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Mhg56 1236 P98

AN
EARNEST REMONSTRANCE •roQ
THE AUTHOR
OF THE
" POPE'S PASTORAL LETTER TO CERTAIN MEMBERS
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD:"
WITH A POSTSCRIPT,
NOTICING THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, AND OTHER PAMPHLETS,
AND AN APPENDIX ON APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. L
; F
BY THE

REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D.
REUIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, CANON OF CHRIST 1 HI 'Kill,
AND LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL I 'OI.I.KI.E.

As a mad man wlio castcth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the man tlut
rvtivelli his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport? — Prov. xxvi. IK, 19.

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AN

EARNEST REMONSTRANCE,
<yc.

Sir, Two reasons induce me to appeal to you, in
reference to your recent Letter : First, that I have escaped
your censures: Secondly, that (if report speaks right) you are
one from whose straiglit-forwardness, sincerity, and love of
truth, I once anticipated much. In both ways, therefore, I am
freed from the risk of personal feelings.
I would, then, regard you as the representative of a certain
class (as every one is, more or less) ; and would direct my
observations to an evil prevalent in these times, not to you.
That evil (and there could scarcely be a greater) is the
use of banter and jest in things serious. It is true that
the minds of a large portion of our countrymen seem to have
become so inured to this, that persons have even despaired
of addressing them, except in a tone even lower than that
low tone to which they have sunk. It is true, that even
among the better-instructed orders, persons, in their degree
serious-minded, have often thought themselves obliged to con
descend to the conventional language of the day, as their only
a -2

hope to gain a hearing. It is true, also, that the appetite has
grown with its unwholesome nourishment ; and now, as by a
self-created necessity, all seem to be absorbed into the tide ;
and it is rare to find any cause advocated in the plain, open,
straightforward tone, which was once the characteristic of our
land. Not simply our periodical literature, or our journals,
but our courts of law, and that branch of the legislature which
is liable to be affected by popular taste, are infected by the
mal-aria of this destructive habit. Man's happiness, or God's
displeasure, domestic misery or national sin, are continually a
jest. Adulterjr, fornication, theft, drunkenness, lying, are
daily matters of sport. If justice is to be perverted, men's
minds blinded, sin to escape unpunished, a jest is the refuge;
caricatures are the vehicles of public instruction, and " a mock
at sin" the source of public amusement.
It is indeed strange, and a lamentable part of this sad merri
ment, that many right-minded people are so little sickened at
it, or so little express their weariness. But so it is with every
other prevailing sin ; those who live amidst it are, in their
several degrees, infected by it : the fineness of our moral per
ceptions is blunted by the very acquaintance with sin, all men
tion whereof we at first loathed ; our ears become untuned to
the chords of Heaven, by listening constantly to the jarring
sounds of earth, and are less offended by their discordancy. Most
men feel themselves compelled to an over-acquaintance with the
things of the day, and so are insensibly inured to its wretched
ness, and deem it irremediable. They are indeed mistaken :
the more earnest spirit is not fled ; it sleeps only, or rather is
drugged by these continued poisonous appliances ; and brighter
days may yet come, when our countrymen shall again be
spoken to, not as members of a vast machine, or as the slaves
of temporal interests, but as responsible immortal agents, as
Christians, as members of Christ the Son of God.
It is one consolation, that if all our outward privileges, yea,
every thing except truth, be lost, then the temptation of ap-

pealing to any other principle but truth and holiness, will be
removed also.
These however have been, in many cases, worldly things,
treated of by men of this world : a pernicious principle was
admitted ; but the source of truth and holy earnestness was not
yet poisoned ; banter had not yet been employed upon things
Divine. This is now inadvertently commenced, and the more
dangerously because inadvertently. Hitherto it had scarcely
been found except among Infidels.
I would then, Sir, request you for a while to lay aside the
thoughts of the amusement which your Letter has caused to
yourself or others, and to consider in earnestness some of the
evils into which it has betrayed you, and may and must betray
others. I will confine myself to three : —
1. Irreverent treatment of holy things.
2. Sacrifice of truth.
3. False insinuation, and consequently slandering.
And these I impute, not to yourself : on the contrary, I
think that, in your natural character, you would be very far
from them. I would speak of them only as inseparable con
sequences of the line which you have taken.
I. Irreverence. — It may suffice, Sir, to mention some of
the subjects which were necessarily brought into your ill-
advised jest.
1. Persons' belief as to our Lord's presence in the Communion.
2. The mode in which the Commission ordained for the
preaching and maintenance of the everlasting Gospel has been
continued to this day.
3. The maintenance of the form of our public worship, and
the doctrines therein contained.
4. The comfort which the dying Christian obtains from the
provisions of our Church.
5. The unity of the Church of Christ.
6. The authority of His bishops, or of His Church.
1

7. The quiet frame of mind of a simple, undisputing
Christian. It is not here the question, whether any of the writers whom
you ridicule, over-stated the truth upon any of these points.
I am convinced that they have not. But granting that they
had, is ridicule a safe, a Christian, a godly, weapon to employ
in such matters ? Is it possible that those who should have
been thereby made ashamed of, or scared from, any of those
statements, would approach the consideration of the truth
itself with that deep and considerate earnestness and reverence
of mind which the subject requires, — if, indeed, you yet hold
that there be any truth at all connected even with these subjects?
Is it not too probable that the infection of this ridicule will
extend to other truths ; some of which, I presume, you would
not wish to see thus assailed ? since the efficacy of Baptism,
the strengthening of the believer's soul by the Body and Blood
of his Lord in the holy Eucharist, the Divinity of our Re
deemer, and His sacrifice for sin, have been, and still are by
some, represented as relics of Popery ? The Socinians, and,
more recently, the Rationalists of Germany, regarded or
represented themselves as carrying on the work of the first
Reformers, in purging Christianity from Papal corruptions.
Ridicule cannot be employed with impunity as a test of
truth : error and truth often lie so closely together, nay, most
religious error has so much of truth mingled up with it, that
the very love of truth ought to preclude the use of jesting; not
to say that the fearfulness of the subject, and the majesty of
Almighty God, might well instinctively awe man into sobriety.
For, through this close connection of truth and error, mire
cannot be cast at error, without defiling the truth also. To
take the most palpable errors, — Could a man jest at Transub-
stantiation, and not thereby unfit his mind for the reception
of the holy mystery of the Communion ? or would not a mock
ing at the false doctrine of the Mediation of the Saints lower
men's notions of their high and holy state ? or has not the

jesting, even at the most unreal delusions of the imagination,
injured men's faith in the influences of God's blessed Spirit?
Throughout, Sir, we are standing upon holy ground; and it
beseems us to pull the shoes from off our feet, and tread reve
rently. Let error be removed as a disease, gently handling
those who suffer under it, or repressing those who wilfully pro
pagate it; but let us not sport with the Enemy of men's souls.
This subject, however, has been handled by one to whose
talents you would perhaps pay deference, — Bp. Warburton ;
and to him I would refer you. He has not indeed the ear
nestness or depth of the writers of the seventeenth century,
yet he states facts which it were well for this age to lay to
heart. For we are now reaping the harvest which the infidels
of his day sowed ; only in his times men yet looked to prin
ciples — in these they regard only their practical efficiency in
carrying a point: then the evil was without, now it is admitted
within the Church. I will now, then, request your attention
to a few extracts only from his address to the Freethinkers, to
whom he dedicates the first three books of The Divine
Legation. " Your writers offer your considerations to the world, either under the
character of petitioners for oppressed and injured truth, or of teachers to
ignorant and erring men. These sure are characters that, if any, require
seriousness and gravity to support them. But so great strangers are we
to decorum on our entry on the stage of life, that, for the most part, we
run giddily on, in a mixed and jumbled character ; but have most an end,
a strong inclination to make a farce of it, and mingle buffoonery with the
most serious scenes. Hence, even in religious controversy, while the
great cause of eternal happiness is trying, and men and angels, as it were,
attending the issue of the conflict, we can find room for a merry story.
" This quality [of making men laugh] causing the writer to be so well
received, yours have been tempted to dispense with the solemnity of their
character, as thinking it of much importance to get the laugh on their
side. Hence ridicule is become their favourite figure of speech. It is
inconceivable what havoc false wit makes in a foolish head. ' The rabble
of mankind,' as an excellent writer [Addison] well observes, ' being very
apt to think, that every thing which is laughed at, with any mixture of
wit, is ridiculous in itself.' Few reflect on what a great wit |WTycherly]
has so ingenuously owned, ' that wit is generally false reasoning.'
' ' To see what little good is to be expected in this way of wit and humour,

one may go further, and observe, that even the ridicule of false virtue
hath been sometimes attended with mischievous effects. The Spaniards
have lamented, and I believe truly, that Cervantes's just and inimitable
ridicule of knight-errantry rooted up, with that folly, a great deal of their
real honour. And it was apparent that Butler's fine satire on fanaticism
contributed not a little, during the licentious times of Charles II., to bring
sober piety into disrepute. The reason is evident : there are many lines
of resemblance between truth and its counterfeits ; and it is the province
of wit only to find out the likenesses in things, and not the talent of the
common admirers of it to discover the differences."
But if these evils result from ridiculing religious error, what
shall be said, if what you have ridiculed be after all the truth ?
And yet, because ultra-Protestants of the present day think
any truth to approximate to Popery, it follows not that it is
Popish, or if found in Popery, it follows not that it is untrue,
else must all the Catholic verities be untrue also. Whenever
you shall be pleased to abandon the ground of ridicule, and to
treat questions of religious truth with seriousness, then will we
also show, that the positions which you have ridiculed are nei
ther Papistical nor untrue, but that you have been ridiculing
the truth. Meanwhile, we propose for your consideration a
catalogue ' of writers (which might easily be swelled to any
amount), who, upon the subject which you have chosen for
your chiefest ridicule, and which ultra- Protestants of this day
are most ashamed of, have spoken as strongly as they, whom
you on that ground decry as Papists : I mean, Apostolical
Succession. I would only observe by the way, since persons in these days
dispense lightly with truths, the value whereof they do not
understand, that in jesting at the doctrine of apostolical succes
sion you despise a fact, wherein one of the acutest writers of
any age or land saw an evidence for the truth of our holy faith.
The apostolical succession of ministers is a fact which satisfies
Leslie's criteria of the truth of the history wherewith it is con
nected; and the sceptical Middleton in vain attempted, during
1 See Appendix. Tracts for the Times, No. 74.

above ten years, to find any case, to which Leslie's criteria
applied, and which yet was untrue.
I will extract such portion of Leslie's words, as may suffice
to explain this. (Short's Method with the Deists, iii. -2.)
" Baptism, and the Lord's Supper, were instituted as perpetual memo
rials of these things (the matters of fact recorded in the Gospel of our
blessed Saviour) ; and they were not instituted in after-ages, but at the
very time when these things were said to be done, and have been observed
without interruption in all ages through the whole Christian world, down
all the way, from that time to this. And Christ Himself did ordain apo
stles, and other ministers of His Gospel, to preach and administer these
sacraments, and to govern His Church, and that always, even unto the
end of the world. Accordingly, they have continued by regular succes
sion to this day ; and no doubt ever shall, while the earth shall last. So
that the Christian clergy are as notorious a matter of fact, as the tribe of
Levi among the Jews. And the Gospel is as much a law to the Christians
as the books of Moses to the Jews ; and it being part of the matters of fact
related in the Gospel, that such an order of men were appointed by Christ,
and to continue to the end of the world, consequently, if the Gospel was a
fiction, and invented (as it must be) in some age after Christ, then, at that
time, when it was first invented, there could be no such order of clergy,
as derived themselves from the institution of Christ ; which must give the
lie to the Gospel, and demonstrate the whole to be false. And the matters
of fact of Christ being pressed to be true, no otherwise than as there was at
that time (whenever the Deists will suppose the Gospel to be forged), not
only public sacraments of Christ's institution, but an order of clergy, like
wise of His appointment, to administer them ; and it being impossible
there could be any such things before they were invented, it is as impos
sible that they should be received when invented."
Of a truth, you know not wherewith you are trifling ; and
I would mention this rather as an unexpected benefit, derived
from adherence to the truth, than as the use of that truth, —
an instance how many hidden values every truth contains
within it, though but gradually perhaps evolved to us, how
much more than we are aware we lose, if we abandon truth.
The progress of error on this head is indeed a warning how
men be ashamed of any, even though it seem to them the least
portion of the truth committed to their trust ; men first sup
pressed it as invidious, and an obstacle to charity, then were
ashamed of it, then disbelieved it, lastly ridicule it. Those
of this generation must look to it, lest the fear of avowing their

10
conviction lead to the same result with regard to the sacra
ments of their Lord ; whether they have not already taken the
first steps.
II. Sacrifice of Truth.
This again I would regard as the inevitable result of the
use of ridicule ; and its ill tendency is the more illustrated by
its having corrupted your natural love of fairness. It is part
of the character which you have adopted, not of your own.
For having once resolved on the fiction which was to be the
vehicle of your satire, then the laws of composition required
that the fiction should be in keeping, however at variance with
the laws of truth. The laws of fiction are indeed stern laws,
since they require the sacrifice of whatever is at variance with
themselves. Having adopted the fiction of a letter from the
Pope to certain members of your Church, as being his emis
saries, it became necessary, by disguise, or omission, or per
version, to conceal whatever would have disturbed the unity of
the drama. For instance, you play not unfrequently upon the
words which one of these writers addresses to the Church of
Rome, — " Cum talis sis, utinam noster esses." And who
would not echo the wish ? Who, — bearing in mind the holy
truths which Rome, amid her corruptions, yet holds, how
much of the highest Christian truth, which many Protestant
bodies have lost, or are in jeopardy of losing, on the mystery
of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, and its consequences ; or
considering, again, the extent of her Communion, — would not
wish, and long, and pray that she might be freed from her anti-
Christian servitude; that she, as ourselves have been, might
be restored to her primeval purity, when she was once the
guardian of Christian truth; that God would "break the yoke
of her burden, the staff on her shoulder, and the rod of her
oppressor?" (Is. ix. 4.) Taken then in their obvious sense, the
words are the expression of every Christian heart. Your fiction,
however, required that they should express a desire for union
with Rome as she is ; and in this sense, accordingly, you

11
quote them. The very next words of the writer contradict
this. He proceeds (and to prevent the possibility of mistake,
he has printed these words in capitals), —
"But, alas! an union is impossible. Their communion is infected
with heterodoxy : we are bound to flee it as a pestilence. They have esta
blished a lie in the place of God's truth ; and by their claim of immuta
bility in doctrine, cannot undo the sin they have committed. They cannot
repent. Popery must be destroyed ; it cannot be reformed."
Honesty required the insertion of these words ; but they
would have spoiled the jest, and so they are omitted.
Again, as a member, to all appearance, of our Church, and so
having no prejudice against her, it is hardly probable that you
should believe what a recent author ' has well termed " The
fable of the Nag's Head consecration." Bishop Bull calls it
" a putid fable ;" and even Lingard, who shrinks not from
any plausible fable, discards it2. It suited, however, your
assumed character, and so, in answer to the words —
" As to the fact of Apostolical succession, every link in the chain is
known, from St. Peter to our present metropolitans."
You reply :
" But surely you are aware of all the circumstances of the Nag's-head
consecration. This must at least diminish confidence as to the continuity
1 Short's History of the Church of England, chap. viii. § 409.
" Strype has been very particular in recording every thing which was
done on this occasion, from the most authentic documents, in order to
refute the fable of the Nag's Head consecration, which was promulgated
by the Roman Catholics about forty years after the event had taken place,
when it might have been supposed that all direct testimony had been lost.
The story is, that the bishops met at a tavern which bore that sign, and
that when Oglethorp refused to consecrate them, Scory laid a Bible on
each of their heads, and bade them rise up bishops. The tale has been
refuted as often as brought forward."
The following also is the statement of the Calvinist Professor, John Pri-
deaux. " The public acts are stiLV extant in Mason and others, honestly
brought forward, and they sufficiently annihilate this transparent lie of
the calumniators. Archbishop Abbot caused them to be shown to certain
priests, to convince them of the impudence of this fiction, that so they
might at length cease from seducing so wickedly their credulous Prose
lyte's." (Controv. de Disciplina Ecclesia?, p. 248. The Italics are his.)
2 Hist, of England, Vol. 7- Note I.

12
of your links, and compel every reasonable mind to doubt as to the reality
of your succession. Even a doubt on such a point is fatal to all the claims
of your Church."
Yet you, Sir, can have no " doubt upon this point ;" and
still you are raising a doubt in the minds of the ignorant and
unwary; and countenancing the only pretext of the Church of
Rome to deny us the character of a true Church. Your jest
again imposed hard laws upon you.
Again ; a lay writer in the tracts had said,
" Ordination, or, as it is called in the case of bishops, consecration,
though it does not precisely come within our definition of a sacrament, is
nevertheless a rite partaking, in a high degree, of the sacramental charac
ter, and it is by reference to the proper sacraments that its nature can be
most satisfactorily illustrated."
Now this statement is made, not to exalt the priesthood,
(although, if we duly " magnified our office," it were to be
hoped, that it would be exercised more earnestly,) but to meet
the common-place objection to the transmission of orders by a
regular unbroken succession from the Apostles, viz., that some
of the bishops, through whom they were transmitted, may have
been unholy men. Now the case of the " proper sacraments "
does illustrate this; for since we hold that "the effect of
Christ's ordinance is not taken away by the wickedness of evil
men," even though they " have chief authority in the minis
tration of the word and sacraments," forasmuch as " the sacra
ments be effectual, because of Christ's institution and promise,
although they be ministered by evil men," (Art. xxvi.), we
cannot consistently object, a priori, to the grace of ordination
being conveyed down, by virtue of our Lord's institution, even
through the hands of evil men. In the words of the layman,
(shortly following your extract,) p. 10. :
" He who receives unworthily, or in an improper state of mind, either
ordination or consecration, may probably receive to his own soul no saving
health from the hallowed rite ; but while we admit, as we do, the validity
of sacraments administered by a priest thus unworthily ordained, we can
not consistently deny that of ordination, in any of its grades, when be
stowed by a bishop as unworthily consecrated. The very question of

13
worth, indeed, with relation to such matters is absurd. Who is worthy ?
Who is a fit dispenser of the gifts of the Holy Spirit ? What are, after all,
the petty differences between sinner and sinner, when viewed in relation
to Him, whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity, and who charges His
very angels with folly ?"
This would have been the question to be considered, had
you been in earnest ; but it was an earnest question, and so
afforded no room for pleasantry. You turn aside, then, to lay
hold of the expression, " our definition of a sacrament," and
make the pope to say, (p. 13.) :
" We do not blame you, beloved brethren, for its not coming perfectly
within your Church's definition of a sacrament ; but we feel convinced
that, when opportunity may serve, you will so alter the definition as to
increase the number of your sacraments."
Yet since the " layman " distinguished " orders " from the
" proper sacraments," it was an ill pleasantry, which would
represent him, as wishing to include them therein, although
you need not have gone as far as Rome for a definition which
would have included them. St. Augustine's definition of a
sacrament, (with which Calvin wishes to show that his own
agrees, Instit. iv. 14. 1.) had sufficed: "a visible sign of a
sacred thing," or " a visible form of invisible grace." The
word "sacrament" has namely, (as every one knows,) a larger
use, although the "two proper sacraments" have always had
their distinct reverence, as not conveying grace only, but
directly uniting men with their Redeemer. In this larger
sense, however, even foreign reformers have not scrupled to
call ordination not merely "a rite, partaking in a high degree
of the sacramental character," but " a sacrament." Thus even
Calvin says, (Instit. iv. 14. 20.):
" I am speaking of the sacraments instituted for the use of the whole
Church. For the imposition of hands, whereby the ministers of the
Church are initiated to their office, as on the one hand I am not unwilling
that it should be called a sacrament, so on the other I do not count it
among the ordinary sacraments."
And again, (iv. J 9. 31.) :
" There remaineth imposition of hands, which, as in true and lawful

