The primitive eirenicon; one evangelical ministry...

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Preface

The principal object of this essay is to show that the Church of England, in publicly acknowledging the validity of a ministry without episcopal ordination or consecration, for more than a century after the Reformation, and in the best period of her history, was sustained by the precedent of the Primitive Church.

The patriarchal Church of Alexandria is here proved to have been episcopal in government, while, at the same time, it was without episcopal consecration or succession for the space of two hundred years immediately succeeding the times of the Apostles.

Ample proof is given that the English Reformers, Compilers, and Revisers of our standards, were cognizant of the fact, and reasoned and acted accordingly.

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The concessions of the ablest modern divines of the same Church are here presented. The Church of England is thus fully vindicated with respect to her deliberate action in the premises.

Another important point is hereby established. According to the same primitive precedent, there is in the presbyterate an original, inherent power of perpetuating the ministry in all its functions, and therefore to be exercised when required, in conjunction with the laity, to remove abuses, and to purify the Church.

Again, it will be seen that the doctrine of an indispensable, unbroken episcopal tactual succession, asserted by the Romanists, was rejected by the Reformers and Revisers of our standards; and, moreover, that a large portion of the Primitive Church acted without respect to such a succession.

With the overthrow of this dogma is destroyed the structure of a human, officiating priesthood, with the system of Ritualism based upon it.

The question is one of testimony, not of prejudice or of mere individual opinion. Ample testimony, it is claimed, is here given to establish the statements above made. A candid examination is asked, and little doubt is felt that there

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will be but one decision, and that in favor of the positions here maintained.

The falsity of the claim of the Church of Rome to the Primacy ; that she is the mother and mistress of churches, is here clearly seen. In position and learning, and consequently in influence, for the two first centuries, this Church was subordinate to the Church of Alexandria. Superiority, neither in learning nor zeal, but in wealth and temporal influence, gave the Church of Rome the precedence, whose kingdom for so many centuries has been manifestly of this world, not of heaven.

Strange is it that the Romish writers cannot agree as to the order of the early bishops of that see; nor can they prove that for two centuries they received episcopal consecration. All such statements being based on assumptions and unfounded inferences, what becomes of that much lauded succession, upon which rests the whole anti-scriptural system of doctrine and worship, by which so large a portion of Christendom has been so long deceived and shrouded in spiritual darkness ? The maintenance of the succession dogma by large numbers in our own communion strengthens Romanism by distracting the Protestant cause, and thus promotes schism among viii PREFACE.

those holding the one scriptural faith, and the true apostolical doctrine.

The argument for the general prevalence of moderate Episcopacy in primitive times is strengthened, not weakened, by the views here presented. With the Episcopacy which approved itself to Cranmer, Jewel, Usher, and Leighton, the writer is fully satisfied. He has seen nothing better in his own day.

The pressing of extravagant claims, supported neither by Scripture, history, reason, or a wise policy, has jeopardized the interests, checked the growth, and sadly impaired the reputation and influence of the truly noble heritage handed down to us by the Protestant Reformers of England.

The effort to extend the system of Archbishop Laud in this free, intelligent land, has proved, as might have been expected, almost a complete failure ; and whatever hold our Church has upon the American people, is owing to their conviction, that this system is a false, and not a true presentation of Protestant Episcopacy ; that it is ephemeral, and will become, ere long, a discredited novelty.

To any charge of a want of attachment to the

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Protestant Episcopal Church, the writer will only point to a service of near a quarter of a century in her ministry. He has no other answer to give.

One of the phenomena of our Church, is the rapidity with which those newly received into our fold (and more than half our ministry have come from other communions) become sounder churchmen, in their own estimation, than many who have labored a lifetime in her service.

A late bishop, in one of our largest and most generally exclusive dioceses, stated to the writer, a few years since, that he had ascertained that but one fifth of his clergy had been reared in the Episcopal Church. In a communion so conglomerate, is it strange that there is so little unity, harmony, and mutual cooperation, or, that men changing their inherited beliefs, and embracing the unscriptural and unreasonable tenets of the modern, exclusive, jure divino Episcopacy, should proceed to any extravagance, and even land at the true logical terminus of such a theory, the Church of Rome, the present home of four of the writer's classmates of the General Theological Seminary ? The late President Nott has wisely remarked : " Men who go over from one denomination to another always stand up more than

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straight^ and for two reasons: First, to satisfy their new friends that they have heartily renounced their former error; secondly, to convince their former friends that they had good reasons for desertion."

In view of the state of things in our Church, how singularly applicable are the words of the eminent Dr. Isaac Barrow, as quoted by Dr. Arnold, an equally eminent churchman : ? c A considerable cause of our divisions hath been the broaching scandalous names, and employing them to blast the reputation of worthy men, bespattering and aspersing them with insinuations, etc. ; engines devised by spiteful, and applied by simple people ; latitudinarians, rationalists, and I know not what other names intended for reproach, though imparting better signification than those dull detractors can, it seems, discern."

