The light that streams from Him, a calm, divine effulgence, not generated from earthly sources, lends brightness to all that throng around Him, recognizing his regal and beneficent dominion. The whole background of this immortal canvass, which a divine hand has limned, is filled with those, who, with upturned prophetic gaze, await his coming; the progenitor of our race, to whom was given the first evangelic promise, Abraham, the father of the faithful, Moses, the leader and lawgiver of Israel, the long line of Judea's kings, with David as its crown, and of Judea's prophets, most sublime in Isaiah; while standing more remote, yet still expectant, are the representatives of the vast heathen nations, which, by a divine providence, had in many ways been prepared for that glorious Advent, being congregated in one vast empire, pervaded by one predominant speech. And before Him, and all around Him, is gathered the glorious company, the goodly fellowship of those, who for eighteen centuries, in every clime, have received from Him the very law of their spiritual life. There are Paul, and John, and Peter, who, with words of fire and promise, kindled the beacon lights among the nations; there is the imperial Cæsar, who unfolded the radiant cross as the harbinger of victory; there are the Eastern and the Western monarchs of the riven Roman empire, equally confessing the name of Jesus; Christian bishops and patriarchs, lordliest amongst them, those of Constantinople and Rome, bring the homage and fealty of the greatest ancient cities; Leo is there, with adoring gaze, while shaping the ruins of the Western empire, and by his side is standing a rude German warrior, awed into submission to the faith; Charlemagne represents the ninth century, the beginning of medieval times, bearing the crown placed upon his brow in the name of Christ; Hildebrand, the most ambitious of pontiffs; Aquinas, the subtlest of scholastics; Bernard, the most zealous of mystics; Wycliffe and Huss, the progenitors of reform; as well as the knights of a Christian chivalry, Godfrey and Richard of the Lion Heart, and the adventurous explorers of new continents, all meet in that throng, and continue the succession of the faith, through the struggling light and darkness of these middle ages, and all the light they wear is cast upon them from that reverend, central form. And those, too, that may stand on this historic pic

ture, as the impersonations of the kingdoms, tendencies and centuries that since have been; Luther, Calvin, Fenelon and Edwards, as divines; Bacon, Descartes and Schelling, in philosophy; Michel Angelo, Raphael, Milton, Shakspeare, Haydn and Mozart, in the various spheres of art; the combatants in the conflicts engendered by the Reformation; Spain's haughty monarch, ruling Europe's destiny in the sixteenth century; the king of France, prevalent in the seventeenth; England's royal line, triumphant in policy in the eighteenth; and the freer image of Liberty that stands for our own Republic, the wondrous growth of the present age; these forms, which live upon the historic canvass, can you group them all around any other centre, or see them truly in any other light, than that of Him, who is the centre of the Kingdom of Redemption, the rightful Monarch of our earth?

It is He who has ruled historic times, and given them their shape and their law; it is He who has carried the race through the crises of its destiny, that in the consummation of that destiny it might be drawn closer to Himself. The divine right of popes, of kings, and of the people, has been in succession contended for, that the divine right of the Great Head of the Church might be seen to be the rallying-place, and the watchword, for the family of man, in its progress towards the end for which it was made.

And of this vision of human history, it is the triumph and seal, that it is not an imagination or a theory, but the open face of history itself, the legitimate summary and rendering of its facts. And in this point of view it contains the sum, and forms the conclusion of our argument. For Christianity, as has been well said, in its inmost spirit and highest sense, is historical. Its truths are truths of fact, inscribed upon the surface, looking out from the heights and up from the depths of all the annals of our race, so that the whole of human history, according to Edwards' unrivalled scheme, becomes one body of divinity, presenting to us an untroubled mirror of the wisdom of God, and the image of his goodness. And thus is human history the very theodicy of God, a grander apology for the Christian faith than the wisdom of a Butler, or the genius of a Pascal, ever framed.

Is it given to man to know anything more sublime than this spectacle of the building up of the city of God? Through the fickle fortunes of men we read the calm and sure order of an unchanging plan; in the growth and decay of states, we trace the unhasting yet unresting progress of a kingdom, ordained ere time began, to be completed when time shall be no more. It is the transfiguration of the history of our globe, in which a divine glory breaks through and irradiates all that is mortal and transient. In the human race are fulfilled the prophetic intimations, which have been found in the work of creation itself; through his six days of travail and conflict, man is prepared for the full glories of a Sabbath of eternal rest.

ARTICLE II.

