This is the ministry we find in Church History, viz. : The principle of the Apostolic succession through the Episcopate.

A. D. 130.

This principle is appealed to by Irenæus, who had sat at the feet of Polycarp.1 He appeals to the Episcopal succession both in the East and West. He asks his opponents to produce a list of their Bishops. He gives a list of those who had succeeded S. Peter and S. Paul in Rome down to Eleutherius of his own day."

It is accepted by Tertullian. In his "Praescriptiones" he asks the sects of the day to unroll the line of their Bishops.

It is anticipated by Hegesippus, "the father of Church History." In his journey through the West he found a succession in each city he passed through.*

In Asia Minor we find the Episcopate from the earliest date. Ignatius had impressed upon the Churches of Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Philadelphia, and Smyrna, that the Bishops with the Presbyters represented the Authority

A. D. 200.

A. D. 167. A. D. 165.

A. D. 130.

5

In Greece we find the same. At Corinth, in A. D. 165, there was a Bishop. A succession is also mentioned by Hegesippus. And what we find in Greece we find in Crete and in Alexandria.

3

The Emperor Hadrian mentions some Alexandrian Bishops in A. D. 130.*

4

We have further evidence on this head from the writings of the East. Not only very ancient offices of ordination and commentaries on the rites of the Church, but such works as "The Apostolical Constitution"" and "On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy," " works which embody a great deal of a date much earlier than the works as we now have them. Then again there are the canons of Councils and works of representative Fathers throughout a long period. So much for the witness of the East.

We will now pass to the evidence of the West. Here the succession is never doubted. It was of

1 Vid. Notes, p. 130, Gore, Ch. and the Min.; Bowden, Let. iv., v.

* Ap. Euseb. H. E. v. 24. There was a Primus.

3 Dionysius of Corinth wrote a letter to Crete. Cf. Euseb., iv. 23, 25. Clem. Strom., vi. 13, 107.

4 Letter to Servianus, quoted by Lightfoot, Ignatius, i.

464.

5 Vid. Simcox, Early Ch. Hist., p. 359, note 1.

6 Apost. Const., vii. 42; viii. 28, 46.

Written by Syrian pseudo-Dionysius, circ. 490.

2

immemorial antiquity when Irenæus wrote. There is no trace whatever of any pre-Episcopal age in any part of Africa, Italy, Spain, Gaul, or Britain. Nor does any writer mention any other form or conception of the ministry. We find it in all the great Western Fathers; we find it in the Councils and all the great Latin Liturgies. We find it Sacramental, Indelible, Sacerdotal, and possessing exclusive powers; Apostolical and Independent while yet belonging to each Bishop as one of a great brotherhood linked together by manifold ties into a corporate unity.

4

We have now clearly seen that our Lord founded a visible society, indestructible and indefectible in its nature, to be the Home of Redemptive Grace and of Truth, and that He instituted an Apostolate which, by the transmission of the Powers He Himself had received from the Father and had given to them, was to perpetuate itself forever. We have also seen how

1 Cf. Euseb. v. 1. Here is the Bishop-the aged Pothinus, a friend of Polycarp, and of the same age, who had left Asia for Gaul, in A. D. 60, together with a zealous band of Christians. Here is the Presbyter-Irenæus. Here is the Deacon-Sanctus. Vid. Mahan, p. 63.

Cyprian, A. D. 250, De Unit. Eccles. 5. fer, Bp. of Cagliari, in Sardinia, A. D. 360. many others.

* Cf. Carthaginian Canons, A. D. 256.

teres, Diacones."-Elvira, cc. 18, 19.

λας

4 Such as Greg. Sacram.

Ep. lxxiv. 7. Luci

De Athan. i. 9; and

Episcopi, Presby

5S. Matt. xxviii. 20. S. John xvii. 18. Καθὼς ἐμὲ ἀπέστει

κἀγὼ ἀπέστειλα αὐτοὺς, κ. τ. λ.

(even as) άπεσταλκεν

Ibid. xx. 21. Καθὼς

κἀγὼ (even so) πέμπω, κ. τ. λ. Vid. i.

§ ii. pp. 33-36. Tenta. Theo.

this is developed in the Acts and the Epistles, and

A. D. 100-117.

how that from the days of Ignatius the Church has known of no other Consti

tution than this of the institution of Christ.

III.

We have thus reached A. D. 100.

Have we further

evidence to show that what was the Constitution of

It is what we find to be the

and Organization of the

the Church in the Ignatian Age was Constitution also that of the Apostolic and subThe Apostolic Age? In order to answer Churchin Apos- this question we must first see what the Apostolic times, nature and conception of the Minis

witnessed by the New Testament and ancient writers.

try is in the Apostolic Age, and what function and form it took in the

sub-Apostolic age.

5

1

The Apostolic Age. No one can deny that the Gospels suggest at least an institution of an official Apostolate as one element in the Church. In the Epistles we find an Apostle as having absolute and complete authority, both to teach and to govern.* He is the founder and ruler of churches. He is an empowered ambassador and minister of the reconciliation with God which Christ won on the Cross. He is a steward of the mysteries of God," an administrator, and represents the general Church. "He has care of all the churches."

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,,

In the Epistles of S. Paul we find an Apostle as one who has received his peculiar powers direct from Christ-οὐκ ἀπ' ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ δὶ ἀνθρώπου. Their successors, such as Timothy, receive their commission, not direct from Christ, but from Christ δὶ ἀνθρώπου.” It is not a power ἀπ ̓ ἀνθρώπων: it is divine from God by succession-δὶ' ἀνθρώπου. In the same Epistles we find a local ministry subordinate to the Apostle. Such a ministry are the "Presidents," "the Teachers," and "the Ministers," who, for instance, laboured among the Thessalonians. the later Epistles we have the local Bishop and Deacon; probably a group of Bishops in divers communities, who governed and acted subordinately to "Prophets," as Pastors and "Teachers." "

In

In the Pastoral Epistles we find a development of the principles of the ministry. We find :

1. Presbyter-Bishops constituting a college of "Presidents" in each Church. Their functions are administrative and subordinately didactic." The Deacons are their assistants.

2. An extension of the Apostolate to Apostolic men.

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