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Apostles, or at least with the next generation of Church teachers, as the genuine Dionysius Areopagita, Papias, Quadratus, Aristides and Castor, Aristo Pellæus and others. Even from the pestilent books of the heretics of the same early times, the great Catholic Institution might have been lawfully evidenced, as a plain matter of fact. Valentinus, Marcion, Basilides, Isidore his son, Julianus Cassianus, and many more might have been pressed into the service.

But in fact there would have been no need of either class of authorities. The Diptychs, or Church Registers, belonging to every Church planted by the Apostles, might have been got together, in every one of which would have been found the names of a regular succession of bishops, priests, and deacons, from the very day of their foundation.

But forgery was preferred; eighteen texts in favour of prelacy being foisted into the Ignatian documents; that men might discover in the traditions of the Fathers, a supplement to the simplicity of Christ. These Ignatian documents however, not only fail to support prelacy; they are its extirpation "ROOT AND BRANCH." Men do not forge where they have proper evidence; nor manufacture what comes naturally to hand. Manchester would soon be as badly off as if "engulphed like the cities of the plain," were any of our Loudons to discover a shirt-tree. So too when these forgeries were perpetrated, sterling reasons for prelacy could hardly have been "plenty as blackberries," unless indeed these jolly old knights of the quill are to be allowed the benefit of the well-known "compulsion" hypothesis. Here then we see the engineer "hoist with his own petard."

Nor is the remark of Gibbon, touching another imposture-the forgery of the Decretals and of the Donation of Constantine; the one the foundation of the spiritual and the other of the temporal power of the Pope's, altogether inapplicable to this cheat that has so newly come to light. "The merchandise was indeed profitable, and a few sheets of paper were sold for much wealth and power." Usually, as our readers know, paper is made out of linen,-here to our astonishment, paper is made into lawn and worked up into bishops' sleeves.

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To heighten the marvel, we next behold the substratum of the lawn alone remain, with bank notes as accidents. As the "last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history," the taint of FORGERY (which alone gave dramatic unity to the whole) shall be espied in Threadneedle Street, substance and accidents vanish like the halo of golden light round the dirty bulbs of Harlaem, and the "dull reality" of equally dirty paper, become the whole assets of a like bankrupt, but far more shabby speculation.

Giant Prelate is now fairly on his knees, his sword in hostile hands; and his life at the mercy of his conqueror. Eighteen passages in Father Ignatius, once formed his ample defence, so many thicknesses of parchment for his shield; seventeen of them have peeled off, and the remaining one now awaits our tender consideration. Justice must be done to this single passage-the small lot of "salvage" from the wreck.

Mr. Cureton knows of some clergymen who believe in the inspiration of Ignatius! To them, this "one text" is of course "Scripture," and will prove any doctrine." But they must at least, first shew that

VOL. I.

Q

Ignatius wrote it, which he assuredly never did. This text was very likely in the copy of the Syriac Translator, but it never was in the Martyr's autograph. Good use has already been made of the fact, that the Syriac Translator recognises such a passage: on that spot the battery is planted, which rakes with its destructive fire, the enemy's camp.

But when the seventeen are gone, the one stands naked and defenceless. For I. it is not merely its solitariness which renders it suspicious; but the passage stands ALONE, in a set of documents now KNOWN to have been falsified in favour of that prelacy, for which this isolated passage is adduced.

II. This passage is condemned by its tone and the awkward manner of its introduction,-in the midst of a personal letter to Polycarp. "Look ye (so runs this suspicious testimony) to the bishop, that God also may look upon you. I WILL ANSWER FOR THE SOULS of those who are subject to the bishops, and the presbyters, and the deacons."*

Here both the hand of a clumsy interpolator, and the "great swelling words of vanity" of a godless hireling are unmistakeable.

III. Not only these words, but the entire latter half of the Syriac Recension of this epistle, is every letter of it SPURIOUS. For the ancient Latin version, published by Faber of Etaples, three centuries and a half ago, ENDS significantly enough with the LAST WORD OF THE THIRD

CHAPTER.

