IN stating reasons for conformity which are to be comprised within a few pages, it is impossible to enter at large into the proof of the fact here asserted, viz. that the primitive church as founded by the Apostles of our Lord, was episcopal; or, in other words, that the power of ordination and government in the church was vested by the Apostles in officers superior to the order of Presbyters, and who are now called by the name of Bishops. I must therefore only state a few circumstances, which are capable of being clearly proved, without producing the evidence on which my belief of them is built. 1. Episcopal government, as established in the Church of England, has all the authority in its favour which prescription or long usage can give it. The most learned of its adversaries have never been able to fix on any period in the Christian Church, from the time of the Apostles to the Reformation, in which the ordination of men to the ministry of the gospel was considered to be vested in any other minister or ministers than a Bishop. 2. All the instances of ordination, recorded in the New Testament, are in favour of Episcopacy. For there is no single instance of ordination, on record there, performed by presbyters, or at least without the presence and co-operation of some officer superior to presbyters. 3. All the directions concerning ordination, given in the New Testament, are addressed to persons superior to presbyters. Such, confessedly, were Timothy and Titus; and to them only are any such directions given. 4. The Apostles, at their decease, left the government of the several churches which they had planted, and the ordination of their ministers, in the hands of fixed Bishops. It may be granted that, during the life-time of the Apostles, the title Bishops, was common to all presbyters, and that this name was not confined to an officer superior to presbyters till after their decease. For it is not the name but the office about which I am inquiring.—It moreover appears that, during the life of the Apostles, some churches had each its settled Bishop, as the seven churches of Asia, who are addressed in their several epistles through the medium of an individual; (Rev. ii. 3.) and that of Crete, where Titus was left by St. Paul. (Titus i. 2.) Other churches however had none as yet settled among them, being under the immediate government of the Apostles, who frequently visited or sent to them, and either themselves, or by other superior officers, ordained ministers for them.