14
ordinations, I allow to be a sacrament, so I deny that it has any place in
this farce, (those of Rome,) wherein they neither obey Christ's command,
nor regard the end, to which the promise ought to lead us."
And Melanchthon, (Apolog. Confess, de numero et usu
sacram.) :
" If orders be understood of the ' ministry of the word,' we should not
scruple to call orders a sacrament. For the ministry of the word has the
command of God, and magnificent promises, Rom. i. Is. Iv. If orders
are understood in this sense, neither should I scruple to call imposition of
hands a sacrament. For the Church hath the command to appoint minis
ters, which ought to be most acceptable to us, for we know, that God
approves that ministry, and is present thereat. And it is of moment, to
set forth and extol, as much as may be, the ministry of the word, against
fanatical men, who dream that the Holy Spirit is given, not by the word,
but for some preparations of their own if they sit idle," &c.
And again, (Loci, de numero sacram.) :
" I approve most thoroughly that ordination be added thereto, (to the
sacraments,) i. e., the calling to the ministry of the Church, and the public
attestation of that calling. For all these are ordained by a command of the
Gospel, as Tit. i. 5. and there is added a promise, the greatest of all, which
attests that God really worketh effectually by the ministry of those who are
chosen by the voice of the Church, as that universal saying beareth record
of the apostles, and all who transmit the word delivered through the
apostles, ' The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one
that believeth.' And Christ saith, John xvii., ' I pray not for these
alone/ &c, and John xx. 23. Eph. iv. 8 — 11. Luke x. 16. John xv. 5.
2 Cor. v. 18, 20. 2 Cor. iii. 6. These, and many like sayings, evidently
testify that God worketh effectually by this very ministry of those who
teach the Gospel, which ministry He wills to preserve in the Church by a
continued calling."
We do not, however, need such authorities ; we would
rather refer you to the wisdom of our English writers, as
Hooker, who speaketh of things as being " as sacraments," or
Archbishop Wake, who objects not to its being called " a kind
of Particular Sacrament."
But before you repeat your jest, allow me one earnest ques
tion ; When one is set apart for the ministry, and the bishop
pronounces over him the words,
" Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the

1.)
Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our
hands," do you think that he receives no spiritual benefit ? or that no
spiritual benefit is thereby implied? if not, are not the words
blasphemy ? but if the Holy Ghost be thereby bestowed, if
the ordained person " receive the Holy Ghost for the office of
a priest in the Church of God," is not ordination to him a
means of grace, and so, although not a sacrament, does it not
" possess in a high degree the sacramental character ?" and
ought this subject to be treated of in merriment?
Again, a writer after having, in a very interesting paper,
pointed out the notices of an extensive Christian ritual, con
tained in Scripture itself, adduced two passages, " in further
illustration of the subject" from Tertullian, a.d. 200, and St-
Basil, a.d. 350, both of whom maintain the binding character
of usages, which, though not in Scripture, had come down from
the Apostles by a " continuous tradition." And who would
not ? Is not our argument against the modern Church of
Rome, that she has introduced "a corrupt following of the
Apostles," (Art. 25.) " fond things vainly invented" and
grounded upon no " warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant
to the Word of God" (Art. 22.) ? The ground taken by the
Church of Home is that all her present traditions are to be re
eeived, as of equal validity with the written word, because she
holds them ; our ground, that they are not to be so received,
because they cannot be proved to be apostolic, and some are
corrupt and vainly invented. Our controversy then with
Rome is not an « priori question on the value of tradition in
itself, or at an earlier period of the Church, or of such tradi
tions, as, though not contained in Scripture, are primitive,
universal, and apostolical, but it is one purely historical, that the
Romanist traditions not being such, but, on the contrary, re-
jHiipiaiit to Scripture," are not to be received. It has mani
festly, then, nothing to do with the question between Rome and
ourselves, wlial Tertullian and St. Basil held of traditions

16
which could be proved to be apostolical ; nor does our accept
ing the traditions of the universal Church in their day, involve
our accepting those of the particular Church of Rome, after so
many centuries of corruption, in the present.
In your Romanist character it is natural to say,
" These are the principles which have ever guided the Catholic Church ;
by deviating from these the nations of Europe have fallen into anarchy and
confusion ; and it is only by zealous efforts, such as our children of the
University are now making for the restoration of those principles, that
peace and harmony and unity can be reproduced."
But in your real character how will you excuse the fallacy
which your assumed one palmed upon your readers ? especially
when the writer had accompanied his citations with the
remark :
" Tertullian is, on the one hand, a very early witness for the existence
of the general doctrine which this passage contains, while on the other he
gives no sanction to the claims of those later customs on our acceptance,
which the Church of Rome upholds, but which cannot be clearly traced to
primitive times."
Do you really believe that Tertullian and St. Basil bear out
the claims of modern Rome ? If not, your assumed character
was too hard for your honesty — if you do, I leave you to
arrange the question with a really learned divine and Bishop of
our day.
" In the passage to which reference has just been made, Tertullian
speaks of written and unwritten tradition ; but the cases in which he lays
any stress upon the authority of the latter, are precisely those which our
reformers allowed to be within its province — cases of ceremonies and ritual
observances. Of these he enumerates several for which no express warrant
can be found in Scripture, and which must consequently have been derived
solely from tradition ; the forms, for instance, observed in baptism, in the
administration of the Lord's Supper, and in public prayer."
Bishop Kaye is here referring to the very passage of Ter
tullian, the quotation of which, together with that of St. Basil,
calls forth your reprobation; and we cannot do better than
refer you, and ultra-Protestants generally, to the masterly

17
manner in which he treats this whole subject, (Tertullian, p.
202 — 307. ed. 2.) and especially his refutation of Mr. Thirl-
vvall, (p. 297. sqq. note.)
Or I may refer you to the learned Dr. Hammond, " Season
able exhortations to all true sons of the Church of England,
wherein is inserted a discourse of heresy in defence of our
Church against the Romanist." (§. 3.)
I will cite one passage only, but the whole essay is well
deserving of study.
" To this also my concession shall be as liberal as any Romanist can
wish, that there are two ways of conveying such revelations to us ; one in
writing, the other by oral tradition; the former in the Gospels and other
writings of the Apostles, &c. which make up the Sacred Writ, or Canon
of the New Testament ; the latter in the Apostles' preachings to all the
Churches of their plantation, which are no where set down for us in the
Sacred Writ, but conserved as deposita by them to whom they were
entrusted." " And although in sundry respects the former of these be much the
more faithful, steady way of conveyance, and for want thereof many
things may possibly have perished, or been changed by their passage
through many hands (thus much being on these grounds confessed by
Bellarrnine himself, that the Scripture is the most certain and safe role of
belief), yet there being no less veracity in the tongues than the hands, in
the preachings than the writings, of the apostles ; nay, ' prior sermo quam
liber, prior sensus quam stylus,' saith Tertullian ; ' the apostles preached
before they writ — planted Churches before they addressed epistles to
them ;' on these grounds, I make no scruple to grant that apostolical tra
ditions, such as are truly so, as well as apostolical writings, are equally the
mailer of that Christian's belief, who is equally secured by the fidelity of
the conveyance, that, as the one is apostolical writing, so the other is apos
tolical tradition."
In the subsequent chapters, Dr. Hammond illustrates from
the rules of Vincentius Lirinensis, " where these qualifica
tions may be found."
I will add one more writer, the great Hooker (and I may
note that Whitaker, whom he quotes, leans in some things
over-much to Geneva, and so to ultra-Protestantism, and yet
is here on the same side). Truly, if we are herein Papistical,
we are so in "-oodly company, and no otherwise than our
I!

18
whole Church and Hooker were by ultra- Protestants always
so accounted.
Hooker then says (Eccl. Pol. i. 14.) :
" We do not reject them (the Romish traditions) only because they are not
in the Scripture, but because they are neither in Scripture, nor can other
wise sufficiently, by any reason, be proved to be of God. That which is
of God, and may be evidently proved to be so, we deny not but it hath in
his kind, although unwritten, the self-same force and authority with the
written laws of God. It is by ours ' acknowledged ' that the apostles did
in every Church institute and ordain some rites and customs serving for
the seemliness of Church regimen ; which rites and customs they have not
committed unto writing.' Those rites and customs being known to be
apostolical, and having the nature of things changeable, were no less to be
accounted of in the Church than other things of the like degree, that is to
say, capable in like sort of alteration, although set down in the apostles'
writings. For both being known to be apostolical, it is not the manner of
delivering them unto the Church, but the Author from, whom they proceed,
which doth give them their force and credit."
Again, one of these writers, among the dangers of altering
the Liturgy, notices the tendency of change itself to produce
the love of changing, the appetite growing with what it feeds
on. With this view, he instances objections, which men of
opposite characters might take to the commencement of the
service ; as, one might think, " the introductory sentences not
evangelical enough ;" another, " the form of absolution not
strong enough." Now the very object of the Tract, and the
character of the illustrations, showed the writer to be (as he
indeed is), content with things as they stand. The jest, how
ever, required that you should represent the contrary as the
opinion of the writers of the Tracts, and the Pope feeling for
them when they lament concerning the absolution (p. 12),
" that it is a mere declaration, not an announcement of par
don to those who have confessed."
Yet granting that a writer had thought this " absolution"
not strong enough, this would not make out the writer a
Papist, since the absolution in the Communion-service is, (as
1 Whitaker adv. Bellarm. qu. 6. cap. 6.

19
is right,) stronger than this : and that in the Visitation for the
Sick stronger still ; so that a person might even wish for a
much " stronger" form of absolution, and yet remain within
the bounds of our Church. And so little strong did our form
appear to the American Episcopalians, that in the Rubric
before the absolution, they substituted the words, " A declara
tion, emieernimj the Forgiveness of Sins," &,'e. Yet herein we
fare better than usual; for you have equally treated f ibid. J
as Papistical, words wherein another writer (Tracts, No. xvii.
p. 4.) embodies our Church's language in the Visitation for the
Sick. If a minister, you must, when called upon, use that same
language; whether then it be Papistical or no, we may leave
you to decide.
Again, another writer, now asleep in the Lord, gave an
historical statement of the gradual compression of the Church
services, and especially that which went on in the Romish
Church, "long before the abolition of the Latin service." (Tract
ix. p. 2.) This the Reformers carried on : it is not Papistical,
surely, to say "unadvisedly;" a person may regret that the
Communion and Morning Service are conjoined, and think that,
but for this, the Communion would probably have been adminis
tered more frequently, and yet not be a Papist. For this
compression of services had begun in Papistical times, and the
error of the Reformers (if it was one) was compliance with the
" spirit of [a Papistical] age." This, however, would have
afforded no room for pleasantry ; and so the whole is repre
sented as being, in our eyes, a departure from Rome, and an
error of " our misguided Reformers."
One expression of this writer demanded a candid judgment;
he said,
" The idea of united worship, with a view to which identity of time
and language had been maintained in different nations, was forgotten."
It is plain that what the writer herein lamented was the loss

20
not of the Latin language as a medium of prayer, but the loss
of that feeling of unity, " with a view to which identity of
time, as well as language, had been maintained in different
nations." He could not, and did not, object to the disuse of a
" language not understanded by the people." (Art. xxiv.) Ac
cordingly he added, " the identity of time had been abandoned,
and the identity of language could not be preserved." This last
sentence would have embarrassed the fiction, and so you have
omitted it.

These instances may illustrate the almost certain risk of
sacrifice of truth, entailed by such a fiction as that upon which
you have ventured. I need not adduce more; for I have no
thought of refuting your statements : this we will do, if ever
you take upon yourself seriously to maintain them ; at present
I would only show you the danger of such trifling in holy things.
Before, however, you venture upon serious controversy, as
the champion of ultra- Protestantism, I would recommend you
to review your armour ; — weapons which you have not proved,
however they may make a show in this counterfeit and
mockery, will not hold in real earnest. You belong, Sir,
to a school which would substitute individual speculation for
solid learning and the knowledge of antiquity, and which, conse
quently, has the reputation of at times reproducing as new, and
so giving undue and injurious prominence to, what all divines
were before well acquainted with ; and at times, also, has fallen
into strange unhistorical errors. Now, whether a certain doc
trine be Papistical or no, is matter of history, not of specula
tion ; and one not versed in history will be liable, perpetually,
to confound the earlier truth, or unobjectionable custom, with
the later corruption ; especially if he has no very clear idea of
Christian theology. Thus you attack — as implying transub-
stantiation — expressions which convey only the doctrine of the
Eucharist, as held in the early Church and our own.

The same want of acquaintance with antiquity, probably led
you to confound the early practice of commemorating God's
departed servants at the holy communion, and praying for their
increased bliss and fuller admission to the beatific vision, with
the modern abuse of masses for the dead, and the doctrine of
purgatory. You found it stated in the account of the ancient
liturgies (Tract lxiii.), that " prayers for the dead" occurred
in the several ancient liturgies, founded upon those of St.
Peter, St. James, St. Mark, and St. John.
Our departed friend, namely, put together an interesting
paper, shewing " the antiquity of the existing Liturgies."
From the tract itself, it would appear that his main object was
to direct persons' attention to the view taken in those Liturgies
of the consecration and oblation of the Eucharist (p. lb'.), since
the consecration of the Eucharist is now so often regarded as
a mere preliminary, instead of being in itself an essential part
of the service ; and this falls in with a part of the self-exalting
rationalism of the day. In giving an account, however, of
the points wherein "all the ancient Liturgies now existing,
or which can be proved ever to have existed, resemble one
another" (p. 7.), he was necessitated to mention "prayers for
the dead" (p. 8, 9.), or, as he explains it, "for the rest and
peace of all those who have departed this life in God's faith
and fear;" and having mentioned that they "all contain (4.) a
prayer, answering in substance to ours for the whole state of
Christ's Church militant," he added (5.), "and likewise ano
ther prayer (which has been excluded from the English Ritual)
for the rest and peace," &c.
He carefully guarded, then, against perplexing men's
minds : he did not put the question prominently forward ;
lie did not blame the Reformers under Edward VI. for having
yielded to the judgment of foreign ultra-reformers, against
their own previous judgment; he stated the simple fact, that
this prayer had been excluded, i. e. whereas it had been retained
on the first putting together of our Liturgy in " Edward VI. 's

1st book," it was excluded from, the 2nd, at the instigation of
Bucer and Calvin ; and Bucer's alteration was adopted. The
original unbiassed judgment, then, of our Reformers, was to
retain the prayer; and it argues no tendency to Popery, if
any one wish that our Reformers had, in this and other points,
for which they had the authority of the early Church, adhered
to their first judgment. These same Reformers had at that
time a clause in the Litany, which has since been excluded,
praying against " the tyrannye of the Bishop of Rome, and
all his detestable enormities ;" so that you could hardly accuse
them of Papistry \
The following is the part of the prayer omitted : —
" We commend unto thy mercy, O Lord, all other thy servants, which
are departed hence from us with the sign of faith, and now do rest in the
sleep of peace : grant unto them, we beseech thee, Thy mercy and ever
lasting peace ; and that, at the day of the general resurrection, we, and
all they which be of the mystical body of Thy Son, may altogether be set
at His right hand, and hear that His most joyful voice, ' Come unto me, O
ye that be blessed of my Father, and possess the kingdom which is pre
pared for you from the beginning of the world.' Grant this, 0~ Father,
for Jesus Christ's sake, our only Mediator and Advocate."
Now to this prayer neither Calvin nor Bucer objected that
it was Papistical. On the contrary, Calvin says, in his letter
to the Protector (Epp. p. 39. fob),
" I hear that in the celebration of the Supper there is repeated a prayer
for the departed, and I well know that this cannot be construed into an
approbation of the Papistical Purgatory. Nor am I ignorant that there
can be brought forward an antient rite of making mention of the departed,
that so the communion of all the faithful, being united into one body,
might be set forth : but there is this irrefragable argument against it, viz.
that the Lord's Supper is a thing so holy, that it must not be defiled with
any human addition."
Calvin argues further against the practice, 1st, as "not being
1 Cranmer had seen and written against the error of Purgatory even
under Henry the VHIth. " The necessary doctrine and erudition of a
Christian man," A.D. 1543, is, in this respect, a decided advance beyond
" The institution of a Christian man," A.D. 1537- (Comp. Formularies
of Faith in the reign of Henry VIII., p. 210 and 375-7.)

founded on Scripture;" 2nd, as "not answering the true and
lawful use of prayer."
Bucer, again, says, (Censura in Ordinat. Eccl. Opp. Angl.
p. 407.)
" I know that this custom of praying for departed saints is very old,
although there is no mention of it in the description of the Lord's Supper
in Justin Martyr."
And having gone over the testimonies from St. Cyprian,
Tertullian, St. Ambrose, Dionysius, he subjoins,
" But however old this Dionysius may be, and however great his
authority, or that of the other holy fathers, yet we must prefer Divine
authority to human, by how much God is greater than man. — Now Holy
Scripture leaches neither by word nor example to pray for the dead. And
it is forbidden to add or take away from it. Deut. iv. and xii."
Of Scriptural grounds Bucer adduces John v. 24, only, as
opposed to this custom, arguing,
"That the common people would think that the departed yet lacked that
peace, (and so the full mercy of God, whereby He forgives His servants
their sins,) and that our prayers were needed to obtain that mercy. No
occasion is to be given to this error, especially when we know with what
a sea of more than heathen superstition, and with what plagues Satan has
by this false persuasion overwhelmed religion."
It may have been on this ground, as Mr. Palmer conjectured,
(English Ritual, torn. ii. p. 94 — 97.) that these prayers were
omitted, as being so connected in the minds of the common
people with the idea of purgatory, that their continuance
would have involved the risk of propagating that cruel and
pernicious error. If so, the revisers of the Prayer Book, in
abandoning their former ground, did wisely and charitably,
and as the necessity of the times demanded ; and although
neither Calvin nor Bucer thought the practice legitimately
connected therewith, yet the common people may then well
have fallen into the mistake, since yourself, who are said to be
a theologian, have now done so; for on this ground alone could
you have selected this incidental mention of prayers for God's
departed servant-, as Papistical.

