Paul, had for the first time ventured to leave it. Let any intelligent man consider the symptoms of degeneracy of which there are so many intimations in the New Testament itself, and the elements of corruption which could not but exist in the primitive Christian community elements the operation of which the Apostles foresaw and predicted; let him consider who the primitive Christians were-converts from Judaism or from heathenism, with the remains of their old prejudices cleaving to them still; let him consider their circumstances, living among pagans, under a pagan government, surrounded by the influences of a state of society of which paganism was the soul, obnoxious to the laws, and frequently assailed by the most active persecution; let him consider their disadvantages, with no Christian literature, with no libraries of theological learning, with no press to multiply books and readers, with no suitable schools for their children, and no colleges for the training of their ministry, compelled even to hold their religious assemblies under the protection of night, and in the deepest privacy; and then let him say whether any thing but a constant miracle could have kept the church uncorrupt for a longer time after the days of the Apostles, than the whole period from the days of the first settlers of New England till the establishment of the federal constitution.

"In every subject which men discuss, or examine," says our author, "there must be certain things which are assumed, or agreed upon, by all parties. These, like the axioms in mathematics, are the starting points of the argument." All this is true; and it is also true that almost every successful sophism, may be resolved into the trick which dextrously assumes, at one step or another in the course of the argument, some definition, some axiom, or some general proposition, which directly Vol. I.

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or indirectly includes the point in dispute. It is with great propriety, therefore, that Mr. Chapin undertakes to state distinctly, at the outset, what are the points assumed, from which his argument proceeds. We transfer to our columns his account of the starting point of his whole inquiry.

as

"One of the points thus assumed, or agreed upon in this matter, and which the common sense of every person must approve, is, that the apostolic history, contained in the Acts of the Apostles, was written to acquaint us with the fact, that the gospel was preached, and churches were formed; but not to detail the peculiarities of their organization;-that the apostolic epistles were written to congive them a platform of church organization and order. Hence, we are obliged to infer, as we know the fact to be, that the New Testament gives, in no one place, a detailed account of the organization and order of the apostolic church. This point being assumed, it is necessary to assume another, before we can proceed at all in the argument; and that is, that the apostolic churches, when fully established, had a uniform system of organization; and that the Apostles, in their writings, allude to, and speak of that form, with sufficient distinctness, to enable us to determine what it was.' pp. 19, 20.

firm the churches in the faith; but not to

This paragraph, to our eye, consists of two parts; first a concession on the part of the author, which virtually subverts every particular form of church organization, claiming to be jure divino; and secondly, an assumption which we, on our part, utterly refuse to concede.

The concession is, that no part of the New Testament was written for the sake of making known the constitution and organization of the Christian community, in the days of the Apostles. And in the face of such a concession as this, will any man ask us to believe that the writers of the New Testament were all Episcopalians of the jure divino school? If that glorious saint and martyr, Archbishop Laud-if Bishop Seabury, or Bishop Hobart-if Queen Elizabeth, or King Charles first or second-if Dr. Pusey, or

"The

Prof. Newman, or Bishop Whittingham, or the editor of the New York Churchman-if the Rev. A. B. Chapin, had written the New Testament, or even one book of that collection-could the Bible have been found so deficient in respect to an explicit "platform of church organization and order?" True Episcopalians could not have left this important matter in so neglected a condition. Accordingly, when Episcopalianism had grown to something like maturity, not far from the year 300, some writer or writers attempted to supply this glaring deficiency. A book was forged, entitled "the Constitutions of the Apostles,"-a most Episcopalian book; Laud himself could hardly have made it more So. It professed to have been written by Clement of Rome, as the amanuensis of the Apostles assembled in council, for the express purpose of prescribing all sorts of regulations for the churches. Canons of the Apostles," was anoth er work of the same kind, though much more compendious. During those glorious ages before the Reformation, which the Oxford doctors and their American co-workers are so anxious to restore, both these books had great authority, being considered almost if not quite genuine; though now they are universally regarded as forgeries, got up not far from the beginning of the fourth century. But if these are forgeries, how happens it that we have no genuine article of the same kind? If the Apostles made no canons at all, besides what we find in the New Testament, and if the New Testament was not written to give to Christians a platform of church organization and order, what ground can there be for the claim, that any particular form of church government, in distinction from others, exists by the divine law? So much for the concession.

