the word church is very common with us, as a name for the place of worship. There are only two passages that I remember, which seem to convey this sense. They are both in the eleventh chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. The first is verse 18. When ye come together in the church, συνερχομένων ὑμων εν τη εκκλησια. Here, however, the word is susceptible of another interpretation, as a name for the society. Thus we say," The lords, spiritual and temporal, and the commons, in parliament assembled;" where parliament does not mean the house they meet in, but the assembly properly constituted. The other is verse 22. Have ye not houses to eat and drink in, or despise ye the church of God? ons exxλnoias τε θες καταφρονείτε: where it is urged, the opposition of εκκλησια to ɑɑ, the church to their houses, adds a probability to this interpretation. But this plea, though plausible, is not decisive. The sacred writers are not always studious of so much accuracy in their contrasts, nor is it here necessary to the The apostle's argument, on my hypothesis, stands thus: What can be the reason of this abuse? Is it because have not houses of your own to eat and drink in? Or is it because ye despise the Christian congregation to which ye belong? This, though it do not convey so exact a verbal antithesis, is, in my judgment, more in the spirit and style of the New Testament, than to speak of despising stone walls. But as to this I affirm nothing. To express the place of meeting, we find the word cuvaywyn, as observed above, used by the apostle James. In ancient authors, the words first adopted were εκκλησιαςήριον, εκκλησίας οίκος, and nugianov, whence the words kirk and church. At length the term ɛxxλnoia, by a common metonymy, the thing contained for the thing containing, came to be universally employed in this acceptation.

sense.

ye

LECTURE XI.

THE steps I have already mentioned and explained, advancing from presbytery to parochial episcopacy, thence to prelacy or diocesan episcopacy, from that to metropolitical primacy, and thence again to patriarchal superintendency; together with those methods I have pointed out to you, whereby the ministers of religion distinguished themselves from their Christian brethren; insensibly prepared the minds of the people for the notion, that in ordination there was something exceedingly mysterious, and even inscrutable. It came at length, not to be considered as a solemn manner of appointing a fit person to discharge the duties of the pastoral office amongst a particular flock or congregation, and of committing them to his care, but to be regarded more especially as the imprinting of a certain character, or unperceivable and incomprehensible signature on a person; a character which, though in consequence of human means employed by the proper minister it was conferred, could by no power less than Omnipotence be removed. And though, at first hearing, one would be apt to imagine, that by this tenet they derogated as much from the ecclesiastic power on one hand as they enhanced it on the other, since they maintained that the persons who gave this character could not take it away, the effect on men's conceptions was very different. If a single ceremony, or form of words, could with as much facility withdraw as confer a gift in its nature invisible, nobody would be impressed with the conception, that any thing very wonderful had been either given or taken. The words or ceremony of ordaining would be considered as nothing more than the established mode of investing a man with the right of exercising canonically the sacred function; and the words or ceremony used in the deposition, as the mode of stripping him of that right or privilege, so that he should no longer be entitled to exercise it. In this way he would be under the same canonical incapacity he lay under before his ordination, which answers to what was, for many ages, called in the

N

church, reducing a clergyman to lay communion. There would be nothing more extraordinary here, than the creating of a lord high-steward, for instance, by certain solemnities accompanying the delivery of a white baton into his hands, and placing him on an eminent seat, and his putting an end to his office, by publicly breaking the baton, and coming down from his seat; whereas, for a man to do a thing, which nothing less than Omnipotence can undo, and which even that, in fact, will never be employed in undoing; to imprint a character—a something which, in spite of angels, men, and devils, shall, to eternity, remain indelible, appears the result of a power inconceivable indeed, and little less than divine.

Whence ideas of this kind originated,-ideas that do not seem to quadrate with the so much boasted power of the keys, which implies alike that of opening and that of shutting, admitting and excluding, binding and loosing,-ideas, of which the apostles and evangelists have nowhere given us the slightest hint, and of which it is plain they had not themselves the smallest apprehension, is a matter of curious inquiry, and closely connected with the subject of the hierarchy. I shall therefore endeavour briefly, in this lecture, to trace the rise and progress of so strange a doctrine.

