and _all_ that we read in
the New Testament concerning _bishops_, including of course the words
_overseer_ and _oversight_, which have the same derivation, is to be
regarded as pertaining to that middle grade"--the presbyters or elders.
Page 12.

The noted historian Waddington, also an Episcopalian, makes the same
admission in the following words: "It is also true that in the earliest
government of the first Christian society, that of Jerusalem, not the
elders only, but the 'whole church' were associated with the apostles;
and it is even _certain_ that the terms _bishop_ and _elder_ or
_presbyter_ were, in the first instances, and for a short period,
sometimes used synomously, and indiscriminately applied to the _same
order_ in the ministry." Church History, Part I, p. 41. The italicizing
is mine.

The well-known historian Milman, also an Episcopalian, in his History of
Christianity, says, "The earliest Christian communities appear to have
been ruled and represented, in the absence of the apostle who was their
first founder, by their elders, who are likewise called bishops, or
overseers of the church." Page 194.

Kurtz, in his Church History, says: "To aid them in their work, or to
supply their places in their absence (Acts 14:23), the apostles ordained
rulers in every church, who bore the common name of _elders_ from their
dignity, and of _bishops_ from the nature of their office. That
originally the elders were the same as the bishops, we gather with
absolute certainty from the statements of the New Testament and of
Clement of Rome, a disciple of the apostles. (See his first epistle to
the Corinthians, Chaps. 42, 44:52.) 1. The presbyters are expressly
called bishops--compare [the Greek especially] Acts 20:17 with verse 28,
and Titus 1:5 with verse 7. 2. The office of presbyter is described as
next to and highest after that of apostle (Acts 15:6, 22). Similarly,
the elders are represented as those to whom alone the rule, the teaching
and the care of the church is entrusted (1 Tim. 5:17; 1 Pet. 5:1,
etc.).... In [several] passages of the New Testament and of Clement we
read of many bishops in one and the same church. In the face of such
indubitable evidence, it is difficult to account for the pertinacity
with which Romish and Anglican theologians insist that these two offices
had from the first been different in name and functions.... Even Jerome,
Augustine, Urban II. (1091) and Petrus Lombardus admit that original