The assumption which our author says he must make "before we can

proceed at all in the argument," is "that the apostolic churches, when fully organized, had a uniform system of organization." We do not volunteer to prove the negative of the proposition thus assumed as the basis of all argument; we only say that for our part, we do not at all concede what our author presumes to be conceded. We wait for proof on this point. Nor are we to be satisfied by being told that the assumption is not peculiar to Mr. Chapin, or to his party. We know that Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians, have all made the same assumption. We know that this assumption lies at the foundation of the Cambridge Platform and of Thomas Hooker's Survey, as really as it lies at the foundation of Mr. Chapin's argument. But all this is not proof. We want proof that the church at Jerusalem, in the days of the Apostles, and the church at Antioch, were organized and governed on precisely the same system. We want proof that the church at Corinth and the church at Babylon, had just the same officers, with just the same functions. The Christian assembly in each city which the Apostles and their fellow laborers visited, grew up by the side of the synagogue; its original and leading members being a secession from the body of Jewish worshipers. Who will prove to us, in the first place, that the Jewish synagogues of that age, in all parts of the world, in Egypt, in Syria, in Chaldea, in Cappadocia, and in Italy, were all constituted and regulated precisely after one pattern? And this being proved, who will prove to us in the next place, that, in every instance, the seceding body of Christians, deviated from the institutions and regulations to which they had been accustomed in the synagogue, just so far and no farther? We commend this inquiry to the attention of those learned men, who have more leisure for it than we have, and especially

to Masters of Arts, and the members of the Yale Natural History Society. The author of the work before us, has a highly original way of accounting for the troublesome fact, that the New Testament no where

lays down a platform of church government. Having assumed, as Having assumed, as we have seen, "that the churches planted by the Apostles, when fully established, had a uniform system of organization," he goes on to assume other fundamental propositions as follows.

"2. That, whatever this form was, it must have been tangible and visible; known to all the members of the church

es; and, therefore, could not be mistaken or forgotten.

"3. For this reason, the Apostles did not address epistles to the churches, in relation to ecclesiastical organization; that being a subject about which there was no possibility of mistake. But they did address epistles to the various churches, on matters of faith and doctrine, which not being thus visible and tangible, but depending on recollection and memory for their transmission, were liable to be forgotten or misremembered." pp. 21, 22.

Now we can not but think that if any thing ought to be reduced to writing, instead of being left to the uncertainties of remembrance and tradition-if any thing would certainly be reduced to writing by men of common sense, acquainted with the use of letters-the constitution and laws which were to be the "uniform system of organization," for a confederacy of newly formed religious societies, extending over the known world, ought to be, and certainly would be made "tangible and visible," by being written upon parchment, if not upon "tables of stone." Nay, may we not say that the only unwritten laws and institu tions which are possible in a community that has the art of writing, are such laws and institutions as have grown up by usage, slowly and unobserved, with the tacit consent or the tacit submission of that community-laws and institutions which, never having been positively

ordained by any recognized authority, can be referred to no lawgiver, and to no precise date at which they came into existence. Yet we are gravely requested to admit as a "fundamental principle," that the Apostles established in all their churches, from the Euphrates to the Guadalquiver, a uniform body of regulations, which they neglected to commit to writing, for the reason that the system was, intrinsically, and independently of all records, so "tangible and visible," that it "could not be mistaken or forgotten." Is this the way in which "uniform systems of organization," Episcopalian, Methodist, or Presbyterian, are set up and kept up in these days? Besides, if we take this for a fundamental principle, why are we not to adhere to it in our practice? If the "uniform system of organization," invented and put in practice by the Apostles, was a system which needed no written constitutions or canons, how can we admit, as identical with that, any system of uniformity, to which a written code of laws is indispensable? The church of England, the kirk of Scotland, the various national churches of America, which have for their essence uniformity of organization, present themselves before us, each with its own voluminous canons and constitutions, without which its uniformity would be impossible; and each of these various churches claims that its own organization is in precise accordance with that established by the Apostles. Why shall we not be allowed to tell them that, according to Mr. Chapin's "fundamental principle," they are all wrong? For, as he teaches us, the "uniform system of organization," established by the Apostles, was one which needed no writing to record it or define it; but without canons or constitutions, it was "tangible and visible, known to all the members of the churches, and therefore could not be mistaken or forgotten."

