PRESBYTER, PRESBYTERIANISM. Presbyter (Gr. presbyteros, elder) is the title of an office or dignity in the Jewish synagogue, and also of one of the grades in the Christian hierarchy. In the latter sense the title has been the occasion of a protracted controvefsy as to the respective claims of the bishop (q.v.) and the presbyter, which, except historically, would be out of place in these pages. The word presbyter not unfre• quently occurs in the Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, and in more than one of these passages it is certainly applied to persons whose office would seem to be iu all respects the same as that which is claimed for the " bishop" in the Episcopalian theory. From this identity of name the identity of office has been inferred, and it has been hence con cluded that the distinction of bishops and presbyters is a human and post-apostolic ordi nance. Advocates of the Episcopal theory admit that the name presbyter is occasionally given, both in Scripture and in the early church writers, to persons who bore the office of bishop (episcopos), and that the latter certainly was in all cases a presbyter; but they contend that besides being a presbyter, he was also something more and something higher, That the office of Timothy, for example, was superior to that of a presbyter is conceived to be plain from St. Paul's instruction to him (1st Timothy v. 10) as to how he should receive testimony against a presbyter. The same is inferred from Titus i. 5. On the other hand no example, it is affirmed, appears of a presbyter sitting in judgment on a bishop, or "appointing bishops in every city." But Presbyterians do not admit the validity of these arguments, inasmuch as they assert the identity of presbyter and bishop, and the right of co-presbyters both to judge a brother and also to ordain the office of the ministry. Episcopalians rely still more, however, on the apostolic fathers, and those of the 3d and 4th centuries. Among the fathers of the former period, Clement of Rome, and even more plainly, Ignatius of Antioch, point to the bishop's superiority as already established, and they are followed by Tertullian, Tremens, Clement of Alexandria, and Cyprian. On the Presbyterian side a remarkable passage is quoted from Jerome, in
which, while repressing the pretensions of deacons to equality with presbyters, he appears to place the presbyter on the same level with the bishop in all the functions of the ministry except the power of ordination. The explanation of this passage, accord ing to the Episcopalian view, is found in what has been already indicated by the com munity of name which existed even in the primitive times; while they also rely on the difference implied in the very important exception which even Jerome admits, in this very passage—viz., the power of ordaining. The offices of presbyter and bishop, according to the Roman Catholic theory, both, although in different degrees, belong to what Roman Catholics regard as the priesthood of the new law. This priesthood the bishops possesses in its fullness, the presbyter only in part, but the functions which belong to that part are discharged alike by the presbyter and the bishop, although by the former only in subordination to the latter. What these functions are will be detailed under the head priest (q.v.); but the principle of a certain distinction of functions, and the limi tation of the power of the presbyter as to one at least—that of ordination—is expressly recognized by Jerome in the passage alluded to. The name presbyter has been retained even in the Roman Catholic theory of a priesthood; but although, by the opponents of the Episcopalian doctrine, the word is used with the express design of excluding the sacerdotal idea, it has come, in the popular language of Roman Catholic theology, lei be identical with priest. From an early period, however, a distinction of rank among the presbyters came into use. Several being, in some cases,•attached to a single church, one of the number received the title of proto-presbyter or (acid -presbyter; but it is quite certain this office bore no analogy to that of the bishop.