teachers already in those places, should appoint these two to this office, without the least mention of any such right in those teachers, as they must have had according to some modern reasonings." The argument for Episcopacy, from the cases of Timothy and Titus, cannot be placed in a stronger point of view than it is by Bishop Hoadly in the above extract.

Bishop Hoadly founds his fourth argument in favour of Epis→ copacy on apostolical institution; alleging, explicitly, "that the Apostles left the power of ordaining Presbyters in the hands of fixed Bishops." He says, that "the main point to be proved is, that Episcopacy is of apostolical institution. For if it be shown that Bishops were settled in the Churches of Christ by them, it will be easily granted that so considerable a business as that of ordination was so far confined to them, by the will of the Apostles, as that it should never be performed without their inspection and their hands."

Bishop Hoadly then proceeds to exhibit, and to vindicate the testimony of the Fathers in favour of Episcopacy. In the subsequent part of his works he minutely considers, and, with great ability, refutes all the arguments that are ever used against Episcopal and in favour of Presbyterian ordination. And the most strenuous advocate for Episcopacy would be at a loss for stronger arguments than those urged by Bishop Hoadly.

Now, that a man who maintains, as Bishop Hoadly does, that the power of ordination was always confined to single persons, superior to Presbyters-that all the instances of ordination in the New Testament prove, that the power of ordination was confined to single persons, superior to Presbyters-that all the rules in the New Testament concerning the ordination of Presbyters, are directed to persons superior to these Presbyters, to be executed by them ONLY-and that Episcopacy and Episcopal ordination are of apostolical institution (these are the very words of Bishop Hoadly)— that any person who holds such language in regard to Episcopacy and Episcopal ordination, should yet carry so far the spirit of compliance, as to concede that Episcopal ordination is only a matter of decency and regularity," is most extraordinary indeed: yet this concession does Bishop Hoadly make in the very treatise from which the above extracts are taken. If Episcopal government is to be placed on the foundation of decency and regularity only, why may there not be as much decency and regularity in Presbyterian government? Bishop Hoadly strenuously maintains that the power of ordination was vested by the Apostles (who, it will be recollected, were divinely commissioned to establish the Priesthood,) not in Presbyters, but in the superior order of Bishops alone. If then the Pres. byters were to exercise this power, would it not be usurpation ; would it not be substituting human authority in the Church in the place of divine? If the power of ordination was confined by the Apostles to Bishops, would not the exercise of it by Presbyters (whatever allowance we may be pleased to make for a case of inevitable necessity) be a mere nullity? No principle is 'more plain than that a man cannot lawfully exercise a power which he has not lawfully received. If Bishop Hoadly, by these concessions which he made, and which appear contradictory to his other principles,

S

expected to induce the Dissenters to conform to the Church, how greatly was he disappointed?

It is matter indeed of astonishment and regret, that Bishop Hoadly should afterwards become the champion of principles that tended not only to subvert all authority in the Church, but to weaken many of her fundamental doctrines. So reprehensible were his opinions esteemed, that the lower house of convocation made a formal presentation of him to the house of Bishops. His character has been thus drawn by the pen of an able Divine: "He always showed himself a much sounder politician than Divine; he daily pronounced the absolution of our Rubrics in the face of the Church, yet told the world, through the press, they were no absolutions at all. In the same place he daily repeated our Creeds; yet, in several parts of his works, borrowed arguments from the writings of the Socinians; which, by an artful turn, he so levelled at the doctrines either contained in, or necessarily resulting from those Creeds, that he who reads his books grows heterodox himself, while he believes the writer to be orthodox. In his most celebrated book, in which he insinuates what he would have us take to be the only necessary conditions on which the favour of God is to be obtained, he dwells on moral conditions only; and by slight touches and double expressions, eludes the necessity of faith in the meritorious death of Christ. He published a discourse, in which, among other things, he set forth, that it matters not so much what our religious principles are, as it does that we be sincere in them; reducing in a manner the whole duty of man to that of sincerity, of which he had given the world so bright an example in his own practice and professions."

