Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Validity of Non-Episcopal Ordination: The Dudleian Lecture Delivered in the Chapel of Harvard University on October 28th, 1888
Unless you call presbyters bishops, there was no E piscopacy at Corinth when Clement wrote his letter; there was no Epis copsey at Philippi when Polycarp wrote his. If there were time to discuss the evidence bearing on the question of the rise of the Episcopate, we should dwell on the conclusive proof afiorded by the testimony of Jerome. Over and over again, he afiirms that with the ancients, bishops and presbyters were the same. The motive of the change - which he says was gradually made - whereby responsibility was laid on one person, was that the thickets of heresies might be rooted out. He distinctly ascribes the superiority of bishops over presbyters to custom rather than to any actual ordinance of the Lord.1: From Jerome corroborated by other authorities, we learn that in the great Church of Alexandria, for a long period after the Apostles' time, when the Bishop's chair became vacant, the twelve presbyters placed in it one of their own number. If there was any act of consecration, it was merely the imposition of hands by the presbytery. This is evident from the purpose of Jerome in appealing to the Commentary on the Philippians, p. 213.
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