officers recognized in the New Testament as belonging to a christian church. But the case of Timothy and Titus, which is the sheet-anchor of the advocates of episcopacy, remains to be investigated.

"Neither Timothy nor Titus appears to have been appointed to a local episcopacy; on the contrary, it appears from the sacred records, that Timothy, by the direction of the Apostle Paul, superintended, for a short time, several churches in various places. (Compare 1 Cor. iv. 17: 1 Tim. i. 3 and 1 Thess. iii. 2.) He was successively sent to Corinth, to Ephesus, and to Thessalonica, in the character of the adopted son and fellow-labourer of the Apostles.

“The charge or office of Timothy and Titus, was to do the work of an evangelist, a work not essentially different, it may be presumed, from that which Paul and Barnabas were sent forth from the church at Antioch to discharge. To this office, whatever it involved, Timothy, we are informed, was set apart by the imposition of the hands of the presbyters; and as St. Paul, in his second Epistle, speaks of the gift of God as having been communicated to Timothy by the imposition of his own hands, we are warranted in concluding, that St. Paul himself, as one of that presbytery, assisted in his ordination. In like manner Paul and Barnabas were ordained to their mission by the prophets and teachers of the church at Antioch. It evidently was not requisite that the rite of ordination should be performed by superiors in office, since an Apostle submitted to be ordained by those who cannot be considered as occupying a rank higher than that of presbyters." (Book ii. ch. ii. § 11.)

References in this argument are made by dissenters to the fathers of the first century, and particularly by Mr. James, (with apparently an obscure and incorrect allusion,) to Clement of Rome, and Polycarp. He makes these citations, in the words of Campbell, as quoted by a Doctor Fletcher.

"There are two very ancient testimonies," says Dr. Fletcher, "which I shall cite from Dr. Campbell; one of them is from the most respectable remains of christian antiquity, next to the inspired writings. The piece I allude to is the first Epistle of Clemens Romanus to the Corinthians. In this Epistle, Clement informs us that the Apostles, having preached the gospel in countries and towns, constituted the first-fruits of their ministry whom they approved by the Spirit, bishops and deacons of those who should believe. And in order to satisfy us that he did not use the word in a vague manner for church officers in general, but as expressive of all the distinct orders that were established by them in the church, he adds, Nor was this a new device, in asmuch as bishops and deacons had been pointed out many ages before; for thus says the Scripture, “I will constitute their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith." (Isaiah lx. 17.) If (as no critic ever questioned, and as his own argument necessarily requires,) this venerable ancient means the same by bishops with those who, in the Acts, are called presbyters or elders, namely the ordinary teachers; it would seem strange that the bishop, properly so called, the principal officer of all, should be the only one, in his account, of whom the Holy Spirit, in sacred writ, had given no previous intima

tion nay, do not the words of this father manifestly imply, that any other office in the church than the two he had mentioned, might be justly styled a new device? If the above account given by Clement is not to be considered as an enumeration, I know not what to call it. It is this writer's express design to acquaint us what the Apostles did for accommodating the several churches they planted with pastors and assistants. And can we suppose he would have omitted the chief point of all, namely, that they supplied every church with a prelate, ruler, or head, if any one had really been entitled to this distinction.

"The other testimony I shall produce is that of Polycarp, who had been a disciple of the Apostle John. He also takes notice of two orders of ministers in the church, enjoining the people (chap. v.) to be subject to their presbyters and deacons, as to God and Christ. He could go no higher for a similitude, nor could he decently have gone so high, had he known of a higher order in the church. Not a syllable of the bishop, as a distinct and superior officer, who, in less than a hundred and fifty years after, would have been the principal, if not the only person to whom their subjection would have been enjoined by any christian writer. Let it be observed further, that though in chap. v. he lays down the duties and qualifications of deacons, and in chap. vi. those of presbyters, where every thing befitting judges and governors is included, and through the whole Epistle those of the people, there is no mention of what is proper in the character and conduct of a bishop. It is evident that Polycarp knew of

no christian ministers superior to the presbyters." (Dr. Campbell's Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 134. Fletcher's Lectures on the Roman Catholic Religion. James's Dissent and Church of England, pp. 47, 48.)

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND VINDICATED FROM THE FOREGOING OBJECTIONS, AND ITS SCRIPTURAL FOUNDATION EXPOUNDED.

THIS chapter being intended to contain a refutation of the several classes of objections mentioned in chapter the seventh, it will be convenient to divide it into correspondent sections.

SECTION I.

Answer to some of the objections of Independents, but more particularly to others of the Society of Friends, and of the least educated among other sects.

The arguments in our fifth chapter, and the universal practice of the professors of Christianity, fully bear out the assumption, that there is no complete church in existence unprovided with a ministry of the word—a ministry designed to direct to a knowledge of the truth by teaching the Scriptures. Also the concurrence of churchmen and other nominal Christians noticed in chapter the first, authorizes our