"It is evident unto all men diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been these orders of ministers in Christ's Church,--Bishops, Priests, and Deacons;"[174] and the Church of England has never yet made bold to dispense with what the Church of Christ did for 1500 years, without a single exception, deem it necessary everywhere to retain. Never _in theory_, indeed, has our Church made bold to work without the three orders of an apostolical ministry, but, alas! frequently has she done this in practice, and in no instance more openly or less successfully than in Australia. For upwards of thirty years, no superintendent at all was placed over the clergy and laity of our communion in New South Wales, and when a step was taken, it was not made in the right direction; an archdeacon was appointed, who, whatever might be his civil authority, was, respecting spiritual authority, exactly upon a level with his other brethren in the ministry; nor could he assume more than this without assuming to himself that to which he was not entitled,--the office of a bishop in the Church. Under these strange and irregular circumstances was the infant Church, brought from the British isles and planted in the wilderness of Australia, allowed to continue for about twelve years. The witness of a layman concerning this state of things may be here repeated: "I myself then saw a church without a bishop, and I trust in God I may never see it again."[175] In 1824, the Rev. T. H. Scott was appointed Archdeacon of New South Wales, and there were then eight chaplains in the colony, which covered a vast expanse of country, and contained, in 1821, (three years earlier,) 29,783 souls, of whom 13,814 were convicts. Thus was New South Wales provided with "a very liberal ecclesiastical establishment," according to the liberal views of one of its leading historians;[176] and as its population increased, so, in some degree, if not in an equal proportion, did the number of its clergy, so that, in September, 1833, the number of souls in the colony was 60,794,[177] (of whom 16,151 were convicts, and 17,238 Roman Catholics,) and the number of clergymen was fifteen, besides the archdeacon and four catechists. Archdeacon Scott was succeeded, in 1829, by the Rev. W. G. Broughton, whose zeal and activity reflect honour alike upon himself and upon the discernment of the noble patron, the Duke of Wellington, who, it is believed, first recommended him to that office. After enduring labour, and toil, and anxiety, such as those only know who have to bear the heat and burden of the day in the Lord's vineyard, at length the archdeacon was made, by permission of the English government under Lord Melbourne, in 1836, Bishop of Australia; and the foundation of an Apostolical and Scriptural Church in the Great Southern Land was at length duly laid, by the consecration of that prelate, at Lambeth, on February 14th, 1836. The old stipend assigned to