I do wish out-and-out Protestants would seriously lay to heart where they stand when they would write a history of Christianity. Are there any traces of Luther before Luther? Is there anything to show that what they call the religion of the Bible was ever professed by any persons, Christians, Jews, or heathen? Again, are there any traces in history of a process of change in Christian belief and practice, so serious, or so violent, as to answer to the notion of a great corruption or perversion of the Primitive Religion? Was there ever a time, what was the time, when Christianity was not that which Protestants protest against, as if formal, unspiritual, self-righteous, superstitious, and unevangelic? If that time cannot be pointed out, is not "the Religion of Protestants" a matter, not of past historical fact, but of modern private judgment? Have they anything to say in defence of their idea of the Christianity of the first centuries, except that that view of it is necessary to their being Protestants. "Christians," they seem to say, "must have been in those early times different from what the record of those times shows them to have been, and they must, as time went on, have fallen from that faith and that worship which they had at first, though history is quite silent on the subject, or else Protestantism, which is the apple of our eye, is not true. We are driven to hypothetical facts, or else we cannot reconcile with each other phenomena so discordant as those which are presented by ancient times and our own. We claim to substitute à priori reasoning for historical investigation, by the right of self-defence and the duty of self-preservation."
I have urged this point in various ways, and now I am showing the light which the Canons of the Apostles throw upon it. There is no reasonable doubt that they represent to us, on the whole, and as far as they go, the outward face of Christianity in the first centuries;—now will the Protestant venture to say that he recognizes in it any likeness of his own Religion? First, let him consider what is conveyed in the very idea of Ecclesiastical Canons? This: that Christians could not worship according to their fancy, but must think and pray by rule, by a set of rules issuing from a body of men, the Bishops, over whom the laity had no power whatever. If any men at any time have been priest-ridden, such was the condition of those early Christians. And then again, what becomes of the Protestant's watchword, "the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible," if a set of Canons might lawfully be placed upon their shoulders, as if a second rule of faith, to the utter exclusion of all free-and-easy religion? and what room was there for private judgment, if they had to obey the bidding of certain fallible men? and what is to be done with the great principle, "Unity, not Uniformity," if Canons are to be recognized, which command uniformity as well as unity?
So much at first sight; but when we go on to examine what these Canons actually contain, their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of Protestantism becomes still more patent. I will set down some instances in proof of this. Thus, we gather from the Canons the following facts about Primitive Christianity:—viz., that,
1. There was a hierarchy of ordained ministers, consisting of the three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.
2. Their names were entered on a formal roll or catalogue.
3. There were inferior orders, such as readers and chanters.
4. Those who had entered into the sacred orders might not afterwards marry.
5. There were local dioceses, each ruled by a Bishop.
6. To him and him only was committed the care of souls in his diocese.
7. Each Bishop confined himself to his own diocese.