AND

NOT PRELACY

THE

SCRIPTURAL AND PRIMITIVE POLITY,

PROVED FROM THE TESTIMONIES OF

SCRIPTURE; THE FATHERS; THE SCHOOLMEN; THE REFORMERS;
AND THE ENGLISH AND ORIENTAL CHURCHES.

ALSO,

THE ANTIQUITY OF PRESBYTERY;

INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF

THE ANCIENT CULDEES, AND OF ST. PATRICK.

BY THOMAS SMYTH,

AUTHOR OF LECTURES ON THE APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION, ECCLESIASTICAL
REPUBLICANISM, ECCLESIASTICAL CATECHISM, ETC.

Show them the form of the house and the fashion thereof, and the goings out thereof, and the
comings in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the laws
thereof: and write it in their sight, that they may keep the whole form thereof, and all the
ordinances thereof, and do them. EZEKIEL, 43: 11.

PUBLISHED:

BOSTON, CROCKER AND BREWSTER; NEW YORK, ROBERT CARTER, JONATHAN LEAVITT,
AND WILEY AND PUTNAM; PHILADELPHIA, J. WHETHAM AND SON, WILLIAM S. MARTIEN,
AND PERKINS AND PURVES; CINCINNATI, WEED AND WILSON; PITTSBURGH,
THOMAS CARTER; CHARLESTON, S. HART, SEN., AND MCCARTER AND ALLEN;
LONDON, WILEY AND PUTNAM.

1843.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Forty-Three, by

CROCKER & BREWSTER,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

8. N. DICKINSON, PRINTER,

No. 62 Washington Street.

PREFACE.

As a sufficient demand has been made upon the patience of the reader, in the body of this work, it will not be increased by any lengthened preface. All that will be done, therefore, will be to offer a few words of explanation.

As to the necessity for the work, nothing need be said. This is now universally admitted. A renewed and thorough discussion of the great principles involved in the exclusive assumptions of prelacy, is forced upon us by the open and repeated assaults made by this bold enemy, upon the rights and privileges of all other christian denominations. The conviction is therefore general, that this controversy must become the leading topic of the age. Manuals are needed, ecclesiastical catechisms are needed, tracts, sermons, and discourses are needed, and treatises, like the present, are also needed. The one does not supersede the other, nor render it the less necessary. Let every man, in his place, and according to his opportunity, come up to the help of the cause of truth, charity, purity, and liberty, against a power which is once more forging for us the chains of spiritual despotism and superstition.

The aim of this work is catholic, and not sectarian. The author appears as the advocate, not of a party, but of all non-episcopal denominations. He includes under the term presbytery, those generic principles which are common to Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Reformed Dutch, Lutherans, Baptists, and Methodists. In some points he will be found