Leaving out the solitary defence of bishops, priests, and deacons! This evidence against the genuineness of the single passage on prelacy, is the more valuable, because this very Latin version is everywhere else the most interpolated of all. Its testimony here therefore is beyond suspicion.

IV. The portion of the epistle thus wanting in the old Latin text, bristles with those uncouth Latinisms, which had long since rendered doubtful the genuineness of the Ignatian writings.

No Latinisms are found in those parts of the Ignatian documents which are recognized by all the texts. They are found only on the confiscated territory. So that here we find another, a later and clumsier hand, providentially defeating itself in setting up prelatical episcopacy on the pedestal of forgery.

V. The use of the term agneia in the fifth Chapter, not in the New Testament and early Christian sense of "chastity," but in the monkish sense of "celibacy," every dabbler in these matters knows to be a palpable anachronism. This new meaning is of too late a date to come from the pen of Ignatius. Priests had not then put false meanings upon the New Testament words. It was in after-times, that purity was translated into celibacy: and a bishop over a congregation, into a prelate over such bishops, These elements of popery-ascetism and spiritual lordship-grew up together in later ages.

Therefore these forgers overshot the mark and outwitted themselves; when they INVENTED A HIERARCHY as the twin monster with celibacy, and put them into the writings of Ignatius, who died before they were born! We shall just give the passage, and leave our readers to judge for

themselves.

"If any be able to abide in celibacy agneia in honour of the Lord's Ad. Polycarp, cap. vi.

condition in the flesh, let him so abide without boasting. If he boast, he is undone; and if he allow himself to be held in greater esteem than the bishop, (!) he is ruined."

The cause of the bishops is ruined, being based on such modern insertions into ancient writings. We are told lugubriously enough in these days, that the introduction of one bishop (as by the Pope) into the diocese of another, (as of one belonging to the English Church,) invalidates the orders of the invaded bishop: whereas all such bishops are usurpers; territorial jurisdiction, authority over one grade of clergy by another, is an invasion of the constitution of Christ; an aggression on the equality and liberty of Christians.

Any hierarchy is an assumption; and the gradations of lordship are based on forgery.

This conspiracy against the rule of Christ, and the freedom of his followers, may be consistently rebuked in the language of a virtuous heathen; words always chosen by type-founders, to exhibit a specimen of their art;-the beauty and variety of their leaden charges provided for every honest musket that is levelled at the foes of truth and goodness, of man and God.

Quousque tandem abutere CATALINA, patientia nostra? Quamdiu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata jactabit audacia? nihil te nocturnum presidium palatii, nihil urbis vigilia, nihil timor populi, nihil consensus bonorum omnium, nihil his munìtissìmus habendi senatûs locus, nihil horum ora vultusque moverunt? PATERE tua consilia non sentis? Constrictam jam omnium harum conscientia teneri CONJURATIONEM TUAM non vides? Quid proxima, quid superiore nocte egeris, ubi fueris, quos convocaveris, quid CONSILII ceperis, quem nostrum ignorare arbitraris? O TEMPORA! O MORES! Senatus hæc intelligit, consul videt, hic tamen vivit; vivit? imo vero etiam IN SENATUM VENIT: fit PUBLICI CONSILII particeps: notat et designat oculis ad cædem unumquemque nostrum. Nos autem viri fortes satisfacere Reipublicæ videmur si istius furorem ac tela vitemus!

As a free Christian adaptation of the sentiments of the Roman patriot, perhaps the following rendering might serve-" to what greater lengths Judas, do you mean to proceed in your abuse of our patience? How long is that senseless wickedness of your's, to wear the mask? When are you to cease bragging that your mountain stands so strong, you can never be moved? Have the cries of God's elect day and night, the wakeful eyes that guard the city of God, the misgivings of the simple Christian people, the accordant aims of the good of every party, the inviolable safety of the secret place of the Most High, the gaze of the indignant cloud of witnesses, no terrors for See you? you not that your plots are laid bare? That already your treason is foiled by being brought to the knowledge of all men? Who does not know what you were about in the darkness of the forger's den, the tools you egged on to do it, and the pious end you had in view? O what times, what religion we have lived to see! Everybody, from the Sovereign downwards, knows these things. And yet the conspirator lives! Lives, did I say, he even sits in the Parliament; he makes laws for the Church; he counts us as sheep for the slaughter. And we, excellent Christians as we are, think we have

done enough for the Commonwealth of Israel, if we can but manage to get out of the way of his rage."

