LECT. VII.] AND OF THE EARLY HERETICS. 343 candidates'; consulted the clergy and even the people upon them2; yet was competent to ordain of his own knowledge without this appeal, when the merits of the candidate were conspicuous. Moreover, it would appear, which is a distinct and very powerful argument on the side of the Episcopal being the primitive form of Church government, that the primitive heretics themselves, dissatisfied after all with the position they had chosen, affected a similar hierarchy of their own; thus in spite of themselves offering a testimony to the stringency of that institution, and the obligation there was upon all Christians to abide by it; and adopting the names of the several orders of clergy in the Church, they exposed themselves to the censure of the Church Catholic, which uniformly affirmed that to make those names of value, they must represent a clergy who had derived their authority by uninterrupted succession from the Apostles; and that wanting that, they wanted everything which constituted the call.* In conclusion, I would once more draw the attention of my hearers to the nature of the evidence for the three Orders and an Episcopal Church, which has been submitted to them, because I think the character of it gives it a weight of its own. None of the Fathers, it will be observed, wrote expressly on the subject of Episcopacy; I mean as controversialists, or with a view to determine a debatable question. They none of them appeal, as we should now do, in discussing this point, to texts in the Epistles to Timothy or Titus, or to other texts elsewhere of a similar import, construing them in this way or that, in order to support their side of the argument, whichever it might be. They afford no tokens of having any misgivings in their mind upon the question; and consequently the evidence which they furnish upon it, is simply that which escapes from them when they are handling other matters, or matters bearing more or less upon the principles of Church government. I do not remember any passage which would Cyprian, Ep. xxiv. 2 Quod et ipsum videmus de divinâ auctoritate descendere, ut sacerdos plebe præsente sub omnium oculis deligatur et dignus atque idoneus publico judicio ac testimonio comprobetur.-Ep. lxviii. § 4. 3 In ordinationibus clericis, fratres charissimi, solemus vos ante consulere, See, e. g. Irenæus, V. c. xx. § 1. Tertullian, De Præscript. Hæret. c. xxxii. seem to militate against this opinion, unless it be one in Clemens Romanus, and this only seems to do so. "So likewise our Apostles knew by our Lord Jesus Christ, that contentions would arise on account of the overseership or episcopacy ἐπὶ τοῦ ὀνόματος τῆς ἐπισκοπῆς). For which reason, having perfect foreknowledge, they appointed persons such as we have before said, and then gave directions how, when they should die, other chosen and appointed men should succeed to their ministry;" that is, not that there would be debates about the term 'EmíσкоTOs and its meaning, but that there would be strifes about who should have the pre-eminence in the Church: to prevent which the Apostles laid down a rule of ecclesiastical succession, which should obviate the inconvenience. Accordingly, it is the incidental manner in which we have to possess ourselves of such testimony as the Fathers bear to an Episcopal Church, which produces whatever defect there may be, or may be supposed to be, in its clearness. But on the other hand, in proportion as this circumstance may deduct from its precision, it augments its value; for it is supplied without any reference to serving a cause, or maintaining a party; and if after all it proves, as I cannot help thinking it does, conclusive of the question of an Episcopate, it is so in a very abundant degree. In the next place, I would direct consideration to the great variety of quarters from which this evidence is drawn. It speaks to the structure not of one local Church, but of Churches the most unconnected and remote, of those in France, in Italy, in Greece, in Asia Minor, in Egypt, in Mauritania; in short, in almost all the countries on the borders of the Mediterranean, the choicest and earliest of Christendom; and it is furnished by men of all temperaments, sober and impassioned, philosophical and visionary; in works of various kinds; in Apologies, in letters, in speculative treatises, in controversial ones; by men who lived one or other of them from the age of the Apostles to nearly that of Constantine; the only period during which the question of Episcopacy could admit of any doubt or debate whatever. And thus, I finally think we may adopt towards the Dissenters the language which Hooker addressed to the learned among the Puritans, and say, "A very strange thing sure it 'Clem. Rom. Ep. I. § xliv. LECT. VII.] CONCLUSION IN THE WORDS OF HOOKER. 