the charge of the poor, poor-houses, widows, and orphans, which formerly belonged to the Bishops. How this first came to pass under the Bishops of Rome shall be explained elsewhere. Magistrates, who shall wish to restore the Church to her pristine splendour, will entrust these duties to ecclesiastical men. For it will ever be in the power of the magistrate to punish any frauds or malpractices which they may discover, whereas Bishops and Pastors cannot so superintend the magistrates, or any whom these may depute, should they so err. Magistrates ought to reflect, that they are themselves liable to fail in the same way as they apprehend the Ministers of the Church may do. To minister to the poor is a religious duty, and part of our service to God. And here I have two things to deplore: first, that in several reformed Churches the Deaconship has become merely a temporal and annual office; and, secondly, that the Order of Deaconesses for nursing the sick, of which a shadow is yet preserved in the Romish

Church, has entirely disappeared. In my opinion, it is of very great importance in what way and by what persons the necessities of the poor are relieved in God's household. I am well aware, that the primitive institution had degenerated into superstition, but what will be the end of our present new device? Mankind are more prone to fall from superstition to profaneness, than to keep in the golden mean. To have compassion on the needy, to defend the fatherless children and widows, was formerly the glory of the Church, and the highest praise of her pastors. Why need I here enumerate the noble women, virgins as well as widows, empresses and queens, and sisters of emperors and kings, who, out of piety to God and compassion on the poor, have devoted themselves to these duties under the vigilant superintendence of their Bishops? When I look on our Churches, I cannot but applaud their zeal, who desire to retain the true and proper Deaconship against those who would transfer it, as some common and merely civil office, to men utterly

profane in life and manners, and who would reckon the guardians of the poor as the meanest of their civil functionaries: I grieve that, contenting themselves with the mere name of Deacons, they have not restored the perfect and true Deaconship as it originally existed in the Church. Much remains to be said touching that office, but I must hasten to speak of Presbyters and Bishops.

CHAP. VIII.

THAT THE CHURCH, IN ITS INFANCY, HAD NO

BISHOPS AND

PRESBYTERS

EXCEPT THE

APOSTLES AND THEIR FELLOW-LABOURERS.

PRESBYTERS are first met with in the Church at Jerusalem, and are first mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Acts. As long as the Apostles and Evangelists remained in that Church, there was no need of Presbyters, but on their dispersion, after the beheading of St. James and flight of St. Peter, it began to have Presbyters of its own, whom St. Luke from that time forth always joins with the Apostles who were at Jerusalem: the time and manner of their Ordination does not how

ever appear. Although their Order was