totypes, should honestly administer the gold they have received for the good of the church, and that they should not, like those Irish prelates, whose money transactions were recently brought to light by the House of Commons, pervert the funds given them by the nation for the public good, to pamper their own appetites, or aggrandize some graceless descendant. But, seriously, if any thing was required to demonstrate that the apostles, as such, have no successors in the New Testament, it would be found in the desperate pertinacity with which it has been attempted to consecrate these money messengers into real apostles of Christ. For surely those who press this argument must have some uneasy suspicions, that should it turn out that Jerome was rather uncharitable when he alleged that Judas was the only one of the apostles who had a successor, and many a successor, too, in the church, it would not surely much mend the matter were it to be proved, that the only apostles who had successors were those who dealt in gold rather than in preaching the gospel. We are not without hope that men will soon be driven by very shame, if by nothing else, from thus perverting the word of God in favour of an unscriptural institu

tion.

Epaphroditus, again, was neither more nor less than such a bearer of money as we have spoken of. When Paul wrote his Epistle to the Philippians, he was a prisoner at Rome, (i. 12-16.) As soon as his condition became known at Philippi, the church there, knowing how much he must need it, and desirous as much as in them lay to alleviate his sufferings, raised a sum of money, and sent it by the hands of Epaphroditus, (iv. 15-18.) When Epaphroditus, after the discharge of the commission entrusted to him, was returning, Paul wrote a letter of thanks and exhortations to the Philippians, and sent it by the hands of Epaphroditus, and in that letter calls him your messenger,' (ii. 25.) And pray, what else should he call him, or what else was he? Or who but a Prelatist, determined to wrest Scripture to support his own unscriptural system, would transform the faithful money-bearer, Epaphroditus, into an actual apostle of Christ? Was it thus the apostolic churches treated their apostles? Was it thus they employed their bishops? We should like to see how William Canterbury, Charles James London, Henry Exeter, or that impersonation of meekness and humility, William Aberdeen, would relish a proposal to take up the scrip, and perform the functions of Epaphroditus. But the whole affair is so superlatively ludicrous, and it is so impossible to treat it in a grave tone, that from regard to Scripture, although certainly from no regard to Scripture-perverting Prelatical advocates, we pass away from the subject. But before doing so, we must remark, that from the very terms employed, it

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is evident that Epaphroditus, and the other persons alluded to, were only special messengers of the churches, and not apostles of Christ. Paul, as we have seen, speaking of himself, says, Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father.' But when he speaks of Epaphroditus and the others, he calls them messengers, (or, if you will, apostles), not of Jesus Christ, nor of God the Father, but of men, and by men, in the churches that had sent them to carry their collections.

It is, therefore, perfectly evident, that the apostles left no successors in their apostleship, or in their apostolic office, distinctively so called. As the church was designed for perpetuity, even till Christ should return, the apostles appointed, as we shall hereafter see, all the offices which are required in the church. But among these we find no mention of the apostolic office. That office consequently terminated in the persons of the apostles themselves. When John, therefore, died, the church was left under the government of the ordinary officers, who are to continue in the church till Christ shall come again. But among these officers there is no mention of apostles. The apostolate, therefore, as we have already said, was an office required by, and suited to the state and circumstances of the church at its primary institution, and neither was intended to be, nor has become perpetual.

But in the second place, and still farther to prove that the apostolate was temporary; the qualifications required for the apostolic office, were such as neither did nor could exist in any man beyond the apostolic age. We will mention only two of these qualifications. And 1st, The apostles wrought miracles in illustration of their divine mission, or apostleship, (Mark xvi. 17, 18; Rom. xv. 18, 19; 2 Cor. xii. 12). We do not deny that God now, if it so please him, can communicate the power to work miracles. But then if any man should pretend now to be an apostle or a special successor of the apostles, we just ask him to make good his pretensions by showing the signs of an apostle.' We trust no one will deem us very unreasonable in making this request, seeing we are commanded on this wise, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world.' (1 John iv. 1.)

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Again, although Christ can, if it please him, communicate the power of working miracles now, as well as in the first ages of the Church, and although so far as this goes, men might now possess one mark or sign of an apostle, yet we notice, 2dly, another essential qualification of an apostle, which cannot be found in any man now living, and could not indeed be found in any man born subsequent to the apostolic age. The qualification we allude to is this, that an apostle must have seen the Saviour in the flesh, and have been

a witness to his resurrection, (Acts i. 21, 22; 1 Cor. ix. 1, xv. 8). This, of course, rendered it impossible that any man living beyond the boundary of Judea, or born after the death of Christ, could or can be an apostle, or a successor of the apostles, in any other sense than that in which all true ministers may, in one point of view, be called successors of the apostles. Accordingly as the apostles died one after the other, the survivors did not attempt to appoint other apostles in their stead, yea, although five hundred' disciples at one time, had seen the Lord after his resurrection, of whom the greater part remained' alive when Paul wrote his first epistle to the Corinthians, (xv. 6.) and although, moreover, as is commonly believed, many, if not more or even all of these disciples had the power of working miracles, and thus consequently possessed the two more essential qualifications for the apostleship, yet they were not appointed to the office by Christ himself, and the other apostles did not presume to appoint them. With the death of John, consequently, the apostolic office ceased in the Church, and since that time there has been no successor of the apostles in their distinctive office. If any man now, then, should lay claim to be considered a successor of the apostles, we ask him what do you mean? Do you mean that you are an apostle in the same sense in which Peter or Paul was an apostle? If he does, we at once repel his claim, and if he be acquainted with the Scriptures, we are almost compelled to regard him either an impostor or a lunatic. But if he mean that although he does not claim to be a successor of the apostles in the sense of being a bona fide apostle himself, still that he is a successor of the apostles in the sense of having succeeded to an office which the apostles had appointed officers to fill, we then ask him what office do you mean? And in order that we may see how well he can substantiate his claims, we may just enquire for a little what were those offices in the Church to which the apostles did really appoint officers.