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Another point in the passage above cited, is equally remarkable in its bearing on the whole subject of inquiry. According to the fundamental principles from which our author's argument proceeds, the Apostles had no occasion to write any epistles to the churches, in relation to ecclesiastical organization; that being a subject about which," even in the absence of all written constitutions and canons, "there was no possibility of mistake." We will not dispute this proposition. Let it stand confessed that the Apostles, from the day of Pentecost till the latest of them finished his course, never had occasion to address a single epistle to a single church, on the subject of church organization. Let it stand confessed that in that primitive and forming age, when there were no settled usages, no precedents, and no written regulations, the organization of the churches, whatever it was, was such, so "tangible and visible" a thing, so known and comprehended of all men, that in all the churches there arose no serious question as to its principles or details-no dispute respecting the relative rights, powers, and functions of members, and of different officers at least, none of such a nature as to require any explanation or decision from an apostle. In one view, this fact, admitting it to be a fact, is a most significant phenomenon. Why may we not shut up the book here, with the conclusion that the system of ecclesiastical organization set up by the Apostles, was just about no system at all? How can the phenomenon be explained, but by supposing that wherever converts were made, under the teaching of the Apostles, and a Christian society or community was thus originated, the Apostles left those Christians to manage their own matters, as a society, in their own way, only charging them to keep their communion pure, and to hold fast those inspiring

truths, which were the object of their faith, and the basis of their hopes. To suppose that the Apos tles established in all the churches a uniform hierarchical system, with a distribution of powers and duties among various ranks rising one above another; and to suppose at the same time, that while that hierarchical system remained unwritten, and while the communities over which it was established, were all new, there arose, in a full quarter of a century, no occasion for the founders of it to give any explanation of an obscure or disputed point, is a supposition so near to an absurdity, that we might be excused from arguing against it.

The author seems to feel that after all his preliminaries are settled, and all his assumptions are granted, the inquiry upon which he is entering will not be without its difficulties. To illustrate the arduousness of the investigation which must ascertain the constitution and uniform organization of the apostolic churches from the New Testament alone, he supposes that a man born and educated in a South Sea island, and entirely ignorant in respect to the institutions and usages of civilized countries, is called to the task of ascertaining the organization of the American army in the revolutionary war, from a collection of General Washington's private letters, together with a few of his proclamations addressed to the army-the letters being written, during the progress of the war, to a few of the General's familiar friends who had left the army and were residing in a remote part of the country. "Such a man, under such circumstances," says our author, "would be situated very much as we are when attempting to determine the entire constitution of the apostolic church, from Scripture alone." This is a strong, but on the whole, not an unfair illustration so far as it goes. Yet it is somewhat defective.

To complete the analogy between the two cases, it must be supposed that by some fundamental ordinance of the government, all the rights of every citizen to his franchises as a citizen, to his property, to his liberty, to his life itself, are made to depend on his ascertaining, under all these disadvantages, what was the organization of the old continental army, and thus enrolling his name in some regiment organized and disciplined exactly after the revolutionary model. It must also be supposed that learned and ingenious men, who have given much attention to the documents, have arrived at different conclusions; and that accordingly, there are in existence several distinct bodies of troops differing from each other in various particulars. There are some who hold that no organization is complete, or truly revolutionary, or can have any validity in securing the rights of those who enroll themselves under it, unless it is commanded by a field-marshal; and such as hold this opinion, organize themselves accordingly. Others succeed in keeping up a very respectable discipline, with no officer of a higher rank than general. There are some who maintain, that the word of command must always be read out from a book, or else all order in the army will go to ruin. Others hold, that if the word of command is rightly given and promptly obeyed, the actual presence of a book is of small consequence, and may be, in some emergencies, a positive inconvenience. Some insist, that it is necessary to wear on parade a certain grotesque old fashioned uniform, with prodigious white facings. Others insist, that as the revolutionary armies appear to have been in no condition to bestow much attention upon their uniforms, and were generally glad to wear whatever coats they could get, the most suitable imitation of their practice, in that

particular, is for every man to appear on parade in plain clothes, as decent as he can afford to wear. Amid these distractions, the inquirer, as ignorant of all such matters as a South Sea islander, is to judge from a few of Washington's private letters, and a few of his general orders, which of these various organizations is the true "ancient and honorable" revolutionary army. And the question is not to be decided by inquiring which corps has the most of the old revolutionary patriotism, or which maintains in the greatest purity those political principles on which the revolution turned-such inquiries might lead him wide of the mark; the whole question, he must remember, is a question of order and organization only. He is to secure his rights as a citizen, only by enlisting in that corps which is officered and drilled after the true revolutionary pattern. However pure may be his patriotism, however enlightened and sound his political principles in all other respects-if he fails in this point, he has no rights as a member of society, but is thrown absolutely on the "uncovenanted mercy" of the sovereign power in the commonwealth.

Such are the preliminaries of the investigation-such the explanations which our author gives of the nature and arduousness of the inquiry through which he proposes to conduct his readers. We are now to observe his manner of conducting the inquiry itself "What is the Scriptural draught of the apostolic church?"

This general inquiry he divides into the following particulars: "1. What was the apostolic church? 2. Who composed it? 3. What were the powers and duties of its members? 4. What were its officers ? and 5. What were the qualifications required of, and the power and duty belonging to each ?" First, then, "What was the apos