the earliest instance of a bishop. A certain official prominence is
stability, to an office which already existed in germ. There is no reason however for supposing that any direct ordinance was issued to the churches. The evident utility and even pressing need of such an office, sanctioned by the most venerated name in Christendom, would be sufficient to secure its wide though gradual reception. Such a reception, it is true, supposes a substantial harmony and freedom of intercourse among the churches, which remained undisturbed by the troubles of the times; but the silence of history is not at all unfavourable to this supposition. In this way, during the historical blank which extends over half a century after the fall of Jerusalem, episcopacy was matured and the Catholic Church consolidated. At all events, when we come to trace the early history of the office in the principal churches of Christendom in succession, we shall find all the facts consistent with the account adopted here, while some of them are hardly reconcilable with any other. In this review it will be convenient to commence with the mother Church, and to take the others in order, as they are connected either by neighbourhood or by political or religious sympathy. 1. The Church of JERUSALEM, as I have already pointed out, presents the earliest instance of a bishop. A certain official prominence is assigned to James the Lord's brother, both in the Epistles of St Paul and in the Acts of the Apostles. And the inference drawn from the notices in the canonical Scriptures is borne out by the tradition of the next ages. As early as the middle of the second century all parties concur in representing him as a bishop in the strict sense of the term. In this respect Catholic Christians and Ebionite Christians hold the same language: the testimony of Hegesippus on the one hand is matched by the testimony of the Clementine writings on the other. On his death, which is recorded as taking place immediately before the war of Vespasian, Symeon was appointed in his place. Hegesippus, who is our authority for this statement, distinctly regards Symeon as holding the same office with James, arid no less distinctly calls him a bishop. This same historian also mentions the circumstance that one Thebuthis (apparently on this occasion), being disappointed of the bishopric, raised a schism and attempted to corrupt the virgin purity of the Church with false doctrine. As Symeon died in the reign of