honour without reproach (ἐκ τῆς ἀμέμπτως αὐτοῖς τετιμημένης λειτουργίας). We may notice also the phrases of chap. 59, 'God the creator and bishop of every spirit'; and of 61, 'We acknowledge Thee through the high priest and defender of our souls, Jesus Christ'; and 64 again, 'through our High Priest and defender, Jesus Christ.'

To me it seems plain that the actual form taken by the Corinthian insubordination and sin against the unity and order of the Church was an intrusive transgression, by those unauthorized because unordained, beyond their appointed place and line in the Christian service (ὡρισμένον κανόνα τῆς λειτουργίας): and that this intrusion into the presbyteral office meant specifically an intrusion into the offering of the gifts,' which was itself a sin against the true high-priesthood of Jesus Christ, who is called both the 'High Priest of the souls' and the 'High Priest of the offerings' of Christians. It is plain also that this revolt of which he thinks and speaks with such exceeding gravity, was to the mind of the writer unreservedly parallel with the great revolt against the Aaronic priesthood in Numbers xvi., xvii. In all this, both in his assumptions and in the silent unconsciousness with which he makes them as of course, St. Clement seems to me to re-echo and to illustrate, precisely in the way we should most have expected, the essential position and meaning, as I have tried to interpret it, of the Scripture itself.

It is not of course meant that to St. Clement any more than to St. Paul this one aspect of what was implied in presbytership swallowed up all the others. To describe a presbyter simply as a 'sacrificer,' or ordination to presbytership as the 'conferring of power to offer sacrifice,' would have probably been as surprising to the one as to the other. Immediately, no doubt, the presbyteral office made demands

1 Cp. 54 : Τίς οὖν ἐν ὑμῖν γενναῖος; τίς εὔσπλαγχνος; τίς πεπληροφορημένος ἀγάπης; εἰπάτω Εἰ δι' ἐμὲ στάσις καὶ ἔρις καὶ σχίσματα, ἐκχωρῶ, ἄπειμι οὗ ἐὰν βούλησθε, καὶ ποιῶ τὰ προστασσόμενα ὑπὸ τοῦ πλήθους· μόνον τὸ ποίμνιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ εἰρηνευέτω μετὰ τῶν καθεσταμένων πρεσβυτέρων.

upon its holders of very varied and anxious responsibility, and therefore presented a prima facie appearance in which no ceremonial observance, however far-reaching or profound in significance, would be the one thing that first would meet the eye. But what is contended is that, nevertheless, the idea of Eucharistic leadership, with all the corollaries that were in fact contained and implied therein, was present inherently from the very first as one necessary aspect of the office. It might seem almost incidental to the general conception of spiritual oversight and government, and responsibility for teaching and for life. It might be thought of just as the culminating instance of the executive duty and prerogative of an office which was characteristically not made up of executive duty and prerogative. But however incidental it may have looked to the eye, the point is that it always was-with all the meanings that really belonged to it-assumed as an inherent property of presbyteral office. That it must have been so of some office in the Christian Church seems to be a necessary corollary from the Epistles to the Hebrews and to the Corinthians. That it was so of presbyterate seems to be implied with sufficient clearness by St. Paul, and, without argument, tacitly taken for granted alike by the writers of the Didache and by St. Clement.

We find in Ignatius, as we might expect, the same strain of thought with a somewhat accentuated clearness. It will be remembered that he does not take the presbyteral office apart. The presbyterate to him is always as a council or a 'coronal' of which the Bishop is the culminating point. But what concerns us immediately is that, to St. Ignatius, the unity of the 'bishop with the presbyterate' means always, as of course, Eucharistic unity. 'Iepeîs is still distinctively a Jewish title; but the relation of Christianity to the Jewish iepeis is not that of a novelty which supersedes in the sense of abolishing, but rather of an inclusiveness which supersedes in the sense of absorbing them for the presence of Christ is characteristic of the Church; and

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if they claim to be priests, the Christian claim outdoes theirs, on their own ground; for the one real High Priest is Christ. And so the unity of the Eucharist is the unity of the altar.' 'Let no one be deceived. Except a man be within the altar, he is deprived of the bread of God. For if the prayer of one or two is of so great force, how much more that of the bishop and the whole Church together1?' 'He that is within the altar is pure, that is to say, he that does anything apart from the bishop and the presbytery and the deacons, he is not pure in conscience 2.' 'That ye may be obedient to the bishop and the presbyters with a mind that cannot be moved, breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death 3.' 'One prayer, one supplication, one mind, one hope in love. . . . Come ye all together as to one temple of God, as to one altar, to one Lord Jesus Christ' (Lightfoot, 'as to one temple even God; as to one altar, even to one Jesus Christ, who came forth from One Father and is with One and departed unto One").

