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view made great progress towards that reputation, which has enabled it at last, (in conjunction with other publications to the same end,) to lower the tone of our trans-atlantic traducers, and to give itself no mean proof of the intellectual advances which it vindicates. From this flattering path to a wide reputation, and from the pursuit of favourite studies, he hesitated not to withdraw himself to the service of religion, and went with, to say the least, no elating prospects, to preach in a new field, the doctrines of uncorrupt Christianity. It is not therefore for the cause alone,—a little of personal feeling may excuseably have place, that we are grateful for the issue of his exertions. Such has been their success, and the power and progress of just religious views, that in little more than a year since his ordination, the society is relieved from heavy pecuniary embarrassments; the odium which existed against it, has sensibly subsided; and it is now as respectable in point of numbers, as it is memorable for the stand it took in support of Christian liberty and truth. Unless we grossly miscalculate the impression which this work will produce, we shall think the exertions made to collect and establish that society, well requited by its having given rise to such a publication.

In his first letter, on the ministry of the Episcopal church, Mr. Sparks controverts the assumption, that "the Episcopal is the only true church; that its ministry originated with the apos tles, and has descended down to the present time through an unbroken and divinely protected succession; and, that ordinations, performed by any other persons than bishops, are devoid of every degree of validity and efficacy in conferring spiritual office and power." He appeals in the first place, to the scripture evidence, and concludes his examination with the following statement.

"First, our Saviour left no instructions in regard to the nature or form of the ministry; he never spoke of three orders, or any number of orders; he gave no directions about the ceremony of ordination, nor did he assign the duty of performing it to any particular class of men. Secondly, the apostles said nothing of any number of orders in the ministry, nor have they left any rules or instructions on the subject of ordination. Thirdly, the first church at Jerusalem was governed by the apostles, elders, and brethren in concert. The apostles assumed no authority above the elders, nor the elders above the people. Fourthly, it is no where said in the whole New Testament, that the duty of conferring ordination was confined to any particular order of the ministry; but on the contrary, several examples are on record, which go to prove, that this ceremony was performed by any officer or officers of regular standing in the church. Fifthly, Timothy and Titus are never called bishops. Timothy is expressly called an evangelist; and the duties of Titus were such, as are usually assigned to an evangelist. Sixthly, the persons who were appoint

ed by the apostles to assist in providing for the poor, and whom you call the 'seven deacons,' are never designated by this name in the scriptures. Their office was wholly of a temporal nature, and therefore could make no part of the ministry. Seventhly, the word deacon seems to have been applied at first as a general term, for a servant in the cause of the gospel, a minister, or teacher; and if it was afterwards appropriated to any particular office, no mention is made in the writings of the apostles respecting the nature or design of such an office. No instance is recorded, in which deacons, as officers of an exclusive character, are said to have taken a part in the government or concerns of any church. Lastly, the same reasons, by which you establish three orders in the ministry, would prove the existence of at least six or seven, as apostles, bishops, prophets, evangelists, elders, teachers, deacons." pp. 24-26.

One would think this were enough for a Protestant. But Mr. Sparks is too fair a disputant, and moreover defends too impregnable ground, not to be willing to allow every advantage to his adversary. He accordingly defers to Episcopal "fondness for the ancient fathers," so far as to go into an examination of their testimony, of which he gives the following summary.

"I have thus gone through with a patient examination of the evidence, on, which the episcopal church advances its singular pretensions to a divine origin and succession. In the scriptures I have found nothing, either in the commands of our Saviour, or of the apostles, which can justify any class of men in assuming to themselves the claim of being the only true church.

"A similar result has followed from the testimony of the Fathers, and the history of the English reformation. First, it can be indisputably proved from the Fathers, that the churches in the primitive ages were not uniformly governed by three orders of ministry; but frequently by two, and sometimes by one. Secondly, bishops were parochial clergymen, in many places at least, and nothing more. Thirdly, ordinations were performed by presbyters, especially in the case of Irenæus, and for a long time in the church at Alexandria. Fourthly, no particular account can be given of the origin of the church of Rome, or of its first seven bishops. Fifthly, the power of the English clergy is confessedly derived from the king, and not from any church. Sixthly, the informality of ordination in the English church was such, in the opinion of the Catholics, who are supposed to constitute the true church, as to destroy all power, that might be transmitted by the episcopal succession. Seventhly, English bishops. were at an early period consecrated by presbyters, and at a much later period, ordination by presbyters was considered valid. Finally, the consecration of archbishop Parker, who was the beginning of the succession since his time both to English and American bishops, was declared, and is still considered by the Catholics, invalid, and was at best of a very suspicious and doubtful character." pp. 45, 46.

We see not, how the arguments in this letter can fail to appear to any impartial person, decisive of the question. For our own parts, until some important error in them is pointed out,-which we apprehend cannot be,-we shall be quite content to have our ordination as regular as that of Barnabas and Paul, who were ordained by "certain prophets and teachers at Antioch."*

It seems to us, that there are not many things in church history which less admit of dispute, than the rise and establishment of episcopacy. The New Testament gives no hint of such a division of orders in the priesthood, that every person who assumes it must enter it either in a superior or subordinate capacity, nor does there any where appear to have been any other distinction among the early preachers of the faith, except what grew out of peculiar gifts, or out of circumstances, implying a peculiar fitness, and therefore authority, to teach, such as having been the immediate associate of our Lord or his apostles. The early preachers of our faith adopted the course which men of good sense, not to say men divinely inspired, might be expected to adopt. Wherever they formed a society of christians, they would naturally retain the instruction of the flock they had gathered, or if they left it, in pursuance of their commission to preach the gospel to all nations, their opinion would naturally be regarded in the selection of the person who should have charge of it, and the imposition of their hands with prayer, would seem an appropriate and solemn way of separating him to his office. As the number of christians in a place increased, convenience would demand the forming of new societies, and the head of the parent congregation might be expected to induct a new teacher, with formalities similar to those with which the first messenger introduced him. So far all would be obviously rational, and no more than we might expect would take place. But the idea that after the age of miracles, any, by right of being successors to the apostles in the highest order of the priesthood, could convey an authority resting solely with them to confer, is an invention of later times. It is not difficult to see how it originated, for it is

