the Bishop Presiding in the place of God and the Presbyters in the place of the Consistory Synedrium of the Apostles and the Deacons being intrusted with the Ministry of Jesus Christ. And speaking of Deacons to the Trallians he says expresly they are not Ministers of Meats and Drinks but Servants of the Church of God I know well that these now Unusual expressions and High Comparisons have been construed into a prejudice against the Authority of these Letters But it is not reasonable to judge either Antient Practice or Phrase by the Modern for possibly those Primitive Christians would be at as great a loss to understand some later Divinity The Passage that may appear the most strange is that to the Smyrneans Follow your Bishop as Christ Jesus followed the Father But we are to remember that the Hereticks whom he warns them to avoid were those who deny'd the reality of our Saviour's Flesh saying that He Suffer'd and Rose again in Appearance only themselves also dispensing with the Reality of their Duty as he tells them and being Christians only in Appearance High-minded and puffed up These he Commands them to avoid and for the same intent he cautions them to shun Divisions among themselves as the beginning of those and most other evils and to Follow the Bishop Polycarp a Faithful Servant of Christ Approv'd and intrusted with the Charge of them by the Blessed St. John adding as Christ Jesus the Father a comparison that no more equals the Bishop to the Father than it does the other Christians of that Church to Jesus Christ It imported only that they should not be high-minded and conceited but should be subject to their Bishop for Christ also himself was in reality found in the form of a Servant and obedient unto the Father even unto the Death of the Cross and that they should receive the Commandments from Polycarp and act as they saw him to act for as St. John lately departed from them had inform'd them Christ also did or spoke (d) 8.28.12.49 nothing from himself and he both Taught and kept the Commandments of the Father (e) 15.10 This seems to be the occasional Analogy of that Expression And as for the others that the Bishop presides in the place of God or is to be look'd on as our Lord these speak him only as a Substitute and lower Representative of God and Christ invested with some degree of Authority from them as when St. Paul Commands Christian Servants to obey even Heathen Masters as Christ (f) Eph. 6.5 neither were the Presbyters to be follow'd as the Apostles for the Parity they held but for the similitude they bore being Assistants to the Bishop as the Apostles were to our Saviour For so was Moses heretofore put in the place of God (g) Exod. 7.1 and as in Ignatius the Presbyters are said to preside in the place of the Consistory or Sanhedrim of the Apostles so the Apostles themselves may be suppos'd to succeed in the place of the Twelve Princes the Chief Assistants to Moses Neither has this Language of Ignatius to Christians any other meaning than it might have had if a Jew should have admonish'd his Brethren Jews to have obey'd their Nasi or Patriarch as God for so they were to have obey'd Moses their first Nasi and his Assessors as they would have done the Assessors of Moses for to those in some manner they succeeded Thus Ignatius concerning Church Officers And to go higher yet up into the first Age for then St. Clemens of Rome undoubtedly wrote his Epistle if not before the Destruction of the Temple h there if we have not an Authority for the Distinction of them by proper names one from another yet we have a certain instance of the use of the word Lay before mention'd whereby they were discriminated from the rest of the Congregation The place whether speaking of the Jewish or of the Christian Church and of the Christian in likelyhood it does runs thus i To the High-Priest proper Offices are given and to the Priests a proper Place is appointed and on the Levites proper Ministries are incumbent The Layman is bound to Lay Duty Let every one of you Brethren in his own Station give Thanks or celebrate the Euchari to God having a Good Conscience and not transgressing the Rule of his own Office as he ought to do in Holy Decency § III. This was the certain Distinction in the Antient Church betwixt the Laiety and the Clergy and among the Clergy betwixt the Bishops Priests and Deacons and that it was deriv'd from the Language and Polity of the Jews we may have already discern'd in part from the account above given (a) Ch. 4. As to the Denomination of Laiety as distinct from the Tribe of Levi it must be directly understood to have been in use with the Jews by those who will understand the passage from St. Clemens last cited concerning the Jewish Priesthood And those too who will have it taken of the Christian Priesthood must conclude from the ordinary and current manner of using this Phrase in the beginning of Christianity that it had been receiv'd before and was as well known as that of Priest and Levite But besides the Ground also of this Appellation is from the Old Testament For there as the Nation of the Israelites is contradistinguish'd to other Nations and is separated for the Peculiar Propriety (a 2) Ex. 19.5 Deut. 14.2 and Inheritance (b) Deut. 4.20 of God the signification of the Greek word Clerus and they might