CHAPTER X. THE CLERGY. It is proposed to state briefly the early constitution of the Christian clergy.1 I. It is certain that the officers of the Apostolical, or of any subsequent, Church were not part of the original institution of the Founder of our religion; that of Bishop, Presbyter, and Deacon, of Metropolitan, Patriarch, and Pope, there is not the shadow of a trace in the four Gospels. It is certain that they arose gradually out of the preëxisting institutions either of the Jewish Synagogue, or of the Roman Empire, or of the Greek municipalities, or under the pressure of local emergencies. It is certain that throughout the first century, and for the first years of the second, that is, through the later chapters of the Acts, the Apostolical Epistles, and the writings of Clement and Hermas, Bishop and Presbyter were convertible terms, and that the body of men so called were the rulers -so far as any permanent rulers existed of the early Church. It is certain that as the necessities of the time demanded, first at Jerusalem, then in Asia Minor, the elevation of one Presbyter above the rest by the almost 1 The proofs of what is here stated have been given before in the essay "On the Apostolical Office,” in Sermons and Essays on the Apostolical Age, and are therefore not repeated here. And it is the less necessary, because they have been in later times elaborated at great length and with the most convincing arguments by Bishop Lightfoot in his "Essay on the Christian Ministry" appended to his Commentary on the Epistle to the Philippians, and by the Rev. Edwin Hatch in his articles on "Bishop" and "Presbyter" in the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, as well as in his more recent Bampton Lectures. These may be consulted for any further detail. universal law, which even in republics engenders a monarchical element, the word "Bishop" gradually changed its meaning, and by the middle of the second century became restricted to the chief Presbyter of the locality. It is certain that in no instance were the Apostles called Bishops" in any other sense than they were equally called "Presbyters" and "Deacons." It is certain that in no instance before the beginning of the third century the title or function of the Pagan or Jewish Priesthood is applied to the Christian pastors. From these facts result general conclusions of general interest. 66 Identity of That 1. It is important to observe how with the recognition of this gradual growth and change of the early names and offices of the Christian ministry, the long and fierce controversy between Presbyterianism and Episcopacy, which continued from the sixteenth to the first part of the nineteenth century, has entirely lost its significance. It is as sure that nothing like modern Episcopacy existed before the close of the first century as it is that nothing like modern Presbyterianism existed after the beginning of the second. which was once the Gordian knot of theologians has at least in this instance been untied, not by the sword of persecution, but by the patient unravelment of scholarship. No existing church can find any pattern or platform of its government in those early times. Churches, like States, have not to go back to a state of barbarism to justify their constitution. It has been the misfortune of Churches, that, unlike States, there has been on all sides equally a disposition either to assume the existence in early days of all the later principles of civilization, or else to imagine a primitive state of things which never existed at all. 2. These formations or transformations of the Christian ministry were drawn from the contemporary usages Origin of the Orders. elders of society. The Deacons were the most original of the institutions, being invented, as it were, for the special emergency in the Church of Jerusalem. But the Presbyters were the "sheikhs," the those who by seniority had reached the first rank — in the Jewish Synagogue. The Bishops were the same, viewed under another aspect- the "inspectors," the "auditors," of the Grecian churches.1 These words bear testimony to the fact (as significant of the truly spiritual character of Christianity as it is alien to its magical character) that the various orders of the Christian ministry point to their essentially lay origin and their affinity with the great secular world, of which the elements had been pronounced from the beginning of Christianity to be neither "common nor unclean." 