¦24
It may not be amiss to subjoin a few of the remarks of the
learned Bp. Collyer ' on this our first reformed liturgy.
" This recommending the dead to the mercy of God is no innovation of
the Church of Rome ; but a constant usage of the primitive Church. To
justify this reformed liturgy in this point I shall produce unexceptionable
authority." And having quoted Tertullian, St. Cyprian, the Apostolical
Constitutions, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine,
and referred to the ancient liturgies, he subjoins : —
" This custom neither supposes the modern purgatory, nor gives any en
couragement to libertinism and vice : not to the latter, for St. Austin, with
the apostolical constitutions, affirms, that unless a man dies qualified, he
cannot receive any assistance from the prayers of the living. That the
ancient Church believed the recommending the dead a serviceable office,
we need not question ; otherwise, to what purpose was it so generally prac
tised ? The custom seems to have gone on this principle, that supreme
happiness is not to be expected till the resurrection ; and that the interval
between death and the end of the world is a state of imperfect bliss. The
Church might, therefore, believe her prayers for good people departed
might improve their condition, and raise the satisfactions of this period."
And, again, having considered Bucer's objections:
" There is another text urged in favour of Bucer's opinion, ' Blessed are
the dead, which die in the Lord from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit,
that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.'
But this place amounts to no censure, either of the primitive practice, or
the reformed common prayer-book before us ; for 'tis supposed by the
ancients and the office last-mentioned, that the dead are discharged from
the fatigues of this life, and their works follow them, and that they are
happy on the main ; however, it does not follow from hence, but that their
condition may be improved, and that they may be served in some measure
by the assistance of the living.  1 have already observed, prayer for the
dead does not imply purgatory; whence it follows, that though the Church
of England condemns the Romish doctrine of purgatory, (Art. 22.) we
cannot thence infer her dislike of prayer for the dead."
With regard to your insinuation that those who approve of
the primitive practice of praying for the dead, " will feel a new
proof that the Church, which has retained this office, is alone
worthy of their regard," Collyer furnishes the answer, 1. That
the Church of England no where restrains her children from
1 Eccles. Hist, of Great Britain, P. ii. Book iv. p. 257.

praying for their departed friends, if this approves itself to
their consciences. 2. That the terms of joining with the
Church of Rome are so hard, her corruptions so manifold, that
" supposing the Church of England was chargeable with the omission of
a primitive usage, which is more than I affirm : 'tis more eligible to adhere
to her, than part with her communion upon so remarkable an exchange."
Since Rome has blended the cruel invention of purgatory
with the primitive custom of prayer for the dead, (not to speak
now of her other corruptions) it is not in communion with her
that any can seek for comfort from this rite.
It would be well for the modern controversialist with Rome,
to weigh Bishop Bull's language on this subject (Sermon iii. ed.
Burton, and " Corruptions of the Church of Rome, in answer
to the Bishop of Meaux' queries," t. ii. p. 260.) lest he involve
himself in difficulty for want of making this distinction. Bishop
Bull says,
" Prayers for the dead, as founded on the hypothesis of purgatory (and
we no otherwise reject them), fall together with it :"
And with these he contrasts
"The prayers of the ancient Church, either the common and general
commemoration of all the faithful at the oblation of the holy eucharist, or
the particular prayers used at the funerals of any of the faithful lately de
ceased. The former respected their final absolution [accomplishment, per
fecting,] and the consummation of their bliss at the resurrection, like as
that our Church useth both in the office for the Communion, and in that
for the burial of the dead, which indeed seems to be no more than that we
daily pray for in that petition of the Lord's Prayer, (if we rightly under
stand it), 'Thy kingdom come,' " &c.
Indeed, as Bishop Bull here implies, the very idea of an
intermediate state involves in it a degree of prayer for God's
departed .servants; since, knowing them to be in a state of im
perfect bliss until the resurrection, whenever we pray for the
final "coming of God's kingdom," we do in fact (if we have
any thought for the departed) pray at the same time for the
perfecting of their bliss. And thus, in the service of the burial
tor the dead, when we pray God
"Of His gracious goodness, shortly to accomplish the number of His

26
elect, and to hasten His kingdom ; that we, with all those that are departed
in the true faith of His Holy* Name, may have our perfect consummation
and bliss both in body and soul ;"
this undoubtedly implies a prayer for the consummation of
the bliss of the departed. And we, who so lose out of mind
God's departed servants, have also almost lost the notion of the
intermediate state. On the other hand, as Bishop Bull also
points out, these prayers for the departed servants of God,
exclude the false invention of purgatory. Bishop Bull
writes —
" In a word, let any understanding and unprejudiced person attentively
observe the prayers for the dead in the most undoubtedly ancient liturgies,
and he will be so far from believing the Romish purgatory on the account
of those prayers, that he will be found to confess that they make directly
against it. For (to omit other arguments) they all run (as even that
prayer for the dead, which is unadvisedly left by the Romanists in their
own canon of the mass as a testimony against themselves), in this form: —
' For all that are in peace or at rest in the Lord.' Now how can they be
said to be ' in peace or at rest in the Lord,' who are supposed to be in a
state of misery and torment ?"
I may add the following extract from the " Antient Liturgy
of the Church of Jerusalem," which formed part of the devo
tions of Bishop Andrews \ As being an antient liturgy, it of
course expresses all which could be meant in this reference to
" Antient Liturgies."
" Grant that we may all find mercy and favour with all thy saints, who,
from the beginning of the world, have pleased Thee in their several gene
rations, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, and every just spirit
made perfect in the faith of Thy Christ, from righteous Abel even unto
this day ; do thou give them and us rest in the region of the living in the
bosom of our holy Fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whence sorrow,
grief, and lamentation are banished away where the light of thy counten
ance shines continually ; and vouchsafe to bring them and us to the full
enjoyment of Thy heavenly kingdom."
I have dwelt the longer upon this subject, as being aware
that you have reputed it a vulnerable point, and you have served
your purpose well, by giving it a prominence, which it did not
i See Dean Stanhope's translation, p. 47, ed. Christian Knowledge
Society.

27
occupy in our Tracts, nor even in that one of our departed
friend, wherein alone it was mentioned, and that but in
cidentally and of necessity. The object of his tract (and it was
a very laudable one), being to point out the agreement as well
as the antiquity of the existing liturgies, it would have been
dishonest, wilfully to have suppressed any one point, wherein
they so agreed. This, therefore, he stated ; meanwhile he ex
pressed no opinion on it, attracted no attention to it, but
simply set it down, as he found it, a matter of fact; and but
for your acute scent of a weak part, it might have remained
unnoticed. No evil could have arisen from his simple state
ment of the fact. You, indeed, may possibly perplex men's
minds, little prepared as they are for the discussion of the
point, by confounding it with a popish superstition (which
Calvin did not do), and thereby giving arms to opponents
of our Church : it is ours to vindicate the early Church and
our reformers.
It is, meanwhile, not a little remarkable that the main position
of this tract which you have selected for censure, is precisely that
incidentally maintained by the learned Archbishop Wake, of
whose soundness never was any doubt in the Church. The
position was ;
" That although the several liturgies have been much interpolated and
in parts corrupted, much likewise has been handed down from the first
uninterpolated, and that means exist for ascertaining what parts are inter
polated and what pure and genuine ; the pure and genuine parts being
those wherein all agree."
Archbishop Wake says in like manner, (Dissert, on the
Apostolical Fathers, e. ix. § 20.) : —
" However, since it can hardly be doubted but that those holy Apostles
and Kvangclists [St. Peter, St. Mark, and St. James,] did give some
directions for the administration of the blessed eucharist in those Churches;
it may reasonably be presumed that some of those orders are still remain
ing in those liturgies which have been brought down to us under their
names ; and that those jirayi rs wherein they all agree, (in sense, at least, if
not in words,) were firs! prescribed in the same, or like terms, by those Apostles
rind Eraur/elisls ; nor would it be difficult to make a farther proof of this
conjecture from the writings of the ancient fathers, if it were needful, in
this place, to insist upon it."

28
One word more on a connected subject; you represent the
writers as dissatisfied with the changes formerly made in the
services, and wishing to introduce others more conformable to
the ritual of Rome. (p. 12.)
This (as I have already in part shewn,) is not so; for, first,
you have (as is your wont) confounded the primitive with the
Romish ritual : secondly, we never have, nor do we wish for
any alteration in the liturgy of our Church ; we bless God that
our lot has fallen in her bosom, — that He has preserved in her
the essentials of primitive doctrine and a liturgy so holy ; and
although I cannot but think its first form preferable, alteration
is out of the question : there can not be heal altera
tion, without a schism ; and as we claim to have our own
consciences respected, and not to have any doctrines suppressed
which the formularies of our Church now express, so, even if
we had the power of change, would we respect the consciences
of others, and not urge upon our superiors, or seek for support
in behalf of the restitution of that more antient form, which
we hold abstractedly the better.
The whole course of the Tracts has, as you know, and your
self reproach us with, been against innovation ; how, then, is it
honest in your assumed character, to give us the following
advice ; —
" You cannot be certain that those in authority would consent to those
alterations, which you regard as improvements ; and you must not be
hasty in urging them too far ;"
as if we had ever had any such wish ?
I may yet add another instance of the risk, which (for want
of better acquaintance with our old divines,) you run of involv
ing unawares in your censures those giants of old times,
against whom, for very shame, a modern should not open his
mouth, while you think you are only attacking men of modern
days like yourself, oloi vvv fiporol aim.
Every system of theology, as indeed every tendency of
mind, every good disposition, every performance of religious

29
duty, has its dangers, the danger of degenerating; and so, of
necessity, has Protestantism. One of the writers of the Tracts
brought forward some of these in warning, especially the ten
dency to require too rigid argumentation, explicit proof, and
not to yield to conviction until compelled. The R,omanist is
too easy of belief, believes on false grounds; the tendency of
the Protestant is, to be over-difficult of belief, not to believe
on sufficient and true grounds. This was illustrated by refer
ence to the prevailing feelings in some quarters with regard to
episcopacy ; and it was shown, that the same principle would
consistently extend not only to infant baptism, but to a ease of
" doctrine, of necessary doctrine, doctrine the very highest and most
sacred, where the argument lies as little upon the surface of Scripture, —
where the proof, though most conclusive, is as indirect and circuitous as
that for episcopacy, viz. the doctrine of the Trinity. Where is this solemn
and comfortable mystery formally stated in Scripture, as we find it in the
Creed ? Why is it not ? Let a man consider whether all the objections
which he urges against the Scripture argument fur Episcopacy may not
be turned against his own belief in the Trinity. It is a happy thing for
themselves that men are inconsistent ; yet it is miserable to advocate and
establish a principle, which, not in their own case indeed, but in the case
of others who learn it of them, leads to Socinianism. This being consi
dered, can we any longer wonder at the awful fact, that the descendants
of Calvin, the first Presbyterian, are at the present day in the number of
those who have denied the Lord who bought them ?"
It certainly was not any common mind, which saw how a
principle, now so commonly avowed in the instance of epis
copacy, will, when carried out, ultimately affect men's belief
in the highest doctrines of the faith: it was also popular ground
to take, and a great temptation, to represent these writers, as
weakening the evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity — and
you have fallen into it. I must own that I do not understand
all which your words would insinuate; but the tone of triumph
in which it is announced, implies that you have found, in your
opinion, a weak point. Vou call it (p. 37, 38.)
" a noble passage, which we can never sufficiently admire ;"
you tell us.
" you can always triumphantly appeal to your own writings to prove that

30
you have always maintained on abstract grounds, even when you were
not assailing individuals, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not explicitly
revealed in Scripture. We shall cite the passage we allude to, because we
delight in transcribing truth, and because we would recommend our
beloved children to have it engraven on the doors of their houses, as a
public announcement .of the orthodoxy of their faith, and the righteous
ness of their conduct."
But what, then, if this statement, for which its author is thus
assailed, occur in the writings of those who have been ever
regarded as great lights of our Church, and that, in relation to
the same subjects ? Your irony will reach rather further than
you intended.
I will cite two only, Hooker and Bp. Beveridge.
Hooker then says (Eccl. Pol. i. 41.),
" There hath been some doubt, likewise, whether containing in Scrip
ture, do import express setting down in plain terms, or else comprehending
in such sort, that by reason we may from thence conclude all things which
are necessary. Against the former of these two constructions, instance
hath sundry ways been given. For our belief in the Trinity, the co-eter
nity of the Son of God with His Father, the Proceeding of the Spirit from
the Father and the Son , the duty of baptizing infants ; these, with such
other principal points, the necessity whereof is by none denied, are not
withstanding in Scripture no where to be found by express literal men
tion ; only deduced they are out of Scripture by collection."
Bp. Beveridge is much fuller, speaks upon the whole sub
ject, and yet it would be difficult to point out any difference
between his statements and those of the Tracts. The passage
is part of the Preface to his learned Essay on the Canons of
the Primitive Church.
" Yet, indeed, this holy Scripture, although in those precepts which are
absolutely necessary to the salvation of every man, it be very clear and
plain to all ; yet in things relating to doctrine and the outward discipline
of the Church, it is not, on account of its very depth, understood in the
same way by all ; but " different people interpret its divine sayings dif
ferently, so that it would seem as if as many meanings almost might be ex
tracted from it, as there are men," as Vincentius Lirinensis of old observed,
and it abundantly appears from heretics and schismatics, who each
obtain their own perverse opinions and practice from holy Scripture,
interpreted after their own way. In matters, then, of this sort, if we would
be secure against erring or stumbling, first of all, beyond question, we
7

31
must beware of adhering too pertinaciously to the private opinions or con
jectures, whether of ourselves or others ; rather should we review what the
whole Church, or at least the majority of Christians thought thereon, and
acquiesce in that opinion, in which Christians of all ages agreed. For as
' in all things the agreement of all is the voice of nature,' as Cicero saith,
so in things of this nature, ' the agreement of all Christians may well be
accounted the voice of the Gospel.' But there are many things, which,
although they are not read expressly and definitely in holy Scripture,
yet by the common consent of all Christians are obtained from it. For
instance, ' That > in the ever blessed Trinity Three distinct Persons are to
he worshipped, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that each of these is very
God, and yet that there is only one God : that Christ is QiavOpwiroQ, very
God and very man in one and the same Person.' These and the like truths,
although they are not delivered in so many words and syllables, either in
the Old or New Testament, yet all Christians have been agreed upon
them, as being founded in both ; excepting only some few heretics, of whom
in religion no greater account is to be had, than, in nature, of monsters.
So, also, ' that infants are to be cleansed by holy baptism, and sponsors to
be employed in that Sacrament, that the Lord's Day or the first in each
week is to be religiously kept ; that the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension
of the Lord into heaven, and the coming of the Holy Ghost, are to be com
memorated every year ; that the Church is to be every where governed by
Bishops, distinct from the Presbyters, and set over them.' These and other
things of the like nature are no where directed in holy Scripture, expressly
and by name ; nevertheless, for fourteen hundred years from the apostles,
they were everywhere publicly received by this Church ; nor can, within
, that period, any Church be found which does not agree therein. So that
they are, as it were, universal notions, implanted in the minds of all Christ
ians from the first, not so much from any particular passages of Scripture
as from all ; from the general scope and tenor of the entire Gospel ; from
the nature and design of the religion therein established ; and from the
uniform tradition of the apostles, who, together with the faith, delivered
down Church- rites of this sort, and (so to speak) general interpretations
of the Gospel, throughout the whole world ; otherwise it were incredible,
yea, it were altogether impossible, that they should be received with such
universal consent, everywhere and always."
III. Imputation of False Motives, and so Slandering.
There is, however, another class of desertions of the truth,
which, in your natural character, as we are persuaded, you would
most abhor, but which your assumed one has forced upon you ;
I mean, imputation of dishonesty to men whom, in your con-
' 'the Italics are Bp. Beveridge's.

3'2
science, you believe and know to be honest. This was indeed a
necessary part of the fiction ; for an agreement with the Church
of Rome in things indifferent, or upon which our Church has
not deemed it necessary to pronounce, would even to ultra-
Protestants appear to involve no very serious charge. It
became requisite, then, to insinuate that they agreed with
Rome further than was expressed, although prudential or
other motives kept them from avowing it. This the fiction
enabled you to do covertly, since such dishonesty has ever
been part of the corrupt policy of modern Rome. Hence
such phrases as —
" We make allowance for those difficulties which impede your per
ception or your avowal of the truth." (p. 6.)
Further, you know that these authors had written also
against Popery, and republished older writings against it :
their very tracts are known by the name of " Tracts against
Popery and Dissent," although, when they were commenced,
Dissent was every where a pressing evil ; Popery had scarcely
began to bestir itself, and was therefore the less noticed1. You
know that all occasions of guarding against the corruptions of
Rome had been used in the very tracts corrective of dissent.
Such writers, however, would have been but bad allies to the
Pope, and therefore this proceeding must, by the laws of fiction,
be represented as insincere. Hence such passages as —
" We pardon some expressions towards us ; compelled, no doubt,
partly by the unhappy circumstances of your country. You have indeed
sometimes employed terms which we well know our adversaries use in
derision of us ; but, we repeat, we can pardon these, whether they are the
result of prejudices still entertained by you, or are employed for some other
reason (p. 6, 7-)- That communion, of which the present circumstances of
your country have made you, almost unavoidably, members, (p. n.)
While we perceive with delight that you have always spoken, in your own
persons, in accordance with our sentiments on this head, you have, at the
same time, selected some tracts from early writers of your communion,
1 A new series of " tracts against Romanism" had meanwhile been
actually commenced, although not then published.

in which our sentiments are impugned. These old tracts will not be read
with much attention, compared, at least, with your own more lively pro
ductions : they can too be readily withdrawn when it is expedient ; for
they are not a pledge of your opinions as strong as your own writings.
In the mean time, you may appeal to your republication of them as a
proof that you have not leagued yourselves with us."
Now of all this, Sir, you do not believe one syllable ; you
do not think that, either in the republication of the older, or
the protests of the more modern tracts against Popery, their
editors or authors were actuated by ;tny such motives ; ' while
you impute insincerity, you have reason to believe them as
sincere as yourself. It is an ill tree which brings forth fruit
thus corrupt.
There is one more evil desertion of truth, which I fear can
not be ascribed to any wish to "adorn your tale," although
you have thereby been enabled to convey it in a form less
manifestly offensive. You say,
"Another piece of advice which we shall give to you, (as we give it
to all our Missionaries,) is, that you should adopt every means to under
mine the influence of those whose writings hold out no hope that they may
be won over to the true Church. They are, in truth, dangerous men, and
you should represent them as such. Be not deceived by their apparent
amiability, by their virtuous conduct, or by their extent of learning.
These very circumstances render them the more to be dreaded. Suffer
not such men to be the instructors of youth. Do not permit them to
occupy those places which public spirit alone ought to make you anxious
to occupy, even independently of any desire for your individual advance
ment." (p. 34.)
I can the less lay this to the account of the fiction, because it
is manifestly the one object of your whole attack upon these
writers; whether out of private friendship to Dr. Hampden,
i Meanwhile, however, the calumny is spread in real earnest. The
anonymous compiler of the ' Specimens of Theological Teaching,' &c.
among the very few statements on which he ventures, echoes it, ' Indeed,
while these writers profess their love and reverence for the Church of
Rome [as it is?], they take care to protest against it, as all Protestants of
course must do.' " (p. 37.) C

34
or of alarm for yourself, as a member of the same school —
nam tua res agitur, cum proximus ardet Ucalegon — it is
notorious that you imagined these writers to be the principal
authors of the measures taken in consequence of that unhappy
appointment, and that your avowed object was, to " effect a
diversion V Herein you were mistaken ; since there prevailed
throughout Oxford one universal feeling of alarm, (which, under
the name of " panic," the heathen, more religiously than we,
would have ascribed to "the gods,") as soon as the appoint
ment was known. These individuals but joined what already
existed. But I would now speak of the truth of the imputation
only ; you have known, or have been aided (we have ground to
think) by others acquainted with those of whom you speak ; and
you dare not, in your own person, avow your belief, or even
your suspicion, of the truth of the allegation, which, under
your assumed character, you have insinuated. You know and
believe it to be untrue; and thus there is another evil of these
unhappy disguises, that they furnish men the temptation of
half saying, what they would shrink from speaking openly,
1 The object, thus covertly conveyed in this first essay, is now boldly
avowed in the " Specimens of Theological Teaching," and in the Edinburgh
Review. To any one acquainted with Oxford, the notion is altogether
absurd : there is in Oxford, happily, far too much thoughtfulness and
scrupulousness to be influenced by any party, however powerful : men
here form their individual convictions, according to their own consciences;
party-feeling neither existed, nor had it existed, would it have had any
influence ; but, in truth, individuals of every shade of religious opinion
within the latitude left free by our Articles, were united by one feeling of
common danger impending over the Church, and that, independently of
each other : they met and acted together spontaneously, actuated only by
one common apprehension. The opinions, then, of a certain number of
the " Corpus Committee," is in reality, nihil ad rem ; but will any one
say that the charges against Dr. Hampden were confined to " undervaluing
antiquity, or the sacraments, or the authority of the Church," or that the
prominent charges were not rather, his vague and Sabellian notions on the
doctrine of the Trinity, the rationalizing of the Atonement, and generally, a
system, opposed to the Articles ? The Articles of our Church, not the
teaching of any set of men, were made our standard ; and to this standard
and primitive antiquity would we appeal for ourselves.

