Theory of the Eldership [pp. 702-759]

Theory of the Eldership.
ministers," &c. (See Form of Government in Confession of
Faith of Church of Scotland, pp. 388-391, Edinburgh edition.)
Preaching was not therefore, as Dr. Breckinridge affirms,
"a new function manifested among the elders unknown to
those of the Jews," but only an old function which, like the
law of brotherly love, became a new commandment by the new
authority, and motives, and sphere of Christ's kingdom.
Nay, Dr. Breckinridge himself, in the same chapter, teaches
that "the worship of the synagogues consisted in the reading
and expounding of God's word, and in offering up prayers to
him." (Knowledge of God, vol. ii. pp. 631 and 634.) It is
also evident that the ministers of the New Testament are not
the successors of the elders of the Old Testament, but of a
separate and sacred order of preachers and expounders of
God's will and word. Vitringa, in his learned work on the
ancient synagogue proves at length that it had regularly ordained preachers.*
The Presbyters of the Synagogue.
The argument for this theory, founded on the supposed
analogy of the Jewish Synagogue, though assumed by Dr.
Breckinridge to be conclusive, will not, therefore, avail to its
support. (See Knowledge of God, vol. ii. p. 621.) In the first
place, while the synagogue was, in all probability, the model
and basis of the first Christian churches, nevertheless to suppose that this was the case, not only in its general form and
order, but in a slavish imitation, is, as Lytton well observes,
(On the C(hurch, p. 193,) "neither consistent with recorded facts
nor with the spirit of the Christian dispensation." Secondly, it
is impossible to ascertain what was the polity and order of the
synagogue in our Saviour's time, or to harmonize the remaining statements of Rabbinical lore into any definite system.
There is much confusion and contradiction, so that the most
patient investigators into the originals-such as Maimonides,
Buxtorf, Vitringa, Selden, Lightfoot, and Schcettgenius-contradict each other and themselves, and confess that much is a
matter of the most doubtful disputation.*
* See Book III. chap. v. vi. and vii.
t See Dr. Miller on Eldership, pp. 35-48, and his frank admissions that his
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