our Church wisely remits as many of her Sons, as are desirous of vindicating her discipline, and of proving, to their own entire satisfaction and to the silencing of all gainsayers, that, from the Apostles' time, there have been "these orders of Ministers in the Church"Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." The Student, who adopts and acts upon her suggestion, is not content with seeking, either in Holy Scripture, apart from the Remains of Christian antiquity, or in those Remains, apart from Scripture, the evidence he requires, on this momentous subject. For him, the hints, allusions and indirect statements of the Apostolical writings are (as, on such a subject, it is reasonable to expect that they should be) explained, illustrated and confirmed by the documents of the ages, immediately subsequent; and from the union of evidence, derived from these two sources, the argument becomes complete and unanswerable. means of the same union of evidence, also, is removed that difficulty, which arises from some confusion of names and titles, that must be allowed to exist in the Sacred Scriptures.

i Note F.

By

It

An unenlightened attention to words, without a due consideration of their sense, has been the fruitful source of Theological errors; nor, in conducting that portion of the argument Church Government, which refers to Scriptural authority, have zealous disputants, on the one side and on the other, enough remembered that it is with the offices-the gradations of rank-the orders themselves, that we are, in real truth, concerned. The titles are of little moment. It may, without prejudice to our cause, be conceded that the members of the highest order of the Ministry are, in the New Testament, called Apostles, Bishops, Ministers, Deacons, Evangelists; that the members of the inferior orders are called also, in common, Ministers or Deacons; that the name of Elders is occasionally applied to the Apostles and their equals; that the same name, sometimes used to denote one only of two subordinate ranks, seems occasionally to include the other also; and that it appears, elsewhere, to indicate merely seniority of age or of discipleship, without limitation to the Clerical orders. These various names were obviously borrowed from

the language in common use; and of their number, some were applied, as titles of distinction and honour, by Christians, to designate their teachers and superiors, whilst others were modestly and humbly assumed by the teachers themselves, to denote their lowly service of their LORD and MASTER. Some time must have elapsed, before these names could be strictly limited to what may be not improperly called their Ecclesiastical senses. But, in point of fact, they soon became thus limited; and it was in a very early age of the Church that the appropriation of the titles of Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons, to three separate orders, had the effect of rendering intelligible and clear to every mind the distinction itself of those three orders. The same valuable end, the same names now answer for ourselves; and, in the Bishop, Priests and Deacons of our own pure and Apostolical Church, as on this day they are here assembled, we behold the representatives of the distinct orders of the Primitive Church. We see, as the early Christians saw, among the Clergy, the Governor and the governed-the

j Note G.

Ordainer of others and the ordained-separated by a boundary line, which none may safely venture to overlook, or to disregard. JESUS CHRIST, our LORD, the sole Founder, has, from the first, been, and still is, the Spiritual Head-the Supreme Spiritual Ruler of His Church. From Him alone have proceeded and still proceed all spiritual appointments. Some portion of His authority He has delegated to human officers, whom he has empowered to transmit the same, in perpetual succession, to others; and this authority was originally given and is now continued in the Church, in order that a lower degree of it may be communicated to lower officers. To these officers, in their respective stations— in their due subordination and in their just subdivisions-belong the right and duty of "preaching the pure word of GOD and of "administering the Sacraments.” To them have been assigned "the keys of the Kingdom "of Heaven;"" and the annexed promise that "whatsoever they shall bind on earth shall be "bound in heaven; and whatsoever they shall "loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

To them belongs the privilege of pronouncing, authoritatively, the sentence of the Divine acquittal or condemnation, in the terms, once uttered by their LORD; and, in His name, repeated, on every occasion of lawful ordination: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose

"soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto "them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they "are retained."

From these remarks, however, it is time to pass to the second proposed division of this Discourse-namely, some practical application of St. Paul's language to the Clergy in particular. We, my Brethren, who "have "been called, according to the will of our "LORD JESUS CHRIST and the due "order of the Church and Realm of England," to Sacred Offices, may, mutually and in a spirit of fraternal faithfulness and charity, invite each other to profit by the admonition, addressed to Timothy, the Apostolically ordained Bishop of Ephesus. We too have received a gift, like his—a gift, partaking of the same nature and proceeding from the same In our case, indeed, no prophecy

source.

m St. John, xx, 22, 23. n Note H. o Ordination Service.