The pastor of Lyons speaks even still more distinctly respecting the status of the bishops who flourished in his generation.  Thus, he says—­“We should obey those presbyters in the Church who have the succession from the apostles, and who, with the succession of the episcopate, have received the certain gift of truth according to the good pleasure of the Father:  but we should hold as suspected or as heretics and of bad sentiments the rest who depart from the principal succession, and meet together wherever they please....  From all such we must keep aloof, but we must adhere to those who both preserve, as we have already mentioned, the doctrine of the apostles, and exhibit, with the order of the presbytery, sound teaching and an inoffensive conversation.” [585:1] “The order of the presbytery” obviously signifies the official character conveyed by “the laying on of the hands of the presbytery,” and yet such was the ordination of those who, in the time of Irenaeus, possessed “the succession from the apostles” and “the succession of the episcopate.”

Some imagine that no one can be properly qualified to administer divine ordinances who has not received episcopal ordination, but a more accurate acquaintance with the history of the early Church is all that is required to dissipate the delusion.  The preceding statements clearly shew that, for upwards of one hundred and fifty years after the death of our Lord, all the Christian ministers throughout the world were ordained by presbyters.  The bishops themselves were of “the order of the presbytery,” and, as they had never received episcopal consecration, they could only ordain as presbyters.  The bishop was, in fact, nothing more than the chief presbyter. [585:2] A father of the third century accordingly observes—­“All power and grace are established in the Church where elders preside, who possess the power, as well of baptizing, as of confirming and ordaining.” [585:3]

An old ecclesiastical law, recently presented for the first time to the English reader, [586:1] throws much light on a portion of the history of the Church long buried in great obscurity.  This law may well remind us of those remains of extinct classes of animals which the naturalist studies with so much interest, as it obviously belongs to an era even anterior to that of the so-called apostolical canons. [586:2] Though it is part of a series of regulations once current in the Church of Ethiopia, there is every reason to believe that it was framed in Italy, and that its authority was acknowledged by the Church of Rome in the time of Hippolytus. [586:3] It marks a transition period in the history of ecclesiastical polity, and whilst it indirectly confirms the testimony of Jerome relative to the custom of the Church of Alexandria, it shews that the state of things to which the learned presbyter refers was now superseded by another arrangement.  This curious specimen of ancient legislation treats