to for eluding our deductions from Scripture and from antiquity, are numerous and often plausible, but will not bear the test of careful investigation. We propose examining in succession a few of the most specious and popular. DISS. I. CHAP. III. tion, omis 1. The first of these fallacies to be mentioned First objec respects accidental omissions by the Fathers in their enumeration of Church offices. Whenever any Father has occasion in his writings to name two only among the three offices, an inference is confidently and absurdly made that the office which he omits must be the Episcopal; that Presbyters and Deacons must alone have existed in his time; and that Bishops, consequently, must be an invention of later ages. And this confident inference is not supposed to be at all invalidated by the fact, that the very same Father, (in other passages of the very work which they appeal to,) alludes distinctly to the existence of three orders, and regards Episcopacy in particular as an Apostolical institution. These reasoners appear to value more highly what a writer has not written than what he has written. They place more reliance upon the silence, than upon the speech of a witness. They supply all deficiencies from the stores of their own ingenuity, and attach more importance to his omissions in some one instance than to his direct assertion in many others. Thus the Bishop of Rome, St. Clement, styled by the Romanists Pope Clement the first, mentions (in his epistle to the Corinthians, already largely quoted from,) that the Apostles, after preaching sions by the Fathers. DISS. I. through various countries, ordained Bishops and CHAP. III. Deacons out of the best qualified of their disciples: and he refers to the following prophecy of Isaiah as a warrant for these ordinations-"I will appoint their overseers" (bishops) "in righteousness, and their ministers" (deacons) "in faith." From this quotation, it has been fallaciously argued, that St. Clement considered Presbyters and Deacons as one and the same order: that this Bishop of Rome had no knowledge of Bishops properly so called and that all ministerial functions, in his time, were divided between Presbyters and Deacons. Such is the argument from the silence of this holy Father. But let us place beside it the really more important argument from his actual declarations. We have already seen the same venerable writer alluding plainly to the existence of three orders; asserting the pre-eminence of Bishops, and inculcating subordination upon Presbyters. He draws a clear distinction between the chief rulers (youμevol, or præpositi) and the Presbyters; he admonishes the people to venerate the former, and to show due reverence for the latter'. He draws his reason for confining the inferior Christian ministers to their subordinate functions, from the circumstance that three distinct orders of Church officers existed under the Jewish economy; each order restricted to its own peculiar duties. He exhorts the Corinthians, every one of them to bless God in his proper station, not 1 See note at the commencement of Chap. II. CHAP. III. exceeding his appointed rule of service: and he insists DISS. I. that greater care to avoid schism and disorder was required in the Christian Church than in the Jewish, conformably to the equitable maxim, "The greater our knowledge, the more fearful our responsibility." That St. Clement should not always give a full enumeration of ecclesiastical dignities, when his subject leads him to mention two of them, is not extraordinary; and affords no proof that he recognised two only. We ourselves, in the prayer for the clergy, mention only "Bishops and Curates :" without meaning to deny that a third order is established in the Church, or intending to confound the two orders of Presbyters and Deacons, for each of which we have distinct duties and distinct forms of ordination. As another instance of similar omission, we may refer to the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. In that single chapter there is mention no less than five times, of "Apostles and Elders," or of "Apostles, Elders and Brethren" in the Church of Jerusalem; without the slightest notice of Deacons, though Deacons certainly had been before appointed in that Church 1. St. Augustin, in like manner, when he conceives the sixteenth verse of the forty-fifth Psalm to be a prophecy concerning the divine appointment of Christian ministers, follows the very method of St. Clement, when the latter, as we have seen, made a similar prophetical application from Isaiah. Isaiah, in his text, had only specified two classes of 1 Acts vi. CHAP. III. DISS. I. persons: the Psalmist only notices one. One class only therefore, in the latter instance, and two only in the former, could, without interpolation, have been inferred. Neither Clement, however, nor Augustin could be expected to interpolate the Old Testament; with a view of obviating the kind of inference from their silence, which, according to the fallacy we are now exposing, might be deduced. The words of St. Augustin are, "What is the meaning of the declaration, Instead of thy Fathers thou shalt have children? The Apostles," he continues, "are the Fathers. Instead of them, sons are born unto thee: namely, those that are called Bishops." How absurd would be a conclusion from this passage, that St. Augustin acknowledged only one class of ministers to be divinely constituted in the Church-namely, the Episcopal. But an omission still more apposite to our purpose is made even by St. Clement himself, in the thirty-second chapter of the very Epistle now in question. He speaks of Priests and Levites as the ministers of God's altar, under the Jewish dispensation; but on the subject of the High Priest he is utterly silent-a silence quite as extraordinary and as effectual to prove the non-existence of the High Priesthood; as the silence of the same author in the corresponding passage, (so obtrusively insisted on,) is effectual to prove the non-existence of the Episcopate 1. 1 It appears a needless concession to allow that St. Clement, when he speaks of "Overseers and Ministers," actually omits the Episcopal order: since perhaps the order really as well as nomi CHAP. III. But let us see how such a mode of arguing would DISS. I. startle any conscientious reasoner on other subjects of still more serious import. Suppose that any adversary to the doctrine of the Trinity were allowed the same privilege of drawing inferences from omissions: he would quote passages to be found in Scripture where the Father and the Son alone are spoken of, and deny the personality of the Holy Ghost'. Or again, from other texts which make exclusive mention of the Father and of the Holy Ghost, he would draw conclusions adverse to the divinity of the Son. But perhaps the most distinct illustration of the absurdity in question may be collected from secular affairs, and from daily circumstances in ordinary life. For instance, let us imagine that any early writer of English history should mention two branches only of our Legislature, the Lords and Commons: would any rational commentator feel entitled to conclude that no third branch existed? that there was then no King in England? and that nally omitted is that of Presbyters. We have only to assert (and our assertion is as good as that of our opponents) that Presbyters are here included under the general name of Ministers, if the word minister be taken in the popular and indefinite acceptation, which then, as now, would occasionally prevail. But, after all, may not St. Clement here refer to the period previous to the nomination of Bishops, when Presbyters and Deacons were the only Church officers whom the Apostles had appointed. It may be added that Episcopacy was of later introduction in Western than in Eastern Christendom. 1 Col. ii. 2. I |