Ancient Christianity exemplified in the private, domestic, social and civil life of the Primitive Christians; and in the original Institu tions, Offices, Ordinances and Rites of the Church. By LYMAN COLEMAN. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co. 1852. pp. 645.

A HIGH CHURCH newspaper, sometime ago, by way of diverting attention from certain unfortunate developments in the Episcopal communion, recommended Presbyterians to occupy themselves with these two questions, "When did Episcopacy begin?" and "Who ordained John Calvin ?"

As to the last of these questions, we are not careful to return an answer. It is a matter of no consequence to us, who ordained John Calvin, or whether he was ever ordained at all. The Church of Christ, under the form in which we embrace it, is not built on John Calvin, any more than the doctrine of justification by faith is built on Luther. Our ecclesiastical and doctrinal system is not shaken a hair's breadth, though we admit that Calvin was just as much a layman as Jeremiah or Ezekiel were. He was, at all events, a much better, as he was a much greater man, than ninety-nine in the hundred of those

soi disant apostles who have been characterized with so much pith as "not prelates, but Pilates; not pastors, but wasters" &c. Presbyterianism remains equally valid and legitimate as a system of Church government, no matter what becomes of Calvin.

But how does the case stand with Episcopacy? Claiming to derive exclusive authority to minister the word and sacraments through an unbroken succession of episcopally and canonically ordained men from the Apostles down, it is bound to establish the soundness of each individual link in the series. Episcopal writers do not hesitate to affirm, that if the connection fails at any one point, the possibility of an authorized ministry is gone forever.

We beg leave, therefore, to retort the question as follows: Who ordained Sacerdos? Who ordained Rusticus? Who ordained Lupus and Lupicinus? all standing in the list that connects existing Episcopacy with St. John. These names, with the proof that they are something more than shadows, and that the individuals bearing them were episcopally and canonically ordained by competent ordainers, ought to be familiar to the believers in an "apostolical succession." We must presume they know all about the ordination of each several one of them, if they would only tell us; for it is too absurd a begging of the question to refer us to faith and the promise of Christ to be with his disciples to the end of the world, as is sometimes done.

In the mean time, by way of a call for the evidence in question, we shall venture to take certain liberties with the characters of the individuals aforesaid. We affirm then that Bishop Rusticus was ordained by only a single person, and that person his father, though notoriously unfit for the sacred office; a proceeding in flat contradiction to the Canons. The seventy-sixth apostolical canon declares that if a bishop, through family partiality, shall admit to the episcopal dignity, a brother, son, or any other kinsman, the ordination shall be invalid, and he himself be punished with suspension from office. We affirm that Bishop Sacerdos, at the time of his ordination, was living with his second wife, contrary to the Canons; and was not capable therefore of the episcopal dignity. We affirm that Bishop Lupicinus, being a Jew, procured himself to be ordained by two

presbyters, through the power of money; which made him no better a bishop than Simon Magus; and as for Bishop Lupus, we assert that he was the subject of a voluntary mutilation which absolutely disqualified him for the sacred office.

If any body fancies these are mere random assertions, all he has to do is to hunt up and produce the evidence. We may presume that every Episcopal presbyter who believes that the validity of his own baptism, and his right to preach and administer the sacraments, depends on the question, whether Lupicinus was or was not episcopally ordained, can tell us who ordained him, and also when and where. For the present, we assert the facts to have been as above set forth; and pause for a reply. The question, who ordained Lupicinus? is unspeakably more momentous to Episcopalians, than who ordained John Calvin?

can be to us.

Leaving this point, however, we proceed to the other, which is to be the main subject of inquiry in the present Article, "When did Episcopacy begin?" The querist assumes, of course, that any attempt to develop the origin of Episcopacy, will show it to have been instituted by Christ himself. We accept the issue; and undertake to show that Diocesan Episcoрасу did not begin till two hundred years later, or not till after the opening of the third century.

We

We shall spare our readers a great deal of what is usually brought into this controversy; and with which they are therefore familiar. We wholly pass by the Scripture argument. We dismiss Ignatius and all his Epistles, spurious or genuine. have no occasion for the threadbare testimony of St. Jerome, conclusive as it is, to the point of the gradual introduction of the Episcopal system. If we can show Episcopacy at the beginning of the third century of the Christian era, only getting to be a system; gradually developing into being; we can dispense with every thing else.

If Episcopacy was established by Christ and his Apostles, and was universal two hundred years after Christ, then at the beginning of the third century we should have this condition of things all Christendom divided into dioceses, each governed by a bishop with a number of presbyters under him, each of whom has charge of a separate congregation.