Premising, then, thus much, I proceed to call attention to the fact, that the whole literature of Christianity from the beginning either states or implies the doctrine of the priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice, which we have deduced also from Holy Scripture. It is true that in the very scanty writings which remain to us from the first century, we may not find the word ‘priest’ applied to the Christian ministry. But, as Mr. Carter has well observed, “the real question is not whether the name, but whether the idea, of priesthood is found to exist in the extant writings of the Apostolic Fathers;” {66b} whilst for the absence of the name it is not hard to assign satisfactory reasons. In the first place, the extant writings of that century are too few to let a negative conclusion be built upon them. They amount, I believe, in all, (if we exclude the “Shepherd of Hermas,” a confessedly mere allegorical work,) to not more than what would make about thirty pages of an octavo volume. {66c} Over and above this paucity of material on which to found an argument, other reasons may readily be given for the term ‘priest’ not occurring. It may be sufficient here just to touch upon two. First, there might be great cause why the earliest Christian writers should not designate those who ministered at their altars by a term which might have been understood to imply that they claimed for them a descent from the house of Aaron according to the flesh; which claim the Jews around them would know in many instances to be unfounded, and which, therefore, to be supposed to make, would lay them open to a charge of imposture; whilst again, secondly, they might equally desire to keep clear of all mistake as to their being confounded with the priesthood of the Gentiles, or heathen world, so likely to involve them in the charge of offering up bloody sacrifices like them; a charge which in fact we know, as it was, they did not wholly escape; a wonderful and most unsuspicious witness by the way (for it comes from those who had no thought to forward any interests of Christianity), that Christians claimed to make a true sacrifice in the Eucharist, for it is evidently this, perverted and mistaken by the persecuting heathen, (as if, when they offered the Body and Blood of Christ, they confessed to offering a human victim,) which led to the accusation; a great evidence surely to the doctrine of the real presence of Christ therein, for who could mistake the Eucharistic doctrine of a large portion of modern Christianity for anything open to such a charge, under which we know, upon the testimony of heathen writers, the early Christians suffered reproach?