'Be dutiful then to use one Eucharist: for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup unto union of His blood: one altar, as there is one bishop with the presbytery and deacons.' 'The priesthood [i. e. of the Jews] is good; but better is the High Priest to whom was entrusted the Holy of Holies, to whom alone were entrusted the hidden things of God-Himself the door of the Father through which enter in Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob, and the prophets and the Apostles and the Church. These things all of them work towards the oneness of God. But the Gospel has somewhat peculiarly its own, the presence of the Saviour, Jesus Christ our Lord, His passion, and His rising again. For unto Him the beloved prophets in their teaching looked on; but the Gospel is 1 Eph. v. 3 Eph. xx.

2 Trall. vii.

4 Magn. vii. See also Magn. ix : μηκέτι σαββατίζοντες ἀλλὰ κατὰ κυριακὴν ζῶντες ἐν ᾗ καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἡμῶν ἀνέτειλεν. Compare the phrase living according to the Lord's day' with Didache, ch. xiv.

5 Philad. iv.

the perfecting of immortality. All things together are good, if ye believe, in love 1' In Smyrn. viii. no Eucharist is valid except it be under the bishop or one appointed by him 2.

When all these passages are put together and dispassionately viewed, it seems to me impossible to deny that every essential conception of the priestliness of the Christian ministry, as of the priestliness of the Christian Church, as I have endeavoured to expound it above, is present-implicitly at least and essentially-within the New Testament; and with increasing explicitness and familiarity to the thought and in great part to the speech of the Church, by the close of the first or the opening of the second century.

That the view here given is a true reading of the history on this matter seems to me to be abundantly corroborated when we look at the passages which Bishop Lightfoot has himself cited in his essay in respect of the intervening time from Ignatius to Cyprian. Thus he quotes Justin Martyr as arguing against an unconverted Jew, 'We who through the name of Jesus have believed, . . . having divested ourselves of our filthy garments . . . are the true high-priestly race of God, as God Himself also beareth witness, saying that in every place among the Gentiles are men offering sacrifices well-pleasing unto Him and pure. Yet God doth not receive sacrifices from any one except through His priests. Therefore God anticipating all sacrifices through this name which Jesus Christ ordained to be offered, I mean those offered by the Christians in every region of the earth with the thanksgiving (èì τy evɣapioría) of the bread and of the cup, beareth witness that they are wellpleasing to Him, but the sacrifices offered by you and through those your priests He rejecteth3... Now for what

1 Philad. ix.

2 Observe that Tony is equivalent to bishop in Ignat. Rom. ix., Philad. ii.

3 Dial. cum Tryph. 116, 117. The prophecy of Malachi is reminding of the Didache, 14, and the antithesis evapéσTOUS

EUTρóσdeкTOS of Rom. xv. 16 and 1 Pet. ii. 5.

οὐ προσδέχεται, of the

purpose does the Bishop cite this passage? It is in order to show on the one hand that Justin does 'lay stress on sacerdotal functions'; on the other, that these 'belong to the whole body of the Church, and are not in any way the exclusive right of the clergy' [the italics are mine]. But is this really a self-consistent theory? If the Church performed 'sacerdotal functions,' by whose instrumentality did she perform them? It is quite clear that by the Christian sacrifices Justin means the celebrations of the sacramental Eucharist. It is also quite clear that in Justin's own well-known description this 'sacrifice' is celebrated in fact by the one 'president' of the congregation. But might it have been celebrated equally by any other Christian? Of course this is not suggested by Bishop Lightfoot. But ought it not to have been suggested, if the position is to be really a consistent one? If the Christian Church is a 'priest,' offering 'sacrifice' in the perpetual Eucharist; if the function of representing the Church in this her priestliness, and ministerially celebrating the Eucharistic 'sacrifice,' is not indiscriminate, but confined to instruments by ordination specially set apart, then it would seem to be simply misleading to say that the 'sacerdotal functions' are not in any way the exclusive right of the clergy. The sense in which they are 'the right of' the clergy may be less important than, and may be wholly dependent upon, the sense in which they are the right of' the body as a whole; but whilst the clergy constitute an order empowered to be, in this matter, the Church's representative instruments or personae1, there certainly is 'a way' in which the functions may be said to belong, even 'exclusively,' to the clergy.

Bishop Lightfoot has previously said (p. 244), ‘A separation of orders, it is true, appeared at a much earlier date, and was in some sense involved in the appointment of a special ministry. This, and not more than this, was originally contained in the distinction of clergy and laity.' 1 Compare the remarks on the same passage above, pp. 87, 88.