2.1 Apostolic Principles: First Principle

APOSTOLIC PRINCIPLES FROM a careful examination of the Scripture, we find at least four different kinds of office-bearers in the Apostolic Church: (1) Apostles; (2) Evangelists; (3) Bishops (also called pastors and teachers); (4) Deacons. Each one of these had a right to exercise all the offices inferior to his own; but one filling an inferior, had no right to discharge the duties of a superior office. Thus, the Apostolic office included all the others; and a bishop or elder had the right to act as a deacon, so long as his doing so did not impede the due discharge of duties peculiarly his own. A deacon, on the other hand, had no right to exercise the office of a bishop; nor had a bishop any authority to take on him the duties of an apostle. Each superior office included all below it.

Two of these offices-those of apostle and evangelist- were temporary, necessary at the first establishment of Christianity, but not necessary to be perpetuated. The apostles were witnesses of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, endowed with the. power of working miracles and of conferring the Holy Ghost by the laying on of their hands, the infallible expounders of the Divine will, and the founders of the Christian Church; and, having served the purpose for which they were sent, they disappeared out of the world, and, as apostles, have left no successors. Evan­gelists were missionaries-men who traveled from place to place preaching the Gospel, and who acted as the assistants and delegates of the apostles in organizing Churches. Of these, Philip and Timothy and Titus were the most eminent examples. It deserves to be remarked, with regard to these temporary, or, as they are usually called, extraordinary office-bearers, that their sphere of duty was not limited to a congregation, but. extended to the Church at large. They were members of any Christian Society, within whose bounds they resided for a time, but their mission was to the world, and their authority extended to the Church universal. The offices of bishop and deacon were, on the other hand, designed to be perpetual in the Church. The bishops, or, ns they are more usually called, elders, (This is assumed for the present: it will be proved afterwards.) and pastors, and teachers, were office-bearers, whose duty it was to instruct and govern the Church. The deacons had charge of tem­poral concerns, and were entrusted with the special duty of ministering to the necessities of the poor. The Church can never cease to have need of these two offices, so long as its members have spiritual and temporal wants to be supplied. But it is to be observed, with regard to the bishops and deacons, that they were mainly congregational officers. The sphere of their duty was not so general as that of the apostles, prophets, and evangelists, but lay for the most part within the bounds of that particular Church or district for which they were appointed to act.

Dr. Campbell thus expounds the special necessity that existed in the Primitive Church, both for the temporary and perpetual office-bearers: " To take a similitude from temporal things: it is one thing to conquer a kingdom and become master of it, and another thing to govern it when conquered, so as to retain the possession which has been acquired. The same agents and the same expedients are not properly adapted to both; For the first of these purposes, there was a set of extraordinary ministers or officers in the Church, who, like the military forces intended for conquest, could not be fixed to a particular spot whilst there remained any provinces to conquer. Their charge was, in a manner, universal, and their functions ambulatory. For the second there was a set of ordinary ministers or pastors, correspond­ing to civil governors, to whom it was necessary to allot distinct charges or precincts, to which their services were chiefly to be confined, in order to instruct the people, to preside in the public worship and religious ordinances, and to give them the necessary assistance for the regulation of their conduct. Without this second arrangement, the acquisitions made could not have been long retained. There must have ensued an universal relapse into idolatry and infidelity. This distinction of ministers into extraordinary and ordinary, has been admitted by controvertists on both sides, and therefore cannot justly be considered as intro­duced (which sometimes happens to distinctions) to serve an hypothesis." With these preliminary observations, we proceed in search of- THE FIRST PRINCIPLE

