secondly, it cannot, I trust, be inexpedient, in the present unsteady, not to say unhealthy, state of public feeling on this subject, to mark as specifically as possible, by way of warning, the one great diverging point, the want of a due attention to which, at the proper moment, has led gradually age after age to that painful variety of opinions, and those occasionally wide deviations from the purity of Gospel truth, which so singularly characterize our own period.

Let me then, in order to make my position clearly understood, direct your attention as briefly as I can to those statements of Scriptural and of Church history, which have more immediate reference to the discipline and spiritual government of the Christian commonwealth. In doing this, I feel indeed that I shall be going over an often trodden path, perfectly familiar to a large class of my hearers; but I am aware at the same time, that it is the duty of a Christian preacher to address his instruction less to the learned than to the ignorant, and cheerfully to submit to the charge of dwelling upon trivial and well-known truths, rather than deprive the humblest of his hearers of their just portion of instruction.

Before then we proceed to advocate the claim of the Established Church of England to be considered as an apostolical and scriptural institution, Jesus Christ himself being its corner stone, it will be

necessary in the first place to enquire, "what sanction the inspired books of the New Testament afford to that specific form of Church government, which we assert to have been regularly transmitted from the primitive ages down to our own times." Now, the facts which we find recorded in those sacred writings connected with this question, though few in number, are all of them at least of a clear and decided character. St. Luke, in the first place, tells us, that our Redeemer himself, in addition to his twelve more immediate Apostles, selected from the whole body of his followers seventy other disciples, whom he sent as preachers of his doctrines to the surrounding cities. This simple form of Church polity, which seems to have been established upon the model of that appointed by Moses for the Jewish nation, continued unchanged until the period of our Lord's ascension into heaven; immediately after which event, the eleven remaining Apostles (as we are informed in the first chapter of the book of the Acts) proceeded to elect Matthias into the office of Apostle and witness of the resurrection, left vacant by the apostacy and suicidal end of the traitor Judas. Shortly afterwards, in consequence of the rapidly increasing numbers of the Christian community, and accompanying need of additional helpers in the daily works of charity, the Apostles, becoming unequal to the toil of both their spiritual

a Luke x. 1.

and secular occupations, found themselves under the necessity of appointing a new order, namely, that of Deacons or assistants, on whom they might devolve the humbler labours of their ministry. A few years later, we read, that the Gentile converts of Greece and the surrounding islands, beginning to stand in need of authorized instructors, the Christian Church assembled at Antioch received a commission from the Holy Spirit to set apart Barnabas and Saul especially for that ministry: which command they forthwith obeyed; and having duly given to those holy men authority by the imposition of hands, dismissed them first to Seleucia, and from thence to Cyprus. At a somewhat later period, we find the Apostles and Presbyters of the Church of Jerusalem addressing an authoritative injunction to the Gentile converts at Antioch on the subject of some scruples entertained by the latter respecting the obligation to the observance of circumcision, and other points of the Jewish ritual. And with this fact we may close our selections from the book of the Acts.

If then we now turn from that historical work to the Epistles of St. Paul, we there find, in perfect consistency with what we have read elsewhere, that inspired teacher uniformly supporting the character which I have stated to be in my opinion inseparable from the duly commissioned

Acts vi. 1—6.

c Acts xiii. 2.

d Acts xv. 22.

Christian minister: that is to say, addressing his respective Churches not as a favoured teacher originally invited by them, but as a messenger from God authoritatively sent to them: kindly indeed, tenderly, and even in tears, appealing from time to time to their better feelings, but also reprimanding and even threatening them, when needful, in the high language of one who had received his warrant from above. Nothing, in fact, can be less open to controversy than St. Paul's language upon these points. He asserts unequivocally his own character as Christ's ambassador, with his consequent right of dictation, of inflicting spiritual censures, and (were he inclined to demand it) of a regular provision for the supply of his bodily necessities. But the Epistles addressed by him to Timothy and Titus give us a still further insight into the form of Church government established at that period. In the two Epistles to Timothy, for instance, we learn, that that person, having been ordained to the ministry by the imposition of the hands of the Presbytery, and (as it would appear by the context) of Paul also, was subsequently appointed by that Apostle to preside over the Church of Ephesus, not in the capacity of a mere Presbyter or Teacher, but as one who, notwithstanding his youth, had authority to ordain as well Presbyters as Deacons, and juridically to examine and censure both those orders of men for any occasional delinquency. In the

Epistle to Titus, we find this latter person receiving the same authority, in equally unequivocal terms, to govern the Church established in Crete.

Such are the prominent statements which present themselves to us from the most cursory view of the inspired writings now referred to. And here then (to say nothing of other incidental facts stated in the books of the New Testament, or the many analogies suggested by the Jewish polity as related in the Old) we may, I think, assert, that we cannot by any possibility glance our eyes over the few circumstances which I have just now quoted, without admitting, that the following case is, at all events, unequivocally made out; namely, that there did exist in the Apostolical age, and under the Apostolical sanction, a threefold order of Ministers of the Gospel; namely, of Apostles; of Elders or Presbyters, (from which latter word our name of Priest is derived;) and, lastly, of Deacons. appears also, that the original number of our Lord's Apostles was subsequently enlarged, in consequence of the increasing wants of the Church, not only by the substitution of Matthias in the place of Judas, but also by the appointment of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch, and subsequently of Timothy and Titus by what would seem to be the single authority of St. Paul. In all these cases, I repeat, we find instructors deputed uniformly by external authority, and in no one instance receiving their power from the parties to whom they came as ministers of the

It