all therefore have been properly stil'd the Clergy of God in respect of other People the meaning of the word Lay for in that regard they all are call'd Priests (c) Exod. 19.6 So in this Holy Nation one Tribe of it was more particularly Chosen and Holy and separated from the rest God not only claiming them to be his Own yet more Peculiarly and in the place of the First Born (d) Numb 3.45 but declaring Himself also to be their Peculiar and Inheritance (e) Num. 18.20 and might well therefore have been appropriately stil'd the Clergy even in respect of the rest of the Holy People who were then for distinction to be call'd the People Neither was this term the People at all dishonourable to the other Tribes for it appears by the Phrase of St. Luke (f) Acts 26.17 2◠to have been the name whereby they chose to distinguish themselves from the Gentiles or Nations and the disparaging acception which the Pharisaical Rabbins give it when they oppose it to the Disciples of the Learn'd and make it to signify the Illiterate and Rude seems to be rais'd by them for their own honour since they have come in to the room of the Priests and usurp'd their Privilege (g) See Ch. 4. §. 4. Next I am come to compare the several Officers of the Christian Church so distinguish'd as above with the several Officers of the
numerus qui ponitur à Septuaginta non convenit Poenitentiae satis miror cur ita translatum sit cum in Hebreo nec Literarum nec Syllabarum nec Accentuum nec Verbi sit ulla Communitas Alioqui de Judea tanto itinere missus Propheta in Assyrios dignam suae Praedicationis Poenitentiam flagitabat ut antiqua putrida vulnera diu apposito curarentur Emplastro Porro Quadragenarius numerus convenit Peccatoribus Jejunio Orationi Sacco Lachrymis Perseverantiâ—e deprecandi ob quod Moyses quadraginta diebus jejunavit in Monte Sina Helias fugiens Jezabel Dei desuper ira pendente quadraginta dies jejunasse describitur Ipse quoque Dominus verus Jona missus ad Praedicationem Mundi jejunavit quadraginta dies haereditatem nobis Jejunii relinquens ad esum Corporis sui sub hoc numero nostras animas praeparat h Greg. Nyss Ep. Can. ad Letoium 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 CHAP. IX § I. A Lent always and every where observed though not of Forty Days § II. Mr. Daillé's Objections against it from Cassian § III. From St. Jerome § IV. From St. Chrysostome § I. THE Reader may perceive by the liberty we have taken of this Digression concerning Baptism and Penance that we are now at leisure and free of all Difficulties concerning the Actual Observation of the Forty Season And indeed about the Fast of it Mr. Daillé henceforth gives us no trouble but against the Apostolical Right he is still looking out for Evidence But in that Point the Reader may have already understood how little we are concern'd who do not pretend to prove That a Lent of so many certain Days was observ'd in the latter end of the Apostolical Age but that some Lent there then was generally kept by all and probably of Forty Days by some in the second Century a thing that will not I presume appear so strange when we come to the Second Part of this Discourse Though therefore I am inclinable to believe that there was very anciently some regard had to the Number Forty and that this in process of time increased very much so as to have been the Solemn Number of Lent in many Churches by the End of the Third Century yet I am willing to allow from what we have seen of St. Chrysostome That this Observation grew so universal from the Recommendation of the Nicene Fathers Those Forty Days too though regarded and observed yet I do not say that they were all of them fasted and every where equally but am ready to allow what St. Chrysostome intimates (a) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 15. that in his time at Antioch some fasted Two some Three and some all the Weeks of them at their own Discretion and what Socrates will hereafter tell us of the same kind § II. That also which Cassian a Disciple of St. Chrysostome's says and is us'd to be produc'd upon this Argument as an unanswerable Objection against the Antiquity of Lent I have no need to dissemble It is to be known says he b that this Observation of forty days as it is now strictly injoyn'd had no being as long as the Perfection of the Primitive Church continued For those who enlarged the Fast throughout the whole Year were not confined by the necessity of this Ordinance nor within such narrow bounds of Fasting as if under a Legal Restraint But when the Multitude of Believers daily falling off from that Apostolical Devotion began to grow worldly then it was thought fit by the Bishops of the Vniversal Church That Men immersed in the Cares of the World and wholly ignorant if I may so say of any such thing as Abstinence and Repentance should be reduced to the Holy Duty by this Canonical Injunction of Fasts and compelled to it as it were by the Imposition of a Legal Tenth c An Injunction advantageous to the weak and which cannot be prejudicial to the perfect those who being under the Grace of the Gospel by their voluntary Devotion already exceed the prescribed Law I shall not now observe what some might venture to say That Cassian speaks all this upon Mistake supposing with Eusebius here what he evidently does in another place