Chapter IV: Testimony of Ancient Ecclesiastical History to the Office of Deacon

With regard to the primitive Church, there seems no reason to doubt that, in its earliest and purest times, the scriptural office of deacon was recognised and maintained in its purity. Whether it was so or not, is of little consequence as a matter of evidence, in as much as, with all sound Protestants, where the testimony of Scripture is clear, the question is at an end, whatever may have been the views or the practice of a fallible church and fallible men in after ages. It is obvious, from the inspired record, that the Christians in apostolic times were called upon to lay by a portion of their property on the first day of the week, as God had prospered them, for the service of the Church and of the poor. This, as a fixed practice in the Church, of which every Sabbath, as well as the wants of their Christian brethren and sisters, reminded them, was not likely soon to be forgotten. Accordingly, down to the age of the Emperor Julian, the apostate, in the middle of the fourth century (A.D. 350,) it appears that the practice was universal. It was this which led the heathen to exclaim, “Behold how these Christians love one another;” and it was this which led Julian to say, “It is a shame that, when the impious Galileans relieve not only their own people, but ours also, our poor should be neglected by us.” And again, “Beginning with their love-feasts and the necessity of tables (for not only the name, but the thing is common among them), they have drawn away the faithful to impiety”—that is heathens to Christianity. No testimony could be more unexceptional to a notorious fact. So systematic a procedure points to an appropriate office.

To descend to more specific testimonies which name the office of deacon: there is not only nothing said (so far as I have been able to discover) in the strongest passages bearing on the constitution of the Christian Church, for the first two hundred years after Christ, inconsistent with the scriptural views of the office, but the allusions of Clemens Romanus, Hermes, Polycarp, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Clemens Alexandrinus, the primitive writers of that period, are all in strict accordance with the ecclesiastico-secular nature of the deaconship. No candid man reading their testimonies, or rather allusions, would ever dream of a preaching and baptizing deacon. Even in Ignatius, supposing the epistles attributed to him trustworthy, there are certainly three offices spoken of. The three Presbyterian offices of pastor, ruling elder, and deacon, however, are as natural an explanation as any other. An unwarrantable change in the nature of the office took place about the middle of the third century (A.D. 250;) but before, at, and after that date, testimonies can be quoted indicating how the office was contemplated by the apostolic Church. Though few men, who have even partially explored antiquity, and who are acquainted with the corruptions of the third century, will care much for authorities after the A.D. 200, yet we may subjoin one or two notices. The traces of incipient error will become the more apparent. Tertullian, A.D. 200, writing of baptism, says, “The right of giving this ordinance belongs to the highest priest, who is the bishop, then to elders and deacons, yet not without the authority of the bishop, for the sake of the honour of the Church. This being secured, peace is secured, otherwise even the laity have the right.” This plainly shews that, in the time of Tertullian, the deacon did not baptize as the deacon in the Church of England now does, as a right belonging to his office—that it was merely a permission from the bishop or minister in cases of necessity, cases of such necessity that even private Christians might baptize. This indirectly proves that the deacon’s office was still confined to the serving of tables.

Cyprian, A.D. 250, in his 73d Epistle, says, “Whence we understand that it is lawful for none but the presidents of the Church (that is the pastors) to baptize and grant remission of sins.” Of course, this excludes the baptizing deacon; while the passage incidentally shows that Cyprian’s bishop or president of the Church was just the parochial pastor. None will contend that the diocesan bishop alone can baptize. Firmilian, a contemporary of Cyprian, in the 75th Epistle of the latter, could be quoted to the same effect.

The Rev. Mr Riddle, a minister of the Church of England, in his “Ecclesiastical Chronology,” under date A.D. 286, says, “The apostolic constitutions and canons are generally supposed to be a forgery of about this date.” They probably contain remnants of earlier compositions, but the work as a whole, although attributed to Clement of Rome, appears to have been compiled towards the close of this century, with a view to support the fictitious pretensions of bishops, and to assist the growth of episcopal power. Many prelatic writers found much upon this work; and no wonder, since it smiles upon their favourite views. Yet such notices of the office of deacon occur as the following: “The deacon must give nothing to any poor man without the bishop’s knowledge and consent;” evidently intimating that his business lay with the distribution of charity. “If any be found sitting out of his own place, let the deacon reprove him, and let him be conducted to a proper place. Let the deacons take care that none whisper, sleep, laugh, nod, &c. After the catechumens and penitents have retired, let the deacons prepare for the celebration of the Eucharist.” Here the deacons are represented, not as an order of priesthood presiding, but rather as taking a subordinate charge of the external order and decorum of the Church—such as would comport with a secular office.

