his degree of honour, but according to the merit of his works." I

Speaking of the Fathers in general, and even of such as lived before his time, and therefore nearer to the fading twilight of apostolic days, he says: "It may be that they have erred unintentionally, or have written in another sense, or their writings have been little by little corrupted by unskilful copyists; or else, before the birth in Alexandria of that (as it were) southern devil Arius, they spoke some things innocently and too unwarily, which could not escape the cavils of perverse

men.” 2

The abject and implicit homage which has been claimed for the Fathers is thus seen to be repudiated in advance by the Fathers themselves, who, at least by precept, if not always by example, enjoined an unquestioning submission to the authority of the Scriptures. And they were wise in thus protesting, as if prophetically, against the superstitious regard which has been accorded to them for centuries; wise, if we consider the extraordinary opinions which they individually held; wise, if we consider the irreconcilable nature of their opinions on the same matters; wise, if we consider the conflicting nature of their opinions at different periods of their lives, and according to the polemical purpose they had to serve; wise, if we consider the extensive range they allowed to a prudential deceit and falsehood, euphemistically termed "economy;" I Hier. "Com. 2 in Oseam." Præfat.

2 Hier. L. 2 "Apol. contra Ruff."

and wise, if we consider the distinct sanction which they gave to demonolatry, and reverence for relics and rags. To deny a guilty complicity in false miracles on the part of some even of the most illustrious of the Fathers, is to abdicate the functions of common sense, or to suppose that they had been abdicated by the Fathers themselves.

By no writer have their real position and claims been more admirably put than by Jeremy Taylor, who in his "Liberty of Prophesying" says: "Why the bishop of Hippo shall have greater authority than the bishop of the Canaries (cæteris paribus), I understand not. For did they that lived (to instance) in St. Austin's time believe all that he wrote? If they did they were much to blame, or else himself was to blame for retracting much of it a little before his death. And if, while he lived, his affirmative was no more authority than derives from the credit of one very wise man against whom also very wise men were opposed, I know not why his authority should prevail farther now. For there is nothing added to the strength of his reason since that time, but only that he hath been in great esteem with posterity. And if that be all, why the opinion of following ages shall be of more force than the opinion of the first ages, against whom St. Austin in many things did clearly oppose himself, I see no reason. Or whether the first ages were against him or no, yet that he is approved by the following ages is no better argument; for it makes his authority not be innate, but derived from the opinion of others, and, to be

1

precaria, and to depend upon others, who, if they should change their opinions (and such examples there have been many), then there were nothing left to urge our consent to him, which, when it was at the best, was only this, because he had the good fortune to be believed by them that came after, he must be so still; and because it was no argument for the old doctors before him, this will not be very good on his behalf. The same I say of any company of them (I say not so of all of them, it is to no purpose to say it), for there is no question this day in contestation in the explication of which all the old writers did consent. In the assignation of the canon of Scripture they never did consent for six hundred years together; and then by that time the bishops had agreed indifferently well, and but indifferently upon that, they fell out in twenty more; and except it be in the Apostles' Creed, and articles of such nature, there is nothing which may with any colour be called a consent, much less tradition universal." I

The principle, therefore, which will guide us in the investigation of the subject we have undertaken is, that nothing can be accounted Christian doctrine which is not found in the writings of the New Testament, and that no system of Church polity and organisation can be regarded as exclusively apostolic and authoritative which has not the same inspired support. The question which we have now to consider is, What says the New Testament touching the existence of an official human priesthood in the Christian Church? and

I"Liberty of Prophesying." Sect. viii.

the answer to this question will involve the establishment of the following positions.

I. That there is no such priesthood acknowledged in name.

2. That there is no such priesthood acknowledged in office.

3. That there is no such priesthood acknowledged in specified qualifications.

4. That such priesthood is precluded by the whole genius of the Christian dispensation.

I.

There is no official human priesthood acknowledged in name.

The fact that the word priest (iepeùs) is not applied in the New Testament to any office-bearer in the Church of Christ, is of itself a circumstance of no mean signification. It cannot be an accident. Such a supposition is forbidden, both by the uniformity of the fact and by the inveteracy with which the name had clung to the sacerdotal office among both the Jews and the nations of heathendom. The suddenness with which a word saturated with official sacerdotalism was dropped as a designation of the ministers of the new faith, and this too by men who had used it daily in connection with the sacrificing priests of Judaism, could not be the result of caprice, but of a conviction that it could not aptly characterise the ministers of the gospel dispensation. Words are neither born, nor do they die, nor dissolve their ancient associations without cause; and

if the preachers of the gospel were known to have been clothed with priestly functions as real in substance as those of the Mosaic economy, however differing in form, it is scarcely conceivable that the appellation by which the Jewish priests had been called would have been withheld from the administrators of the gospel. Throughout the Old Testament no nominal distinction is marked between those who sacrificed to Baalim and those who sacrificed to God. They are all termed priests, irrespective of the diverse faiths which they represented. Hence the word shows no partiality for one religion more than another, and was as ready to offer its services to the Christian dispensation as to the Jewish or Pagan religions, provided there had been any official functionary to whom the designation would have been appropriate. The absence of the word in such connection is a phenomenon which demands explanation, and the explanation devolves on those who represent the Christian ministry as a priesthood. That it should have been disused as a name of office by apostles, on the supposition that under the New Covenant all its significance had centred upon the High Priest of our profession, by whose redemptive work its typical import had been fulfilled, is natural. But such disuse is mysterious and inexplicable on the supposition that there still remained in the dispensation of the gospel a place for a priesthood, not in a figurative, but a real sense. The fact of this disuse is conceded by Bellarmine himself, who does not lightly acknowledge an argumentative pressure. While, however, he ad