d That the Aegyptian Essenes describ'd by Philo were Disciples of St. Mark and that the Primitive Christians lived all at first in that Austerity I shall only remark that Cassian speaks here of the forty days and not of a Lent in general and of their being fasted by Injunction and not at Discretion And therefore those Perfect Men of his who fasted the whole Year might however have fasted some peculiar time before Easter with a more peculiar Devotion for that they fasted all the Days cannot be meant by him much less with an equal Abstinence and they might too some of them have so particularly fasted Forty Days though not by Legal Direction yet by their own Choice notwithstanding any thing said in this place If too we understand the time when these Forty Days were first imposed by common Consent to have been that of the Nicene Council this is no more than we before had from his Master St. Chrysostome But if he means some elder Times and he may the very first Age For they began to be luke-warm very early as we learn from some parts of the New Testament we have then a Testimony from Cassian of a much higher Antiquity for this Quadragesimal Institution However that which he adds concerning the Imposition of Forty Days whenever it began that it was no hinderance to the Perfect is very observable and to be consider'd by all Pretenders to Perfection For the Injunction he intimates though not made for the Perfect would however be kept by them and they would shew they were under Grace by Exceeding and not by Transgressing the Ecclesiastical Law In as much as he that fasts every day will not fail to fast forty and he that is ready to offer his whole Time will not hold back the Tenth § III. WE see how far Cassian's Expressions are from any Reflexion upon the Institution of Lent and those of St. Jerome alledg'd usually for the same Purpose apparently require the same Construction and need only to be seen if the Reader will bear the length of the Passage e Some may say if it be not lawful to observe Days and Months c. we then are under the like Guilt who observe Wednesday and Friday and the Lord ' s Day and the Fast of the Forty Season and the Holy Days of the Passover and the Joy of the Pentecost and the several Days that are kept in several Countries in Honour of Martyrs To this he that will give the plain Answer will reply That the Days the Jews observe are not the same with ours For we do not celebrate the Passover of Vnleavened Bread but of the Resurrection and the Cross neither do we in Pentecost reckon the Seven Weeks with the Jews
had before said the same thing (d) Iren. Lib. 3. Cap. 3. where he names the Succession of the Bishops of Rome down to Eleutherius of his own time the twelfth from the Apostles presupposing the same succession of such single Persons in all the Apostolick Churches and giving it as a Truth in matter of Fact on which he might found the Truth of the Catholick Doctrine and which the Hereticks themselves could not gainsay This plain Testimony of so Learn'd and Venerable a Person at no longer a distance from the Apostles seems unexceptionable but for the Church of Smyrna it is absolutely Unquestionable For there he speaks almost from his own personal Knowledge having himself been acquainted with Polycarp who was immediately ordain'd by the Apostles And as sure as this Polycarp was Bishop of Smyrna so plain it is there that Anicetus was of Rome in his time and from their very Conference together reported by this Irenaeus as we have seen (e) Part 1. Ch. 1. §. 4. it also evidently appears that such Bishops had been always there presiding of whom we know as many are mention'd in that place on occasion of the Paschal Dispute as reach'd up to the very beginning of the Second Century Neither need I dissemble that those Bishops are stil'd Presbyters in the place last mention'd since they are known to be Presbyters of the more eminent Degree and to be the same single Persons with the same superiour Character the same distinction still remaining between them and the inferiour Presbyters § II. I might well be content with the Evidence Tertullian and Irenaeus give for the Apostolical Distinction between the Bishop and the other Presbyters and may therefore presume that what I have further to say of the same nature from Ignatius will not fail to be credited For how unreasonable it is to suspect his Writings for the peculiar Dignity he attributes to Bishops and that is the greatest Argument of Suspicion they have has already appear'd from the little I have produc'd as the Reader may find both that and all the lesser Cavils at large and unanswerably refuted by our Bishop Pearson (a) Vind. Ignat. This Ignatius Bishop of Antioch being in his Journey through Asia the less to his Martyrdom at Rome about the year 116 at farthest (b) Dodw. Diss in Ir. 1. sect 17. wrote several Letters to the adjacent Cities thanking the Churches there for their Christian Courtesie to him which they had shew'd by their Messengers and express'd by other Tokens of Fraternal Love and taking at the same time occasion to make them some effectual return and confirm them in the Faith and Discipline of Christ These Letters as all others even the Apostolical would be much better understood by us if we distinctly knew the particular Circumstances of