EPISCOPACY

(Gr. emaxoTros, an overseer.) The government of a church by three distinct orders of ministers— bishops, priests, and deacons. The nature of the argument upon which this constitution is best defended will be most clearly seen in a quotation from Mr. Short's History of the English Church. Speaking of the points at i ue between the Presbyterians and the Church party in the reign of Elizabeth, he says, " Were there three distinct orders in the primitive church? and if so, was the right and office of ordaining peculiar to the highest of these1!" He then proceeds to argue thus:— " In the apostolical history, as contained in the New Testament, these questions are not clearly answered, and there is much indistinctne about the names of bishop and priest or elder; but if we suppose, by way of hypothesis, that there were bishops, priests, and deacons, we shall find no statements which cannot be easily reconciled with the supposition. As we proceed with ecclesiastical history, those same traces become more decisive, till we find that at an early period the questions are both answered in the affirmative; and we infer, therefore, that unle it can be shown that a change in this particular took place, we may presume that the same ecclesiastical constitution existed from the time of the apostles. A Presbyterian might argue that in the apostolical history of the New Testament there is nothing which militates against the hypothesis of the two orders only, at least nothing which proves the point; that. St. James might have been the chief elder, the moderator of the church of Jerusalem; that Titus and Timothy might have held no higher office than that of dean in a cathedral church, or archdeacon in a diocese; and that as the pres bytery had the power of ordaining, they, as its super in ten dents, were directed by St. Paul to 6et all things in order. But then this hypothesis does not account for the introduction of episcopacy, without even a hint from the historians that any alteration in the church government was effected. When to this it is added, that there never existed a church without episcopacy till the Reformation, the proof seems as strong as moral proof can be, that it is most probable [s. 424]