Gospel. Thus much then with respect to the information afforded us on this topic by the inspired Scriptures.

And now, if from them we continue our research through the uninspired records of the primitive Church, we still find the same distinction of three several classes of teachers uniformly kept up. So much so, that although from local and other circumstances other orders were subsequently established in addition to those now alluded to, we may I believe state confidently, that from the days of the Apostles until the early part of the sixteenth century, notwithstanding the multitude of discussions which took place on other points, no large community of Christians existed, in which the respective grades of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons were not acknowledged and retained.

The sixteenth century, however, opened a new and most momentous series of events to the Christian world. The stream of time had not for so many ages passed over the Church, without destroying some of its ancient land-marks, and establishing new. In the course of the long preceding period, the original purity and simplicity of the evangelical doctrine had become almost entirely overwhelmed and concealed by an accumulation of human additions, the results partly of mistaken notions of piety, partly of worldly and ambitious feelings; so that to an indifferent person, comparing for the first time the practical state of what then called itself Christianity with that

original form of it announced in the holy Scriptures, the resemblance between the one and the other would have been scarcely recognizable.-In the course of that period, the direct communication of every individual with his Maker through our one High Priest Jesus Christ had been virtually cut off; and the human minister of the Church, arrogating to himself an authority far beyond that paternal superintendence exercised and sanctioned by the first preachers of our faith, had interposed himself between God and man as the only legitimate channel for the conveyance of the divine grace. In that period, the great fundamental Christian doctrine of a sufficient expiation of sin by the one momentous sacrifice of the Redeemer had been depreciated, if not superseded, by the gratuitous assertion of a purgatorial expiation, to be submitted to by every delinquent individual in a future state. In that period, angels and the souls of departed human beings had been authoritatively recognized as legitimate objects of worship more accessible, and more ready to listen to prayer, than the great Almighty Creator himself.-In the course of that period, the Scriptures had become in great measure a sealed book to the large community of Christians, and traditions, partly the exaggerations of innocent primitive practices, partly the offshoots of heathen systems of philosophy, partly the deliberate inventions of secular ambition, had been

substituted in their room.-In the course of that period, the affecting sacramental commemoration of our blessed Saviour's death and sufferings had, in direct contradiction to the express words of revelation, been converted into an almost Levitical rite, in the form of a continually recurring sacrifice for sin. And in the course of that period, the authority conferred by the Redeemer on the ministers of his word, to listen to the sorrows of the penitent, to expound to him the merciful promises of the Gospel, to reconcile him to God's visible Church in this world, and to solicit his admission to the Church of God's saints in heaven, had been elevated by an usurping Antichristian tyranny into an irrespective power of forgiveness of sins, made saleable, by an almost incredible hardihood of impiety, to all those who had worldly wealth enough to make the purchase.

The time was indeed now come, when the cup of the Church's iniquities was full; when the whole mass had become thoroughly corrupt; and when the cry of "Come ye out of her, my people," would seem to address itself to every sincere servant of Christ. But how and in what state were they to come forth from it, when almost every authority, every ruler in God's household, had touched the accursed thing, and identified himself with the very abuses which he ought to have been the foremost to denounce? The truly Christian portion of the

community did indeed come forth; but it came as sheep without the shepherd; it came, as we may imagine of the holier part of the children of Israel, when hurrying away from the worship of the golden calf, and leaving Aaron still occupied in the performance of his idolatrous rite. The Protestant Reformation under such circumstances was assuredly not only a justifiable, but an absolutely necessary, return to the original purity of the Christian doctrine;-but it should in fairness be at the same time observed, that it inflicted a severe though inevitable wound upon Church government and discipline. In consequence of that event, the promoters of that important change found themselves in many parts of Europe involved, in spite of themselves, in the dilemma of either surrendering the Gospel itself, for the purpose of maintaining the external machinery and symmetry of its polity; or of sacrificing that polity, venerable and apostolical as it was in its origin, for the sake of the Gospel. No doubt they were justified in the resolution which they finally took, though they themselves deeply lamented at the moment, and their posterity has had bitterly to lament also, the necessity of the alternative. Cut off by the course of events from further communication with their higher spiritual rulers, sincere and otherwise orthodox Christians were now found advocating from necessity a doctrine, which, under

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other circumstances they would have assuredly disapproved; a doctrine (with the solitary exception of Aerius and his scanty party in the fourth century) hitherto unacknowledged by former ages, namely, that the office of Bishop differs from that of Presbyter by conventional arrangement only, and not by original Apostolical appointment. The result of this fatal step was precisely what might have been expected. A blow was inflicted upon the Christian commonwealth from which it has never perfectly recovered, and an opening was afforded to those capricious and unscriptural innovations in religious belief, which, blending themselves with political excitement, have, during the course of the last three centuries, been productive of so much disaster to mankind.

In England, however, the disruption of the Established Church discipline occasioned by the Protestant Reformation was for a considerable time less sensibly felt, than among a large portion of the continental Churches. In this country, the resistance to papal authority being the act, as it were, of the whole nation, the Crown and the Hierarchy having in great measure gone along with the general impulse, the machinery of the ecclesiastical government, as transmitted from the Apostolical age, was fortunately left entire. It was not until the fearful persecution of Protestantism, which took place under the reign of Queen Mary, when so many