also their duty, in a subordinate the ordination by imposition of degree, to promote its spiritual interests. The deacon of the Episcopal Church has nothing in common with such an office; he has no secular business; he is no assistant to the bishop; he is, in fact, but an imperfect presbyter, preparing to obtain, by another ordination, his full powers. We have to show that the primitive deacons managed the temporalities of the church, and in that, as well as in other respects, were appointed to assist the pastors. Whether they belonged to the clergy or the laity, is a question about names, and that too of an age after the Apostolic; we readily admit them to have been an order of spiritual men, and we wish they had more of this character in our own churches. In the passage under consideration, they were evidently appointed to see, that a suitable and just provision was made for the widows, and to manage the daily administration, confessedly the distribution to the poor. They were to serve tables, that is, to attend to pecuniary business, in order that the Apostles might unreservedly devote themselves to the word of God and prayer. The phrase, diaкove траTELαic, seems to refer to the tables of the money changers; тpaπεa frequently occurs in the sense of a money table, and in Luke xix. 23, in that of a bank. An appropriate passage is commonly cited from the decree of Ptolemy, respecting the manumission of the Jews, Josephus Ant. xxi. 2, 3. (See Krebs and Rosenmüller.) With good reason, therefore, all recent commentators have interpreted the pas sage "inservire pecunia," to attend to pecuniary business. On the other hand, it has been argued by some writers, from the qualifications required, and from hands, that the seven deacons were appointed not so much for secular, as for spiritual purposes. By none, perhaps, has this argument been more forcibly put than by Whitby on the passage; and by Mr. Hughes in his dissertation prefixed to his edition of Chrysostom de Sacerdot. But what less, I ask, could have been required for the due discharge of the daily administration, or for the sustaining of any official character in the Christian church, than wisdom and good character, and in an age when miraculous gifts were common, a large measure of the Holy Ghost. As to the imposi tion of hands, we do not see how this can support any view of the deacon's office, as this rite was used on almost all occasions in the primitive church. When multitudes received the imposition of hands, who were appointed to no office at all; when it appears to have been the common symbol of communicating supernatural gifts; surely nothing can be inferred from this rite, respecting the nature or duties of an ecclesiastical office. When it is said, that Stephen preached, and Philip baptized; I reply, it can be easily shown, that in the primitive church many preached and some baptized, who were neither bishops nor deacons; just upon the principle recognized in Dissenting churches, but disowned by Episcopacy, that every member is obliged to spread the knowledge of the Gospel wherever he has an opportunity. It has been sometimes said, that this was only a temporary appointment on a particular emergency, and not the institution of a permanent office in the Christian church;-that these persons are no where called deacons ;and that nothing can therefore be argued from this passage respecting the office in question. Then I say at once, whether these men were deacons or not, to the deacons of the primitive church was committed the superintendence of its temporal business. For, not to insist upon the frequent use of the word diakovia in the New Testament, to denote the superintendence of charitable donations for the benefit of the poor, the whole current of Christian antiquity represents the deacons as intrusted with the management of secular business. The declaration of the Council of Trullo upon this subject is well known, in which it is said, the deacons did not administer the sacred mysteries, but only served tables and attended to widows.* Bingham calls this a singular notion of the Council, and adduces in reply several expressions of the epistles of Ignatius, in which the deacon's office is certainly lauded and extolled sufficiently. But to those who can believe, that so early a Christian writer as Ignatius commanded the people to reverence the deacons as Jesus Christ, just as in another epistle he is made to tell the Magnesians, that their bishop presides in the place of God, to such it is a hopeless task to argue upon this question. Surely such expressions as these, were there no other reason to doubt their genuineness, must prevent us on a controverted subject from placing any dependance upon the epistles of Ignatius.† * Coun. Trul. c. 16. + As Pearson makes the extravagant exaltation of presbyters, which is common in these epistles, a plea for their genuineness, because, as he would have us believe, the honours and influence of priests declined in the third or fourth century; so perhaps some ingenious controversialist may construct an argument The distinction between presbyters and deacons, in the first four centuries, is apparent from the appellations which were commonly given to them. In allusion to the Jewish economy, the former were called priests, and the latter levites. These expressions frequently occur in acts of Councils, and in the writings of the Latin fathers; among the rest, Jerome often calls deacons levites, and says, expressly, that they are the ministers of tables and widows.