35
as knowing or suspecting it to be untrue : but now, if
untrue, it is to pass as part of the jest, and so they take cour
age, and stifle their consciences.
For ourselves, you will have done us good service; your
attack will fall harmless alike on those of us who are now with
the Lord, or upon those who remain ; but your revival of the
old Presbyterian cry against " Prelacy and Popery," will show
the members of our Church what is really censured under the
name of Popery : they will see the necessity of striking back
into the old paths, and manfully avowing truths, which many
of late have shrunk from, as invidious. You, Sir, have been
consistent; it is, if we are rightly informed, your favourite maxim
that the bishops have been the great hinderers of the develop
ment of the Reformation for the last 300 years ; i. c, of such
development as Germany has suffered under for the last half
century, and from which she is now in part recovering. The
Rationalists, it is known, ever maintained the same ; they also
complained that our bishops were the great hinderances to the
extension of their theories among us. Therein they saw,
indeed, but a portion of the truth ; since our bishops were
produced by the system, which under God's blessing they con
tributed to perpetuate; but still they saw that our system
possessed a principle of stability, or as they deemed it, sta-
tionariness, foreign to their own. Those who wish well to our
Church will now see, who, under Almighty God, are the real
upholders of sound doctrine among us ; they who respect the
office of a bishop, even antecedently to any consideration of
individual merit in the person consecrated thereto, or they
who, as yourself, (p. 16.) ridicule such respect; they will see
that the cry of Popery is but a feint devised by the arch
enemy of the Church, whereby to hurry men down the steep
descent of ultra-Protestantism to its uniform end, the '"denial
of the Lord who bought them." And knowing that that
Church alone is safe wlio guards the deposit of sound doctrine
committed unto her, they will not be seared by shadows to

36
abandon the reality, or shrinking from the reproach which
our forefathers bore faithfully, fall into the toils, on either side
spread for them, whether of the Socinian or the Papal anti-
Christianism. Christ Church, St. Mark's ' Day.
1 See Collect for the Day.

POSTSCRIPT.

It were an endless task, and would imply too great a notion of one's
own importance, to attempt to occupy the time of others with the refuta
tion of all the statements which have been brought together. I have
exhibited those of the " Pope's Pastoral Letter," both as the first explicit
attack, and as a protest against the mischief of so handling things sacred.
A few words may suffice for the rest.
I. Specimens of the theological tenets of certain members of the Corpus
Committee. 1. The object of this pamphlet, and its entire inappositeness, have
been already stated. The persons therein assailed, — Mr. Newman, Mr.
Sewell, and myself, — were a portion only of a Committee appointed by
others, and the organs and representatives of a feeling already existing.
Our private opinions have nothing to do with the question wherewith
they are mixed up. That question is the soundness or unsoundness of
Dr. Hampden's theology, and its probable tendencies ; and on this the
appeal is to his own works and the Articles.
2. No charges of discrepancy from the Liturgy or Articles are even
attempted to be brought against us. Yet is not interference within these
limits a tyrannical attempt to put a yoke on men's consciences ?
3. For myself it is said,
" What Bhall lie thought of persons, as judges of others, who regard some of the
Christum doelrines us lilted rather fur contemplative minds than for the vulgar?"
I said,
" When truths, which hi lung to reverential contemplation rather, and arc not fitted
forevei v daj impulse upon a mixed multitude, are rudely laid aside."
I spoke neither of "contemplative minds," nor of " the vulgar, " but
of the " reverential contemplation" of the advanced Christian, and of
truths adapted to the mixed multitude of backsliding or half- Christians,
or persons almost apostate, or the fleshly-minded. The "vulgar" are

38
often the most " contemplative." The doctrines which I had mainly in
view were the high doctrines of the Holy Trinity; yet the 17th Article
also recognizes that the consideration of some subjects may be "full of
sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to the godly," yet, " for curious
and carnal persons, a most dangerous downfall."
" In Professor Pusey's peculiar scheme of Theology, the Church and its ordinances
become all in all, whilst the teaching of the Spirit by the Word of God, the doctrines
of free grace, of justification by faith, of remission of sins through the blood of Christ,
in conjunction with repentance, appear only secondary and supplementary parts of the
scheme of religion."
Part of this is to me absolutely unintelligible. 1 . I spoke of Baptism,
throughout, as an ordinance — not of the Church, but of Christ, as the
application of the blood of Christ. 2. Because, with Scripture and the an
cient and our own Church, I regard the Sacraments as the channels of " free
grace," do I hereby make " free grace" " secondary and supplementary ?"
Is the gift conveyed, " secondary and supplementary" to its channel ? 3.
In like manner, as to "justification," because I regard it as bestowed in
Baptism, and the source of all subsequent holiness, does it thereby
become " supplementary ?" 4. To Christians baptized in infancy, "the
teaching of the Holy Spirit by the word of God," or directly in the heart,
is ' ' supplementary," since the gift of the new birth was first bestowed ;
but how is it, therefore, "secondary?" 5. "Remission of sins through
the blood of Christ in conjunction with repentance " in one sense ought
to be " secondary and supplementary," in another, not : they, in
truth, who have most grown up in their baptismal holiness, have con
tinually whereof to repent, and for which to pray Him, who is their
Advocate with the Father, to intercede for them " by His most precious
blood, by His cross and passion :" but as it is ordinarily understood that
men fall away from their baptismal privileges so as to need again " to be
renewed unto repentance," this ought to be " secondary and supple
mentary;" it is not a part of the ordinary scheme of God's mercy in
Christ. Our Church teaches us to pray to Christ, " who has redeemed us
by His most precious blood," but it no where teaches us to look for a wash
ing in that blood, except through His sacraments, nor indeed for a com
plete remission, except through baptism, the baptism into His death.
The above statements are somewhat strangely combined, and do not
argue that knowledge of Christian doctrine, which would justify the
criticism of others.
II. Edinburgh Review. Art. The Oxford Malignants and Dr. Hampden.
A paper, such as this, would not require notice from any Christian,
and might be passed over in mere sorrow, but for one statement, which is
derived, in some way, from Dr. Hampden himself. The following is the
plea now set up for Dr. Hampden, and in proof of the falsity of " the
Malignants."

39
" The technical language in which Scriptural truths have been expressed, is carefully
confounded with the truths themselves ; Dr. H. as carefully distinguishes them, repeat
ing, over and over again, his firm belief, that the Scriptural truths arc such in substance
as the Church of England represents them ; but agreeing with many good and sound
divines, in regarding the language in which they are conveyed in theological writings, as
perplexing, and as not setting forth the truth in the same practical manner as it is to be
found in Scripture." (I*. 2:30, 231.)
I would not charge Dr. Hampden with falsifying his own statements ;
I believe simply that he does not understand them himself, or is not
aware of their extent; yet I have already shown with regard to the word
"fact," that he now explains his past use of it, in a way altogether dif
ferent ¦ from the sense in which he did use it, that unwittingly he "applied
it in one sense, and defended it in another." (See Past and Present State
ments p. 25. sqq., 2nd edit.)
In the present instance he has committed a similar oversight2. Dr.
Hampden certainly expressed his belief in certain " facts of Divine Pro
vidence," which he thought to be the only truths of revelation : and no one'
doubted this, (for without this belief Dr. Hampden must have been an
universal sceptic ;) on the contrary, Dr. Hampden's positive statements
were again and again noticed by his opponents, (Elucidations, p. 41. sqq.
Dr. Hampden's Theol. Statements, pp. xiii. xxiii. sqq. and p. 62. Past and
Present Statements); but Dr. Hampden opposed this "basis of divine facts,"
not simply to the "technical language wherein Scriptural truths have been
expressed," but to what he termed " speculations" or " theories" conveyed
under that " language." At the very outset of his lectures, he proposes
to himself, as his object, (what he stated past writers to have neglected,) to
" shew how the intellect of man had insinuated its own conclusions into
the very body of the revelation in the course of its transmission," as well as
" modified the expressions by which the truth is conveyed," (B. L. p. 6. see
Theol. Statements, p. 9. sqq.) It is, then, mere forgetfulness or confusion,
to speak of this last as having been the only object of the lectures.
Again, the "speculations," as Dr. Hampden speaks, gave rise to the
phraseology; the phraseology was the expression only of the previous ideas.
Again, Dr. Hampden believes what he thinks the main facts of the divine
revelation ; now it is possible that some of these might be expressed by
different terms; as our Lord's death for us, by redemption, atonement,
reconciliation, sacrifice, oblation, satisfaction, vicarious suffering, expiation ;
and although most of these express some portion of the whole truth with a
prominence peculiarly their own, and so it would be unwise and ungrateful
to reject them, yet the truth might be adequately expressed, under certain
circumstances, by the one or the other of them, and the omission of others
would not necessarily involve abandonment of doctrine ; although a
1 The author of the " Specimens" founds one charge upon this misconception ; he
does not understand that the objection was not to the use of the word "facts," but to
the denial that there wcie an\ doctrines bcyind the furls of Divine Providence on this
our earth. Mr. Hull naturally adopts the same explanation, p. .111.
'' The same mistake is icpeatcd in the " Remarks" of W. W. Hull, Esq. pp. 33 mi.
117 Hi. Hi 59. S

40
Church, which should habitually abstain from them, would ultimately lose
a portion of doctrine, and so change the doctrine itself. There are other
cases, however, where the truth has not been so variously expressed, as the
consubstantiality of the blessed Trinity, the eternal generation of the Son,
the procession of the Holy Spirit, wherein the abandonment of the language
involves the abandonment of the doctrine : there are many more, in which
persons object to the language, simply because they object to the doctrine
therein contained.
Again, one of Dr. Hampden's most frequent charges against the Church-
doctrine, was against its realism, i. e. its forming into Realities what were
only speculations upon words ; it was not the language of the Church to
which he objected, but that she converted into positive, objective truth,
what was merely language, that she formed inferences from language.
Again, Dr. Hampden condemned all deductions from Scripture ; now
since many of the truths received in the Church confessedly are deductions,
(see Bishop Beveridge, above, pp. 30, 31.) Dr. Hampden must consist
ently object to these, and did so.
A few extracts can but slightly illustrate the above : the following are
instances which cannot be said to be confined to " technical language"
only: —
" We arc apt to conceive that the Unity must he understood numerically." (p. 146.)
" Notim/s of materialism, we may perceive, were mixed up with these several
theories." (p. 121, 2.)
" Let us not identify this reality [sc. k of the sacred facts of Providence, which we
comprehensively denote by the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity,'] with the theories
couched under a logical phraseology. I firmly and devoutly believe that Word which
has declared the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. But
who can pretend to that exactness of thought on which our technical language is Imsed V
(p. 149,50.)
" It was an Unity both physical and logical, which the Orthodox held." (p. 126.)
" The theory of the Divine Procession, and its modifications by the Sabcllian or
Arian, demanded tlieir appropriate phraseology, without which they could not be main
tained." (p. 123, 4.)
" The questions next arose, how to reconcile these different views with the Unity of
the Divine Being ; how to discriminate between the Father, Son, and Spirit. Then
came also the disquisitions arising from the Incarnation of the Word, and their reaction
on the notions concerning the Trinity; and the minute discussions concerning the rela
tion of the Holy Spirit to the other members of the Trinity, as to the order and mode
of procession [sic] and the reaction of these upon the original hypothesis of the Tri-
nity." (p. 124.)
It is really scarcely possible, after having studied any portion of
Dr. Hampden's Bampton Lectures with any care, to understand how
he could persuade himself that he had objected to the "language" only of
the Church. Or take the following description of the origin of heresy, and
its effect upon the Church.
" All that was intended at the first, by these Speculations concerning the Divine Pro
cession, was, to present to the mind a view of the mysterious facts of the Trinity,
according to that theory of Causation which was the philosophical creed of the dav, and

41
thus to satisfy the questions of speculative men. Origen, indeed, attributes the origin of
all heresies in religion to the anxiety of inquisitive men to understand the doctrines of
Christianity. Rather, they were owing to the undue solicitude of Christians to meet
the objections of opponents. Theoretic views of the Scripture truths, it was thought,
might be useful in maintaining an argument with the infidel philosopher, or the scep
tical Christian. But soon the more scrupulous or less philosophical believer would
take alarm at the introduction into religion of expressions apparently foreign to the
truth. The alarm would spread ; and the leaders of orthodoxy would be roused to
vindicate the sacred cause ; the heretic philosopher Tould be called on for his defence ;
he would bo induced to maintain the position which he had originally advanced ; and his
defence of his jicculiar viae would then lead him into further speculations on the subject.
Thus were men of Loth parties, the reputed orthodox as well as the reputed heretic,
</rud.uulh/ forced into conclusions, and from these conclusions into other premsies, at which
they might at first hare recalled. They gradually went deeper, until at length their
footing was lost, and they abandoned themselves to the current. When once the prin
ciple is recognized, that a doctrine must be defended from all the consequences deducible
from it, there is no extravagance of theory, which the disputant may not be forced to
adopt, for the sake of saving his original hypothesis."
How can this be looked upon, as a question of language ' only ?
With regard to the other statements of the article in the Edinburgh
Review, the ignorance therein displayed, as to the whole tenor of the pro
ceedings at Oxford, even the very order in which they occurred, as well as
of the motives of those therein concerned, is perfectly natural : yet it does
seem somewhat strange that the writer of the article should profess to
review, and condemn of falsehood, a publication which, to all appearance,
he had never seen. For, 1 . he describes " Dr. Hampden's Theological
Statements and the Thirty-nine Articles compared," as —
" A more elaborate production, in which a number of propositions on different points of
Theology, are professedly selected from Dr. Hampden's works, and. contrasted with the
Articles of the Church of England."
Now if the writer had seen the Pamphlet, he would have known that
they were not propositions, but copious extracts from Dr. Hampden's works
which were so contrasted ; the propositions stood separately. And the
charge above refuted shows that there can be no mistake in this ; for he
charges the compiler of the second pamphlet with " carefully confounding
the technical language, in which Scriptural truths have been expressed,
with the truths themselves ; whereas Dr. Hampden as carefully distin
guishes them."
Yet the compiler simply extracted Dr. Hampden's own words, without
adding any thing of his own.
1 There arc in Dr. H.'s works indications of a theory, that the Xireue and Athanasian
Creeds have, in our Church, a different meaning from that which their framcrs, (Paro
chial Sermons, p. 35 — 311,) or even our Kcfonncis, intended (B. I., p. 37!>-H); that their
expressions ale not to lie interpreted in a positicc sense (ib. ) If, indeed, it is first as
sumed, that the expressions are not to be interpreted as representing realities, then it
signifies little how the expressions be ohpeted to; hut the assumption is unliistoiical,
and contrarv to Arl.viii., that " they aic thoroughly to be received and believed; for they
ma\ be proved Ity most certain warrants of Holy St ripturc." The theory, afiu" all,
would appl\ to but \ciy lew of the dilliculties ot the Bampioii I.ectiiics, and addb others.

4-2

2. He says,

" Dr. Hampden's calumniators took good care not to notice Dr. Hampden's Parochial
Sermons. Now it is manifest that the real nature of a man's religious views and feel
ings is to be collected most perfectly from his general pastoral preaching to his own con
gregation," &c.
Yet if he had ever seen the Pamphlet, he would have seen that the
" Parochial Sermons" are noticed (p xviii. sqq.), and it was by combining
them with his " Philosophical Evidence," and " Bampton Lectures," that
I came to the conviction that Dr. Hampden's teaching is Sabellian.
III. — Propositions attributed to Dr. Hampden by Professor Pusey, com
pared with the text of the Bampton Lectures, in a Series of Parallels.
The author of these " Parallels" is an avowed admirer of Dr. Hampden's
Bampton Lectures, and it is one of his objects " to direct attention to a
work, to which extracts, even in defence, must do partial injustice ! " On
this ground, I suppose, the propositions, which I extracted from the
" Observations on Dissent," and the " Moral Philosophy," although in
some cases flagrantly offensive, are passed over. The immediate object,
however, is to throw a doubt over the accuracy of my propositions, by
exhibiting in '' parallel columns the genuine unmutilated text of the Bamp
ton Lectures."
This, if accurately performed, had been useless labour ; for that very
text had been given, — only more fairly, more fully, and more accurately, —
in the very work in which I published those propositions ; so that the means
were already provided whereby people might judge for themselves. I say
more accurately, because an appearance of contradiction between my pro
positions and Dr. Hampden's context, is afforded in his " Parallels," in
some places by omission, or alteration of words.
Thus, in p. 4 alone, there occur the following (besides two verbal) inac
curacies :
Prop. 16. " Materialism intruded itself into what was considered the orthodox view
[''doctrine' Parallels] of the divine proceeding."
The compiler, by omitting portions of the context, as,
" Notions of Materialism, we may perceive, were mixed up with these several theories
of Causation, &c. though in the progress of the Trinitarian speculations, the original Mate
rialism oftlie Church philosophy is partly disguised under metaphysics and logic," &c.
and by connecting the passage with what follows only, would make it
appear that the charge of Materialism related — not to the Church-system,
but — to certain illustrations only.
Again,
Prop. 12. " The orthodox theory of the Trinity . . . consisted in an exact scientific
view of the principle [' theory? Parallels] of Causation," p. 1 18.
In the context we have,
" The heterodox, whether Unitarians or Tritheists, failed in this speculation,"

4.3
for
«' the heterodox, in either extreme, whether t/iose chxrged with Unitarian consequences, or
those who incurred tlie imputation of Tritlieism, failed in speculating concerning the
principle of Causation."
But although the language is thus softened, the charge remains the
same, that the only difference between the orthodox, and those charged
with heresy in either extreme, was, that the latter failed in a mere matter
of speculation.
Again,
Prop. 1!). — " The account of the Incarnation itself was more peculiarly logical; still
there was a mixture of physical speculation." (p. 137.)
Against this is placed in the Parallels :
" The discussums [the compiler puts this in italics] on the Incarnation were partly
physical, partly logical."
as if to show that Dr. Hampden was speaking of " discussions" only, and
that I had substituted the word " account ;" he breaks off his quotation
just before the words of Dr. Hampden, which I extracted.
All these inaccuracies occur in one single page.
Further, I had given the following proposition as Dr. Hampden's :
Prop. 2. — " The ready reception of the theon , that Christ, as the sole primary cause
of grace, conveyed that grace through the Saeiaments, as subordinate instrumental
causes, by which the Divine agency accomplished its ends, is sufficiently accounted for
by the general belief in magic, in the early ages of the Church." (p. 314, 15.)
On this it is said,
" N.B. — The word 'its' marked in italics in the column of Propositions has no ex
istence whatever in Dr. Hampden's passage."
The phrase, " subordinate instrumental causes, by which the divine
agency accomplished its ends," does occur in the Bampton Lectures, p. 314,
to which I referred. Dr. Hampden's proposition runs thus :
u The general belief in magic, in the early ages of the Church may sufficiently
account for the ready reception of such a theory of sacramental influence"
The other words are introduced from the preceding page, to show what
this theory is.
The same haste, doubtless, has occasioned the omission of some propo
sitions out of the Bampton Lectures, although the " Parallels'' profess to
quote them all. Two of these are the following :
pr0p () — •• strictly to speak, in the Scripture itself there arc no doctrines."
(B. L. p. .'S74 )
Prop. .'!.—" The apostolic Epistles contain no doctrinal statements." (Ibid.)
I say " haste," for besides that I have no ground to believe the com
piler dishonest, I suppose that in most instances he actually placed the
extracts from Dr. Hampden over against my propositions out of mere

