For faith, hope, and charity, For grace and assistance in our spiritual course, For eternal happiness, For humility and patience, Collects. 14th Sunday after Trinity. 1st, 2d, and 13th after Trinity. 6th Sunday after Epiphany, For our imitation of the saints, St. James's Day, St. John Baptist's Day, For deliverance from judg- Septuagesima Sunday, ments, For the love of God and his laws, For love and charity, For the ministers of God's word and sacraments, For mortification, 14th Sunday in Lent. 4th Sunday after Easter, 3d Sunday in Advent. For the protection of God's ( 2d, 3d, 4th, and 20th Sundays providence, For purity of heart, For pardon of sin, For acceptance of our prayers, To be truly religious, Before reading the Scriptures, For fruitfulness in good works, after Trinity. The Purification. 12th, 21st, and 24th Sundays 10th Sunday after Trinity. 7th Sunday after Trinity. 5th Sunday after Easter, For faith in God's mercy through Christ's death 19, 57. For the grace of charity For grace to love God's law For salvation and eternal happiness For God's care and protection For the comfort of God's holy Spirit Thanksgiving for God's mercies For pardon of sins For redemption by Christ Against evil and perplexing thoughts On Christmas-Day, and seven days after Easter-Day, and seven days after Trinity Sunday For the grace of perseverance For the morning For the evening 130, 138. The seven Penitential Psalms are the 6th, 32d, 38th, 51st, 102d, 130th, and 143d. NOTE A, FOR PAGE 163. It may not be amiss to present to the reader the following passages from the writings of the Fathers, which, with many others that might be produced, decisively prove, that the primitive church was episcopal. FIRST CENTURY. IGNATIUS, Bishop of Antioch, in his Epistle to the Trallians. "Continue inseparable from Jesus Christ our God, and from your bishop, and from the commands of the Apostles. He that is within the altar is pure; but he that is without, that is, does any thing without the bishop, and presbyters, and deacons, is not pure in his conscience." In his Epistle to the Smyrnians. "Let no man do any thing of what belongs to the church without the bishop. It is not lawful, without the bishop, neither to baptize, nor to celebrate the holy communion." SECOND CENTURY. IRENEUS, Bishop of Lyons. "We can reckon up those whom the Apostles ordained to be bishops in the several churches, and who they were that succeeded them down to our times." CLEMENS, of Alexandria. "There are other precepts without number; some which relate to presbyters; others which belong to bishops; others respecting deacons." THIRD CENTURY. ORIGEN, of Alexandria. "There is a debt due to deacons; another to presbyters; and another to bishops, which is the greatest of all, and exacted by the Saviour of the whole church.' CYPRIAN, Bishop of Carthage. "The church is built on bishops, and every act of the church is governed and directed by them, its presidents." The testimony of St. Jerome, in the fourth century, has been supposed by some to militate against episcopacy. In his comment on the first chapter of Titus, he advances only as a conjecture, "that the churches were at first governed by a college of presbyters, equal in rank and dignity. Afterwards, divisions being occasioned by this parity among presbyters, when every presbyter began to claim, as his own particular subjects, those whom he had baptized; and it was said by the people, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas; to remedy this evil, it was ordered, all the world over, that one of the presbyters in every church should be set over the rest, and peculiarly called bishop." But it is evident, that in this passage, St. Jerome plainly refers the degree by which bishops were established over presbyters to the time of the Apostles. He not only assigns, as the occasion of it, the adherence of some to Paul, of others to Apollos, of others to Cephas, which is reproved by St. Paul, in his epistle to the Corinthians; but in his epistle to Evagrius, he expressly calls the distinction of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, an apostolic institution, and taken by the Apostles from the Old Testament, where Aaron, his sons the priests, and the Levites, correspond to the three orders of the Christian church. In his catalogue of ecclesiastical writers, he affirms, "that James was ordained bishop of Jerusalem by the Apostles; that Timothy was made bishop of Ephesus, and Titus of Crete, by St. Paul; and Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, by St. John," &c. Even in St. Jerome's opinion, therefore, the primacy of bishops over presbyters was an apostolic institution. Yet, were the opinion of St. Jerome otherwise, the opinion of a single Father, in the fourth century, ought not certainly to be adduced against the concurring testimony of all the earlier Fathers. The primitive church, beyond all doubt, was episcopal. The |