promoted, and moral virtue may be better protected and encouraged, under one species of churchgovernment than under another, in the same manner as temporal blessings are not enjoyed in the same degree under every species of civil government. We who live in this country have the satisfaction of knowing that we live under the form of ecclesiastical polity founded by apostolical authority, and under a form of civil government of unparalleled excellence; and these constitutions in church and state are admirably suited, by their congenial nature and intimate alliance, to afford mutual assistance and support to each other. They are so blended and interwoven that they must stand or fall together; and the friends of the temporal and of the eternal interests of their fellow-creatures are equally called upon to stand forward in the maintenance and defence of both.

As the Scriptures do not prescribe any definite form of church-government, so they contain no directions concerning the establishment of a power by which ministers are to be admitted to their sacred office. The only persons, except the Apostles, mentioned in the Acts or Epistles as invested with this power are Timothy and Titus, both of whom received it from St. Paul, when they were placed by him at the head of the churches of Ephesus and Crete. But though episcopal ordination is not actually commanded in the New Testament, yet we know that it was invariably practised in every ancient church; and thence we infer, that it was

originally instituted by the Apostles themselves. "Our adversaries have been challenged long since to produce an ordination during the first fifteen hundred years after Christ, which was performed by presbyters, and not generally looked upon as invalid; whereas, on the other hand, they who have been ordained by mere presbyters in the primitive times have been stripped of their pretended orders, and with derision turned down to the laic form. A famous and known instance is Ischyras, who was deposed by the Synod of Alexandria, because Colluthus, who ordained him, was supposed to be no more than a presbyter, though pretending to be a bishop. The council of Sardica, and the council of Seville in Spain, acted in like manner on the like occasions." a It appears, then, that no species of church-government except the episcopal, and no mode of ordination except by bishops, have any claim to the sanction of the primitive church of Christ. From the Apostles, episcopal ordination has been regularly conveyed to us, and the legislature of this kingdom has recognised and confirmed this power to bishops; they therefore are the persons among us WHO HAVE PUBLIC AUTHORITY

GIVEN THEM IN THE CONGREGATION TO CALL AND SEND

MINISTERS INTO THE LORD'S VINEYARD; and those who ARE CALLED AND SENT BY THEM, WE JUDGE LAWFULLY CALLED AND SENT. In every church, in which episcopacy prevails, the uninterrupted succession of bishops is considered as essential to the power of

a

Veneer on this Article. Vide Bingham, b.ii. c. 3.

consecrating and ordaining; and upon that principle, when, a few years since, episcopacy was about to be established in the independent states of America, the persons who were to be appointed by the government of the country to be the first bishops previously came from America to receive consecration from the hands of English bishops. And upon the same principle we should allow a popish priest, who should have renounced the errors of popery, to perform the functions of a priest in our church without a fresh ordination. When the Reformation took place in England, the bishops and clergy were not consecrated and ordained again; they had received consecration and ordination from

MEN WHO HAD PUBLIC AUTHORITY GIVEN THEM IN THE

CONGREGATION for that purpose; and to whom the power of consecrating and ordaining had been transmitted from the Apostles; and that power, although it had passed through the corrupted channel of the church of Rome, was not vitiated by its erroneous doctrines or superstitious worship. Our Saviour acknowledged Caiaphas to be highpriest, and he even prophesied as such, although he was not the head of Aaron's family, to whom the high-priesthood was by divine command confined. And the ancient catholic church admitted into its communion those who had been baptized by heretics, without rebaptizing them.

I shall conclude this subject with the following testimony of the learned Mr. Le Clerc, a divine of the church of Holland, in which the presbyterian

form of government prevailed, and therefore he cannot be considered as prejudiced in favour of episcopacy:-"I have always," says he, "professed to believe, that episcopacy is of apostolical institution, and consequently very good and very lawful; that man had no manner of right to change it in any place, unless it was impossible otherwise to reform the abuses that crept into Christianity; that it was justly preserved in England, where the Reformation was practicable without altering it; that therefore the Protestants in England and other places, where there are bishops, do very ill to separate from that discipline; that they would still do much worse in attempting to destroy it, in order to set up presbytery, fanaticism, and anarchy. Things ought not to be turned into a chaos, nor people seen every where without a call, and without learning, pretending to inspiration. Nothing is more proper to prevent them than the episcopal discipline, as by law established in England, especially when those that preside in church-government are persons of penetration, sobriety, and discretion." a

a Calvin is known to have acknowledged the worth of episcopacy; and it is an interesting fact that, at the close of the Synod of Dort, the most influential men there freely confessed the need of episcopacy to preserve their church from corruption and disorder. Hist. of Church of Christ, by the Editor, vol. iii. chap. vii. p. 445.

This subject is concisely but fully treated of in the Bishop of London's "Three Sermons on

the Church," before quoted, and which may be recommended to the student as furnishing, on many very important points, observations as valuable as the language in which they are conveyed is forcible and lucid: "It was by means of episcopacy, under the blessing of the great Shepherd and Bishop of the Church, that the light of the Gospel dawned upon these islands, and that their barbarous and rude inhabitants

ARTICLE THE TWENTY-FOURTH.

OF SPEAKING IN THE CONGREGATION IN SUCH A TONGUE AS THE PEOPLE UNDERSTANDETH.

It is a Thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the Custom of the Primitive Church, to have Public Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments, in a Tongue not understanded of the People.

THE object for which Christians assemble themselves together, being to hear the word of God, to offer their united prayers and praises to their heavenly Father, and to participate in those holy ordinances which it pleased the divine Author of our religion to institute, it seems obvious to common sense, that the public service of the Church should be performed in a language understood by the congregation.

One of the general rules given

were initiated by baptism into all the privileges, and blessings, and hopes of the Christian covenant; and subjected to all the humanising and civilising influences of that truth and grace which are dispensed by the Church. Whatever may be said of the abuses of that form of government, or of the temporary neglect of its essential rights and advantages, it is to episcopacy that this country owes the enjoyment not only of its religious liberties, but in a great degree also of its civil freedom and its social happiness. But what is a far higher praise, it owes to the same channel of the divine goodness the transmission and preservation of Gospel truth, ob

scured for a time, and eclipsed, but never totally extinguished; and of those liturgical offices, which, while they minister grace and edification to the Church's faithful children now on earth, connect them with the worshippers of her first and purest ages, the fathers, and martyrs, and confessors, who set forth the beauty of her holiness in their lives, and made fruitful her vineyard with their blood. It is through this channel that the spiritual blessings we enjoy must be transmitted to our children, and, we believe, diffused throughout the world."Sermons on the Church, p. 45. EDITOR.