44
honesty, since, in fact, they establish the fairness of my original propo
sitions; he at least has not pointed out, nor can I conjecture, what objec
tion any one can make to them.
The compiler but seldom ventures upon a comment ; when, however,
he does so, the matter becomes easy.
As an instance, I had given the following proposition on the Trinity as
Dr. Hampden's ; —
Prop. 9. — " All the differences of opinion which have ever prevailed upon the doctrine
of the Trinity, relate to the history of the human mind as much as to theology ; and
do not affect the Catholic faith," p. 149.
The following quotation is made in answer : —
" To me it matters little, what opinion on the subject has been advocated by the
shrewdest wit, or deepest learning, has been most popular, or most extensive in its recep
tion. All differences of this kind [not surely differences of opinion] relate to the his
tory of the human mind as much as to theology."
And people are left to suppose that the differences, to which Dr. Hampden
alludes, are simply as to the wit or learning by which the opinions on the
Trinity have been advocated. Yet Dr. Hampden clearly shows the con
trary ; he says,
" One fiwl is clear through all this labyrinth of variations, which historical creeds have
exhibited ; that there is some extraordinary communication concerning the Divine Being,
in those Scriptural notices of Cod, which have called forth the curiosity of thinking men
in all ages. To me, it matters little wltcd opinion on the subject has been prior, has been
advocated by the shrewdest wits, ecc. All differences of this kind liclouy to the history of
ttte human mind., us much as to theology ; and a feet not the broad basement of fact, mi
ichieh the manifold forms of speculation have taken tlieir rise. The only ancient, only
Catholic truth is the Scriptural fact."
Now, is it possible to read this, and say that the " differences" are not
" differences of opinion," and that these " differences," " the labyrinth
of variations," the " manifold forms of speculation," do not stand opposed
to what is called the " only ancient, only Catholic truth," " the Scriptural
fact," or " some extraordinary communication concerning the Divine
Being" ? The contrary impression is produced in the Parallels, by stopping
short of the words " and affect not," &c.
Undoubtedly, a writer, who holds fast what he calls the " Scriptural
fact" only, will be, as Dr. Hampden says, " neither Sabellian, nor Tri-
theist, nor Socinian ;" for he will hold no definite statement at all ; but
neither will he hold the " Catholic faith ;" and this is much what was said
in my Preface, p. xx. "The utmost at which Dr. Hampden arrives in
his several statements, amounts but to the negative side of Sabellian-
ism." The compiler of the Parallels, however, selects certain of my proposi
tions, " 6, 10, on original sin, and S, 14, 23, &c, Trinitarian articles
which," he says, " exhibit painful instances of carelessness and haste in
drawing inferences," &c.

45
These propositions were : —
Original sin ;
6. " The term propagation ('engendered,' Art. IX.) was introduced into the account
of the origin of evil, in order toproce its universality," p. 221 .
10. " The idea, that the corruption of nature exists in infants, is the result of theory,"
p. 221. Dr. Hampden's words are,
" The universality of the principle was next to be demonstrated. How could it apply
to the case of the infant soul, snatched out of the actual pollutions of the world ? — The
theorist, not content with referring to the Redeemer's love as the simple earnest of the
blessedness of the little infant, sought how to connect this fact with the universal need
of redemption. It was to be, brought, therefore, under tin- theory of original sin. This
occasioned the introduction of (tie term ]u-n], a gallon, into (lie account of the, origin of evil.
If the corruption if nature descended, by ' ]>ropagation,' then it would exist in the guileless
infant." Now I cannot understand how the two propositions could be more dis
tinctly asserted. A certain problem is given, viz. to prove the universality
of the principle of evil in the world. To this the guileless infant, who
died untainted by actual sin, was an apparent exception. Yet all needed
redemption ! How could it be proved that the infant needed it ? It must
be brought under the theory of original sin ; and since it had no actual
sin, this could only be effected by assuming that "the corruption of nature
descended by propagation."
Trinitarian articles.
Prop. 8  " All the ancient heresies were Trinitarian in principle," p. 148.
Dr. Hampden's exact words would be —
" All the theories proposed on the subject [of the Trinity] are Trinitarian in prin
ciple." This, of course, related and was applied to the heretics only. It is now
endeavoured to show that nothing more is hereby meant, than that per
sons set out by being Trinitarians, but themselves explained away their
hypothesis by their speculations.
Yet Dr. Hampden says,
" If the opinions of Praxeas, iXc. amounted to Unitarianism, it was onli/ br/ 'ray of
conscigicuee or inference. They set out with a Trinitarian hypothesis, and cither ex
plained it away themselves liy their speculations, or lutd the consequences of their tlieories
forced on them by their adversaries, as the principles of their belief. We can plainly per
ceive, although unfurtunutchi but vciv slight memorials remain to us of their disquisi
tions, that their anxiety was, to account for certain acknowledged facts of the Scripture
narrative. They refer to admitted manifestations of Cod, as the Father, the Sua, and Hie
1 Inly Spirit ," Ke
Now, since Dr. Hampden would object to the consequences of a theory
drawn by an opponent (15. L p. 44s), and as moreover this reference to
" admitted manifestations of Cod, as the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit," comes up to his notions of the belief in the Holy Trinity (see
"Dr. Hampden's Theological Statements and the Thirty-nine Articles

40
compared," Pref. p. xx. sqq.), how can it appear otherwise.^than that
Dr. Hampden recognizes these heretics, " of whose disquisitions unfortu
nately very slight memorials remain," as Trinitarians? that a culpable
indifference to truth is herein implied ?
Moreover on Dr. Hampden's view of the doctrine of the Trinity I had
spoken explicitly, (with reference to his several works,) in the "Theolo
gical Statements," Pref. 1. c. and " Dr. Hampden's past and present
statements," p. 5. sqq. 2nd edition. It had been more to the purpose to
have refuted these, than to have singled out one, and that not one of the
most important propositions for " carelessness and haste."
\4. Unity of God. — " The revelation of the Divine Unity was not meant to convey to
Israel any speculative notion of the oneness of the Deity." (p. 147.)
These are Dr. Hampden's own words ; and they were selected in order to
exhibit, in another form, his mode of getting rid of positive statements,
and bringing every thing down to a mere relation to ourselves, a mere
vehicle of practical teaching. It is part of his system, which would have
nothing to be known of God, — that God could reveal nothing of Himself
to us, as He is in Himself, (see Theol. Statements, Pref. p. xxii. sqq.), and
it was before pointed out " how large a portion of the faith of the Univer
sal Church is cut off by these maxims." (ib. p. xix.)
When, then, the compiler of the Parallels fills up the above sentence,
" The revelation of the Divine Unity was not meant to convey to Israel any specula
tive notion of the oneness of the Deity ; but practically, to influence their minds in
regard to the superstitions from which they had been brought out ;"
this is precisely what I meant to complain of; viz., that he admitted
the Divine revelation, not as in itself true, and imparting a knowledge
of God, but negatively only, and as practically excluding superstitions.
For the object of Dr. Hampden's remarks is to show that men are not to
conceive of God as one ; he thinks that " the repugnance often felt [in the
carnal mind] at the admission of a Trinity in Unity," would be thereby
"abated;" he complains that "we are apt to conceive that the Unity
must be understood numerically," so that instead of (with our Church)
praying, " Almighty God, who has given unto us His servants grace, by the confession of a
true faith to acknowledge the glory of the Eternal Trinity, and in the power of the
Divine Majesty to worship the Unity," to "keep us stedfast in this faith," 
we are first to discard our belief in the Unity, otherwise than as a negation
of Polytheism, in order to prepare the way for a belief in the Trinity.
23. Atonement. — " The bane of this philosophy of expiation was, that it depressed the
power of man too low." (p. 253.)
This statement is to be explained away by a sentence, which occurs four
pages before, (p. 249.) in a subordinate part of the discussion, and relating
to Romish errors ; meanwhile it is omitted ' that there intervenes a state-

1 The same oversight occurs in Mr. Hull, Remarks, p. 13 sqq. 35

sqq.

47
ment (p. 250.) relating to the sacrifice of our Saviour, giving as an instance
of this philosophy,
" The application of the term punishment to the sacrifice of our Saviour." (Is. liii.
4—6. 11, 12.)
Representing as false, the idea,
" that the Passion of our Lord, being accepted by God as the means of human salva
tion, must be a punishment (pcena) sustained by Him, equivalent to the delinquency of
sinful man."
And to the theological use of the word satisfaction, in that
" it declares the sufferings of Christ to be the voluntary payment, on His part, of what
was otherwise not owing from Him, to the Divine justice."
Now since this view of the sacrifice of our Lord is stated to " belong to
the same philosophy," how can it be thought that it was not included in
this condemnation, especially as Dr. Hampden never in his own person
uses the words " expiation," &c, which are most opposed to the Socinian
doctrines ; and there is an alarming indistinctness in all his language even
when he does not directly side with the Socinians ; as in the denial that
" the Son reconciled the Father to us, as well as us to the Father." (See
Past and Present Statements, p. 9. sqq. edit. 2.)
This may suffice; I need only add that I see no ground to retract
any one proposition, although I have re-examined those, upon which any
question has been raised : I formed them originally without any bias ;
or rather, the bias with which I first took up the work, was to hope
well of Dr. Hampden's soundness of doctrine, however superficial I
had perceived his knowledge of Church-history to be. I would again
repeat my former conviction, that " the correctness of the propositions
will appear to any one, who shall examine the whole context as atten
tively." (Theol. Statements, p. 35.)
Three points may be adverted to in conclusion ; first, that I had selected
not a few only, but (as I find), 104 propositions out of Dr. Hampden's
works, which to myself and others appeared dangerous, and leading to
the overthrow of sound Christian doctrine. This is not met by cavils at
some half dozen of them, or even by error of mine, if such could be esta
blished, in some few instances. These minute discussions are likely to
draw people away from the truth, not to promote it. The real question
is the general effect of the whole.
2. Is that sound and safe teaching for young men, out of which an
individual, who has for many years been studying theology, and wished
to see the truth, extracted above 100 propositions, which, if true (and this
is conceded on both sides), are of dangerous tendency? and yet both the
Bampton Lecturer, and recently the Moral Philosophy, were directed, the
latter exclusively to young men, the former concluded by an appeal which
could be meant but for them.
" If there are any, therefore, whose anxiety for the "acred cause has been awakened
by anv observations in the course of the present Lectures, I exhort them to proceed.

43
fearless of any ultimate shock to the real truth of Christianity by Ihe most searching
investigation," &c.
3. However fearful are the propositions which I have extracted from
Dr. Hampden's works, they do to myself (and I hear the same from
others) convey an idea of but a small portion of the evil tendencies of
those works. To the pernicious tone of the language, and the lowering,
uncharitable view of the early Church, I have already adverted. (Theol.
Statements, Pref. p. 30 sqq.) At least, much and painful things as I have
been compelled to read, I have read few, professing to come from a Chris
tian author, more painful.
Having now noticed four anonymous censures, one may well be allowed
to rest. It is somewhat remarkable, in this whole controversy, that on
the one side we have had, emanating from one party, a series of anonymous,
publications, beginning with die unscrupulous " Letter to the Archbishop
of Canterbury," casting (with the exception of this last) personal imputa
tions, ascribing personal or party motives, from individuals, no one of
whom has ventured to risk his own character by publishing his name ;
on the other, a series of writings from those whom the "men of this
world" call persecutors, imputing no motives, confining themselves to
facts, painful facts indeed, and painful measures, but still facts only, and
pledging their own characters, as ministers of Christ, to the truth and
rectitude of what they allege.
1 Since the above statements were in print, an exception has appeared, in the " Re
marks intended to show how far Dr. Hampden may have been misunderstood and
misrepresented, during the present controversy, in Oxford, by W. W. Hull, Esq., of
Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-Law, late Fellow of Brasenose College."
One of course respects an individual, who lays aside his pursuits to vindicate an early
friend, (p. .53,) whom he believes to have been injured ; but it is not to be expected that
a layman, amid professional studies, should be qualified to enter upon a large theological
subject. He has fallen into some of the leading mistakes of the previous writers; and,
where occasion offered, these have been just referred to in a note : a more detailed
examination seemed hardly called for.

APPENDIX,
BEING No. 74 OF THE
TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

CATENA PATRUM.
No. I.
TESTIMONY OF WRITERS IN THE LATER ENGLISH CHURCH TO
THE DOCTRINE OF THE APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION.

The Baptism of John, whence was it ? from heaven or of men ?
And they reasoned among themselves saying, If n<c shall say,
from heaven, He will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe
him ? But if wc shall say, of men, ire fear the people ; for all hold
John as a prophet.
Persons who object to our preaching distinctly and unhesita
tingly the doctrine of the Apostolical succession, must be asked
to explain, why we may not do what our Fathers in the Church
have done before us, or whether they too, as well as we, are
mistaken, or injudicious theorists, or Papists, in so doing. This
question is here plainly put to them ; and at the same time the
attention of inquirers, who have not made up their minds on the
subject, is invited to the answer due to it from the parties
addressed. The doctrine in dispute is this ; that Christ founded a visible
Church as an ordinance for ever, and endowed it once for all with
spiritual privileges, and set His Apostles over it, as the first in
o

50

a line of ministers and rulers, like themselves except in their
miraculous gifts, and to be continued from them by successive
ordination ; in consequence, that to adhere to this Church thus
distinguished, is among the ordinary duties of a Christian, and is
the means of his appropriating the Gospel blessings with an
evidence of his doing so not attainable elsewhere.
The passages quoted below contain, it is presumed, this doc
trine ; but they are not intended as more than tokens and sugges
tions of the full testimony contained in the works of their
great authors.

List of authors cited.

1. Bilson.

23. Wake.

2. Hooker.

24. Potter.

3. Bancroft.

, 25. Nelson.

4. Andrews.

26. Kettlewell.

5. Hall.

27. Hicks.

6. Laud.

28. Law.

7. Bramhall.

29. Johnson.

8. Mede.

30. Dodwell.

9. Mason.

31. Collier.

10. Sanderson.

32. Leslie.

11. Hammond.

33. Wilson.

12. Taylor.

34. Bingham.

13. Heylin.

35. Skelton.

14. Allestrie.

36. Samuel Johnson

15. Pearson.

37. Home.

16. Fell.

38. W. Jones.

17. Bull.

39. Horsley.

18. Stillingfieet.

40. Heber.

19. Kenn.

41. Jebb.

20. Beveridge.

42. Van Mildert.

21. Sharp.

43. Mant.

22. Scott.

Bilson, Bishop. — Perpetual Government of Christ's Church,
ch. ix. p. 105 '.
It will happily, [haply] be granted the Apostles had their prero
gative and pre-eminence above others in the Church of Christ ;
but that limited to their persons, and during for their lives, and,
therefore, no reason can be made for their superiority, to force
the like to be received and established in the Church of Christ
for all ages and places ; since their office and function are long
since ceased, and no like power reserved to their successors after
them. I do not deny but many things in the Apostles were
personal, &c. . . . yet, that all their gifts ended with their lives,
and no part of their charge and power remained to their after-
comers, may neither be confessed by us, nor affirmed by any,
unless we mean wholly to subvert the Church of Christ. . . .The
Scriptures once written, suffice all ages for instruction ; the
miracles then done, are for ever a most evident confirmation of
their doctrine ; the authority of their first calling liveth yet in
their succession ; and time and travel, joined with God's graces,
bring pastors at this present to perfection ; yet the Apostles'
charge to teach, baptize, and administer the Lord's Supper, to
bind and loose sinners in heaven and in earth, to impose hands
for the ordaining of pastors and elders, these parts of the Apos
tolic function and charge are not decayed, and cannot be wanted
in the Church of God. There must either be no Church, or
else these must remain ; for without these no Church can
continue. ' As quoted by Dr. Spry in his Bampton Lectures, p, 311.
n 2

52 Hooker.
Hooker, Presbyter and Doctor. — Ecclesiastical Polity.
Book. v. § 77.
. . .In that they are Christ's ambassadors and His labourers,
who should give them their commission, but He whose most inward
affairs they manage ? Is not God alone the Father of Spirits ?
Are not souls the purchase of Jesus Christ? What angel in
heaven could have said to man, as our Lord did unto Peter,
" Feed my sheep, — preach — baptize — do this in remembrance of
Me. Whose sins ye retain, they are retained, and their offences
in heaven pardoned, whose faults you shall on earth forgive?"
What think we ? Are these terrestrial sounds, or else are they
voices uttered out of the clouds above ? The power of the
ministry of God, translateth out of darkness into glory ; it raiseth
man from the earth, and bringeth God Himself from heaven ;
by blessing visible elements it maketh them invisible graces ; it
giveth daily the Holy Ghost ; it hath to dispose of that flesh
which was given for the life of the world, and that blood which
was poured out to redeem souls ; when it poureth maledic
tion upon the heads of the wicked, they perish ; when it revoketh
the same, they revive. O wretched blindness, if we admire not
so great power ; more wretched if we consider it aright, and not
withstanding, imagine that any but God can bestow it ! To
whom Christ hath imparted power, both over that mystical
body which is the society of souls, and over that natural which is
Himself, for the knitting of both in one (a work which antiquity
doth call the making of Christ's body,) the same power is in
such not amiss both termed a kind of mark or character, and
acknowledged to be indelible  " Receive the Holy Ghost :
whose sins soever ye remit, they are remitted ; whose sins ye
retain, they are retained." Whereas, therefore, the other Evan
gelists had set down, that Christ did before His suffering
promise to give His Apostles the keys of the kingdom of
heaven, and being risen from the dead, promised moreover at
that time a miraculous power of the Holy Ghost, St. John
addeth, that He also invested them even then with the power of

Bancroft. 53
the Holy Ghost for castigation and relaxation of sin, wherein
was fully accomplished that which the promise of the keys did
import. Seeing, therefore, that the same power is now given
why should the same form of words expressing it be thought
foolish ?
Ib\d. § 68.
Now the privilege of the visible Church of God, (for of that we
speak) is to be herein like the ark of Noah, that, for any thing
we know to the contrary, all w ithout it are lost sheep ; yet in this
was the ark of Noah privileged above the Church, that whereas
none of them which were in the one could perish, numbers in the
other are cast away, because to eternal life our profession is not
enough. Bancroft, Archbishop. — Sermon preached at Paul's Cross.
This hath ever been reckoned a most certain ground and prin
ciple in religion, that that Church, which maintaineth without
error the faith of Christ, which holdeth the true doctrine of the
Gospel in matters necessary to salvation, and preacheth the
same, which retaineth the lawful use of those Sacraments only
which Christ hath appointed, and which appointeth vice to be
punished, and virtue to be maintained, notwithstanding in some
other respects, and in some points, it have many blemishes, imper
fections, nay divers and sundry errors, is yet to be acknowledged for
the Mother of the faithful, the House of God, the Ark of Noah,
the Pillar of Truth, and the Spouse of Christ. From which Church
whosoever doth separate himself, he is to be reckoned a schismatic
or an heretic 
There are many causes set down by the said ancient Fathers,
why so many false prophets do go out into the world ; but I
will only touch four ; whereof I find the contempt of Bishops
especially to be one; for unto them, as St. Jerome saith, ever
since St. Mark's time, the care of Church government hath been
committed ; they had authority over the rest of the ministry. . . .
" that the seed of schism might be taken away, cS:e."
Read the Scriptures, but with sobriety; if any man presuming
upon his knowledge, seek further than is meet for him, besides

