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THE

PRIMITIVE GOVERNMENT

OF

CHRISTIAN CHURCHES,

FROM THE EARLIEST TESTIMONY OF FACTS; IN THE ORIGINAL
WORDS OF THE ANCIENT WRITINGS, AND ESTAB-
LISHED BY THE SACRED RECORDS.

SECTION I.

The ordinances and officers of the Gospel neither conventional, nor subsequent to inspiration.—Presbyter meant not different offices; but presbyter and bishop the same commission.-The fathers credible for facts, their opinions unimportant, their silence presumptive proof.-Barnabas and Hermas rejected. The testimony of Clement of Rome weighed.

FORMS of civil government are conventional, except where the social compact has been excluded by the dictation of power, or perverted by the stratagems of fraud. But in the kingdom of Christ, laws, ordinances, and offices are all prescribed and adjusted with precision; innovation is disobedience; an unauthorised office is insubordination and rebellion. The commission and duties of the gospel-herald are spread upon the same pages of that word which he is to preach; that he may know his own obligations, and the people, how he is to be regarded. Offices erected in the church, after the removal of inspired men, are unlawful, whether in ancient or modern times. If such

B

offices can be justified on the conjectural ground of convenience, so may ordinances, and we may "teach for doctrines the commandments of men." Unity of design and operation, and especially the prevention of sinful competitions and disorder, justified presbyteries, in determining that one of their number should preside in their sessions, and in public worship. But for the ordination of a presbyter, or the ordination of any as lay presbyters, without apostolical precept or example, neither right nor power existed; and every such unscriptural office was and is merely void.

That no such commission under that dispensation whereof Christ was a minister, belongs to gospel times, will be conceded by those for whom I write; and that the commissions of apostle and evangelist, given by him after his resurrection, for the planting of the churches, being obviously temporary, have expired, may be at present also assumed. Our purpose is to show from facts, what permanent offices at first existed in every regularly constituted church; that we may ascertain whether the term presbyter, pεoẞ7εро5, was, among the first Christians, understood to designate two offices, a preaching and ruling elder, or one only, whether the epithet ruling, posols, was so far from importing subordination, that it was adopted to signify a presiding authority,—and whether becoming permanent at the close of the second century, this office, founded on mere expediency, was more usually expressed by the word xoxoxos, bishop, common before that period to all elders. If these things shall be made clear, the assumption of the existence of two offices, couched under the same term, and constituted by ordination, but deemed to be distinct merely because presbyters exercised a diversity of duties in their episcopal character," will be evinced to be merely gratuitous and unsupported.

Although the opinions and practice of the fathers

a Phil. i, 1. Acts xx. 17-28. Heb. xiii. 17. 1Pet. v. 1.

can have not the least authority to establish any office or doctrine, any prerogative or duty, not taught or exemplified in the Sacred Scriptures, yet their understanding of the Scriptures, without superseding the duty of thinking for ourselves, is entitled to our respectful attention; and their testimony, where unperverted, may prove that an office or order was in use in their times; or their silence may, under circumstances, establish, as far as a negative is capable of proof, that none such was then in existence. Where the genuine work of a pious father represents a doctrine, or an office to have been common, when he wrote, his testimony is credible, that the thing, which he asserts, was at least the fact as far as he knew. But if the opinion of such father, or the practice of the church in his day, must be admitted as authoratively obligatory, though not founded on the word of God, then indulgences can remove sin, and a wafer become the body of Christ! The utility of their testimony is compatible with the admission that most of the Christian fathers, of whose writings we have any more than fragments, have left melancholy proofs of weakness and error; the conflicting opinions also of councils, equally disprove their infallibility.

The meaning of a law is often discoverable from the first practice, which obtained under it. If the ruling elders, of which some modern divines have dreamed, were a grade of officers in every church, between preachers and deacons, such fact ought to appear in the early uninspired Christian writers. If it should not be discovered upon a fair investigation, the silence of antiquity will be conclusive against the existence of such an office. Those who inveigh against clerical aggrandizement, as a modern substitute for original simplicity, and denounce episcopal power as an unscriptural invasion of the privileges of the pastoral office, ought never to plead expediency, when they degrade the presbyterial, which is the only episcopal order, by reducing presbyters to the stand

ing of deacons. The present appeal shall be to facts supported by undeniable testimony.

The ancient miserable production, by many ascribed to Barnabas, but deemed spurious by Eusebius, has not touched our subject. "The Pastor," supposed to have been written by Hermas, whom Paul mentions, was certainly not earlier than the middle of the second century. A translation only has survived; from this the non-existence of the intermediate order might be easily argued; but our proofs shall be drawn only from books of indisputable genuineness.

The excellent Clement, whose name Paul pronounced to be in the book of life, is by the voice of antiquity the author of a letter, which is the most, if not the only credible uninspired Christian production of the first century. Its caption purports a letter from the church at Rome to the church at Corinth; the contents are a persuasive and pious address, well designed to produce submission to the government of their elders, whom they had rejected. There is not a hint in the letter, either of an individual bishop, or of subordinate presbyters at Rome, Corinth, or elsewhere. Had there existed a superior officer at Corinth, this letter in defence of the presbyters must have recognized his authority; had there been lay elders, the total silence of the letter on that point is wholly unaccountable.

That the elders, mentioned in this epistle, are of the same order, appears continually: "Let the flock of Christ enjoy peace, with its elders, pε7рv, appointed over it:" It is a shame that "the church of the Corinthians, on account of one or two individuals, should rise against their elders, peoßulspous" "Our apostles knew from our Lord Jesus Christ, that contention would arise about the honor of the oversight, eяioxoяns. On this account, having perfect foreknowledge, they constituted those before mentioned; and they appoint

b Chap. 54.

© Chap. 47.

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