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    catechumen should have recourse to his Testament to determine ? the truth of the answer , subjoins in a note- — " The three orders and offices were distinct in the days of the apostles ; their titles were not equally so ; but the certainty of a fact may well supersede all dispute about a name . " Now , I would ask , how

    is the existence of any office , or order of men to be ascertained in history but by their names and titles ? If new names and titles are now invented , give us the original ones ; if the three orders existed in fact , tell us why not in name also . Lay before us the denomination which they actually bear in the New Testament . The invention of new titles shews a want of old ones , and decides against the catechist . What sacred writer

    calls Christian teachers priests ? They use the term , I acknowledge , and sometimes in a good sense , but oftener in a bad . Priests , in the vocabulary of the New Testament , are generally persecutors , enemies of truth and righteousness , persons grieved that ignorant and unlearned me ? i ( and such were some of the apostles ) taught the people ; they are pharisaic Jews , or superstitious pagans ; when the word is applied to

    Christians , it is by a bold trope , mid they are all called priests tmto God , and consequently there can be no particular order of them . Had the Bishop been better read in the Acts of the Apostles , he would have seen that deacons were not " appointed by the apostles / ' but chosen by the church or

    congregation , aqd that they had no more to do with governing the church and administering ; ordinances than have our parish beadles * A little further on , our Bishop teaches his scholar , that iC an inward call and outward ordination to the ministry" are

    indispensably necessary . This inward call is insisted on in the office of ordination of priests and consecration of bishops , of the church of England , and must therefore at any rate ba maintained ; bvit it is curious enough that the ministers of that church commonly deride him who pretends to it as a fanatic , In order to get into the church , they swear stoutly that they are moved by the Holy Ghost ; and when once they are fairly

    in it , they are ready to excommunicate the simple Christian who , taking the church at its word , waits for divine illumination , and acts as he is impelled by spiritual inovings . This is as amusing a scene as that exhibited by an aspiring ecclesiastic * who , after havino ; intrigued , and fawned , and laboured all his

    life to gain a bishopric , declares most fervently , whe $ i the mitre is about to be placed upon his head , Nolo episcopari , " You sha ' n ' t make me a bbhop . " Having saved his orthodoxy by assorting the necessity qf an inward call , the good JBishojp thus proceeds : " Q . Is an inward call to the jninistry sufficient without the outward ordination ?"—A * " No , " But why ,

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    634 Ifp . Burgess ' s Principles . "

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1806, page 634, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1731/page/18/