54 Andrews.
that he knoweth nothing as he ought to know, he shall cast
himself into a labyrinth, and never find that he seeketh for.
God hath bound Himself by His promise unto His Church, of
purpose, that men by her good direction might in this point be
relieved ; to whose godly determination in matters of question,
her dutiful children ought to submit themselves without any
curious or wilful contradiction . I could bring many authorities
to this effect.
Andrews, Bishop and Doctor — Sermons on Whitsunday,
No. 9. (Works,?. 695.)
The Holy Ghost may be received more ways than one. He
hath many spiramina ; rroXvTooirwQ " in many manners" He
comes ; and multiformis gratia He comes with. He and they
carry the name of their cause ; and to receive them is to receive the
Spirit. There is a gratium faciens, the saving grace of the Spirit,
for one to save himself by, received by each, without respect to
others ; and there is a gratis data (whatever become of us) serv
ing to save others by, without respect to ourselves. And there
is xaP'£ diaKoviae,, the grace of a holy calling, for it is a grace, to
be a conduit of grace any way. All these ; and all from one and
the same Spirit.
That was here conferred, (in John xx. 22,) was not the saving
grace of inward sanctimony; they were not " breathed on" to
that end. The Church to this day gives this still in her ordi
nations, but the saving grace the Church cannot give ; none but
God cangive that. Nor the g ratis data it is not. That came by the
tongues, both the gift of speaking divine languages, and the gift
of dwotydeyyeo-dai, speaking wisely, and to the purpose : and (we
know) none is either the holier or the learnederby his ordination.
Yet a grace it is. For the very office itself is a grace ; mihi
data est hcec gratia, saith the Apostle, in more places than one ; and
speaks of his office and nothing else. The Apostleship was a grace
yet no saving grace. Else, should Judas have been saved. Clearly,
then, it is the grace of their calling (this) whereby they were sacred,
and made persons public, and their acts authentical, and they

Andrews. 55
enabled to do somewhat about the remission of sins, that is not
(of like avail) done by others, though perhaps, more learned and
virtuous than they, in that they have not the like mitto vos, nor
the same accipite that these have.
Ibid. — Sermon on Absolution. Appendix, p. 90.
The power of remitting sin is originally in God, and in God
alone. And in Christ our Saviour, by means of the union of the
Godhead and manhood into one person, by virtue whereof, " The
Son of man hath power to forgive sins upon earth."
This power being thus solely vested in God, He might, without
wrong to any, have retained and kept to Himself, and without
means of word or sacrament, and without ministers, either apostles
or others, have exercised immediately by Himself from Heaven.
But we should then have said of the remission of sins, saith St.
Paul, "Who shall go up to heaven for it, and fetch it thence ?
for which cause," saith he, " the righteousness of faith speaketh
thus, say not so, &c."
Partly this, but there should be no such difficulty to shake our
faith, as once to imagine to fetch Christ from heaven for the
remission of our sins ; and partly also, because Christ, to whom
alone this commission was originally granted, having ordained
Himself a body, would work by bodily things, and having taken the
nature of a man upon Him, would honour the nature He had so
taken, for these causes ; that which was His, and His alone, He
vouchsafed to impart, and out of His commission, to grant a commis
sion, and thereby to associate them to Himself, (it is His own word
by the prophet) and to make them ovvipyove, that is co-operatores,
workers together with Him (as the Apostle speaketh) to the work
of salvation, both of themselves and of others. From God then
it is derived ; from God and to men.
Now if we ask, to what men ? the text is plain. They to whom
Christ said this Rcmiscrilis, were the Apostles.
In the Apostles, (that we may come nearer yet) we find
three capacities as we may term (hem, 1. As Christians in gene
ral. 2. As preachers, priest:., or ministers, more special. 3. As

56 Andrews.
those twelve persons, whom in strict propriety of speech, we term
the Apostles.
Some things that Christ spake to them, He spake to them as
representing the whole company of Christians ; as His Vigilale.
Some things to them, not as Christians, but as preachers or
priests ; as His Ite prcedicate Evangelium, and His Hoc facite ;
which no man thinketh all Christians may do.
And some things to themselves personally ; as that He had
appointed them witnesses of His miracles and resurrection, which
cannot be applied but to them and them in person. It remaineth
we inquire, in which of these three capacities, Christ imparted to
them this commission.
Not to the Apostles properly ; that is, this was no personal
privilege to be in them, and to die with them, that they should
only execute it for a time, and none ever after them. God forbid,
we should so think it. For, this power being more than needful
for the world, (as in the beginning it was said,) it was not to be
either personal, or for a time ; then those persons dying, and those
times determining, them in the ages following (as we now in this)
that should light into this prison or captivity of sin, how could
they or we receive any benefit by it ? Of nature, it is said by
the heathen philosopher, that it does neither abundareinsuperfluis,
nor deficcre in necessariis. God forbid, but we should ascribe as
much to God at the least, that neither He would ordain power
superfluous or more than needed, or else, it being needful, would
appropriate it unto one age, and leave all other destitute of it ;
and not rather, as all writers both new and old take it, continue it
successively to the world's end.
And as not proper to the Apostles' person, so neither common
to all Christians in general, nor in the persons of all Christians
conveyed to them. Which thing the very circumstances of the
text do evict. For He sent them first, and after inspired them ;
and after both these, gave them this commission. Now all Chris
tians are not so sent, nor all Christians inspired with the grace or
gift of the Spirit, that they were here. Consequently, it was not
intended to the whole society of Christians. Yea, I add, that
forasmuch as these two, both these two, must go before it, Missio

Andrews. 57
and Inspiratio, that though God inspire some laymen, if I may
have leave so to term them, with very special graces of knowledge
to this end, yet, inasmuch as they have not the former of sending,
it agreeth not to them, neither may they exercise it, until they
be sent, that is, until they have their calling thereunto.
It being then neither personal nor peculiar to them as Apostles,
nor again common to all as Christians, it must needs be committed
to them as ministers, priests, or preachers ; and consequently to
these that in that office and function do succeed them, to whom,
this commission is still continued. Neither are they, that are
ordained or instituted to that calling, ordained or instituted by
any other words or verse than this, (John xx. 23.) Yet not so,
that absolutely without them, God cannot bestow it, on whom,
or when Him pleaseth ; or that He is bound to this means only,
and cannot work without it, For, gratia Dei non alligatur
mcdiis, the grace of God is not bound but free, and can work
without means either of word or sacrament ; and as without
means, so without ministers, how and when to Him seemeth
good. But speaking of that which is proper and ordinary, in the
course by Him established, this is an ecclesiastical act, committed
as the residue of the ministry of reconciliation to ecclesiastical
persons. And if at any time He vouchsafe it by others that are
not such, they be in that case Ministri necessitatis, non officii, in
case of necessity ministers, but by office not so.
The remission of sins, as it is from God only, so it is by the
death and blood-shedding of Christ alone ; but for the applying
of this unto us, there are divers means established. *
In the institution of Baptism there is a power to that end. * *
2. Again, there is also another power for the remission of sins, in
the institution of the Holy Eucharist. * * 3. Besides, in the
word itself there is a like power ordained. " Now are you clean,"
saitli Christ, (no doubt from their sins) propter Scrmoncm hunc.
And the very name giveth as much, that it is entitled, " The
Word of Reconciliation." 4. Further there is to the same effect
a power in prayer, and that in the priest's prayers, " Call for the
Priests," saith the apostle, " and let them pray for the sick per
son, and if he have committed sin, it shall be forgiven him.' All

58 Hall.
and every of them, are acts for the remission of sins : and in all
and every of these, is the minister required, and they cannot be
dispatched without him.
But the ceremonies and circumstances that here (John xx. 23.)
I find used, prevail with me to think, that there is somewhat here
imparted to them, that was not before. For it carrieth no likeli
hood, that our Saviour bestowing on them nothing here, but that
which before He had, would use so much solemnity, so diverse and
new circumstances, no new or diverse grace being here communi
cated. * * * I take it to be a power distinct from the
former, and (not to hold you long) to be the accomplishment of
the promise made (Matt. xvi. 19.) of the power of the keys,
which here in this place and in these words is fulfilled ; and have
therein for me, the joint consent of the Fathers. Which being a
different power in itself, is that which we call the act or benefit
of absolution ; in which, as in the rest, there is in the due time
and place of it, an use for the remission of sins.
Hall, Bishop and Confessor. — On Episcopacy. Pt. iii. p. 9.
And for you, my dearly beloved brethren at home, for Christ's
sake, for the Church's sake, for your souls' sake, be exhorted to
hold to this holy institution of your blessed Saviour and His un
erring apostles, and bless God for Episcopacy. Do but cast
your eyes a little back, and see what noble instruments of God's
glory He hath been pleased to raise up in this very Church of
ours out of this sacred vocation ; what famous servants of God,
what strong champions of truth, and renowned antagonists of
Rome and her superstitions ; what admirable preachers, what
incomparable writers, yea what constant and undaunted martyrs
and confessors, &c  Neither doubt I but that it will please
God, out of the same rod of Aaron, still to raise such blossoms
and fruit, as shall win him glory to all eternity. So you are to
honour those your reverend pastors, to hate all factious withdraw-
ings from that government, which comes the nearest of any Church
upon earth to the Apostolical. . . . Let me therefore confidently
shut up all with that resolute word of that blessed Martyr and

Laud. 59
Saint, Ignatius  " Let all things be done to the honour of
God, give respect to your bishop as you would God should re
spect you. My soul for theirs which obey their bishop, presby
ters, and deacons ; God grant that my portion may be the same
with theirs." And let my soul have the same share with that
blessed Martyr that said so. Amen.
Laud, Archbishop and Martyr. — Conference with Fisher,
xvi. 29.
" I am with you always unto the end of the world." Yes
most certain it is, — present by His Spirit ; or else in bodily pre
sence He continued not with His Apostles, but during His abode
on earth. And this promise of His spiritual presence was to
their successors ; else, why " to the end of the world ?" The
Apostles did not, could not, live so long. But then to the
successors the promise goes no farther, than " I am with you
always," which reaches to continual assistance, but not to divine
and infallible.
" The Comforter the Holy Ghost shall abide with you for ever."
Most true again ; for the Holy Ghost did abide with the Apostles,
according to Christ's promise thus made, and shall abide with
their successors for ever, to comfort and preserve them.
Ibid. — xxv. 15.
Christ promised the Keys to St. Peter. (Matt, xvi.) True ;
but so did 1 le to all the rest of the Apostles (Matt, xviii. John
xx.), and to their successors as much as to his. ... St. Augus
tine is plain, " If this were said only of St. Peter, then the Church
hath no power to do it," which God forbid ! The Keys, therefore,
were <riven to St. Peter and the rest in a figure of the Church, to
whose power and for whose use they were given. But there's
not one key in all that bunch, that can let in St. Peter's successor
to a " more powerful principality" universal than the successors
of the other Apostles had.

60 Bramhall.
Bramhall, Archbishop and Confessor. — Vindication of the
Church of England. Discourse III.
I do also acknowledge that Episcopacy was comprehended
in the Apostolic office, tanquam trigonus in tetragono, and the
distinction was made by the Apostles, with the approbation of
Christ ; that the angels of the seven Churches in the Revelation
were seven Bishops ; that it is the most silly ridiculous thing in
the world, to calumniate that for a Papal innovation, which was
established in the Church before there was a Pope at Rome ;
which hath been received and approved in all ages since the very
cradle of Christianity, by all sorts of Christians, Europeans,
Africans, Asiatics, Indians, many of which never had any inter
course with Rome, nor scarcely ever heard of the name of
Rome. If semper, ubique, et ab omnibus be not a sufficient plea,
I know not what is.
But because I esteem them Churches not completely formed, do
I, therefore, exclude them from all hopes of salvation ? or esteem
them aliens and strangers from the commonwealth of Israel 1 or
account them formal schismatics ? No such thing. First, I know
there are many learned persons among them who do passionately
affect Episcopacy ; some of which have acknowledged it to
myself, that their Church would never be rightly settled, until it
was new-moulded. Baptism is a sacrament, the door of Christ
ianity, a matriculation into the Church of Christ : yet the very
desire of it in case of necessity, is sufficient to excuse from the
want of actual Baptism. And is not the desire of Episcopacy,
sufficient to excuse from the actual want of Episcopacy, in like
case of necessity ? or should I censure these as Schismatics ?
Secondly, there are others, who though they do not long so
much for Episcopacy, yet they approve it, and want it only out
of invincible necessity. In some places the sovereign prince is
of another communion ; the Episcopal chairs are filled with
Roman Bishops. If they should petition for Bishops of their
own, it would not be granted. In other places the magistrates
have taken away Bishops ; whether out of policy, because they
thought that regiment not so proper for their republics, or be-

Bramhall. 61
cause they were ashamed to take away the revenues, and preserve
the order, or out of a blind zeal, they have given an account to
God : they owe none to me. Should I condemn all these as
schismatics for want of Episcopacy, who want it out of invincible
necessity ?
Thirdly, there are others who have neither the same desires,
nor the same esteem of Episcopacy, but condemn it as an Anti-
christian innovation, and a rag of Popery. I conceive this to be
most gross schism materially. It is ten times more schismatical
to desert, nay, to take away (so much as lies in them) the whole
order of Bishops, than to subtract obedience from one lawful
Bishop. All that can be said to mitigate this fault is, that they
do it ignorantly, as they have been mistaught and misin
formed. And I hope that many of them are free from obstinacy,
and hold the truth implicitly in the preparation of their minds,
being ready to receive it, when God shall reveal it to them. How
far this may excuse (not the crime but) their persons from formal
schism, either a toto or a tanto, I determine not, but leave them
to stand or fall to their own Master.
But though these Protestants were worthy of this contumely,
yet surely the Romanists are no fit persons to object it, whose
opiniastrcty did hinder an uniform reformation of the Western
Church. Who did invest Presbyters with Episcopal jurisdiction,
and the power of ordaining and confirming, but the Court of
Rome, by their commissions and delegations, for avaritious
ends ? And could they think that the world would believe, that
necessity is not as strong and effectual a dispensation, as their
mercenary Bulls ? It is not at all material, whether Episcopacy
and Priesthood be two distinct orders, or distinct degrees of the
same orders, the one subordinate to the other ; whether Epis
copal ordination do introduce a new character, or extend the
old. For it is generally confessed by both parties, Protestants
and Roman Catholics, that the same power and authority is neces
sary to the extension of a character, or grace given by ordination,
which is required to the Institution of a Sacrament, that is not
human but divine. These avaritious practices of that Court,
(though it be not commonly observed) were the first source of

62 Bramhall.
these present controversies about Episcopacy, and Ecclesiastical
discipline, which do now so much disturb the peace of the
Church. Ibid. — Vindication of Grotius. — Discourse III.
Excuse me for telling the truth plainly ; many who have
had their education among Sectaries and Non-conformists have
apostated to Rome, but few or no right Episcopal Divines. Hot
water freezeth the soonest.
He addeth, that " Grotius himself assures him (whom he hath
reason to believe) that there were not a few such among the
prelatical men." How ! not a few such as these, who have
apostated from the Church of England ? For ingenuity's sake
let him tell us where Grotius saith any such thing. Grotius hath
not one word to his purpose, when it is duly examined. But
this it is to confute books, in less time than wise or modest men
would require to read them.
Hitherto, he is not able to show us any tolerable reason of his
warning. But he showeth us the occasion, p. 82. " Those that
unchurch either all or most of the Protestant Churches, and
maintain the Roman Church and not theirs to be true, do call
us to a moderate jealousie of them." This is far enough from
proving his bold suggestion, that they have a design to introduce
the Pope into England. So though all he say were true : yet he
can conclude nothing from thence to make good his accusation or
insinuation. I wish he would forbear these imperfect enthyme-
matical forms of argument, which serve only to cover deceit,
and set down both his propositions expressly. His assumption
is wanting, which should be this : but a considerable party of
Episcopal divines in England do unchurch all or most of the
Protestant Churches, and maintain the Roman Church to be a
true Church, and these to be no true Churches. I can assent to
neither of his propositions, nor to any part of them, as true, sub
modo, as they are alleged by him.
First, I cannot assent to his major proposition, that all those who
make an ordinary personal uninterrupted succession of Pastors to
be of the integrity of a true Church, (which is the ground of his

Bramhall. 63
exception) have, therefore, an intention, or can justly be sus
pected thereupon to have any intention to introduce the Pope.
The Eastern, Southern, and Northern Churches are all of them
for such a personal succession, and yet all of them utter enemies
to the Pope. Secondly, I cannot assent to his minor proposi
tion, that either all or any considerable part of the Episcopal
divines in England, do unchurch either all or most part of the
Protestant Churches. No man is hurt but by himself. They
unchurch none at all, but leave them to stand or fall to their
own Master. They do not unchurch the Swedish, Danish,
Bohemian Churches, and many other Churches in Polonia,
Hungaria, and those parts of the world, who have an ordinary
uninterrupted succession of Pastors, some by the names of
Bishops, others under the name of Seniors, unto this day. (I
meddle not with the Socinians:) they unchurch not the Lutheran
Churches in Germany, who both assert Episcopacy in their
confessions, and have actual superintendents in their practice, and
would have Bishops, name and thing, if it were in their power.
Let him not mistake himself: those Churches which he is so
tender of, though they be better known to us by reason of
their vicinity, are so far from being " all or most part of the
Protestant Churches," that being all put together, they amount
not to so great a proportion as the Britannick Churches alone.
And if one secluded out of them all those who want an ordinary
succession without their own faults, out of invincible ignorance
or necessity, and all those who desire to have an ordinary suc
cession either explicitly or implicitly, they will be reduced to a
little flock indeed.
But let him set his heart at rest. I will remove this scruple
out of his mind, that he may sleep securely upon both ears.
Episcopal divines do not deny those Churches to be true
Churches, wherein salvation may be had. We advise them, as it
is our duty, to be circumspect for themselves, and not to put it
to more question, whether they have ordination or not, or desert
the general practice of the universal Church for nothing, when
they may clear it if they please. Their case is not the same
with those who labour under invincible necessity. What mine

