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order, in his day, between Bishops and Presbyters; and far less does he convey any hint, that only the former ordained and confirmed. He says nothing of either of these rites, directly or indirectly, in any of his works. And when the friends of Episcopacy

. suppose, that the mere use of the words Bishop and Presbyters, establishes their claim, they only adopt the convenient method of taking the point in dispute for granted, without a shadow of proof. If we suppose the Bishop or Pastor, alluded to by Clement, to be the standing Moderator or Chairman of the Presbyters, belonging to a single congregation, without any superiority of order over such of them as preached and administered ordinances, will not only account for the strongest expressions above recited; but is, in fact, the only supposition that can be reconciled with the tenor of his writings.

I have now gone through the testimony of those Fathers who lived and wrote within the first two Centuries after Christ*, the limits which I prescribed to myself at the beginning of this letter.

The well informed reader will observe, that I have taken no notice of certain writings, called the Apostolical Canons, and the Apostolical Constitutions, which have been sometimes quoted in this controversy. They are so generally considered as altogether unworthy of credit, that I deem no apology necessary for this omission. When Episcopal writers of the greatest eminence style them “ impudent forgeries,” and their author a cheat, unworthy of credit," I may well be excused for passing them by.

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And I can solemnly assure you, my brethren, that the foregoing extracts, besides what I have deemed favorable to our own cause, also contain, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the strongest passages that are to be found, within that period, in support of diocesan Episcopacy. I may confidently challenge the most zealous Episcopalian to produce, out of the writers of those times, a single sentence which speaks more fully or decidedly in favor of his system, than those which have been presented. If there be any such, I have not been so fortunate as to meet with them ; have the ablest Episcopal writers with whom I have been conversant, appeared to know of their existence. You have before you, not merely a specimen of those quotations which they consider as most favorable to their cause, but in fact, the great body of the strongest and best passages for their purpose, that they are able to produce.

Let me, then, appeal to your candor, whether the assertions made at the beginning of this letter, are not fully supported. Have you seen a single passage which proves that Christian Bishops, within the first two centuries, were, in fact, an order of clergy distinct from those Presbyters who were authorized to preach and administer sacraments, and superior to them? Have you seen a sentence which furnishes even probable testimony, that these Bishops received, as such, a new and superior ordination ; that each Bishop had under him a number of congregations with their Pastors, whom he

governed ; and that with this superior order exclusively was deposited the power of ordaining and administering the rite of Confirmation? Have you found even plausible evidence in support of any one of these articles of Episcopal belief? Above all, have you found a syllable which intimates that these were not only facts, but also that they were deemed of so much importance as to be essential to the very existence of the church? Even supposing you had found such declarations in some or all of the early Fathers; what then? Historic fact is not Divine institution. But have you found the fact? I will venture to say, you have not. We are so far from being told by the writers within this period, 76 with one voice,” that Bishops are a superior order to preaching Presbyters, that not one among them says any thing like it. Instead of finding them “unanimously,” and “constantly” declaring that the right of Ordination is exclusively vested in Bishops as a superior order, we cannot find a single passage in which such information, or any thing that tesembles it, is conveyed. And, with respect to Confirmation, which is claimed as one of the appropriate duties of the diocesan Bishop, it is not so much as once mentioned by any authentic writer, within the first two hundred years, as a ceremony which was in use at all*, and much less as appropriated to a particular order of clergy.

* Unless the doubtful passage before quoted from Cle. miens Alexandrinus, may be supposed to refer to this site :

On the contrary, we have seen that these writers, with remarkable uniformity, apply the terms Bishop, Presbyter, President, Shepherd, Pastor, interchangeably to the same officers; that the apostolical succession is expressly ascribed to Presbyters ; that a Bishop is represented as performing duties which would involve absurdity on any other supposition than that of his being the Pastor of a single flock; and that in all cases in which any distinction is made between Bishops and Presbyters, it evidently points out, either the distinction between preaching and ruling Presbyters; or that between those who were fixed Pastors of churches, and those who, though in full orders, and of the same rank, had no pastoral charge, and until they obtained such a place, acted the part of assistants to Pastors. In short, when the testimony of the early Fathers is thoroughly sifted, it will be found to yield nothing to the Episcopal cause but simply the title Bishop. Now when the advocates of Episcopacy find this title in the New Testament evidently applied to Presbyters, they gravely tell us that the mere title is nothing, and that the interchange of these titles is nothing. But when we find precisely the same titles in the early Fathers, and the same interchange of these titles, they are compelled either to alter their tone, and to abandon their former reasoning, or else to submit to the mortification of being condemned out of their own mouths. and if so, then it will follow, from that passage, that, in the days of Clemens, Presbyters confirmed,

The friends of prelacy have often, and with much apparent confidence, challenged us to produce out of all the early Fathers, a single instance of an Ordination performed by Presbyters. Those who give this challenge might surely be expected, in all decency and justice, to have a case of Episcopal Ordination ready to be brought forward, from the same venerable records. But have they ever produced such a case? They have not. Nor can they produce it. As there is, unquestionably, no instance mentioned in Scripture of any person, with the title of Bishop, performing an Ordination ; so it is equally certain that no such instance has yet been found in any Christian writer within the first two centuries. To find a precedent favorable to their doctrine, the advocates of Episcopacy have been under the necessity of wandering into periods when the simplicity of the Gospel had, in a considerable degree, given place to the devices of men; and when the man of sin had commenced that system of unhallowed usurpation, which for so many centuries corrupted and degraded the church of God.

Such is the result of the appeal to the early Fa. thers. They are so far from giving even a semblance of support to the Episcopal claim, that, like the Scriptures, they every where speak a language wholly inconsistent with it, and favorable only to the doctrine of ministerial parity. What then shall we say of the assertions so often and so confi.

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