Ecclesiastical degrees were not instituted originally under the notion of dignities, pre-eminences, or honours, as they became afterwards, but as ministries, charges, and what the apostle Paul called gy, works, 1 Tim. iii. 1. “ If a man desire the office of a bishop," says he, "he desireth a good work." Consequently, if in any thing denominated the office of a bishop there be no work to do, it cannot be the office whereof the apostle speaks; for the misapplication of the name can never alter the nature of the thing. The persons accordingly possessed of such offices were styled, both by our Lord and by Paul his apostle, gyara, labourers, workmen. "The labourers are few," says the former, and "the workman is worthy of his meat:" the latter recommends it to Timothy to acquit himself as "a workman that needeth not be ashamed."

For some time, indeed, it could hardly enter into the mind of any man to think himself entitled to decline executing personally, whilst able to execute, a trust solemnly committed to

him, and which he had himself undertaken: for the terms ordination, and appointment to a particular pastoral charge, were perfectly synonymous. If one, however, in those truly primitive times, (which but rarely happened), found it necessary to retire from the work, he never thought of retaining either the title or the emoluments. And though the ministers were of two kinds, the one called anciently the ministry of the word, and in later times the cure of souls, and the other a ministry in things temporal, for the support and relief of the poor and infirm, as was the deaconship, those in both offices were equally held bound to personal service. Nor would any one have thought, in the earliest ages, of serving by a deputy, unless for a short time, and on account of some remarkable and unavoidable impediment; much less would he have accepted another charge that was incompatible with his former But to be made a bishop, and in being so to receive no charge whatever, to have no work to execute, could have been regarded no otherwise than as a contradiction in terms.

one.

Indeed the name of the office implied the service, without which it could not subsist; that is, without which there was no office. The name bishop, as I have observed, means overseer; and this is a term manifestly correlative to that which expresses the thing to be overseen. The connexion is equally necessary and essential as between father and child, sovereign and subject, husband and wife. The one is inconceivable without the other. Ye cannot make a man an overseer to whom ye give no oversight, no more than ye can make a man a shepherd to whom ye give the charge of no sheep, or a husband to whom ye give no wife. Nay, in fact, as a man ceases to be a husband the moment that he ceases to have a wife, and is no longer a shepherd than he has the care of sheep, so, in the only proper and original import of the words, a bishop continues a bishop only whilst he continues to have people under his spiritual care. These things, indeed, are so plain, that one is almost ashamed to attempt to illustrate them. Yet the changes that too soon ensued have turned matters so entirely off their original bottom, that propositions which, in the age of the apostles, must have appeared selfevident, require a careful development to us moderns; so

much is the import of names and phrases altered in the course of some successive centuries. Let us therefore endeavour to investigate the source of these alterations.

When, as it happened in a few ages, the church was become populous and extensive; and when, released from persecution, it was beginning to taste the sweets of ease and affluence; when men, by consequence, were growing less zealous and more remiss; as the several congregations were supplied by their respective presbyteries, which were a sort of colleges of ministers, who, under the bishop, had the charge in common; it happened sometimes that one of these, without creating great inconvenience to his colleagues, retired from the service, and, either for the sake of study and improvement, or from some other reason, resided elsewhere. The presby

ters had not then separate charges, and the consistory could sufficiently supply the necessary functions with one more or one fewer. But he who in this manner retired from the parish, did not retain any charge of the people; as little did he draw thence any emolument whatever. Thus Jerome, a presbyter of Antioch, Ruffinus, in like manner, of Aquileia, and Paulinus of Barcelona, resided little in those places.

Afterwards, as evil customs always spring from small beginnings, the number of such absentees daily increasing, this degenerated into a very gross abuse; and those nominal pastors having become odious, on account of their idle way of living, got the name of vagabond clerks, of whom frequent mention is made in the laws and novels of Justinian. But before the commencement of the sixth century, none ever thought of holding the title, and enjoying the profits of an office, without serving. Then, indeed, in the western church, the condition of ecclesiastical ministries underwent a considerable change, and came to be regarded as degrees of dignities, and honours, and rewards of past services. As formerly, in ecclesiastic promotions, the need of a particular church being considered, a person fit for the charge was provided; so now the rule was inverted, and, the condition and rank of the person being considered, a degree, dignity, or benefice, was provided, which suited his quality and expectations: whence sprang very naturally the custom of doing the work by a