REPLY TO MR MASON'S LETTER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2101, 24 December 1885, Page 3

REPLY TO MR MASON'S LETTER.

TO THK EDITOR. j Kir, -The Church in Ephesians IV. is not Any visible organisation. It is an invisible I community, owning a spiritual head, and embracing all who have a rominon faith, of whatever age or nation. This being so, the writer's superstructure fallt>, foi he assumes that as there cannot be two bodies the Church of England mint be the only body, because it conforms to the four marks of the true Church. But whero is the proof ? See MaiinseH's letter passim. I. Creeds: They aie mere human productions, and devoid of all authority on the point at isMic. They are the 'so-called Apostles' Creed, the Niceno Creed, and the Athanasun Creed. The la>-t is a pal pable forgery by an unknown write! in the Bth century. The Niccnc Cieed m its present form is not accepted by the Gieek Church. It dates merely fiom 325 A.D., or rather 381, the time when the Council of Niece* was enlarged by that of Constantinople ; the word " tilioque " was afterwards added by the Latin Church— an interpolation which has been the cause of that inveterate schism which exists to this day between the Eastern and I Western Chinches. All Protestant Churches accept the first, though not for the same reason as our opponents accept it. There in no evidence that it was written by the inspired men after whom it is called. Two of the articles in it, "The Communion of the Saints " and " The descent into hell," are not found in any Greek or Latin Creed during the hr»t two centuries ; nor weie they originally in the Apostles' or Roman Creed. The article of the " Descent into Hell " was only introduced into the Apostles' Creed about GOO A. o. What becomes, therefore, of this mark of a '• True " Church » 11. The Ministry (bishops, priests and deacons). Only two orders are mentioned in the Primitive Church— i.e.. Prpsbyters and Deacons. Our portion is — that the word Epi*copos (Bishop) i* never u-ed in the New Testament to signify the over-ight over Ministers, but only over the flock ; that it is never used to designate any special order of clergy ; that it m applied indiscriminately to all Presbyters as indicating a special function exercised by them all in common ; that there was no such order as that of bishops existing during the tir'-t century, nor did it spiing into exigence until afterwards, that in fact Presbytery proceeded Episcopicy, and that the latter is a mere outgrowth of the former. In proof of thin we submit the following taken from writers on the Episcopilian side — men of asknowledged learning and honesty :—: — In his Greek Testament \ol. 2, p 130, Alford says "The title Epi-eop >s as applied to one person superior to the Presbuteroi ( i. c. Presbyters) and answering to our Bishop appears to have b"en unknown in Apostolic times." In this edition Alford has made many emendations at the suggestion of the learned Bishop Kllicot, but in no place does the Dean depart from the position that in the New Testament Presbyters are " identical with Bishop*. " In his Epistle to the Philippians page 201 (1879) Lightfoot, Bishop ot Durham, observes "As late as the year 70 no distinct signs of Episcopal government appeared in Gentile Christendom." Again at page 218 " though he (Clement, Paul's fellow labourer) has occasion to speak of the ministry as an institution of the Apostles he mentions only two orders (i. c. Presbyters and Deacons), moreover he still uses the word Bi*hop in the olden sense in which it occurs in the Apostolic writings as a synonym for Presbyter." In his Bampton lectures 1880, Hatch, Viceprincipal of St. Mai y's, Oxford, admits '• that in the early Christian Church the whole of the administration of matters eccesiastical was in the hands of Presbyters who represented the supreme power." At the beginning of Lecture IV., p. 83, he says " with the exception (which is probably rather apparent than real) of two pa-sages I Timothy, 3. 2, and Titus, 1. 7, all general references to Church officers in Apostolic and Greek Ap>stohc literature hpeak of them in the plural. The names l.y which they are designated are various but interchangeable, and their variety is probably to be explained by the fact that the same officer or officers, having equivalent rank, had various functions But in the course of the second century, although fm the most part the same names continue to be used in the plural, one of them is appropriated to a single officer who evidently stands above the rest and in any enumeration of Church officers ii mentioned separately," This is all we Presbyterians contend for. It concedes to us the whole ground in dispute. We reason thus— as the ministers in the pmnitive and Apostolic Church held co-ordinate rank though exercising various functions, and as the supremacy of the episcopate was the result of the struggle with gnosticism iv the second century, it follows that the modern orders in the Church of England cannot be regarded as a mark of a true Church. 111. The Sacraments : There can be only two sacraments. Confiimation was a part of the ceremony of baptism in the early Church ; it is ho still in the Eastern Cburchw, but we have no warrant for it in scripture. If irregularity in the act of baptism can only be put right by the hands of a Bishop, and there is no such person in the early Church, then the act of baptism by an unordained person remains irregular — the Bishop notwithstanding. We are, we must confer it, curious to know hnw the writer of this letter could deliver himself out of this difficulty also. We pass over the reference to the Greek Church, some recent proceedings of Philotheos Brjennios, the Metropolitan of Sorrae in Macedonia, will uhow the curious how little reason this Anglo-Catholicism has to be proud of her Greek sister. We maintain that the Church during the first century was a pure democracy, Hatch, much to the chagrin of a certain party in the Church admits this in the fullest manner thus, at the close of his vol. p. 220, " But the survival of the Church, i.e., of the whole congregation of Christian people dispersed throughout the world, in not necessarily the aurrival of this or that existing institution. After each of its early struggles there was at least this murk of conflict tbjt, there was a re-adaptation of form. The supremacy of the Kpiucopate was the result of the struggle with gnosticism ; the centralisation of EccleMaitic.il government wan the outcome of the break mg-up of the Empire; and if tho secret of the past be the key to the future, the institution* of England are destined in the Pro\ idencfl of God, in the day/; that are to come, to shape themselves m new forms to meet the new needs of man. To the general character of theso forms many indications point. It would seem as though in that vast secular revolution whioh is. ao.com> pluhing itsolf, all organisations, whether ecclesiastical or civil, must be as the early Churches were, more or less democratic il, and the mo»t significant fact of modern history in, that within the last 100 years, many millions of our own race and our own Church, without departing from the ancient faith, have slipped from beneath the inelastic frame-work of tho ancient organisation, and formed a group of new societies on the basis of a chosen Christian brotherhood, and no almost absolute democracy, Rbv. J. S. Bovn.