and received this boasted succession, by which she first became a living church, in the year 1787!!!

3

And yet, before the year 1640, there had come to this country from Scotland and Ireland, acccording to Mather, four thousand presbyterians.1 In 1684, a small colony of persecuted Scotch, under Lord Cardross, settled in South Carolina. Within three years before 1773 sixteen hundred emigrants from the north of Ireland settled in Carolina; and scarcely a ship sailed from any Irish port for Charleston that was not crowded, and that almost entirely by presbyterians. To the Scotch also, says Dr. Ramsay, this state is indebted for a great proportion of its physicians, clergymen, lawyers, and schoolmasters. The English puritans were, many of them, presbyterians. The Dutch were also presbyterians. A portion of the German emigrants were of the same denomination. All the French protestants were as staunch Calvinists and presbyterians as were the Scotch and the Irish, their constitution having been framed by the immortal Calvin. The American presbyterian church, therefore, is composed of Puritans, Scotch, Irish, Dutch, German, and French emigrants who have all become built up into one spiritual temple in the Lord. The number of presbyterian emigrants who came to this country by the middle of the last century, was between one and two hundred thousand. Those from Ireland alone were not less than fifty thousand. And, as their blood has now flowed into one common stream, so have they been molten down and moulded into one Christian mass. In the year 1704, a presbytery consisting of seven ministers was constituted, called the presbytery of Philadelphia. This had so encreased as to be divided, in 1716, into four presbyteries, and thus to constitute the synod of Philadelphia; and in 1788, so as to constitute four synods, which organised the general assembly in 1789.

5

From the very commencement of the settlement of South Carolina there were a sufficient number of puritans in it to keep up a constant warfare, as Dr. Ramsay says, with the high churchmen. In 1685, great numbers of French protestants, that is, presbyterians, sought an asylum here." The congregationalists and presbyterians had a church in Charleston as early as 1690. The presbyterians, says Ramsay, were among the first settlers, and were always numerous.8 Of the numerous emigrants, in the last fifty years of the eighteenth century, a great majority were presbyterians. They were fully organised into a presbytery very early in the eighteenth century.9

1 See Hodge's Constit. Hist. of the Presb. Ch., vol. i, ch. i.
3 lbid.
4 Hodge, ibid., p. 68.

of S. C., vol. ii, p. 45.

7 Ibid., p. 38.

say, vol. ii, p. 26.

5 Hodge, ibid, p. 70.
8 Ibid., p. 24.

2 Ibid. p. 67.

6 Hist

Ram

While, therefore, on our principles, there were fully organised presbyterian churches in this country, and in this state, from the earliest period; on the principles of prelacy there was not an organised episcopal church in this country, having any visible form or centre of unity, or principal of vitality, until the year 1789. The patent for the colony of South Carolina was granted in 1663. In the year 1701, Dr. Humphrey states, that with a white population of seven thousand persons, natives of these kingdoms, (that is Britain,) there was, until the year 1701, no minister of the church of England resident in this colony.' In 1710 the episcopalians formed less than half the population, counting several French congregations. On the other hand, as we have seen, there was a regularly organised church, formed by the union of presbyterians and independants in Charleston, as early as the year 1690.3 Nay, it appears, that the present episcopal organisation in this state can date no further back than the year 1804. For, in his sermon upon the late Dr. Bowen, the present bishop says; in 1804, the diocese was reduced, we may say, to its original elements. The bishop was gone to his rest, no convention had been held for five years, and there was no standing committee existing or acting. The Rev. Mr. Bowen, the youngest minister in it, was one of the principal leaders in the measures for its reorganisation. A convention of the churches was held in February, 1804; rules for its governance, chiefly prepared by him, were adopted, and he was elected secretary of the convention, and of the standing committee.'

6

4

In what sense, then, can episcopalians or Romanists, claim to be the legitimate branch of the holy catholic church, in these United States,'5 since, on their own principles priority of establishment constitutes the claim to apostolic jurisdiction, in any kingdom? Verily they have both pronounced upon themselves a sentence of illegitimacy. They are, as judged by their own harsh canons, intruders, usurpers, uncatholic, uncanonical, and dissenters from the only true, primitive, and apostolic church in these lands, which, on their own principles, is no other than the presbyterian.6

V. CONCLUSION.

We have now concluded what the limits of this work will permit us to say in vindication of the faith and order of our fathers. Our church has been, in ten thousand ways, chal

1 Hist. of Soc. for Prop. Rel., p. 25. 2 Hodge's Hist. of Presb. Ch., part ji, 457. 3 Ramsay, Hist. S. C., vol. ii, p. 25. 4 P. 15, see also p. 42. Origin of the Prayer Book, pp. 106, 113, by Mr. Odenheimer of Phil. 6 In this discussion we again remind the reader, we use the term presbyterian in its large comprehension, and therefore purposely avoid any invidious comparisons, between denominations who regard one another as brethren in the Lord.

