Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IX. Divergence of Cyprian's from Modem views. In these opinions of Cyprian the first point which invites attention is their dissimilarity to any scheme of the Christian ministry now held. A parallel between that ministry and the three Levitic orders is indeed familiar to us, but net the same parallel which Cyprian draws. Although disobedience to the Bishop is the sin of disobedience to the High Priest, yet his Bishop is not pourtrayed as surrounded first by the Priests, and secondly by the Deacon-Levites. The Order of Bishops with him answers to the ' Priests of God,' the Presbyters are the Tribe of Levi. The New High Priest is Christ eternally1. Secondly, neither would any school now interpret the Mosaic precepts with anything like the literalness which he always uses. For instance, the territorially endowed ministry of all Christendom gives up what was in his eyes an essential resemblance to the house of Levi, their right to maintenance by offerings without land. Third, the method of election to bishoprics is extinct through the whole world. Nowhere do neighbouring bishops meet and, requiring the testimony of the laity over whom he will preside, elect or nominate for them a bishop3. Various as have been the phases through which that election has passed, none can be more alien from the spirit of Cyprian's prescriptions than the two which divide the Western Church between them. In one the lay, in the other the ecclesiastical element has reduced its copartner to a shadow : in each the surviving element has merged in a single individual, a single nominator to all sees within his supremacy. Here it is the monarch, there the one bishop of Rome3. Measured by ancient standards neither section could criticise the other, yet to the purposes ' Ep. . i, Testim. i. 17. £p.6$. ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.