* Previous to the martyrdom of St. Lawrance, the treasures of the church were demanded from him as deacon, (the archdeacon being at that time a deacon, and not, as now, a presbyter,) and he presented the widows, the orphans, and the infirm. In accordance with the spirit of their office, the deacons received the oblations of the congregation-distributed the elements at the Lord's Supperconferred with the bishop on cases of scandal, or improper conduct among the people-provided for the regular solemnization of divine worship-and performed a variety of services, which afterwards, when both priests and deacons grew too great for the duties of their offices, were committed to a host of people, called the inferior clergy. One part of these duties might perhaps be revived with advantage. My readers will smile when I tell them, that the apostolic constitutions direct deacons to overlook the people, that no one talk or sleep during divine service. Upon the nature of the office, we therefore conclude in the words of the fourth Council of Carthage, 66 a deacon is set for the antiquity of these epistles from their representing deacons as the holy Apostles, and even as Jesus Christ himself. * Hierom. Ep. 75. ad Evagr. apart not to the priesthood, but to a ministering office."* It remains to observe, that in the primitive church the office of deacons was not considered preparatory to that of presbyters or bishops. We readily admit, that many deacons were made both presbyters and bishops; because the piety, wisdom, and diligence, which qualified them for the former office, recommended them also to the latter, in an age when preaching was much less artificial than it is at present, and much less of a professional character was attached to Christian pastors. But to prove that the one office was not preparatory to the other, it will be sufficient to state, what all must admit, that on the one hand, many eminent deacons were never made presbyters, and on the other, there were many presbyters and bishops who had never been deacons. Of the former class, we find St. Lawrence the martyr, Ephrem the Syrian,† and many others; of the latter class, St. Ambrose, Cyprian, Nectarius, Bishop of Constantinople; Eusebius, of Cæsarea; Eucherius, of Lions; Philogonius, of Antioch, and many others. To make our appeal to Scripture, would the Apostle have said, "not a novice," if every bishop was previously to serve the office of deacon, of whom it is said, let them also be first proved? + I mention this industrious writer, because Mosheim in his Ecclesiastical History, Cent. iv. p. 11. ch. 1. § 10. calls him Bishop of Syria. It is strange the learned historian should make him a bishop, and still more strange, give him so large a diocese in the fourth century. It is, I believe, said by some body, that St. Basil ordained him a presbyter; but the otherwise uniform testimony of the ancients, is, that he died deacon of the church of Edessa. With regard to the number of deacons in each church, no uniformity was observed; only be it remembered, deacons were always attached to some particular church, that is, congregation of believers. In general, deacons were more numerous in the eastern than in the western churches. The church at Rome, and some few others, professing to imitate apostolic practice, always appointed seven deacons : on the contrary, at Constantinople, they were limited by one of Justinian's novels, to a hundred for the great church only. a It may be expected, that such paper as this should not close without some remarks upon the deaconesses of the primitive church, the archdeacon of the early ages, and as far as it can be ascertained, the amount of provision which, in the first three or four centuries, was made for the poor of the church. I must defer the consideration of these particulars until another opportunity. In the mean time, allow me to call the attention of your readers to the following inquiries. What means can be adopted to diminish the prevalence of the system of committing the business of a Christian church, the guardianship of the ark of the Lord, to unconverted men, that is, be it observed, to men with whom a believer is solemnly bound to form no unnecessary association whatever? We oppose an unholy ministry; can we counterance what is in effect, under the name of committees or managers, an ungodly deaconship? Again, in the present age of zeal and activity, when so many duties press upon the faithful pastor, often calling him from study and prayer; is it not desirable, I go further, is it not a Christian duty, that such deacons of our churches as have amassed considerable property in business, and will sustain no serious injury in leaving it, should retire from the bustle of the world, and consecrate themselves unreservedly to the glory of the Redeemer in that important office to which the voice of their brethren has called them? Lastly, what support is a church bound to afford to its destitute members, where there is a legal provision for the poor? in other words, is a church at liberty to leave its members among the paupers of the