From the fact that, for some time, the writer conscientiously and earnestly advocated the exclusive episcopal theory, he thinks that he enjoys a greater advantage in the discussion of this question. He has surveyed it from more than one direction. He has known by experience the evils of the system against which he is earnestly contending. A somewhat thorough study of the

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writings of the English Reformers, compelled him to modify his views, and to adopt the principles of the Compilers of the Prayer Book, in preference to the innovations of Laud and of his followers.

Examination of the writings of the Primitive Fathers has convinced him that the High Church principle was unknown to the Church before the times of Cyprian, two centuries after the death of most of the Apostles.

He has yet to find the statements of an early author, that Primitive Episcopacy was necessarily connected with an episcopal consecration, a second ordination, or an exclusive tactual succession of a third order of the ministry.

Having shown that the most important Church of antiquity, while episcopal in government, with the clearest succession of patriarchs, was yet without episcopal consecration and tactual succession for two centuries, the burden of proof reasonably lies with those who contend that other churches possessed such a tactual and uninterrupted succession, to make clear the fact. It has never yet been done, nor can it be with our present amount of light.

The' mere use of the term succession, by writers xii PREFACE.

like Eusebius, Irenseus, and Tertullian, does not at all settle the question, inasmuch as succession in office and place are not necessarily connected. Dr. Barrow quotes Gregory Nazianzen as saying, " Athanasius was the successor of Mark, no less in piety than in presidency ; the which we must suppose to be properly succession." This tactual episcopal succession is assumed by exclusive writers, while no satisfactory proof is furnished.

In a question like this, which concerns the Church standing, and the validity of ministerial acts in the largest portion of the Reformed and Protestant Communions, mere assumptions will not pass current.

The reception of these exclusive assumptions, without satisfactory proof, by Christian people, we believe, as sincere as any, has produced its natural fruits, and made our Episcopacy needlessly repulsive and odious.

Primitive Episcopacy, saddled with these human additions, how it has lost its rightful position !

In the Roman Church, the effect is seen in the almost complete destruction of spiritual religion, and the substitution of an amalgam of Judaism, Paganism, and a corrupted Christianity, whose latest and most favorite dogma, the sinless Con-

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caption of the Virgin Mary, has been borrowed from the Koran of Mohammed.

In the Anglican Church, the result has been the repulsion of a large portion of the most religious minds of the nation from its communion. In our own Church, it is seen in the sacrifice of strength and numbers, which might readily have been secured ; in a waning influence ; in intestine strife ; in the increase of formalism; and in the intellectual deterioration of the clerical body. The history of the past, as welt as the present condition of affairs, fully establishes these statements, and justifies the position taken by the author; a position taken conscientiously, and with the sincerest regard for the truth and the Church Catholic, and his own branch of the same.

In a succession of apostolical doctrine ; in the fact of a ministerial succession ; and in a moderate, wise, and safe Episcopacy, he believes with the Reformers ; but in the Laudean doctrine of an indispensable, unbroken, episcopal tactual succession, one entirely different from that held by the Christian Fathers, he has no confidence. He has no respect for what has proved to be a destructive and impolitic innovation. He trusts his book may lead others to a full investigation of this error, and to unite with him in resisting xiv PREFACE.

and opposing it, until the whole Church shall combine in rejecting it.

That the legitimate result of the teachings of Cyprian was the papacy, he is fully convinced. That the contest now in the Church is between the principles of Cyprian and those of Luther, he believes, in the words of Isaac Taylor : " It is thus at this moment : Cyprian and Luther are wrestling amain for mastery in the English Church ; and one or the other of these spirits must be dislodged. A season of apathy may again come upon the Church, and so the struggle may stand over to another day ; but at its next revival, the English Church will either go over unconditionally to antiquity, erasing from its formularies whatever is Protestant in them, and will expel all who adhere to scriptural doctrine ; or, it will recover its lost ground, and become consistently Protestant and biblical."

How remarkably has this prediction, uttered in 1843, been verified ? We are already in the midst of the renewed conflict. May God speed the right, and give ultimate triumph to a true antiquity? May an open Bible, a free pulpit, an evangelical ministry, prevail over formalism, ritualism, ceremonialism, and ecclesiasticism, and every system akin to Judaism and Popery ?

SUCCESSION OF SOUND DOCTRINE, THE TRUE APOSTOLIC SUC- CESSION 167

APPENDIX A.

ADDITIONAL TESTIMONY 195

APPENDIX B.

CONFIRMATORY EVIDENCE . . . .. . . . 206

APPENDIX C.

FURTHER LAY TESTIMONY 217

THE PRIMITIVE EIRENICON.