After all prelacy still lives,

"magnificently proud,"

and carries its head high like a giraffe! So will the fly-wheel of some Titan steam engine spin some time merrily round,-after the boiler has burst.

The College of Augurs (the prelates of the old Roman Paganism) held many a conclave after the day when Cicero and his Right Rev. brethren felt their muscles so sorely taxed as they chaunted the pious Cantilena.

But at last, the lever of truth planted on the fulcrum of doubt, heaved a world of FALSEHOOD into the limbo of vanity.

Thus much is very certain;-the Ignatian way from Jerusalem to Canterbury, is no longer a royal road. The valley of the Ascetics presents an impassable gulf. It is a veritable Slough of Despond, in which the prelatical pilgrim may "tumble," but whence he will never emerge. At best, crosier and mitre, and lawn and apron, must be left sticking in the mire. No "steps" placed there by "the king," can be tracked across the slime. PLIABLE may wallow there, but it is not the place for CHRISTIAN.

The researches of Mr. Cureton stand as a warning to all travellers, to avoid that road.

The Monks of Nitria have preserved the work of that Oriental Martin Mar-prelate; whose Syriac Translation of Ignatius, is now safe in our British Museum; as a providentially preserved protest against our "spiritual peers." Mr. Cureton has done good service in bringing before the learned world these important facts, some results of which we have here presented to our readers.

At no future visitation dinner, sparkling with "good old Church port, and plenty of it," will episcopal ears ever be shocked with the unseasonable toast-"the Monks of Nitria!" The lordly prelate, must now seek some safer foundation, than a forged cheque in the name of Father Ignatius.

III.

"EVERY PLANT WHICH MY HEAVENLY FATHER HATH NOT PLANTED, SHALL BE ROOTED UP."-(Matt. xv. 13.)

In those who think a national Church right, dissent is a sin; in those who think it wrong, silence is a shame.

CHURCH POLITY.

BY ANDREW COVENTRY DICK, Esq.*

THE re-publication of this work, will be hailed by all earnest and intelligent enquirers into the central problem of the age, the relation of Government to Religion.

The investigation is entered into with all the clearness of the logician, and the calmness of the philosopher, joined with the sincerity of the patriotic Christian.

Such a searching and dispassionate examination of this great question, will do much towards removing prejudices, and preparing the way for its final adjustment.

The little wisdom by which the world is governed, is sufficiently indicated by the fact, that we have still to settle the province of Government. The primary distinction between savage and civilised life consists in a greater fixedness of the dwellings and habits of the people, as well as of the supreme power and the constitutional administration of justice. But a whole nation may be barbarians, when no longer savages, and this they are, wherever the fixed government or constitution is in the power and management of an absolute hereditary autocrat. In this state of things the people are serfs, and the autocrat their proprietor, who taxes at his sovereign pleasure, or sends them forth to battle as sheep to the slaughter. The next step in political society is the uprising of antagonist powers in shape of lords or barons who wish to share in the sovereignty, constituting so many principalities under the sovereign, and modifying his absolute will by their several interests and purposes. This is the second stage, wherein the aristocratic element enters into the ruling power. Nations that make any advance, next reach to another stage a middle class, of industry, intelligence, and commerce-whose combined power demands a further extension of the ruling authority; and thus there is added to a House of Lords a House of Commons, which involves in name a further development from the awakened intelligence of the labouring classes, and so in theory embraces the element democracy-the sovereignty distribuA Dissertation on Chuch Polity. By Andrew Coventry Dick, Esq, Advocate. Ward and Co. Paternoster-row, London.

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