land, and thus to abandon "the daily ministration" to overseers and churchwardens? I confess, for myself, I should heartily rejoice, if Dissenters had as little dependance upon parochial relief as the poor among Quakers. I should rejoice, in our deed, if we were prepared to say, the widows and orphans, the aged and infirm among us, are brethren and sisters in Christ: we will cheerfully pay every demand for the poor of our country; but we will strain every nerve to support the household of faith; we have one sacred principle among us, if any man will not work, neither shall he eat; and we will preserve another inviolate, if any man cannot work, he shall not be thrown for his maintenance upon the world, from which we have received him. How this is to be effected, or whether, under present circumstances, it can or ought to be effected at all, I am not prepared to venture an opinion. R. H. THE BOOKWORM. A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme, by Meric Casaubon, D. D.-London. 8vo. 1655. THE generality of books, like plants peculiar to a climate, thrive only in that soil which gave them birth if they are removed they lose their beauty and wither. They may retain their peculiarity of shape, and stand as specimens of exotic productions on the shelves of a museum, but all their sanative virtue is blasted by the unkindly atmosphere they breathe. This is doubtless, one of the many reasons which operate to that dislike for obsolete literature which pervades, at least, many modern readers. Men whose minds are trimmed up in the guise of modern literary dandyism, drilled to learning under the rapid evolutions of Hamiltonian fuglemen, and taught to dance to the " March of intellect," do not come fitly prepared to read, much less to understand and enjoy, the quartos and folios of former days. The spirit and manners of this age are as are A genuine bookworm must antedate his life and all his sympathies, and by a kind of inverted metempsychosis be ideally present with, and feelingly alive to, all the wants, and customs, and fashions, and principles of the era of the book he reads. He must form another atmosphere in which his drooping exotic may again revive and blossom. To us, who better acquainted with the "Mercurius Rusticns," than with the " Times," and have been left far behind in the rapid march (or flight, as we should rather call it) of the present age, such a mental retrospection has almost become habitual. But to those who are not familiarized to ancient manners, the process by which the taste is formed to this " cavear to the multitude," is repulsive. In these days of mechanical excitement, when intellectual progression is accelerated by gas and steam engines, the very air which we breathe is impregnated with the corpuscles of modern philosophy, and 'tis scarcely possible to withdraw ourselves from the murky element with which we are surrounded, and inhale, even for a moment, the inartificial breath of antiquity. Scotch moods, German metaphysics, the gigantic nonentities of eastern mythology, arctic navigation, and tunnels under the Thames, are all uniting to mystify our understandings, and this intellectual opium spreads such a universal delirium, that nothing can excite our energies but what is prodigious and terrific. If the age proceed much further in improvement, there will be no living in it, and we have serious thoughts, before it is too late, of taking up our abode in one of the most dis. tant of the Hebrides, or in some lone nook amongst the Welsh mountains, where we hope to be out of the reach of this alarming spirit of progression. There, at least, we shall not be bullied by Irving's orations, nor fascinated by the gaze of the "modern seers.' The Cambrian precipices are as yet inaccessible to the "March of intellect," and as impregnable to the legions of modern science as to those of ancient Rome. Situated as we are, though more than a hundred miles from the centre of action, there is but little hope of remaining long uninfected, and if ever these steam-coaches should be invented, the contagion will be unavoidable. Though we amuse ourselves with the pertinacity of an eastern ascetic, and shun, as far as possible, all intercourse with the diseased, we sometimes fear, especially from some prognostics of recent appearance, that the mania has entered our humble dwelling. As yet one section of it is perfectly healthy-our study: there, nothing modern has been permitted to enter:-the air of it savours of antiquity. Its aspect is that of an Egyptian catacomb, where, in their several niches, repose the forms of the mighty dead, whose very dust is fragrant. is in such company that a black letter volume should be read: the garishness of a parlour, and its meagre assortment of ornamented and ephemeral literature but ill befit the gravity of age. Let our readers abstract themselves for a few moments and bear us company. Let them absorb themselves in the contemplation of the events of the seventeenth century, and consider every later period as a kind of parenthesis in history, a paragraph which contributes nothing to the integrity of the sense. From amidst the crowd of worthies who surround us, we will select this thin and time-worn octavo, whose pages amply graced, with learned Latin, and learned Greek, bespeak a person It more |