcopus' regards the office, and that of 'presbyter' the age. The saint however, in the latter epistle, implies that this idea is his own alone; for he proceeds to establish it by arguments, and does not claim for it the testimony of the Church. He also says that 'at Alexandria, from the time of S. Mark to the Bishop Heraclas and Dionysius, the presbyters always named one (chosen from themselves, placed in a higher grade) Bishop, 'just as the army might choose the Emperor, or the deacons 'select one of their own number whom they termed arch' deacon. "What," he asks, " except ordination, does a Bishop do that a presbyter does not do?" "

6

To this we may say that nominabant Episcopum presbyteri,' whatever it does exactly mean, does not signify that the presbyters actually ordained their Bishop: and it will hardly be urged in support of S. Jerome that Eutychius, the Arabic historian of the tenth century, whose errors and self-contradictions are so gross and numerous, says that the presbyters of 'Alexandria laid hands on one of their own body and made him 'patriarch; a custom which continued to the time of Alexander, who first forbade the presbyters to make their own patriarch, ' and caused him to be ordained by Bishops;' and 'that there was no Bishop in all Egypt from Ananias to Demetrius, except 'only at Alexandria.'1

But we must remember that S. Jerome's language is not all on one side, and his meaning has perhaps been incorrectly apprehended by Blondel and Salmasius. He says that in the Apostles' time Bishops and presbyters were one and the same. In the sense in which we have already explained this assertion, the words of Scripture bear him cut; and many of our greatest divines-Andrewes, Beveridge, Bingham, and others readily concur with him. And that such really was his meaning seems

1 Tom. i. pp. 331, 332.

very probable, for he also says plainly and repeatedly that there were three orders in the Christian Church as in the Jewish; an admission in which neither Blondel nor Salmasius really follow him. He makes the Bishop equal to the High Priest; the presbyter to the priests; and the deacons to the Levites.1 In his letter to Eustochium on the death of her mother, he calls presbyters' priests of inferior degree;' and, in that to Heliodore, deacons the third degree.'

3

2

If S. Jerome really means that there is no apostolic authority for the order of bishops (which in the face of the above assertion we conceive to be impossible), it is to be concluded that, great as his name is in the Church, he is in error in that opinion. But he mentions no period of time for the rise of this order; and as the schisms he mentions began during the life, and in the very presence, of the Apostles, he may easily mean that they then placed bishops at the head of the churches for the objects specified. There is, however, clearly no reason why we should necessarily prefer his authority to that of the whole Church, or to any competent witness of her doctrines or discipline. Theodoret, for instance (his own contemporary), says: They 'formerly called the same persons both presbyters and Bishops, and those now called Bishops they used to call Apostles.' There is no historical difficulty in this view; whereas S. Jerome's, as explained by Blondel and others, is clearly attended by more than one. But these writers extract from his words a meaning which is not only not to be found in them, but which, when well considered, appears actually opposed to them.

Against the presbyterian writers, and unrefuted by them, we have the decisive testimony of S. Clement of Alexandria, that S. John placed Bishops, not presbyters, over the churches of Asia. We have the apostolic canons (of S. Clement's age, or earlier, as Bishop Beveridge thinks) clearly and carefully distinguishing between the ordinations and offices of Bishops and of priests, and laying down stringent laws to prevent the ordination of the former from being at any time invalidated. Nor do we ever find any single church after the Apostles' death, to have been governed by a presbytery alone. The ante-Nicene Councils, Antioch against Paul of Samosata, Neocæsarca, and Ancyra, in the East; and Arles and Elvir, or Illiberis, of Spain, in the West, show this as far as they go; and especially the great Ecumenical Council of Nice, with its 318 Bishops gathered from all parts of the world, without a single presbyter among them presiding as such over a church, seems to prove the same almost

1 Cont. Jovin: lib ii. pp. 220, 226. 2 Ep. lxxxvi. p. 687. 3 Ep. v. p. 10. This distinction allowed by S. Jerome, or possibly the necessity of the case, may have given rise to Salmasius's twofold division of presbyters.

to demonstration. For is it not utterly impossible that every trace of presbyterian government should have entirely vanished from every country so speedily, had the Apostles really established it in any one? Nay, it could not; for it would then have been the apostolic depositum, which the church to whom it was given was bound to have retained. Such a church would have had no right to reject presbyterianism for episcopacy, merely because other churches had done so, or because some temporary need (such as S. Jerome states) had arisen to cause them to think that episcopacy was better for them. Had presbyterianism really been instituted, or even allowed by the Apostles, it must have continued. Its non-existence at every time and in every place is the most unanswerable moral proof that it was never at any place so instituted. Mr. Greenwood's unconsciousness of this shows a great defect in his appreciation of the sacredness of apostolic institutions.