Jerome, A.D. 360, one of the most pious and learned of the Fathers, asks, in his letter to Evragius, when condemning a person who had raised deacons above presbyters, “Who can endure it, that a minister of tables and of widows should proudly exalt himself above those at whose prayers the body and blood of Christ is made?” plainly excluding deacons from being an order of the clergy. I might refer to various additional testimonies quoted by Rutherford, in his “Due Right of Presbytery”—such as Sozomen’s, that the office of the deacon was to keep the Church’s goods; Eusebius, that the care of the poor, and the keeping of the Church and its vessels, were committed to the deacons; Ruffinus, that when there was no presbyter, that is elder, present, the deacons might distribute the elements of the Lord’s Supper; but it is unnecessary. I may merely state, that the sixth General Council of Constantinople, A.D. 692, acknowledged “the Scripture deacons to be no other than overseers of the poor, and that this was the opinion of the ancient fathers” (Canon 16.) What a change, then, must notoriously have taken place by this time on the original constitution of the Christian Church! Neander, the celebrated German professor of Church History, in his “History of the Christian Church,” p.40, says, “Though many other secular employments were added to the original one, yet the fundamental principle (the relief of the poor), as well as the name of the office, remained. In later times (referring to Cyprian and Origen), we still find traces of the distribution of alms being considered as the peculiar employment of deacons.”

Do any, after all, wonder how an office plainly secular should, so early as the middle of the third century, be changed in its nature into the spiritual. We beg to assure them that, to one acquainted with the general state of the early Church, there is nothing in this circumstance to awaken incredulity. By this time, apart from doctrine, serious corruptions had been introduced into the practice of the Church. In the third century, Cyprian speaks of the administration of the Lord’s Supper to infants as common, while, within fifty years from the apostles, water was mixed with the wine used in the Supper, and ere long this was contended for as a divine institution! Before the close of the second century, subdeacons, acolythes, exorcists, and other lower officers, quite unknown in the apostolic Church, had been introduced; while shortly after, other orders of metropolitans—patriarchs, archbishops—all inconsistent with the equality of bishops, and condemned by intelligent Episcopalians as human inventions, appeared in the higher circles of Church. In the fourth century the clerical imparity was established. In such circumstances, is it wonderful that the office of deacon should be early corrupted from the simplicity of its original design?

It is easy to see how, in the progress of degeneracy, the office should be perverted from its original use. When the pastor had become careless and slothful, and the office of ruling elder unpopular, because calling for the exercise of discipline, it was natural to devolve preaching and the administration of the sacraments on the deacon; while the bishop occupied himself with the government of the Church, as at once more easy and congenial. In the meantime, in the progress of ambition the deacon would be nothing loath to rise to a higher step, and assume what would be considered more honourable functions. Possessing, however, the key of the Church’s chest, the office could never be despised, in periods when the mercenary became a marked feature in the Church’s history. Hence we find, that in the progress of decline the deacons were converted into archdeacons, and, in A.D. 400, they were next in influence to bishops, and so superior to many of the period. Their power rose as the Church decayed in character. Riddle, in his “Ecclesiastical Chronology, " under A.D. 1072 says, “Archdeacons, as representatives and commissioners of the bishops, were guilty of many flagrant abuses of their station and influence,—an evil which subsequently led to the abridgment of their authority, and the appointment of bishop’s official or vicars.” What a change was this from the humble deacon of apostolic times—the meek dispenser of alms to the poor turned into the representative and commissioner of lordly bishops, who ruled the clergy of a province with a rod of iron! As the religious houses were multiplied, and at once created and fed crowds of beggars, the office of deacon, in its scriptural meaning, would naturally perish.

I cannot do better, in concluding this part of the subject, than quote the words of a prelate of the Church of England. Bishop Croft, in his work entitled, “Naked Truth,” p. 49, says,

Whether this of deaconship be properly called an order or an office, but certainly no spiritual order; for their office was to serve tables, as the Scripture phrases, which in plain English, is nothing else but overseers of the poor, to distribute justly and discreetly the alms of the faithful, which the apostles would not trouble themselves withal, lest it should hinder them in the ministration of the word and prayer. But as most matters of this world, in process of time, deflect much from the original constitution, so it fell out in this business; for the bishops, who pretended to be the successors to the apostles, by little and little took to themselves the dispensation of alms,—first, by way of inspection over the deacons, but at length the total management; and the deacons, who were mere lay officers, by degrees crept into the Church ministration, and became a reputed spiritual order, and a necessary degree and step to the priesthood, of which I can find nothing in Scripture and the original institution, nor a word relating to any thing but the ordering of alms for the poor.¹