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.
REASON V.
I maintain communion with the Church of England, because her doctrines are fixed by articles of Religion, which appear to me to be derived from and perfectly conformable to the Scriptures of Truth.
I AM fully aware that some among the ministers of the church to which I belong, may have entered into her service without understanding or fully approving the articles to which they subscribed their assent and consent, and consequently may preach doctrines differing from those of the church whose ministers they are. The possibility of the supposed case appears from the painful necessity, under which a late Bishop of London was laid, of depriving an unsound clergyman of his office. But such ministers cannot do this without exposing their own ignorance or hypocrisy; nor can their own unbelief make the faith of the church of no effect. These articles I consider to be the bulwark of orthodoxy or true doctrine in our church,—the means of her preservation from apostacy in the lowest state of spiritual life to which she has been or may be reduced, and of providing for her recovery from such a state whenever God is pleased to breathe upon her. A declaration or subscription to the truth of the Bible would afford no security, as all who bear the Christian name, however heretical or unsound in opinion, pretend to derive their creed from the word of God. I conceive therefore that it is of high importance to have the principal articles of the Christian faith embodied in such a way, that no heretic can, without manifest dishonesty, subscribe to them. If the incumbent or minister of any parish be thus dishonest, having subscribed to what he never cordially believed, and preaching doctrines contrary to the articles he has subscribed, when his incumbency or ministry in that parish ceases by death or any other cause, the articles of the church remain in full force. But if no such test existed, and if the election to church preferment were vested in the people, a single incumbency might so corrupt the opinions of the congregation as to perpetuate heresy from generation to generation.
I continue therefore in the communion of the Church of England, because she has fixed principles, and those principles are, in my judgment, scriptural and “according to godliness.”