those Churches to which no doubt he speaks very properly tho' we now out of the same words can make but a general and sometimes a very ordinary sence But however something of the Circumstances of those Times and of his Intention in those Letters appears thro' them And as his Design seems to be to fortifie them against the Fears of the present Persecution and to warn them of the dangerous Heresies sprung from Simon Magus and then prevailing so he manifests a particular care against Schism and for the preserving the Government of the Church Before this time the Divisions of the Church of Corinth about their Governors had occasion'd a Letter from the Church of Rome by Clemens's Hand and now in Asia when St. John himself the surviving Apostle was dead and the supreme controuling Authority was extinct it is very likely that the Orders before establish'd were in some danger of being subverted by the Ambition and Unruliness of such whom the Spirit by St. Paul had expresly foretold to Timothy the Bishop of their capital City (c) 1 Tim. 4.1 Now that such Attempts were then made upon the Authority of Church-Officers and to the confusion of their Distinction may be gather'd from this Ignatius as it also appears from his manner of Expression that such a Distinction was no novel thing and of modern erection nor was it of slight concern In this view as we may suppose he tells the Ephesians That they ought to glorifie Jesus Christ who had glorified them to be of one mind and to say the same thing and to be subject to the Bishop and to the Presbytery that they may be wholly sanctified You ought says he to concur with your Bishop as you do for your Presbytery is as consonant to him as strings to an Instrument And let no Man be deceiv'd he that is not within the Altar falls short of the Bread of God and he that does not come to the Assembly is Proud and it is written God resisteth the Proud d Let us not then resist the Bishop that we may be subject to God And the more modest and condescending your Bishop is the more he is to be reverenc'd for he is to be look'd on as the Lord himself And lastly he speaks of their Concurrence with Christ that they may obey the Bishop and the Presbytery with an undistracted Mind breaking that one Bread which is the Medicine for Immortality the Antidote against Death This it seems was necessary to be said on this subject to the Ephesians amongst whom as amongst the other Asiatick Churches to whom he writes the Peace of the Church which St. John's presence had hitherto secur'd began to be disturb'd Whereas therefore in his letter to the Roman Church whose zeal in this case was so well known he makes no mention of their obedience to spiritual Governours in all his other letters to the Asiaticks he enlarges much on the same Topick and was it seems oblig'd to press that Duty even upon the Smyrneans where Polycarp himself was Bishop He does it after this manner Fly Divisions as the beginning or cause of Evils All of you follow the Bishop as Christ Jesus the Father and follow the Presbytery as the Apostles and reverence the Deacons as the Commandment or Mandatories e of God Let no one do any thing appertaining to the Church without the Bishop Let that be esteem'd a good Eucharist which is under the Administration of the Bishop or such as He shall appoint Where the Bishop appears there let the People be as where Jesus Christ is there is the Catholick Church It is not lawful without the Bishop neither to Baptize nor keep the Love-Feast but what He approves that is it which is acceptable to God So to the Philadelphians after Exhortation to Unity under the Bishop he adds Take care therefore to use one Eucharist For there is one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ one Cup wherein his Blood is united one Altar as there is one Bishop with the Presbytery and my Fellow Servants the Deacons As also in that to the Magnesians he directs Endeavour to do all things in the Vnanimity of God
Jewish But in this as for the Synagogue-Discipline and Worship of the Jews I am prevented by what has been said before and the Parallel must have manifestly appear'd betwixt the Bishop Priest and Deacon and between the Chief of the Sanhedrim or Synagogue the Elders and their Ministerial Officers For as every City had its Consistory in that manner Officer'd with the Jews so had it with the Christians though with no Subordination to any other higher Court as at Jerusalem in as much as that Local Dependance was now abolish'd The Chief of the Consistory with the Jews was either the Prince or his Deputy the Father of the Assembly Now the Title of Prince was I suppose in the Christian Church every where appropriated to Christ and the Bishop was as the Father in whom the Principal Directive Power was lodged The other Elders were his Councellors and Assistants in the Governing and Teaching of the Assembly and the Deacons had the management of Affairs Execution of Orders and Distribution of Alms belonging to their part as is notoriously known Thus was a Christian Church govern'd conformably to the Synagogue as a Society it was likewise as a Congregation The Instruction and Exhortation belong'd to the Bishop or else by his leave to the Presbyters or it was perform'd by such other proper Person as the Bishop should appoint Likewise Prayers were said either by the Bishop or Presbyters or else by the Deacons For these last answering the Jewish Chazans directed the People in their Devotions either repeating the Prayers before them or calling upon them to hearken to those repeated by others and also either Read the holy Scriptures or assisted those who were to Read them Neither do the Elders of a Christian and a Jewish Church agree only so far but farther yet For as the Jewish Elders since the Destruction of Jerusalem have thought fit to assume to themselves much of the Sacerdotal Honour and Privilege so have the Christian succeeded into the like Dignity nay are call'd by the same Name as we have seen in Tertullian's expression (h) See Ch. 6. §. 