345 were, that such a discipline as ye speak of should be taught by Christ and his Apostles in the Word of God, and no Church ever have found it out, nor received it till this present time; contrariwise, the government against which ye bend yourselves be observed everywhere throughout all generations and ages of the Christian world, no Church ever perceiving the Word of God to be against it. We require you to find out but one Church upon the face of the whole earth, that hath been ordered by your discipline, or hath not been ordered by ours, that is to say, by episcopal regiment, sithence the time that the blessed Apostles were here conversant.' 'Hooker's Eccles. Pol. Pref. ch. iv. § 1, vol. i. p. 193, Keble's Ed. LECTURE VIII.* Use of the Fathers in settling the Canon of the New Testament. Appeal to them in the sixth Article. Method of establishing the Canon stated by Jones. Illustration of this method with reference to the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, the Revelation. Discussion of questions, whether the autographs of the Apostles existed in the time of Tertullian; whether any Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians is missing; whether the Epistle to the Ephesians is rightly so entitled; whether St. Paul was the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Use of the Fathers in proving that the substance of the Canonical books, the beginnings and endings of the Gospels, the incidents of our Lord's ministry, the circumstances recorded in the Acts, the tenour of the Epistles, were the same in their times as they are now. THE HE next subject on which the use of the Fathers will discover itself—a subject indeed which may still be ranged under the head of Evidences, if we take that term in an extended sense-is the Canon, the substance, the text, and the meaning, of Scripture. On these points the writings of the Fathers will be found to give us most invaluable information. I can only undertake to call your attention to a question so prolific; a question, which in itself and alone would require volumes to exhaust. But far less than this will suffice to convince you, that these most important topics cannot be investigated fully, and some of them scarcely at all, without the help of the Fathers. Thus, with respect to the Canon, our sixth Article challenges an examination of early ecclesiastical authors for the purpose of establishing it. "In the name of the holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church," is its language. Our Church, therefore, directs *I might here have introduced a Lecture on the use of the Fathers as ministering to our knowledge of our Liturgy and showing that the foundations of our Prayer Book were laid in Apostolic and Sub-Apostolic times; but as I did this at length in my Lectures on the Prayer Book, and shall do it again when I repeat that course, I shall proceed to another topic. LECT. VIII.] THE AUTHORITY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS, 347 or at least encourages us to acquaint ourselves with ecclesiastical antiquity, in order to see what Scriptures were received from the earliest times without hesitation, and what were rejected; and so to satisfy ourselves of her own catalogue. And Mr. Jeremiah Jones, who discusses this question with great learning and ability, sets out with this proposition; that "the principal means whereby we can know whether any books be canonical is by tradition; or the well-approved testimonies of those who lived in or near the time of their being first written." 1 Thus amidst the number of Gospels which swarmed in the first ages, many of them apparently as early as St. Luke himself, who alludes to them in the Preface to his own Gospel, we learn from ecclesiastical antiquity, there were four, and four only, canonical; and those four we further learn, as I shall presently show, were the same we now possess. You are, no doubt, aware of the remarkable testimony to this effect, of Irenæus; who maintains that as there are four cardinal points, and as the Church is dispersed over the whole earth, there must be four pillars to support it; and that, therefore, the Word gave four Gospels. The theory, to be sure, is puerile, but the fact is conclusive; as may be the reason assigned by the same author for the omission of the tribe of Dan from the number of the sealed-viz. that Antichrist was to come of that tribe-still the testimony is complete, that in the time of Irenæus the text of the Revelation in this instance was what it now is.3 And Clemens Alexandrinus in a paragraph, which I brought before you on a former occasion, confirms the statement of Irenæus; and in a manner no less incidental; for having cause to reply to a passage in a document which professed to report a saying of our Lord, Clemens observes, "in the first place we do not find this saying in our four Gospels;" as though no others were of authority. 4 The same Irenæus clearly announces the Acts of the Apostles as a canonical book; assigns it to St. Luke'; quotes it largely as furnishing the sentiments of the Apostles, to the confusion of those of his heretical antagonists, and to the support of 1 Jones on the Canon, Part I. ch. vii. [ δεδομένοις ἡμῖν τέτταρσιν εὐαγγελίοις Irenæus, III. c. xi. § 8. οὐκ ἔχομεν τὸ ῥητόν. — Clem. Αlex. Stromat. III. § xiii. p. 553. 3 V. c. xxx. § 2. 4 Πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἐν τοῖς παρα 5 Irenæus, III. c. xiv. § 1. |