In various parts of the New Testament we read of several offices as then existing in the Church, but which every person now acknowledges to have been temporary, and to have ceased with the primitive age. For example, in Eph. iv. 16, we read of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.' But no one now maintains that prophets and evangelists, as distinct officers, were intended to be permanent, or that they now exist in the Church, or that teachers, as a distinct class of officers, now remain in any christian community. Apostles we have already disposed of. The only officers in the apostolic church, which all parties acknowledge to be permanent, are deacons and presbyters or elders, and to these we now turn our special attention.

Of deacons, their office, and original appointment, we read in

Acts vi. 1-6. From the very express terms there employed, as well as from the immediate circumstances which gave occasion for their appointment, it is evident that deacons were not spiritual officers at all. The only duties committed to them, were to receive the contributions of the faithful, and apply them for the temporal relief of the poorer brethren. The primitive deacons therefore were only almoners of the church, and overseers or guardians of the poor.

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It is true we read of two of the primitive deacons, Philip and Stephen, who seem to have performed spiritual functions. Philip, for example, went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them,' (Acts viii. 5), and then administered baptism unto the converts, (v. 12, 13, 38). But then it appears to have been a settled plan of the apostles whenever they found a deacon who had used (or as the margin has it, 'ministered) the office well,' to promote him to a higher degree' in the ministry, (1 Tim. iii. 13). Accordingly, Philip, who was a man of faith, ready utterance, and mighty in the Scriptures, was promoted to the office of an evangelist, (Acts xxi. 8.) and it was as an evangelist, not as a deacon, that he preached and baptised. It is evident from the very words of the passage last referred to, that Philip, when he became an evangelist, ceased to be a deacon. The words are Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven' deacons; that is, who was one of the seven, but is now not a deacon, but an evangelist. Besides, from the very nature of the offices, he must have ceased to be a deacon before he became an evangelist. As a deacon, his duties would require his presence, at least one day every week at Jerusalem. But as an evangelist, he was required to travel from place to place, preaching and administering ordinances. It is perfectly evident therefore, that when Philip became an evangelist he ceased to be a deacon,—and it is equally evident that the deacon, in Prelatical and Congregational churches, who is employed in ministering, not to the bodily wants of the poor, but to the souls of men, has not the shadow of support in the Scriptures. Here, as everywhere else, our own system harmonises to the very letter, with the primitive institutions.

But it has been contended that Stephen, who remained a deacon to the last, also preached the gospel, and Acts vi. 8, 11, and vii. throughout are referred to in proof. But it is perfectly evident that in the latter instance he merely defends himself when standing a prisoner at the bar of one of the constituted courts of the country, and this of course any citizen might do, whether minister or layman, nor can any man surely maintain that Stephen preached merely because he defended himself in a court of law. In the former passage, again, he was only engaged in a sort of public debate with some

bigotted Jews, and this surely any man might do without its being supposed in consequence, that he was a minister. Aquila, a tentmaker, who was only a layman, nay, also Priscilla, his wife, were accustomed to do the same, wherever they travelled in the way of their business, (Acts xviii. 26.) Yet no one fancies they were ministers of the word, and why then should we fancy Stephen to have been such?

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It is evident therefore, that deacons, in the apostolic church, were not spiritual officers, as they now are in Prelatic and Independent churches, but simply curators of the poor, and administrators of the funds of the church, as they are among us. This is so self-evident that it has been acknowledged in all ages, even by the warmest partisans, and the most authoritative writers of the Prelatic Church. Jerome, the most learned writer of the fourth and fifth centuries, calls deacons servers of tables and widows,' which certainly, as is evident from Scripture, was their original function. Bishop Croft, an English prelate, who lived two hundred years ago, calls the deaconship a pretended spiritual order,' and says that it was 'certainly no spiritual order, for their office was to serve tables, as the Scripture phrases it, which in plain English is nothing else but overseers of the poor, to distribute justly and discreetly, the alms of the faithful.' Bishop White, an American prelate, says of the deacons, that at the first institution of the order, there must have been no difference between them and laymen, in regard to the preaching of the word and the administering of the sacraments.'* Mr Riddle, a learned living divine, of the Church of England, calls deacons expressly overseers of the poor,' and 'almoners,' and says they were not spiritual persons in the ecclesiastical sense of the word,' and that they were not appointed to the ministration of the word.' Such authorities might be multiplied to any extent, but these may suffice to show that Prelatical churches are guilty not only of inventing offices and officers, which Christ never instituted or sanctioned, and cannot be expected to bless, but also of perverting those primitive offices which they still nominally retain. This is an assumption of lordly power, independent of Christ, to which apostles never laid claim, and which they would shudder to exercise. But these pretended successors of the apostles arrogate to themselves not only a licence to lord it over God's heritage,' but even a liberty to dispense with the appointments of Christ himself. If the primitive deacons were only overseers of the poor, and administrators of the funds of the church, then such are the only functions which, by the word of God, a deacon is warranted to perform: and if, without warrant from Scripture, he attempt to perform any other

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* See both passages at length in Smyth's Lectures, p. 150.

Riddle, Eccl. Antiquities, 137–8.