1. The High Priest who is the Bishop and as he phrases it discoursing about those Hereticks who making little distinction between the People and the Church Officers committed Sacerdotal Offices to the Laiety i and as we may in general have collected even from the discretive Appellatives themselves of Laiety and Clergy But the Elders of the Christian Church derive not those their style and Privileges from the Calamities of Jerusalem and the Usurpation of the Rabbins nor are they esteem'd Priests in vertue of their Presbytery though the English word Priest happens to come by the French Prestre from the Latin Presbyter On the contrary by Original appointment a Christian Priest corresponds as directly to a Priest of the Jews as a Presbyter does to their Elder or rather to speak more generally the Bishops Priests and Deacons of the Gospel answer not more to the Officers of the Sanhedrim or Synagogue than they do to those of the Temple to the High Priest or as we conceive his Great Vicar to the Priests and to the Levites For this is not only intimated by the Sacerdotal Titles the Governours of the Church immemorially had as we learn'd from Tertullian but plainly declar'd by their Office and all along allow'd and own'd by more Antient Authors They having as hath appear'd an Eucharistical Sacrifice still remaining to be celebrated by them a Pure Offering to be offer'd in every place and every where Holy Tables or Altars erected for that Service And this is what St. Jerom has said much to our purpose in that Letter of his which has been often miscited to the Prejudice of Episcopacy (k) Ad Eâ—â—gâ— And says he that you may understand the Ecclesiastical Traditions to be deriv'd from the Old Testament we are to know what Aaron and his Sons were in the Temple that Bishops Priests and Deacons are to challenge to themselves in the Church This Remembrance of St. Jerome was we see well founded and is if I mistake not attested by the structure of an Antient Christian Church such of which we have been speaking before (l) Ch. 6. §. 1 3. For whereas the first four Partitions of it wherein the Laiety were dispos'd have been seen to answer to the four first Courts of the Temple beyond which none but those of the Tribe of Levi ordinarily could go there yet remain two other Partitions the places heretofore of our Clergy to answer to the two remaining Courts of the Priests and of the Altar For so that part E Fig. 2. of a Christian Church which is next beyond the Upper Place of the Faithful now call'd the Quire D and reaches to the Rails of the Altar space stil'd by the Western Church Presbyterium and by the Greek Solea m where the Readers are said to have had a place n corresponds aptly enough with the Court of the Temple where the Priests stood who were not actually on Duty and where the Doukans Desks of the Singers were likewise placed (o) Lightf T. Service Ch. 23. And then the Higher space F Fig. 2. inclosed with Rails or Lattice where the Lord's Table or Christian Altar G stands apparently agrees to the Court of the Altar in the Temple F. Fig. 1. which was fenc'd in like manner And possibly the rais'd Seat T behind the Altar as the Archiepiscopal Chair at Canterbury now is where the Bishop sat with the Chief of the Clergy on either side answer not only to the Seats of the Elders in a Synagogue (p) Ch. 6. §. 3. but to the Place where the High Priest stood compassed with his Brethren round about as a young Cedar in Libanus by the Palm Trees (q) Eccles 50.12 either at the Altar it self G Fig. 1. or in the Porch H which was as high and from whence after the Burning of the Incense the Blessing was pronounc'd (r) Iâ—â—juf Ib Ch. 36. Maim de Cult Diâ—â— Tract 6. Câ—p. 6. §. 4. And this concerning the Agreement of the upper part of a Church with the upper Courts of the Temple I have added on this Argument not so much to confirm the Sacerdotal Title of Christian Priests for that seems to be otherwise sufficiently secur'd as to complete the Parallel already begun in the sixth Chapter and by which a new account is offer'd of the Modelling of these Christian Aedifices I know Architects derive the Design of our Churches from the Fabricks of the Heathen Basilicae or Publick Halls (Å¿) Pallad lib. 4. c. 5. lib. 3. c. 19. the upper end of which was rais'd and had a Semicircle in which Governours and Judges sat for Audience having before them a Table as we may presume and a space separated and Raild in and beyond that without the Bar a place something lower where those stood who attended the Court the remaining and lowest part of the Hall being open to