Page:A short account of the rise and progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in America.djvu/104

 Dictionary informs us that the word Bishop comes from the Saxons, and that they derived it from the Greeks, and that these people used it as a title for the chief clerk of the market, who inspects all that is bought and sold therein. James Wood brings it from the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and agrees with the above information; and when the title was brought into the Church, Lord King shows that the man who bore it, was only a Priest, a Presbyter, or Elder; and examining the New Testament, we find nothing therein which makes him any thing more, as to ordination, than an Elder. How then does he become a Bishop, or Superintendent, as he is called among us? He is virtually elected by the church. How does the church elect him? They have granted this power to the Yearly Conference, according to our Discipline, which consists of a body of itinerant ministers, and by them he is actually elected for a certain term of years, by ballot, and at the expiration of that term he is re-elected, or another person elected in his stead, if the Yearly Conference think proper, at one of those meetings which the Discipline designates for making new rules and regulations. In confirmation of the foregoing, relative to the origin of the word Bishop, and to there being originally but two orders in the church, see Buck's and Wood's Theological