3. It is interesting to observe the relics of the primitive condition of the Church, which have survived through all the changes of time. Vestiges of tive usages. The Bishop, in the second century, when first he became elevated above his fellow Presbyters, appears for a time to have concentrated in himself all the functions which they had hitherto exercised. the primiIf they had hitherto been coequal Bishops he gradually became almost sole Presbyter. He alone could baptize, consecrate, confirm, ordain, marry, preach, absolve. But this exclusive monopoly has never been fully conceded. In almost every one of these cases the Presbyters have either not altogether lost or have recovered some of their ancient privileges. In all Churches the exclusive absorption of the privileges of the Presbyters into the hands of the Bishop has been either resisted or modified by occasional retention of the old usages. Everywhere Presbyters have successfully reasserted the power of consecrating, baptizing, marrying, and absolving. 1 See the authorities quoted in Renan, St. Paul, 239. Everywhere, except in the English Church, they have in special cases, claimed the right of confirming. Everywhere they have, with the Bishop, retained a share in the right of ordaining Presbyters. At Alexandria they long retained the right of ordaining Bishops.1 We commonly speak of three Orders, and the present elevation of Bishops has fully justified that phrase; but according to the strict rules of the Church, derived from those early times, there are but two - Presbyters and Deacons.2 The Abbots of the Middle Ages represent in the Episcopal Churches the Presbyterian element — independent of the jurisdiction of Bishops, and equal to them in all that concerned outward dignity. The Deacons. 4. Of all the offices in the early Church, that of Deacon was subjected to the most extreme changes. Their origin (if, as is probable, we must identify them more or less with the Seven in the Acts) is the only part of the institution of the Christian ministry of which we have a full description. It was the oldest ecclesiastical function; the most ancient of the Holy Orders. It was grounded on the elevation of the care of the poor to the rank of a religious service. It was the proclamation of the truth that social questions are to take the first place amongst religious instruction. It was the recognition of political economy as part of religious knowledge. The deacons became the first preachers of Christianity. They were the first Evangelists, because they were the first to find their way to the homes of the poor. They were the constructors of the 1 See Lectures on the Eastern Church (Lecture VII.); Bishop Lightfoot, "The Christian Ministry," in Commentary on the Philippians, pp. 228–236. 2 It would seem that in those centuries the chief pastor of every city was a Bishop, and those who looked after the villages in the surrounding district were called country bishops (xwрemoкóпwv); whether Presbyters or Bishops in the later sense is a question which from the identity of the two Orders it is impossi ble to determine with certainty. 3 Renan, Les Apôtres, pp. 120-122. C most solid and durable of the institutions of Christianity, namely, the institutions of charity and beneficence. Women as well as men were enrolled in the order. They were district-visitors, lay-helpers on the largest scale. Nothing shows the divergence between it and the modern Order of Deacon more completely than the divergence of numbers. In the Greek, Roman, and English Churches, and, it may be added, in the Presbyterian Churches, there are as many Deacons as Presbyters. But in the early Church the Presbyters were the many, the Deacons the few, and their fewness made their office not the smallest but the proudest office and prize in the Church.1 The only institution which retains at once the name and the reality is the Diaconate as it exists in the Dutch Church. The seven Deacons of Rome exist as a shadow in the Cardinal Deacons of the Sacred College of Rome, but only as a shadow. They were the seven chaplains or officers of the Church. Their head was an acknowledged potentate of the first magnitude. He was the Archdeacon. Such was Lawrence at Rome, such was Athanasius at Alexandria, such was the Archdeacon of Canterbury in England. If any one were asked who was the first ecclesiastic of Western Christendon, he would naturally and properly say, the Bishop of Rome. But the second is not an archbishop, not a cardinal, but the Archdeacon of Rome. Till the eleventh century this was so absolutely. That office was last filled by Hildebrand, and in the deed of consecration of the Church of Monte Casino, his name succeeds immediately to that of the Pope, and is succeeded by that of the Bishop of Ostia. Since his time the office has been rarely filled, and has been virtually abolished.2 1 Jerome, Epist. ad Evagrium; Thomasin, Vetus et Nova Disciplina, i. ii. 29. 2 Thomasin, Vetus et Nova Disciplina, i. lib. ii. c. 20, s. 3. The Archdeacon of Constantinople ceased about the same time. The first instance of a Presbyter Archdeacon is A. D. 874. |