A glance at the early history of the Church will confirm our readers in the belief of the non-existence in those times of presbyterianism. In Eusebius iv. 22, we are told of an ancient writer, Hegesippus, who lived in or near the time of the Apostles, and travelled from place to place in search of ecclesiastical knowledge. He wrote a work in five books. He informs us that he stayed some days at Corinth, with the Bishop Primus, on his way to Rome. Here he compiled an account of the succession of that church to the time of Anicetus.' How then, if presbyterianism had been originally allowed by the Apostles, equally with episcopacy, does not Hegesippus tell us something of it? It may be answered, that we have only the extract given by Eusebius from his work. But we maintain that that extract is decisive of this question. He might have failed to state that there were differences in the mode of government of the churches, if there had been any, or Eusebius might have omitted to record his statement; but as it is, he states positively that there were none. As it was at Rome, so he had found it in all other places: there was one, and but one, succession and doctrine everywhere, and his words are too plain to be mistaken, too definite to be explained away.

Again; Papias, another cotemporary of the Apostles and Bishop of Hierapolis, says of himself, that he had been a diligent hearer of, among other apostolic men, the presbyter John.2

1 The reading of the passage has been made doubtful by an alteration in the text of H. Savile, to which Bishop Pearson justly objects. We have followed the original reading as sanctioned by Bishop Pearson.-De Successione primorum Romæ Episcoporum.-Dissert I. chap. v. § ii. and following.

2 Eusebius, Book III. chap. xxxix. Papias Asianus, forsan Hierapoli natus, S. Joannis erat auditor, et Polycarpi sodalis. Eusebius quidem non Apostolum,

This might have been the Apostle and Evangelist; and although Eusebius gives it as his own opinion that it was not, and mentions it as a report, that two Johns had lived at Ephesus, and that there were two tombs of theirs in the place, it is by no means certain that he is correct; for S. Irenæus seems to know of but one John, the Apostle himself. If it be so, as S. John is here called presbyter by Papias, others so called may have been in the first rank of ecclesiastical officers, or (as we should now say) Bishops, though bearing an appellation since appropriated to those of the second rank only. At any rate the uncertainty that does exist that John the elder was not the Apostle is a point worthy of observation, as a proof of the fact that, not only in the canon of Scripture itself (as we have already shown), but also in the early uninspired history of the Church, from the mere title applied to ecclesiastical officers nothing can be inferred any way.

Subsequently to these times, and to the same effect, there are the histories of Ischyras and of Aërius. S. Athanasius was accused by the Arians at the Council of Tyre, of having profaned the church of Ischyras, and destroyed the sacred furniture. The charge was admitted by Ischyras himself to be false in fact. There was, in truth, no church in the place, and Ischyras was confessedly no presbyter at all, having been ordained only by Colluthus, who himself was known to have lived and died a mere presbyter. How could such a charge, at that date, have fallen to the ground, and that too before S. Athanasius's bitter and most unscrupulous enemies, if presbyterian government had ever been established in any place; especially if the Patriarch himself of Alexandria, as Eutychius says, was ordained by presbyters till the time of Alexander, the immediate predecessor of S. Athanasius in the see? We conclude, therefore, that S. Athanasius' report of this matter (for we have it from himself) is a positive proof of the falsity of that statement of Eutychius.

Again; still less possible would it have been that Aërius should in the same century have been (as he was) condemned as a heretic, not in any particular country, but throughout the whole Church, and noted as such by S. Epiphanius and S. Augustin, because among other things he denied the difference between Bishops and presbyters. How could that opinion have passed in so short a time from an admitted opinion

sed Joannem presbyterum, seu seniorem, intelligit. At Irenæus, et longo post eum agmine scriptores cæteri illum Joannis Apostoli fuisse discipulum diserte satis innuere videntur. Immo utriusque discipulum vero non absimile est, et post Joannis Apostoli mortem Joanni presbytero se adjunxit.'-Cave, Hist. Litt. ad verb. Papiam.