C4 Mede.
own sense is of it, I have declared many years since to the
world in print ; and in the same way received thanks, and a
public acknowledgement of my moderation from a French divine.
And yet more particularly in my reply to the Bishop of Chalce-
don, Pres. p. 144. and cap. i- p. 164. Episcopal divines will
readily subscribe to the determination of the learned Bishop of
Winchester, in his answer to the Second Epistle of Molineus.
" Nevertheless, if our form (of Episcopacy) be of divine right, it
doth not follow from thence, that there is not salvation without
it, or that a Church cannot consist without it. He is blind who
does not see churches consisting without it : he is hard-hearted
who denyeth them salvation. We are none of those hard-hearted
persons, we put a great difference between these things. There
may be something absent in the exteriour regiment, which is of
divine right, and yet salvation to be had." This mistake pro
ceeded, from not distinguishing between the true nature and
essence of a Church, which we do readily grant them, and the
integrity or perfection of a Church, which we cannot grant
them, without swerving from the judgment of the Catholic
Church.Mede, Presbyter. — Sermon on Urim and Thummim. — Works,
Book I. p. 186.
The Ministers of Christ must be Lux Mundi, the Light of the
world — Vos estis Lux Mundi — " Ye are the Light of the World :
Ye are the World's Urim," saith Christ unto His Apostles. " For
the lips of the priest should preserve knowledge, and they should
learn the law at his mouth." This light of knowledge, this
teaching knowledge, is the Urim of every Levite ; and therefore
Christ, when He inspired His Apostles with knowledge of heavenly
mysteries, He sent a new Urim from above, even fiery tongues
of Urim from heaven. He sent no fiery heads, but fiery tongues ;
for it is not sufficient for a Levite to have his head full of Urim,
unless his tongue be a candle to show it to others. There came,
indeed, no Thummim" [integrity or perfection] " from heaven, as
there came an Urim ; for though the Apostles were secured from
errors, they were not freed from sin ; and yet we who are Levites
1

Mason. 65
must have such a Thummim as may be gotten upon earth; for
St. Paul bids Titus in all things to show himself an example of
good works, and this is a Thummim of Integrity. But, besides
this Thummim, the Ministers of the Gospel have received from
God more especially another Thummim, like unto that which was
proper to the High Priest ; namely, the power of binding and
loosing, which is, as it were, a power of oracle, to declare unto
the people the remission of their sins, by the acceptance of
Christ's sacrifice.
Mason, Presbyter. — Vindicice Ecclesice Anglicancc, i. 2.
Anglican. Our Ministry is agreeable to Divine Scripture, and
therefore holy. Nor do we doubt, that, when the Chief Shepherd
shall appear, they who turn many to righteousness shall shine as
the stars for ever and ever. However, what is your argument
against our ministry ?
Romanist. Can a man be a lawful minister without a lawful call?
Anglican. Of course not . . .
Romanist. If so, I pray tell me how the Anglican Church can
defend her ministry. Surely I may address each of you in
Harding's words to Jewel : " What say you, my master ? You
bear yourself as though Bishop of Salisbury ; but how will you
substantiate your call ? What is your warrant for ministering in
the Word and Sacraments ? &c. &c." ... I ask thee, is your call
inward or outward ?
Anglican. Both.
Romanist. An outward call, to be lawful, must be either imme
diately from Christ's mouth, as the Apostles were called, or
mediately through the Church.
Anglican. Well ; we are called by God through the Church ;
for it is He who gives " Pastors and Doctors for the perfecting of
the Saints."
Romanist. They who are called by God through the Church,
must derive their warrant and power by lawful succession from
Christ and the Apostles. If you maintain you have proceeded
from this origin, it is your business to prove it clearly to us ; to
set forth and trace your genealogy . . .
E

66 Sanderson.. — Hammond.
Anglican. The Ministers of the Anglican Church derive their
imposition of hands in a lawful way from lawful Bishops, possessed
of a lawful authority ; and therefore their call is ordinary [not
extraordinary, by miracles].
Romanist. But whence have those Bishops derived their power ?
Anglican. From God, through the hands of Bishops before
them, &c. &c.
Sanderson, Bishop and Confessor. — Divine Right of
Episcopacy.
My opinion is, that Episcopal Government is not to be derived
merely from Apostolical practice or institution, but that it is
originally founded in the Person and Office of the Messias, our
blessed Lord Jesus Christ ; who, being sent by our heavenly
Father to be the Great Apostle (Heb. iii. 1), Bishop, and Pastor
(1 Peter ii. 25) of his Church, and anointed to that office immedi
ately after His baptism by John, with power and the Holy Ghost
(Acts x. 37, 38), descending then upon Him in a bodily shape
(Luke iii. 22), did afterwards, before His ascension into Heaven,
send and empower His holy Apostles, in like manner as His
Father had before sent Him (John xx. 21), to execute the same
Apostolical, Episcopal, and Pastoral Office, for the ordering and
governing of His Church, until His coming again ; and so the
same office to continue in them and their successors unto the end
of the world. (Matt, xxviii. 18 — 20.) This I take to be so clear,
from these and other like texts of Scripture, that if they shall be
diligently compared together, both between themselves and with
the following practice of the Churches of Christ, as well in the
Apostles' times as in the purest and primitive times nearest
thereunto, there will be left little cause why any man should
doubt thereof.
Hammond, Presbyter, Doctor, and Confessor. — On the
Power of the Keys. Preface.
That the prime act of power enstated by Christ on His Apos
tles, as for the governing of the Church, (and exorcising or
banishing all devils out of it,) so for the effectual performing that

Hammond. 67
great act of charity to men's souls, reducing pertinacious sinners
to repentance, should be so, either wholly dilapidated, or piteous-
ly deformed, as to continue in the Church, only under one of these
two notions, either of an empty piece of formality, or of an engine
of state and secular contrivance, (the true Christian use of
shaming sinners into reformation, being well nigh vanished out of
Christendom,) might by an alien, or an heathen, much more by
the pondering Christian, be conceived very strange and unreason
able, were it not a little clear that we are fallen into those times,
of which it was foretold by two Apostles-, that in " these last
days, there should come scoffers, walking after their own lusts,"
&c. . . . I shall design to inferno further conclusion, but only this,
that they which live ill in the profession of a most holy faith. .
but especially they that discharge and banish out of the Church
those means which might help to make the generality of Christians
better, have the spirit of Antichrist working into them, even when
they think themselves most zealously busied in beating down
his kingdom. What those means are which might most effectually
tend to the amending the lives of Christians, I shall need no
farther to interpose my judgment, than, 1st, by submitting it to
Christ, who put the keys into the Apostles' hands, on purpose as
a means to exemplify the end of His coming  2nd, by
minding myself and others what the Apostles- say of this power,
that it was given them irpoQ oiKoBopt)v, to build up the Church of
Christ, &c.
Chapter 3. The only difficulty remaining on the point, will be,
who are the Apostles' successors in that power ; and when the
question is asked of that power, I must be understood of the
power of governing the Church peculiarly, (of which the power
of the keys was and is a principal branch), for it must again be
remembered that the Apostles are to be considered under a double
notion, first, as planters, then as governors, of the Church 
Which distinction being premised, the question will now more
easily be satisfied, being proposed in these terms ; who were the
Apostles' successors in that power, which concerned the govern
ing their Churches which they planted ? and first, 1 answer, that
it being a matter of fact, or story, later than that the Scripture

68 Taylor.
can universally reach to, it cannot be fully satisfied or answered
from thence  but will in the full latitude, through the universal
Church in these times be made clear, from the recent evidences
that we have, viz. from the consent of the Greek and Latin
fathers, who generally resolve that Bishops are those successors.
Taylor, Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor, — On Episcopacy.
Introduction.
Antichrist must come at last, and the great apostasy foretold
must be, and this not without means proportionable to the produc
tion of so great declensions of Christianity. " When ye hear of
wars and rumours of wars, be not afraid," says our Blessed Savi
our, " the end is not yet." It is not war that will do " this great
work of destruction ;" for then it might have been done long ere
now. What then will do it ? We shall know when we see it.
In the mean time, when we shall find a new device, of which, in
deed, the platform was laid, in Aerius and the Acephali, brought
to a good possibility of completing a thing, that whosoever shall
hear, his ears shall tingle, " an abomination of desolation standing
where it ought not," " in sacris," in holy persons, and places, and
offices, it is too probable that this is the preparatory for the Anti
christ, and grand apostasy.
For if Antichrist shall exalt himself above all that is called
God, and in Scripture none but kings and priests are such, " dii
vocati, dii facti," I think we have great reason to be suspicious,
that he that divests both of their power, (and they are, if the king
be Christian, in very near conjunction,) does the work of Anti
christ for him ; especially if the men whom it most concerns will
but call to mind, that if the discipline or government which Christ
hath instituted is that kingdom by which He governs all Christ
endom, (so themselves have taught us,) then they (to use their
own expressions) throw Christ out of his kingdom; and then
either they leave the Church without a head, or else put Antichrist
in substitution.
We all wish that our fears in this and all things else may be
vain, that what we fear may not come upon us ; but yet that the
abolition of episcopacy is the forerunner, and preparatory to the

Heylin. fjg
great Apostasy, I have these reasons to show, at least, the pro
bability. First, &c. * * *
Section 2 and 3. This government was by immediate substi
tution delegated to the Apostles, by Christ Himself, " in traditione
clavium, in spiratione Spirittis, in missione in Pentecosto.".. .
This power so delegated, was not to expire with their persons ;
for when the great Shepherd had reduced His wandering sheep
into a fold, He would not leave them without " guides to govern"
them, so long as the wolf might possibly prey upon them, and
that is, till the last separation of the sheep from the goats. And
this Christ intimates in that promise, " Ero vobiscum (Apostolis)
usque ad consummationem seculi." " Vobiscum ;" not with your
persons, for they, died long ago : but " vobiscum et vestri simili-
bus," with Apostles to the end of the world. And, therefore,
that the Apostolate might be successive and perpetual, Christ
gave them a power of Ordination, that by imposing hands on
others, they might impart that power which they received from
Christ. Heylin, Presbyter and Confessor — On Episcopacy, i. 6.
The Church at his (St. John's) departure, he left firmly
grounded in all the points of faith and doctrine, taught by Christ
our Saviour, as well settled in the outward government, the polity
and administration of the same, which had been framed by the
Apostles, according to the pattern and example of their Lord and
Master. For being that the Church was born of seed immortal,
and they themselves, though excellent and divine, yet still mortal
men, it did concern the Church, in a high degree, to be provided
of a perpetuity, or, if you will, the immortality of overseers, both
for the sowing of this seed, and for the ordering of the Church,
or the field itself. This, since they could not do in person, they
were to do it by successors, who by their office were to be the
ordinary pastors of the Church, and the Vicars of Christ. Now,
if you ask the Fathers who they were that were accounted in
their times and ages the successors of the Apostles, they will
with one accord make answer, that the Bishops were.

70 Allestrie.
Allestrie, Presbyter, Sermons, No. 16.
The separateness of the functions of the Clergy, the incommuni-
cableness of their offices to persons not separated for them, is so
express a doctrine both of the letter of the text, and of the Holy
Ghost, that sure I need not to say more, though several heads
of probation offer themselves ; as first the condition of the callings,
which does divide from the community and sets them up above it.
And here I might tell you of " bearing rule," of " thrones," of
" stars," and " Angels," and other words of a high sense, and yet
not go out of the Scripture bounds, although the dignity did not
die with the Scripture age, or expire with the Apostles ; the age as
low as Photius words it thus, To ccn-otrroXacov, K.r. \. " That Apos
tolical and Divine dignity, which the Chief Priests are acknow
ledged to be possessed of by right of succession." Styles which I
could derive yet lower, and they are of a prouder sound than
those the modest humble ears of this our age are so offended with.
But these heights, it may be, would give ombrages ; although
it is strange that men should envy them to those, who are only
exalted to them, that they may with the more advantage, take
them by the hands and lift them up to heaven. Those nearnesses
to things above do but more qualify them to draw near to God,
on your behalf, that these your Angels also may see the face of
your father which is in heaven, and those stars are, therefore, set
in Christ's right hand, that they may shed a blessing [blessed ?]
influence on you from thence 
The censures of the Church, the burden of the keys, which
(passing by the private use of them in voluntary penitences, and
discipline upon the sick,) as they signify public exclusion out of
the Church, for scandalous enormities, and re-admission into it
upon repentance, have been sufficiently evinced to belong to the
governors of the Church. The exercise of them is so much their
work, that St. Paul calls them " the weapons of their spiritual war
fare, by which they do cast down imaginations, and every high
thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and
bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."
(2 Cor. x. 4.-5.) a blessed victory, even for the conquered and
7

Pearson. 7 ]
these the only weapons to atchieve it with. If those who sin
scandalously, and will not hear the admonition of the Church,
were cast out of the Church, if not religion, reputation would re
strain them somewhat ; not to be thought fit company for
Christians, would surely make them proud against their vices.
Shame, the designed effect of their censures, hath great pungen
cies ; the fear of it does goad men into actions of the greatest
hazard, and the most unacceptable ; such as have nothing lovely
in them, but are wholly distasteful  Now, the infliction of these
censures is so much the work to which Church governors are
called by the Holy Ghost, that they are equally called by Him to
it and to Himself; both are alike bestowed upon them.
"Receive the Holy Ghost ; whose sins ye retain they are re
tained." (John xx. 22.) And in the first derivations of this
office, it was performed with severities, such as this age, I doubt,
will not believe ; and when they had no temporal sword to be
auxiliary to these spiritual weapons.
Pearson, Bishop and Doctor. — On the Creed, Article ix.
[After considering the Church as one, by reason of its one
foundation, faith, ministry of sacraments, hope, and charity,
he continues, — ]
Lastly, all the Churches of God are united into one by the
unity of discipline and government, by virtue whereof the same
Christ ruleth in them all. For they have all the same pastoral
guides appointed, authorized, sanctified, and set apart by the
appointment of God, by the direction of the Spirit, to direct and
lead the people of God in the same way of eternal salvation : as,
therefore, there is no Church where there is no order, no minis
try ; so, where the same order and ministry is, there is the same
Church. * * *
The necessity of believing the Holy Catholiek Church appeareth
first in this, that Christ hath appointed it as the only way unto
eternal life. We read at the first, " The Lord added to the
Church daily such as should be saved ;" and what was then daily
done hath been done since continually. Christ never appointed
two ways to Heaven ; nor did He build ¦> Church to save some.

72 Fell.
and make another institution for other men's salvation. " There
is none other name under Heaven given among men whereby we
must be saved," but the name of Jesus ; and that is no otherwise
given under Heaven than in the Church. As none were saved
from the Deluge but such as were within the ark of Noah, formed for
their reception by the command of God ; as none of the first-born
of Egypt lived,, but such as were within those habitations whose
door-posts were sprinkled with blood by the appointment of God
for their preservation ; as none of the inhabitants of Jericho could
escape the fire or sword, but such as were within the house of Rahab,
for whose protection a covenant was made; so none shall ever
escape the eternal wrath of God, which belong not to the Church
of God. This is the congregation of those persons here on earth
which shall hereafter meet in heaven. These are the vessels of
the tabernacle carried up and down, at last to be translated into
and fixed in the Temple.
Next, it is necessary to believe the Church of Christ, which is
but one, that, being in it, we may take care never to cast ourselves,
or be ejected, out of it. There is a power within the Church to
cast those out which do belong to it : for if any neglect to hear
the Church, saith our Saviour, let him be unto thee as a heathen
man and a publican. By great and scandalous offences, by incor
rigible misdemeanours, we may incur the censure of the Church
of God ; and while we are shut out by them, we stand excluded
out of Heaven. For our Saviour said to His Apostles, upon
whom He built His Church, " Whosesoever sins ye remit, they
are remitted unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they
are retained." Again, a man may not only passively and involun
tarily be ejected, but also may, by an act of his own, cast out or
eject himself, not only by plain and complete apostasy, but by a
defection from the unity of truth, falling into some damnable
heresy ; or by an active separation, deserting all which are in
communion with the Catholick Church, and falling into an irrevoc
able schism. Fell, Bishop and Confessor. — On Ephesians, v. 9.
Apostles, .... Prophets, . . . Evangelists, . . . Pastors,

Bull. — Stilling fleet. 73
and Teachers  For the three first, some part of their func-
tibn was temporary and extraordinary ; in what was ordinary and
perpetual, Bishops succeeded.
Bull, Bishop and Doctor. — Vindication of the English
Church, § 24.
We proceed, in the next place, to the constant visibility and
succession of Pastors in our Church  And here I make
him this fair proposal : let him, or any one of his party, produce
any one solid argument to demonstrate such a succession of
Pastors in the Church of Rome, and I will undertake by the very
same argument, to prove a like succession in our Church. Indeed,
 the Author of the Letter is concerned, no less than we
are, to acknowledge such a succession of lawful pastors in our
Church, till the time of the Reformation ; and if we cannot derive
our succession since, it is a hard case. But our records, faithfully
kept and preserved, do evidence to all the world an uninterrupted
succession of Bishops in our Church, canonically ordained,
derived from such persons in whom a lawful power of ordination
was seated by the confession of the Papists themselves. For the
story of the Nag's Head Ordination is so putid a fable, so often
and so clearly refuted by the writers of our Church; that the more
learned and ingenuous Papists are now ashamed to make use
of it.
Stillingfleet, Bishop. — Unreasonableness of Separation ;
Preface.
.... Unthinking people ... are carried away with mere
noise and pretences, and hope these will secure them most against
the fears of Popery, who talk with most passion, and with least
understanding, against it; whereas no persons do really give them
greater advantages than these do. For, where they meet only
with intemperate railings, and gross misunderstandings of the
state of the controversies between them and us (which commonly
go together), the most subtle priests let such alone to spend their
rage and fury; and when the heat is over, they will calmly
endeavour to let them see how grossly they have been deceived

74 Kcnn.
in some things, and so will more easily make them believe, they
are as much deceived in all the rest. And thus the East and
West may meet at last, and the most furious antagonists may
become some of the easiest converts. This I do really fear will
be the case of many thousands among us, who now pass for most
zealous Protestants ; if ever, which God forbid, that religion
should come to be uppermost in England. It is, therefore, of
mighty consequence for preventing the return of Popery, that
men rightly understand what it is. For, when they are as
much afraid of an innocent ceremony as of real idolatry, and
think they can worship images and adore the Host on the same
grounds that they may use the sign of the cross, or kneel at the
Communion, when they are brought to see their mistake in one
case, they will suspect themselves deceived in the other also. . .
When they find undoubted practices of the Ancient Church con
demned as Popish and Antichristian by their teachers, they must
conclude Popery to be of much greater antiquity than really it is ;
and when they can trace it so very near the Apostles' times, they
will soon believe it settled by the Apostles themselves. For it
will be very hard to persuade any considering men, that the
Christian Church should degenerate so soon, so unanimously, so
universally, as it must do, if Episcopal government, and the use
of some significant ceremonies, were any parts of that apostasy.
.... Three ways, Bishop Sanderson observes, our dissenting
brethren, though not intentionally and purposely, yet really and
eventually, have been the great promoters ,of the Roman interest
among us ; (1) by putting to their helping hand to the pulling
down of Episcopacy .... (2) by opposing the interest of
Rome with more violence than reason ; (3) by frequently mis
taking the question, but especially through the necessity of some
false principle or other, which, having once imbibed, they think
themselves bound to maintain, whatever becomes of the common
cause of our Reformation.
Kenn, Bishop and Confessor. — Exposition of the Church
Catechism.
I believe, O blessed and adorable Mediator, that the Church is

