Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

tioch, of the dispute concerning circumcision', when Paul and Barnabas appeared as the advocates of the Gentiles, and Peter as the minister of circumcision, and James acted as president; an honour to which he was entitled, from his affinity to the Lord, and from his local preeminence as Bishop of Jerusalem. To this Council the Presbyters were admitted; and the decision, which was formed on the most mature deliberation, and with the concurrence of all that were present, and was delivered with the most impressive solemnity and authority, was inscribed in the name of the Apostles, and Presbyters, and Brethren. On a former occasion, when St. Paul arrived in Jerusalem to make his report, he saw none but Peter and James"; and when after an interval of fourteen years he again visited Jerusalem, James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to him and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship. At his last return to Jerusalem, James only with the Elders were present ". The other Apostles were probably executing their office in the different provinces, which the ecclesiastical annals assign to them.

The form of ecclesiastical government of which the Apostolical constitution has been traced through all the writings of the New Testament, and to which they all bear testimony clear and convincing, various and concurrent, was designed for perpetual and universal use. As the kingdom of Christ was not of this world", the method of its government was not variable in conformity with the fluctuating notions of human expe

" Galat. i. 18, 19. * Galat. ii. 9. y Acts

t Acts xv. 2. xxi. 18. z John xviii. 36.

dience; and as the divine Master was to subdue all things to himself, the pride and prejudices, the humours and passions, the imaginations and conceits of inen, were to be reduced under one scheme of ecclesiastical polity, one rule of moral duty, and one code of religious faith. The order of the Church was to be co-extensive with the belief of the Gospel, which it was appointed to propagate and preserve, even as a golden candlestick, to exhibit and sustain the light of evangelical knowledge, or as the column and base of a building, which supports the truth'. In the wide circuit through which the Apostles preached the Gospel, among Jews and Gentiles, at Rome and Athens, in Samaria and Jerusalem, they must have met with men of opposite habits and dispositions, actuated by different prejudices and prepossessions, and disposed to various forms of religious worship and civil polity; and had they accommodated themselves to the peculiar views of their hearers, they might have established a sovereign priest in the household of Cæsar, an aristocratic council in the court of the Areopagus, and a popular assembly at Ephesus, where Demetrius and his craftsmen might have acted the demagogue. That they did not vary their ministerial order, and that in all places they followed one common plan, appears not only from the history of their Acts, but from detached occasional allusions in the Epistles, which they severally wrote, without previous communication with each other, to Churches widely remote in point of situation, and essentially distinguished by manners and customs, in all of which they

[blocks in formation]

either recognize or recominend the institution of one common form of ministerial order, to which they must have ascribed an authority, which it became them not to oppose, and which in their judgment must have been adequate to the purpose for which it was ordained. When the Apostles received their final commission, they received a promise of the presence of Christ with them always even to the end of the world; a promise which could not be fulfilled in their persons, and which denoted the perpetuity of the order and office to which the promise was made. In reference to this commission, St. Paul declares, that when Christ ascended up on high, he gave gifts unto men; he gave some Apostles, and some Prophets, and some Evangelists, and some Pastors and Teachers; and these were given for the work of the ministry, for the knitting together of the Saints, for the edifying of the body of Christ: gifts of which the use and necessity were not peculiar to a single age, but commensurate with the duration of the Christian Church. But that there might remain no question concerning their continuance and perpetuity, the Apostle expressly declares that these gifts were given and these offices were designed, until we all come, in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; where the fulness of Christ denotes the complement of the Christian Church. Perpetual therefore must that order be concluded to be, which was to be blessed with the unfailing presence of Christ, which the Apostles

e Matt. xxviii. 20.

d Ephes. iv. 11, 12.

• Ver. 13.

in the variety of their experience continually recommended, and which was part of the discipline of the kingdom which is not of this world, designed by the universal Father for the relief of common wants by common means, " that we may be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, who is the head, even Christ; in whom the whole body fitly framed together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body to the edifying of itself in love.”

f Eph. iv. 14, 15, 16.

SECTION V.

CONFIRMATION OF THE ARGUMENT.

[ocr errors]

THE unity of the divine œconomy appears conspicuously in the relation which the Christian ministry bears to the Jewish priesthood, of which it is the continuance and adaptation, rather than a new and original constitution. The early Fathers frequently use the titles of the Levitical to denote the Apostolical hierarchy, and consider Judaism as typical Christianity, and Christianity as the perfection of Judaism. The ministries of the two dispensations of Moses and of Christ agree in a triple form, and the Apostles, Presbyters, and Deacons of the one are coordinate with the High-priest, the Priests, and Levites of the other. The twelve Apostles instructing the people under Christ, answer to the twelve heads of tribes who were subject to Moses; and the Seventy disciples of our Lord, to the same number of the heads of families who were appointed according to the number of Jacob's family that went down with him into Egypt, and also according to the number of the Seventy men of the elders of Israel who were solemnly set apart for assisting Moses in bearing the burden of the people". They correspond in their dependence on an invisible and heavenly Lord, the Levitical priesthood on Jehovah, the Christian ministry on Christ, who is the Head over all things to the Church. The inferiority of the Levites and the Deacons to the higher orders is the same in both institutions; and the division of the

« PredošláPokračovať »