*We suggest to Mr. Sparks an argument, on which, in another edition, it might be well to enlarge. The authority to which the English church pretends, it claims to have received from the Romish. Now the power which inakes, can unmake, and unless we mistake, the whole English hierarchy is yearly declared by the pope excommunicate. At any rate the consecration of archbishop Parker, to whom the English line is traced, was formally declared to be irregular and invalid. The arguments, therefore, by which the English clergy seek to prove that authority in the Romish church to which they refer their own, these self-same arguments, if they have any weight, prove the English clergy to be no priests, disowned as they are by the very power by which they claim to have been created.

no secret how early worldly passions began to nestle in the bosom of the church.* As congregations multiplied in a neighbourhood, the first who had brought the faith into it, or the first who had exercised a stated ministry, came to be regarded with a peculiar respect. Greater age, or superior rank, learning, or virtue, would elevate others above their associates; and humble as most of the early christians were, and difficult and dangerous as was the situation of all, distinction would be a demand for severer duty on one side, and the necessity of protection would lead to cheerful submission on the other. They who assumed the post of danger, claimed for their reward, or for the benefit of the rest, from selfishness, or from the apparent necessity of the case, that it should be also the post of dignity and rule; and while as yet distinction only gave a better chance of martyrdom, when there was no pomp to attract the ambitious, nor patronage to excite the worldly, there was no reason for contesting the claim, and whether formally or tacitly, it was readily allowed. When the church formed an alliance with the state, another condition of things succeeeded. The gradations which the universal temporary expediency had created, were for private advantage made permanent, and defended as such on the ground of right; and what had been but precedence in duty, trust, and danger, came to be claimed as superiority of office. Till a comparatively late period, however, the Romish, the most powerful church, can alone be considered as properly episcopal. The government of the Alexandrian approached near to the presbyterian form, and that of the church of Carthage to the congregational. Considering how early the christians became an important, though still an oppressed body, and how deeply-rooted and all-embracing a passion is the love of power, we are only surprised, that a system like the episcopal was not earlier organized. From that period, the history of episcopacy, is the history of Romish usurpation.†

"I wrote unto the church; but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, received us not." III John, v. 9.

† Doddridge's sensible and candid account of the rise and establishment of episcopacy may be seen, vol. ii. p. 352 of his Lectures. That of Jerome about the beginning of the 5th century, is this; "Till through the instinct of the devil there grew in the church factions, and among the people it began to be professed, I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, and I of Cephas, churches were governed by the common advice of presbyters; but when every one began to reckon those whom himself had baptized, his own, and not Christ's, it was decreed in the whole world, that one, chosen out of the presbyters, should be placed over the rest, to whom all care of the church should belong, and so the seeds of schism be removed." To explain this simple historical statement in accordance with his own views, the bishop

We shall be asked how an institution, so pregnant with danger to the liberty of christians, was able, unless founded on scriptural authority, to survive the protestant reformation. The question is easily solved. The work of the reformation was of a magnitude and difficulty, of which at this period we are hardly able to form a tolerably just conception. Nothing less was to be done than to overturn the most dearly cherished prejudices of men, on a subject, which the sense of ages had declared it sacrilege to scrutinize. It was not to be expected that the first inquiries, bold as they were, should reach the conclusions of the last; that the first struggles of minds trained into deformity and feebleness by the worse than Chinese distortions of a Romish discipline, should show the vigour of a healthy growth. Rear an infant in manacles, he will be a cripple, though he be freed from them, when he becomes a man. There were abuses of more pressing enormity than this, which claimed the first attention of an awakened age. The papal was so galling a yoke, that the weight of the episcopal was scarcely felt; and bad as were the simoniacal practices of the time, they were not to be thought of, till a more crying sin, the sale of indulgences, was stifled. We ought not to be surprised (if it were only on this ground) that the pretensions of the episcopate were no earlier contested. But further; the best reformers, and those who saw this subject in its true light, were wise men; wise enough to know that the whole is often best secured by claiming at first only a part, and one design effected, and another put in a happy train by forbearance, when impatience would frustrate both. They did not care to expose such an enterprise as theirs to ill-timed risque, by disgusting any of its adherents, who, in the case of an amalgamation of orders, would lose the rank and revenues of princes. They did not forget, that in the gowned hosts

of Lincoln, (Elements of Theology, ii. 391.) employs the very hypothesis which the statement is made to discountenance. He argues that Jerome must have spoken in this passage of apostolic times, "because in another part of the same work he tells us, that James was made bishop of Jerusalem by the apostles, Timothy bishop of Ephesus, and Titus bishop of Crete, by St. Paul, and Polycarp bishop of Smyrna by St. John." If Jerome spoke here, as he is represented to have spoken, of diocesan and not parochia! bishops, what churches in Ephesus and Crete, we would gladly learn, were those, which, before Timothy and Titus were sent to them, were "governed by the common advice of presbyters ?" and in what part of the Acts of the Apostles is an account, or in what part of the epistles a hint, given of the passing of that decree, according to which this writer would have it, that Timothy and Titus were made diocesan bishops; passed as his hypothesis supposes it to have been, within the period to which the New Tes tament history relates. Were scripture, and all antiquity beside, silent on the subject, the writings of Jerome alone would prove the episcopal government to be an usurpation.