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    But before we admit the obligation of this conformity , is it not necessary to settle the previous question , whether the circumstances of the first discip les may not have been so widely different from any thing which exists at present , as to render any attempt to adopt their plan of church government as a model for our guidance unadvisable , oV even impracticable ? We find mention made of bishops , or presbyters , and deacons ; but we have also

    deaconesses , prophets , interpreters , discerners of spirits , angels , and others , exercising various offices , probably having a certain relation to the spiritual gifts with which the primitive churches or particular members of them were endowed . But the precise nature of these offices is no where distinctlyexplained ; and , in fact , there is no point in Christian antiquity involved in greater obscurity than the internal constitution of the churches or separate societies of disciples in the apostolic age . If it be said , that these officers may now he dispensed with , inasmuch as we have no distinct account of

    their functions , this is at once to take the discretionary power into our own hands , and to determine for ourselves with respect to apostolic institutions , the question , which are , and which are not , suitable to our altered circumstances . Such being the state of things , and the principle of expediency being of necessity introduced , it seems to us that we may as well be consistent at once , and fairly confess that this and this alone , ( taken of course with a reference to the spirit and general character of the Christian dispensation , ) can now be depended on as a guide in the constitution of Christian

    societies . We cannot , therefore , assent to Mr . Armstrong ' s conclusion in favour of the scriptural authority of his favourite form of church government . If we must needs have such a form at all , by which is meant a regularly constituted authority exercising a control over a number of distinct Christian congregations , it appears to us that the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians are

    precisely upon a level . Neither of these forms is any part of Christianity , it is only a mode of inculcating it ;* and either the one or the other may be recommended as best adapted to certain local or accidental peculiarities in the community among who m * it is introduced . But the adjustment of their comparative merits is a question with which we , as congregationalists , have nothing to do ; and we leave the parties whom it concerns to settle it as they think best .

    If , however , the discussion of this question involves that of political establishments , we shall frankly say , that any thing we have observed of the proceedings either of synods or conferences , gives us no reason to think we should mend ourselves by a change . Indeed , we cannot refrain from expressing our surprise at the claim which Mr . Armstrong sets up for his church , as " the defender of the rights of conscience , the parent of civil liberty , and the nurse of religious freedom , " What the character may be of the Synod of Munster , to which our author belongs , it is not for us to say ;

    but we need not look farther than to their brethren m another province for a delectable specimen of arrogant illiberality ; and surely , if ever there was an intolerant , bigoted , persecuting race of men on the face of the earth , it was the Presbyterian covenanters of Scotland and England , during the civil wars of the seventeenth century . They had , indeed , exerted themselves to overthrow the dominion of episcopacy when they felt the weight of its oppression ; but they had no sooner accomplished their object , than they set themselves to build again the things they had destroyed , and thus made

    • Sec Paley ' s candid acknowledgment ; Moral Philosophy , Book vi . ch . x .

    Untitled Article

    Ordination Service . 4 ] f

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1829, page 411, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2573/page/43/