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of Parliament . St . Bartholomew was pressed to take the see of Jericho , but he preferred holding the deanery of Naptbali , with the great living of Succoth , which last was of the clear yearly value of 8000 / ., and besides was encumbered with very little duty , as there were only 700 persons in the
parish , 500 of whom did not believe in the Christian religion . St . Clement died worth twelve hundred thousand pounds in the three per cent , consols , the careful savings of forty years' episcopacy ; and Irenaeiis , having been a tutor to a Consul's son , had the primacy of Rome offered him , which however he refused , being content with the bishoprick of Lyons . " —Letter , p . 4 .
Figures of speech aside , Mr . B . proceeds to point out , in plain terms , two principal items in which the primitive Christian Church and the present English Church are essentially different . " 1 . There were no diocesan bishops ; 2 , there was no tithe or church property ' in the primitive church . He proves , by very obvious scriptural criticism , what to us never seemed difficult of proof , though Mr . Wild labours hard to make oqt the contrary , * that bishop means the same as presbyter or elder itt the
language of the New Testament , and that the distinctions of orders in the priesthood are of subsequent origin . He maintains unopposed his second position , at least as relates to tithes , Mr , Wild allowing at once that in the early church the tithe system was out of the question , from the difference of circumstances ; while , as to church property , the only answer attempted is , that the Christians contributed voluntarily to the common fund to a large amount .
The worldly spirit of the Establishment , the worldliness of its priests , ( with honourable exceptions , principally among the curates , ) and the poll * tical manoeuvring by which vacant bishoprics are filled up , ( with vety few
. , - , . , . * i ? Mr . Beverley had appealed to Acts xx . 28 , where Paul calls the elders of tho Church of Ephesus bishops ( reudered overseers in the Common Version ) j and to Titus i . 5—7 , ( f that thou should st ordain elders in every city , if any be blameless , " &c , ' * for a bishop must be blameless . " In reference to the . former passage , Mr . Wild says , that every bishop was an elder ^ though not every elder a bishop , Jfrst as every English bishop is a clergyman , though not every clergyman a bishop ; and wishes us to believe his dictum that these elders of the Church of Ephesua were all diocesan bishops * The latter passage he understands to mean that Titus should ordain elders into bishops in every city ; promote them from priests into diocesans ; and appeals to the good sense of his reader to decide whether this interpretation is not the most natural , ** arid ordain elders ( bishops ) to every city . **
By this rule , when- Biigllsh priests are ordained , they become bishops . Mr . Wild then itefera to three passage * from the Epistles of Ignatius , one from Cyprian , and another from Jerome , as proving three , aider * of clergy to have subsisted , viz . bishops , priests , and deacons . But the Epistles of Ignatius are too questionable to be trusted , even as proving what waa the case in his day ; and the other two references ( strange to say ) speak only of the order of "bishops , without deciding whether they differed ( as perhaps they might in the third * and fourth centuries ) from the elders of the Hew TeBtan » ettti- ~( Sce pi . 15—24 . )
Untitled Article
On the Corrupt State vfthe Church 6 f Mrtgtund . 629
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1831, page 629, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2601/page/53/
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