ALL offices in the Christian Church take origin from the Lord Jesus. Himself is the Author and embodiment of them all; He is the Apostle of our profession; He is an Evangelist, preaching peace to them that are afar off, and to them that are nigh; He is the great Pastor or Shepherd of the sheep-the Bishop of souls; and He is the Deacon or servant who came not to be ministered to, but to minister. All offices in the Church are embodied in the person of Christ. The Apostles were the only office-bearers chosen during the lifetime of the Lord. They held their appointments immediately from Himself. They were called to the work of the ministry by His voice, and they received their com­mission at His hands. Simon and Andrew were casting • their nets into the Lake of Galilee, as Jesus walked upon the beach, but at His call they left their nets, to follow Him through the world. The sons of Zebedee heard His voice, and forthwith they forgot both father and mother in their ambition to become fishers of men. When Christ said, Follow me, Levi forsook the receipt of custom, and was a publican no more. The personal call of the Lord Jesus was then, and is still, the first and best of all autho­rity to hold office in the Church of God. Let a man only satisfy us that he holds his appointment directly from the Lord, as the Apostles did, and we require no more to induce us to submit to him. But after the Lord had ascended to heaven, the personal call, except in case of Paul, who was one born out of due time, was not the passport of any man either to the ministry or apostleship. Men were no more put into office by the living voice of the Lord Jesus. The departure of the Master, and the vacancy left in the list of Apostles by the death of Judas, gave opportunity for bringing into opera­tion a new principle. The first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles brings the whole case before us. Let us specially examine the passage- Acts 1:13-26 -that we may have full possession of the facts. It appears that, in the interval between the Ascension and the Day of Pentecost, the dis­ciples met for prayer and supplication in an upper room of the city of Jerusalem. The mother and brethren of Jesus were present, as were also the eleven Apostles. Taken together, they numbered one hundred and twenty in all. Peter rose and addressed the company. He reminded them of the vacancy in the apostleship. Judas, who betrayed the Master, was dead, and the office that he forfeited by his transgression must be conferred upon another. He states the necessary qualifications of him who was to be the successor of Judas. He must be one who had intercourse with the 11 from the commencement of Christ’s ministry to the close. He states the duties of the new apostle; he was to be with the others a witness of Christ’s resurrection. Such was the case that Peter put before the men and brethren, met together in that upper room of Jerusalem. We then rend in Acts 1:23 -" THEY APPOINTED TWO, Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias." In consequence of this double choice, it became necessary to decide which should be regarded as the true apostle; which, after prayer, was done by casting lots. But let it be particularly observed that, while Peter explained the necessary qualifications, and the peculiar duties of the office, the appointment of the person did not rest with Peter, but with the men and brethren to whom the address of Peter was directed. Farther, it is not to be forgotten that the office to which Matthias succeeded is, in Acts 1:20, termed a Bishopric, and how it is said in Acts 1:25, he had " to take part of this ministry and apostleship." The men and brethren, at the instigation of Peter, exercised the right of appointing a man to a bishopric-that is, to the office of a bishop, and to take part in the ministry. In the Apostolic Church, the people appointed Matthias to be a minister -a bishop-an apostle. The case recorded in Acts 14:23, is to the same effect, though, from a mistranslation, the force of it is lost upon the English reader. The authorized version represents the two Apostles, Barnabas and Paul, as ordaining elders in every church; whereas the true meaning of the word in the original is " to elect by a show of hands "-a fact now admitted by the best expositors. We must not allow a faulty translation to rob us of the testimony of Scripture to an important fact-namely, that the elders of the New Testament Church were appointed to office by the popular vote. The sixth chapter of Acts comes next under consideration. At the period to which the narrative there recorded refers, the disciples at Jerusalem had grown numerous. The Grecians began to complain against the Hebrews, how that their widows were neglected in the daily ministrations. Hitherto the twelve had attended to the wants of the poor; but their hands were at the same time full of other work, and, among such a multitude, it is not surprising that some were neglected, nor is it very wonderful, considering what human nature is, that some were found to murmur, even when apostles managed the business. What was now to be done? A division of offices was clearly a necessity. But were the apostles to take it on themselves to select persons on whom should devolve the duty of attending to the temporal wants of the community f Had they done so, few would dispute their right, or venture to charge inspired men with the exercise of a despotic or unwarranted authority. But, instead of this, they adopted a course of procedure unaccountable to us on any other principle, than that they purposely managed the matter in such a way a? would guide the Church in the appointment of office-bearers when themselves would be removed, and thus form a precedent for future ages. The apostles summoned the multitude together and explained the case. They said their appropriate business as ministers was with the Word of God. They said it was unreasonable for them to have to neglect the spiritual province, in order to attend to temporal concerns; and they called upon the brethren to look out among themselves for seven men, of good character, gifted with wisdom and the Spirit of God, who might be appointed to take charge of this secular business, and who would leave the apostles free to attend to duties peculiarly their own-namely, prayer and the ministry of the Word. " And the saying pleased the whole multitude; and THEY CHOSE Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Simon, and Pannenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch; whom they set before the apostles; and when they had prayed, they kid their hands on them " (Acts 6:5-6). The seven men whom the multitude chose on this occasion were the first deacons. Though not expressly called so in the Scriptures, yet they are admitted to have been such, by almost universal consent. The lowest office-bearers, therefore, in the Apos­tolic Church, were chosen by the people.

Here, then, are three clear facts, fully sufficient to be the basis of a principle. The first chapter of Acts supplies us with an instance of the assembled men and brethren appointing to office one who was both an apostle and a minister. The fourteenth chapter shows that the elders of the congregation were chosen by popular suffrage. The sixth chapter furnishes an example of the whole multitude of the disciples choosing seven men to be deacons. On these three facts, clear and irresistible, we found the prin­ciple of POPULAR ELECTION. The conclusion that follows from this evidence, we find it absolutely impossible to evade, namely that in the Apostolic Church the office bearers were chosen by the people.