Christ delegated his power in the Church to his Apostles. "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. As my Father sent me, even so send I you." Whatever the Apostles did, had therefore the sanction of Christ. What they did as the inspired governors of the Church, was virtually done by him. In the exercise of the power thus entrusted to them to establish the Church, the Apostles, in all the Churches of which we have any account in Scripture, constituted three orders of the Ministry, and gave the power of ordination to the first order. Here is more than mere apostolic practice-it is, as Bishop Hoadly maintains, Apostolic institution. And surely, in the fundamental point of the orders of the Christian Ministry, which derives all its efficacy from the divine commission which it enjoys, the Apostolic mode of conveying this commission is binding. Man has no right to change it, at what-、 ever time, and for whatever reasons he may think proper. To say, indeed, that it is unalterably binding, would be to maintain what cannot, in a strict sense, be predicated of any divine institution. For God, who " will have mercy, and not sacrifice," will dispense with his own positive institutions when it is not in the power of men to comply with them; and will, we trust, pardon that violation of them which is founded on necessity, and on involuntary, not wilful error. May we not say then, in the words of the excellent and pious Dean STANHOPE, "This spiritual government being instituted by Christ himself, cannot be abrogated, ought not to be changed, by any authority less sacred, any declaration less

Positive and express, than that by which it was first established. This, we have reason to believe, would not be wanting, were such authority mischievous or unnecessary: But for any man to pronounce it so, without any such signification from its author, is cer tainly most impudent sacrilege, and even raging impiety."* Ed.

1

For the Albany Centinel.

QUERIES.

How long will the present dispute between Episcopalians and

non-Episcopalians continue in the manner in which it is at present managed? Could not the writers bring what they have to say into shorter compass?

2. What weight in the controversy should be allowed to the testimony of those called the Fathers? Is their practice to be received as the true interpretation of Scripture, or is the Scripture alone to be the guide in this matter?†

3. When the Fathers contradict one another, is the whole of their testimony on this point to be rejected; or is the greatest number to decide; or must we depend principally upon those who were cotemporaries with the Apostles? If the last, why are not Clemens Romanus and Polycarp, who mention only two orders of officers in the Church, more frequently quoted?||

4. What is the meaning of the expression, "Successors of the Apostles?" Does it mean that the Bishops of the Romish and Epis

* Stanhope's Epist. and Gospels, vol. iv. p. 224. Ninth Edition. Epis. for St. Mark's Day.

When the Scriptures speak of three orders in the Ministry, and give the power of ordination to the first order; and when we find that the primitive Fathers bear concurring testimony to the apostolic institution of these orders, we have all the evidence that the case will admit. We rely on the Fathers as faithful historians, as credible witnesses to matters of fact. In this point of view their testimony is of importance to ascertain the true sense of Scripture. Errors of judgment do not prove them to be incompetent witnesses to matters of fact. "Let us not (to use the language of Bishop Hoadly), under the pretence of freedom and impartiality, cast off their universal concurrent testimony about a matter of fact of which they are the only proper judges," [the matter of fact to which Bishop Hoadly alludes, is the prevalence of Episcopacy from the Apostles' times] "lest we destroy all historical certainty, and forfeit the credit even of the most sacred writings now extant." Hoadly's Def. of Episc. Ordin. ch. i. Ed.

The Fathers do not contradict one another on the subject of Episcopacy. Even according to Bishop Hoadly their testimony on this point is "universal and concurrent." Ed.

|| Clemens and Polycarp were both Bishops; the one of Rome, and the other of Smyrna. And when they were themselves Bishops, does this writer (who the reader will recollect is the author of Miscellanies) mean to insinuate, that they bear testimony against the existence of this order? Ed,

copal Churches succeeded to the Apostolic office, or only that the Apostles constituted an order in the Church, who are to ordain, consecrate churches, and rule over a number of Ministers and their congregations, be they more or less?*

5. What idea is to be fixed to an "uninterrupted succession,” and how is it to be traced?† Who were the seven first Bishops of the Church of Rome? What is the truth respecting the successors of Austin the Monk, who (as is said), having become almost entirely extinct, by far the greatest part of the Protestant Bishops were ordained afterwards by Aidan and Finan, who were no more than Presbyters ?||

6. Since Paul sent for Titus, after he had "set in order the things that were wanting" in Crete, to come to Nicopolis, took him along to Rome, and then sent him into Dalmatia, may not Titus be properly called an Evangelist, or a travelling rather than a diocesan Bishop ?S

* This writer must surely know that Bishops claim to be "successors of the Apostles" only in their ordinary power of ordaining to the Ministry and governing the Church.

Ed. † Dr. Lathrop (see the remarks at page 94, &c.) will inform this gentleman what is meant by "uninterrupted succession," and how it is to be traced.

