Short Reasons for Communion with the Church of England / Or, The Churchman's answer to the question, "Why are you a Member of the Established Church?"

by Thomas Tregenna Biddulph

REASON IV.

But I maintain communion with the Church of England, because her government is episcopal, i.e. by Bishops; this being the mode of Church government which existed in the primitive Church, and was founded by the Apostles of our Lord.

In stating reasons for conformity which are to be comprised within a few pages, it is impossible to enter at large into the proof of the fact here asserted, viz. that the primitive church as founded by the Apostles of our Lord, was episcopal; or, in other words, that the power of ordination and government in the church was vested by the Apostles in officers superior to the order of Presbyters, and who are now called by the name of Bishops. I must therefore only state a few circumstances, which are capable of being clearly proved, without producing the evidence on which my belief of them is built.

1. Episcopal government, as established in the Church of England, has all the authority in its favour which prescription or long usage can give it. The most learned of its adversaries have never been able to fix on any period in the Christian Church, from the time of the Apostles to the Reformation, in which the ordination of men to the ministry of the gospel was considered to be vested in any other minister or ministers than a Bishop.

2. All the instances of ordination, recorded in the New Testament, are in favour of Episcopacy. For there is no single instance of ordination, on record there, performed by presbyters, or at least without the presence and co-operation of some officer superior to presbyters.

3. All the directions concerning ordination, given in the New Testament, are addressed to persons superior to presbyters. Such, confessedly, were Timothy and Titus; and to them only are any such directions given.

4. The Apostles, at their decease, left the government of the several churches which they had planted, and the ordination of their ministers, in the hands of fixed Bishops.

It may be granted that, during the life-time of the Apostles, the title Bishops, was common to all presbyters, and that this name was not confined to an officer superior to presbyters till after their decease. For it is not the name but the office about which I am inquiring.—It moreover appears that, during the life of the Apostles, some churches had each its settled Bishop, as the seven churches of Asia, who are addressed in their several epistles through the medium of an individual; (Rev. ii. 3.) and that of Crete, where Titus was left by St. Paul. (Titus i. 2.) Other churches however had none as yet settled among them, being under the immediate government of the Apostles, who frequently visited or sent to them, and either themselves, or by other superior officers, ordained ministers for them.

But immediately after the death of the Apostles there was, in every church, an officer superior to presbyters, who was called by way of distinction a Bishop. This we learn from express testimonies in the remaining writings of men who lived in the time of the Apostles; such as Clemens Romanus, mentioned in Phil. iv. 3.—Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who suffered martyrdom in the year 107; and Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who was burned in the year 167, aged one hundred years or more. These excellent apostolic men have expressly spoken in their epistles of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, as the stated officers of the Christian Churches, assigning to the former the prerogatives or rights of government and ordination in their several districts. Besides this, ancient historians of the church have given lists of successive Bishops, that is, of individual presidents, in several of the more important churches, reaching up to the very time of the Apostles.

Now it is not to be supposed that, immediately after the death of the Apostles, any innovation or change, so important and invidious as that of episcopal government, would or could have been introduced; or that, supposing it to be destitute of apostolic sanction, its introduction should produce no opposition. Much less is it to be supposed that such men as Clemens, Ignatius, and Polycarp, the disciples and friends of the Apostles, would have suffered such an innovation to be introduced, and have mentioned it in the highest terms of approbation. But the truth is, that they speak of the three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, in the Christian Church as conformed to the three ranks of ministers in the Jewish Church, the High Priests, the common Priests, and the Levites, [8]—as ordained by Christ himself, and as existing even during His own ministry, He himself acting as the great Bishop, His Apostles as His Presbyters, and the seventy disciples as His Deacons: and as at length established in the universal Church by apostolic authority and usage.

On this ground then I justify my continuance in the Church of England, viz. its conformity in this important branch of its constitution to the primitive and apostolic church. But I wish it to be understood that I assign my reasons for such a continuance, not with a view to the conversion of those to my sentiments who are not members of our church; but merely for the purpose of showing that I do not act without reason, and of confirming those who are members of our own church, but have not had an opportunity of obtaining information on the subject under consideration,—of confirming them in their attachment to that church, which I consider to be “built,” in its constitution as well as its doctrines, “on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone.” From Him all authority descends; for in Him, as “the head of His body the church,” it is all vested by Divine appointment. “All power is given unto me in heaven and upon earth.—Go ye therefore and teach (or make disciples of) all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Thus He handed down the authority He had received to His Apostles; they transmitted it to their immediate successors; and so it has descended to the Bishops or chief pastors of the church in our own day. Without wishing to interfere with the right of private judgment which belongs to every man, and for the exercise of which he is accountable to God only; I own that I cannot see how the Christian Church as a visible society, could have been continued in the world without such a communication of Divine authority.