Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: So evident indeed is this truth, that some of the ieading writers on the Presbyterian side of the question Lave felt themselves obliged to acknowledge it. Such is the case with the learned Blondel, in his " Apology," which was written at the earnest request of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. He contends that the Angels of these Seven Churches were " exarchs or chief governors," who were superior in office to the other clergy, holding their places for life, and indeed so superior. that " the acts of the Church, whether glorious or infamous, were imputed to those exarchs." And this, he says, is necessary to be maintained, otherwise the difficulties are insuperable. So also Dr. Campbell, President of Marischal College, Aberdeen, is forced to make concessions, from which he evidently shrinks. He remarks—" But one person, called the Angel of that Church, is addressed in the name of the whole. . . . Shall we affirm, that by the angel is meant the Presbytery ? " With this interpretation, he declares himself dissatisfied. He concludes, at last, that it means one who had a. kind of presidency over the rest, derived from the mode! of the Jewish Sanhedrim. So difficult is it, to evade the natural explanation, or rather, so eager are men to adopt any theory which may enable them to escape the argument, that in the Apostolic days each Church had its chief ruler.f Campbell's Lect. on Eccles. Hist., Lect. V. p. 82. f Dr. Miller of Princeton, in his despair, has resorted to the amusing explanation that the Angel was only the Moderator of the Pre- bytery. We cannot forbear giving Dr. Bowden's reply to this theory. " When our Lord blamed and threatened the Angel of the Church of Sardis, might he not have said, ' Lord, why blamest thou me? I have no more authority in thy Church in thi...