But immediately after the death of the Apostles there was, in every church, an officer superior to presbyters, who was called by way of distinction a Bishop. This we learn from express testimonies in the remaining writings of men who lived in the time of the Apostles; such as Clemens Romanus, mentioned in Phil. iv. 3.—Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who suffered martyrdom in the year 107; and Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who was burned in the year 167, aged one hundred years or more. These excellent apostolic men have expressly spoken in their epistles of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, as the stated officers of the Christian Churches, assigning to the former the prerogatives or rights of government and ordination in their several districts. Besides this, ancient historians of the church have given lists of successive Bishops, that is, of individual presidents, in several of the more important churches, reaching up to the very time of the Apostles. Now it is not to be supposed that, immediately after the death of the Apostles, any innovation or change, so important and invidious as that of episcopal government, would or could have been introduced; or that, supposing it to be destitute of apostolic sanction, its introduction should produce no opposition. Much less is it to be supposed that such men as Clemens, Ignatius, and Polycarp, the disciples and friends of the Apostles, would have suffered such an innovation to be introduced, and have mentioned it in the highest terms of approbation. But the truth is, that they speak of the three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, in the Christian Church as conformed to the three ranks of ministers in the Jewish Church, the High Priests, the common Priests, and the Levites, {8}—as ordained by Christ himself, and as existing even during His own ministry, He himself acting as the great Bishop, His Apostles as His Presbyters, and the seventy disciples as His Deacons: and as at length established in the universal Church by apostolic authority and usage.