lenged to the contest, by the bold and reckless assertions of prelatists and papists. We have long borne in patience and in silence. While the armies of the Philistines have been holding us up as cowards to the contumely of all men, such has been our love of peace and charity, and our desire to be engaged in seeking the immediate benefit of the souls of men, that in this country, during the last century, but three champions have found leisure to go forth and meet these boasting Goliaths. The Rev. Dr. Miller, the Rev. Dr. Mason, and the Rev. Dr. Rice, have ventured forth, like other Davids, and, with the sling and stones gathered from the brook of sacred writ, have achieved a noble conquest over all the might and power of their heavy-armed antagonists. Others, indeed, have rendered able service in a more limited measure.1 These, however, have done so with manifest reluctance, and have hastened back to more congenial occupations. Our enemies, nevertheless, though thrice signally defeated, with new and multiplied reinforcements, still give battle. There is no possible opportunity, artifice, or device passed by, that may promote their interests, or injure our cause. Their arms are opened to every deserter who has been driven from our camp by his own instability, failure, disappointed ambition, wounded pride, or vanity and chagrin, who is held up to the world as a splendid trophy of the power of her principles; and thus do they glory in what ought to be their shame, and to fill them with confusion of face. Every writer among them is a defamer of presbytery, and asserts his bravery by the loudness of his challenge, and the hardihood with which he asseverates what has again and again been disproved. Their press, in every city and state throughout our extended union, is filled with the praises of prelacy and popery, and the most distorted pictures of presbyterianism. Even in our most refined communities, and before the most intelligent audiences, as in Charleston, the veriest tyros in divinity, who know no more about the controversy than they have learned in the school of prejudice, are heard uttering the thunders of damnation, while they pour forth the vials of wrath upon us aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise.

In these circumstances it is time for us to awake. Our silence has been misinterpreted, our patience abused, and our charity perverted to the injury of the truth, and to the support of bigotry and error. We, then, may be pardoned, who, emboldened by diligent preparation and the implored assistance of Him whose cause we plead, have come forth to lend our feeble help to the Lord against the mighty. We

1 Such as Mr. Barnes, and recently the Rev. Mr. Duffield and Mr. Eddy.

have not, therefore, been content to stand in the breach. We have met the enemy on his own chosen grounds, and engaged him with his own weapons. Our warfare is not merely defensive, but aggressive. We have reclaimed territory as ours by inalienable rights, which our opponents have long possessed by right only of usurpation. We have endeavoured to make good our title to an inheritance for which prelatists plead custom, and we a divine charter; to plant the standard of apostolic order, where the gaudy banner of patristical formality had long waved; and again to garrison those outposts from which our enemies have been too long permitted to harass us.

The prelatic claims we have shown to be utterly untenable, either by Scripture or truly primitive antiquity. There is against the system a negative testimony which is in itself overwhelming.

By this doctrine it is taught, that Christ and his apostles instituted three orders in the ministry; that to the first of these they delegated all the authority imparted to the church, and the exclusive right of ordaining any to the gospel ministry; that this arrangement was made an essential element in the being and continuance of the church; and that, as such, it was enjoined upon all their followers, and instituted in every church. Now this being so, it is, as has been shown, morally certain that they would have explicitly announced the doctrine, and that the fact of its apostolic institution in all the churches would have been made certain. The very contrary, however, is the truth in the case. This system has not been explicitly taught in the New Testament, or in the early fathers, even in those places where it must have been inevitably introduced. No triple commission is to be found; no exclusive grant to the prelatic order; no affirmation of the essentiality of this system to the existence and order of the church. This, as has been fully shown, is largely admitted. And it is further granted that these three orders of ministers were not established in some of the apostolic churches, while we confidently challenge proof for their existence any where, during at least three centuries. To say, then, that from the apostles' time these orders have existed, and have been regarded as they are by prelatists now, is most preposterous and absurd.

We have, however, shown that there is positive proof in the Scriptures and the fathers against this theory, and in confirmation of all the essential principles of presbytery. Every power claimed by prelatists as peculiarly their own by divine gift, we have proved to belong, by divine right, to all the ministers of the gospel, who are in general denominated presbyters. Every church spoken of in the New

Testament, and by the apostolic, primitive, and early fathers, was parochial, and not diocesan, that is, it was presbyterian ; and the primitive government of the church was the episcopacy of presbytery, and not of prelacy.

The evidence in favour of this original constitution of the church of Christ we have traced through every age of the church. The most eminent fathers have turned king's evidence, and given solemn testimony against the usurpations of prelacy. Those who, in every period of the church, stood forth in defence of the faith once delivered to the saints, contended also, and that earnestly, for presbyterial polity, against the despotism of the hierarchy. The whole body of the schoolmen taught the Scripturalness of the fundamental principles of presbyterianism. The glorious company of the reformers-Waldensian, Bohemian, German, French, Scottish, and English-agreed in the maintenance of these same doctrines. They were professed by the ancient Culdees of Ireland and Scotland, in the west; by the Vallenses, in the south; and by the Syrians and Alexandrians, in the east. Prelacy is therefore a novelty, an innovation; and while sustained by the practice of a corrupted and degenerate church, through many ages, has been condemned by the wisest and the best men in all ages, and in all parts of the church.