Ed.

Though there may be some difference of opinion as to the particular order in which the seven first Bishops of Rome succeeded one another, no primitive writers ever dispute the succession of Bishops in that Church. Ed.

As there is no authority stated for this fact, and as it is qualified by the expression, "as is said," it is scarcely necessary to notice it. The learned Collier, on the authority of the venerable historian of England, BEDE, remarks, "The Bishop who was sent to King Oswald before A1DAN'S mission, was consecrated at Rye: AIDAN likewise received his own consecration there; where it appears by the historian there were more Bishops than one." He likewise remarks, on the same authority, "Aidan was succeeded in his Bishopric by FINAN; who being consecrated and sent into England by the Scots, went to his see in Holy-Island, and built the Cathedral there." See Collier's Eccle. Hist. vol. i. p. 94, 95.

Ed.

Let Bishop HOADLY answer this inquiry, and silence the only objec tion which anti-Episcopalians can bring against the evident superiority of Timothy and Titus over the other orders at Ephesus and Crete, that they were extraordinary officers, Evangelists, travelling Bishops. "It is of small importance whether Timothy and Titus were fixed Bishops, properly so called, or not. Perhaps at the first plantation of churches there was no such necessity of fixed Bishops as was found afterwards; or perhaps at first the superintendency of such persons as Timothy and Titus was thought requisite in many different churches, as their several needs required. If so, their office certainly was the same in all churches to which they went; and ordination a work reserved to such as they were, persons superior to the settled Presbyters. But as to Ephesus and Crete, it is manifest that Timothy and Titus were to stay with the churches there, as long as their presence was not more wanted at other places: And, besides, if they did leave these churches, there was as good reason that they should return to them to perform the same office of ordination when there was again occa sion, as there was at first why they should be sent by St. Paul to that purpose. Nor is there the least footstep in all antiquity, as far as it hath yet appeared, of any attempt in the Presbyters of Ephesus of Crete, to take to

7. What was the particular offence given to Bishop Seabury which induced him to beat so unmercifully non-Episcopalians in a pamphlet inviting them to union; or, as the author of "A Companion for the Festivals," &c. has it, to "come into" the Episcopal Church?

8. Were Timothy and Titus successors of the Apostles during the lives of the Apostles, or after their decease? If the former, in what relation did the Apostles stand? If the latter, how could they be Bishops before that time, since Bishops are successors of the Apostles? Would it not be more modest in the Bishops of the Episcopal Church not to carry their succession higher than Timothy and Titus?*

9. If we can prove by the writings of the Fathers, merely because they relate facts, that Bishops are a superior order to Presbyters, may we not also prove, from the writings of the Old Testament, that kingly government is of divine right?†

10. In case a dispute arose, the decision of which depended on the date of the baptism of the children who were first baptised by a Lutheran Minister, and baptised again by an Episcopal Minister, which register of the two Churches ought to be admitted as proof?

11. Did the Bishop of London know that several persons whom he ordained as Priests, and one whom he ordained as a Bishop, had no other baptism than that administered by Ministers of a Presbyterian Church, whose administration of ordinances is held by the Episcopalians in the United States to be "nugatory and invalid ?"‡ AN INQUIRER.

I

A LETTER FROM CORNELIUS TO CYPRIAN.

DEAR BROTHER,

HAVE attended, with much interest, to the controversy which you and the Layman are now so well maintaining against the writer of Miscellanies and his coadjutor, respecting the Episcopal government of the Christian Church. It is astonishing to behold the confidence with which the advocates for Presbyterian parity traverse

themselves the offices appropriated in the forementioned Epistles, to a superior order of men." Hoadly's Def. of Epis. ch. i.

Ed.

* As Timothy and Titus were commissioned by the Apostles, succeeding Bishops derived their commission, through them, from the Apostles. Ed. + Kingly government stood among the Jews on the ground of divine right, because it was instituted by God. Episcopacy among Christians stands on divine authority, because it was instituted by the Apostles, who were divinely commissioned to establish the orders of the Priesthood. Until the author of Miscellanies can prove that kingly government was prescribed to Christians as well as the Jews, his insiduous and disingenuous comparison between it and Episcopacy will receive the indignation it deserves. Ed.

This writer will, on this point, find satisfactory information, if he is disposed to seek it, in the note on his Miscellanies, at p. 24, &c. Ed.