Beveridge. 75
a society of persons, founded by Thy love to sinners, united into
one body of which Thou art the head, initiated by baptism, nou
rished by the Eucharist, governed by pastors commissioned by
Thee, and endowed with the power of the keys, professing the
doctrine taught by Thee and delivered to the saints, and devoted
to praise and to love Thee.
I believe, O holy Jesus, that Thy Church is holy like Thee its
Author ; holy by the original design of its institution, holy by
baptismal dedication, holy in all its administrations which tend to
produce holiness ; and, though there will be always a mixture
of good and bad in it in this world, yet that it has always
many real saints in it ; and, therefore, all love, all glory, be to
Thee 
Glory be to Thee, O Lord my God, who hast made me a member
of the particular Church of England, whose faith, government,
and worship are Holy, and Catholic, and Apostolic, and free from
the extremes of irreverence and superstition, and which I firmly
believe to be a sound part of Thy Church universal, and which
teaches me charity to those who dissent from me ; and, therefore,
all love, all glory be to Thee.
Beveridge, Bishop amd Doctor. — Sermon on Christ's Presence
with His Ministers.
In the first place, I observe,, how much we are all bound to
acknowledge the goodness, to praise, magnify, and adore the
name of the most high God, in that we were born and bred, and
still live in a Church, wherein the Apostolical line hath, through
all ages, been preserved entire, there having been a constant suc
cession of such Bishops in it, as were truly and properly successors
to the Apostles, by virtue of that Apostolical imposition of hands,
which being begun by the Apostles, hath been continued from one
to another, ever since their time, down to ours. By which means,
the same Spirit which was breathed by our Lord into His Apostles
is, together with their office, transmitted to their lawful successors,
the pastors and governors of our Church at this time ; and acts,
moves, and assists at the administration of the several parts of
the Apostolical office in our days, as much as ever. From whence

76 Sharp.
it follows, that the means of grace which we now enjoy are in
themselves as powerful and effectual as they were in the Apostles'
days, &c 
And this, I verily believe, is the great reason why the devil
has such a great spite at our Church, still stirring up adversaries
of all sorts against it, — Papists on the one hand, and Sectaries on
the other, and all, if possible, to destroy it ; even because the Spirit
which is ministered in it, is so contrary to his nature, and so
destructive of his kingdom, that he can never expect to domineer
and tyrannize over the people of the land, so long as such a
Church is settled among them, and they continue firm to it. . . .
As for schism, they certainly hazard their salvation at a strange
rate, who separate themselves from such a Church as ours is,
wherein the Apostolical succession, the root of all Christian com
munion, hath been so entirely preserved, and the word and sacra
ments are so effectually administered ; and all to go into such
assemblies and meetings, as can have no pretence to the great
promise in my text. For it is manifest, that this promise was
made only to the Apostles and their successors to the end of the
world. Whereas, in the private meetings, where their teachers
have no Apostolical or Episcopal imposition of hands, they have
no ground to succeed the Apostles, nor by consequence any right
to the Spirit which our Lord hath ; without which, although they
preach their hearts out, I do not see what spiritual advantage can
accrue to their hearers by it, &c 
Sharp, Archbishop. — Sermons, Vol. vii. Of the Church.
" Go," He says, " and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them, &c." .... This commission of our Saviour we may pro
perly style the Charter of the Church ; and mind, I pray, what is
contained in it. Our Saviour here declares the extent of His
Church, and of what persons He would have it constituted. It
was to extend throughout all the world, and to be made up of all
nations. He here declares by whom he would have it built and
constituted, viz. the Apostles. He here declares upon what
grounds He would have it constituted, or upon what conditions
any person was to be received into it, viz. their becoming the dis-

Scott. 77
ciples of Jesus Christ, and undertaking to observe all that He has
commanded. He here likewise declares the form or the method
by which persons were to be, admitted into this Church, and that
was by being baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost. And, lastly, He here promises the per
petual presence of His Holy Spirit, both to assist the apostles and
their successors in the building and governing this Church, and
to actuate and enliven all the members of it  Thus, I am
sure, I have given the true notion of the Church, which the
Scripture always intends, when it speaks of the Church as the
Body of Christ, when it speaks of the Church which Christ pur
chased with His blood, when it speaks of the Church into which
we are baptized, when it speaks of the Church to which all those
glorious promises are made of the forgiveness of sins, of the per
petual presence and assistance of the Holy Spirit, of the gates of
hell never prevailing against it, and of everlasting salvation in the
world to come ; I say that Church is always meant of the whole
company of Christians dispersed over all the world, that profess
the common faith, (though perhaps none of them without mixture
of error,) and enjoy the administration of the word and sacrament,
under their lawful pastors and governors : all these people, wher
ever they live, or by what name soever they call themselves,
make up together that one Body of Christ which we call the Ca
tholic Church. Scott, Presbyter. — Christian Life, Part ii. ch. 7.
Another thing wherein those particular Churches, into which
the Catholic Church is distributed, do communicate with each
other, is, in the essentials of Christian regiment and discipline :
for though the particular modes and circumstances of Christian
government and discipline are not determinated by divine insti
tution, but left for the most part free to the prudent ordering
and disposal of the governors of particular churches, yet there is
a standing form of government and discipline in the Church, insti
tuted by our Saviour himself, which, as I shall show hereafter, is
this ; that there should be an episcopacy, or order of men, autho
rized in a continual succession from the apostles, (who were au-

78 Wake.
thorized by Himself) to oversee and govern all those particular
Churches into which the Church Catholic should be hereafter dis
tributed ; to ordain, &c, &c. And this being the standing govern
ment and discipline of the Catholic Church, no particular Church
or community of Christians can refuse to communicate in it, with
out dividing itself from the communion of the Church Catholic ;
I say, " refuse to communicate in it," because it is possible for a
Church to be without this government and discipline, which yet
doth neither refuse it, nor the communion of any other Church for
the sake of it. A church may be debarred of it by unavoidable
necessities, in despite of its power and against its consent 
Though this instituted government is necessary to the perfection
of a church, yet it doth not therefore follow, that it is necessary
to the being of it  But though a community of Christians
may be a true part of the Catholic Church, and in communion
with it, though it hath no episcopacy ; yet it is a plain case, that
if it rejects the episcopacy, and separates from the communion of
it, it thereby wholly divides itself from the communion of the
Catholic Church.
Wake, Archbishop.— Exposition of the Doctrine of the English
Church. Art. 15.
The imposition of hands in Holy orders, being accompanied
with a blessing of the Holy Spirit, may, perhaps, upon that ac
count be called a kind of particular sacrament. Yet since that
grace, which is thereby conferred, whatever it be, is not common
to all Christians, nor by consequence any part of that federal
blessing which our blessed Saviour has purchased for us, but only
a separation of Him who receives it to a special employ, we think
it ought not to be esteemed a common sacrament of the whole
Church, as Baptism and the Lord's Supper are  We con
fess that no man ought to exercise the ministerial office till he be
first consecrated to it. We believe that it is the Bishop's part
only to ordain. We maintain the distinction of the several
orders in the Church ; and though we have none of them below
a deacon, because we do not read that the Apostles had anv, yet

Wake. — Potter. 79
we acknowledge the rest to have been anciently received in the
Church, and shall not therefore raise any controversy about
them. Wake. — Art. 25.
Professing in our Creed a Holy Catholic Church, we profess to
believe not only that there was a Church planted by our Saviour
at the beginning, that has hitherto been preserved by Him, and
ever shall be to the end of the world ; but do in consequence un
doubtedly believe too, that this universal Church is so secured by
the promises of Christ, that there shall always be retained so
much truth in it, the want of which would argue that there could
be no such Church.
Potter, Archbishop. — On Church Government. Chap. v.
First then, it must be shown, that the office and character of
all persons, who are admitted into holy orders, extends over the
whole world, and it is manifest, in the first place, that the Apostles
had a general commission to " teach and baptize," and to execute
all other parts of their office in all nations. As the bishops of the
Church have been shown to succeed the Apostles in ail the parts
of their office which are of standing and constant use in the
Church : so we might reasonably conclude, though we have no
farther proof of it, that the office and character of bishop, and
consequently of inferior ministers, extends over all the world, be
cause those of the Apostles, their predecessors, did so ; since there
is scarce any reason why the apostles' authority should be uni
versal, which will not hold, at least in some degree, for the same
extent of authority in the bishops, as will appear from some of the
following considerations : —
There is but one Catholic Church, whereof all particular
Churches are members, and therefore, when any spiritual privilege
or character is conferred on any particular Church, it must be
understood to extend over the whole Catholic Church : thus by-
Baptism, men are not only made members of the particular
Church where they happen to be baptized, but of the Catholic
Church over the world ; and therefore whoever has been lawfully

80 Nelson.
baptized in one Church, has a right to partake of the Lord's Sup
per, and other church privileges, in all other Churches, where he
happens to come ; whereas if baptism only admitted men into
some particular Church, they must be re-baptized, before they
can lawfully be received to communion in any diocese, where
they have not been baptized already.
If it was not thus in holy orders, that they who have received
them in one place, retain them in others : no minister could have
authority to preach the Gospel or to administer the sacraments, or
to exercise any other part of his functions beyond the particular
district in which he was ordained ; the consequence whereas is
manifestly this, that the gospel of Christ must not be propagated,
nor any churches erected, in countries where they had not stood
ever since the Apostles' times. For since there can be no ministers
without ordination, as was before proved, so then they, who have
been ordained in one country, may lawfully exercise their respec
tive functions in others, where there are no ordained ministers
already settled, or else those countries must remain for ever with
out ministers, and consequently without sacraments and other
. puhlic offices of religion.
Nelson, Confessor. — Festivals and Fasts.
The Church being a regular society founded by Christ, dis
tinct from and independent of all other worldly societies, must
naturally make us suppose that He instituted some Officers for
the government of it. . . . [The] Powers peculiar to the superior
Order being necessary for the good government of the Church, it
is plain in fact they did not expire with the Apostles. But, as
our Saviour " glorified not Himself to be made an High Priest,"
but had His commission from God the Father, so after His
resurrection, He invested the Apostles with the same commis
sion His Father had given unto Him : " As My Father hath sent
Me, even so send I you ; and He breathed on them, and said
unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." In which commis
sion is plainly contained the authority of ordaining others, and a
power to transfer that commission upon others, and those upon
others to the end of the world. And to show that it was not

Kettlewell. — Hicks. 81
merely personal to the Apostles, our Saviour promises to be
with them and their successors in the execution of this commis
sion, "even unto the end of the world." .... This commission
the Apostles and their successors exercised in all places, and
even in opposition to the Rulers that then were ; so that the
Church subsisted as a distinct society from the state, for above
three hundred years, when the civil government was only con
cerned to suppress and destroy it. Indeed when the Church
received the benefit of incorporation and protection from the
state, she was content to suffer some limitations as to the exercise
of these powers, and thought herself sufficiently recompensed by
the advantages that accrued to her by the incorporation.
Kettlewell, Presbyter and Confessor. — Practical Believer,
ii. 6.
Question. There remains yet one instance of the Communion
of the Primitive Christians, mentioned by St. Luke, viz. their
" continuing in the Apostles' fellowship." (Acts ii. 42.) I pray
you what is meant by that ?
Answer. Owning their authority and continuing under their
government. They were appointed by Christ, as His deputies,
to govern His Church ; and, therefore, to adhere to them, as the
delegates of Christ, is called living " in their fellowship."
Q. But how can we live in their fellowship, and adhere to
their government, now they are dead ?
A. By adhering to and owning the authority of our own
Bishops, who are their successors, and rule the Church in their
stead. Hicks, Bishop and Confessor.— Treatise on the Episcopal
Order, § 2.
Can you, Sir, when you consider that Bishops are appointed to
succeed the Apostles, and, like them, to stand in Christ's place,
and exercise their kingly, priestly, and prophetical office over
their flocks ; can you, when you consider this, think it novel, or
improper, or uncouth, to call them spiritual princes, and their
dioceses principalities ?— when they have every thing in their
f

82 Law.
office which can denominate a prince ? For what is a prince but
the chief ruler of a society, that hath authority over the rest to
make laws for it, to challenge the obedience of all the members,
and all ranks of men in it, and power to coerce them, if they will
not obey ? And now, Sir, I pray you attend to what follows,
and then tell me, if the office of a Bishop contains not every
thing that is in the definition of a chief or a prince. St. Igna
tius, who was St. John's disciple, writes of the Bishop in his
Epistle, &c. Law. — Second Letter to the Bishop of Bangor.
" The priests of the sons of Levi shall come near ; for them
hath the Lord thy God chosen to minister unto Him, and to bless
in the name of the Lord." (Deut. xxi. 5.) Now my Lord, this is
what we mean by the authoritative administration of the Christian
clergy ; whether they be by way of benediction, or of any other
kind. We take them to be persons whom God has chosen to
minister unto Him, and to bless in His name. We imagine that
our Saviour was a greater priest and mediator than Aaron, or any
of God's former ministers. We are assured that Christ sent His
Apostles, as His Father had sent Him ; and that, therefore, they
were His true successors ; and since they did commission others
to succeed them in their office by the imposition of hands, as
Moses commissioned Joshua to succeed him, the clergy who have
succeeded the Apostles, have as divine a call and commission to
their work, as those who were called by our Saviour ; and are as
truly His successors as the Apostles themselves were.
Ibid. — Postscript.
The third objection against this uninterrupted succession is
this : that it is a popish doctrine, and " gives Papists advantage
over us." The objection proceeds thus : " We must not assert
the necessity of this succession, because the Papists say it is only
to be found in them." I might add, because some mighty zealous
Protestants say so too.
But if this be good argumentation, we ought not to tell the Jews
or Deists, &c, that there is any necessity of embracing Christ-

Jolmson. 83
ianity, because the Papists say Christians can only be saved in
their Church. Again, we ought not to insist upon a true faith,
because the Papists say, that a true faith is only in their com
munion. So that there is just as much Popery in teaching this
doctrine, as in asserting the necessity of Christianity to a Jew, or
the necessity of a right faith to a Socinian, &c.
Johnson, Presbyter. — Unbloody Sacrifice, Part II. Chap. 3.
The Eucharist is one, as offered by priests, who are one by
their commission. It is very evident that it was not only our
Saviour's intention, but His most passionate desire, that, as all His
Apostles received their commission from Him, so they might
execute it with such a harmony and consent of mind, that there
might not be the least jarring between them ; for thus He prays
for them : " Keep through Thine own name those whom Thou
hast given me, that they may be one, as We are." And the
foundation of our Saviour's wishes and expectations for so perfect
an union between His Apostles was this, as is expressed by Himself,
" I have given them the words which Thou gavest me," that is,
He had committed to them the same treasure of Divine truth
which the Father had before committed to Him, &c. . . . After
His resurrection, He does, with great solemnity, tell them, " As
My Father sent Me, even so send I you ;" from which words it is
evident, that the commission of all the Apostles was one and the
same; that it was such a commission as Christ himself, in His human
nature, had received from His Father; and even they who were not
of the same order with the Apostles, but only inferior Presbyters
under them, yet by deriving their authority from the same fountain-
head, and exercising it in conformity to the instructions which
they received from them, they still kept the " unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace." ... It was upon this account that Ignatius,
Cyprian, and others, represent the whole college of Bishops
throughout the whole world as one person, sitting in one chair,
attending one altar : and that, therefore, is the one Eucharist
which is celebrated by this one priesthood ; and St. Clement of
Rome allows nothing to be offered without the inspection of the
high priest ; and, therefore, when a new altar is erected, a new
F 2

Si Dodwell.
Bishop ordained in opposition to the former, then there is just
occasion to ask that question, as St. Paul did, " Is Christ
divided?" When two several pastors assume to themselves the
privilege of offering and consecrating the Sacrament not only in
two distinct places, but in contradiction to each other, and by
two several inconsistent claims ; then it is evident, that one of
them acts by no commission, for if the true Eucharist can be had
in two opposite assemblies, then Christ's flesh ceases to be one.
Dodwell, Confessor, — Discourse on the one Priesthood, one
Altar. Ch. 12.
I observe that the Hierophanta, in their mysteries represented
a Divine Person. The same, in all probability, were the thoughts
of the primitive Christians, concerning their Bishops. This I take
to be the true design of that description of the Majestatic Presence
in the Revelations, to represent the Divine Presence, and assist
ance in the Church, in as lively a way as possible, according to the
ways of Mystical Representation received in those times. .. .St.
John being particularly to affect the Churches he writes to, those of
the Lydian or Proconsular Asia, with a very feeling sense of the
Divine presence among them, (which might add the greater au
thority to his several exhortations respectively,) he represents our
Saviour in a human visible shape ; and that the rest of the scene
might be suitable, (that is, sensible also as well as Himself,) he
personates the Angels by their visible Bishops, that so Christ
might be apprehended as present with the Bishops, as God was
supposed to be wherever these Seven Spirits were, which were
peculiarly deputed to represent the Majestatic Presence. This I
take to be the reason why he confines his number, not that by
any geographical distinction those seven cities were incorporated
into a body, more than others of that province, but that he had
a particular regard to that number of those Angels of the presence.
Therefore he makes seven candlesticks, alluding, as I have said,
to the like number of those in the Tabernacle, as emblems of
those seven Churches. Therefore seven stars, alluding to the
number of the Planets and the Angels who presided over them,
as emblems of the Bishops of those Churches  Thus it appears

Dodwell. 85
plainly, that the Bishops are here represented in a mystical way ;
and how particularly suitable it was, in this way, to personate
them by the name of Angels. They were, indeed, to perform the
same office under Christ, as a visible human person, which the
Angels were under Him as the Logos, in reference to the restitu
tion of souls to their original dignity 
But because even His human nature, though visible in itself,
is yet invisible to us, therefore another way was thought of for
copying out that heavenly rtXtrr), even in the ordinary exter
nal visible government of the Church. And here the Bishop was
to personate Christ Himself, as the High Priest had, formerly,
represented the Logos. The seven Deacons were to represent
the Seven Mystical Angels, as 1 am very apt to think, they were
designed from the very original. I cannot think it casual that
the number first pitched on was exactly seven. But, that which
more confirms me in this opinion is the real suitableness of the
office of the Deacon to the Bishops, as representing the Logos in
a visible way, with that of those Angels to the same Logos, as He
was invisible. The office of the Angels in general is thus des
cribed, by the Author of the Hebrews, that they are ["ministering
spirits, sent out for a diaconate."] These are exactly the very
terms by which the Church would have expressed the office of
these Deacons, if she had been to have described the same office
as vested in mortal men  They (the Angels) were to stand
before the presence of God, in a posture of readiness to be sent
on messages by Him ; and so were the Deacons to stand before
the Bishop, to be sent by him on his messages. They were the
" eyes of the Lord, which ran to and fro through the whole
earth." So also the Deacons are, in the language of the Ancient
Church, called the Oculi Episcopate? the same reason  Now
we may not wonder why the Bishops are called Angels, in the
formentioned mystical immediate relation to our Saviour Himself
as the chief " Bishop of our souls ;'* because, indeed, in regard of
Him, they bear no higher office than that of Deacons 
Accordingly the Primitive Church were extremely vigorous in m-
sisting on this verv number of their Deacons, in all places, as I

86 Dodwell.
have elsewhere showed. The council of Neocaesarea imposed it as
a universal rule, how great soever the Church were to which the
Deacons were to serve ; .... a canon, which, though it were at
first designed only for their own province of Cappadocia, was,
notwithstanding, afterwards extended, first, to the Eastern Em ¦
pire .... afterwards to the Western .... Therefore, even then it is
much more probable that this number was already received in
more Churches than otherwise.
And now the comparisons of the Bishops in Ignatius cannot
seem so strange, these things being considered, as they did to
Blondell, who had considered none of them. They are generally
designed to express the sacredness and excellency of the persons
which the clergy bore in these mystical performances. Nor is
there any thing in them that is really affected or strained, much
less blasphemous, no, nor any extravagant flights of fancy. .. .
If he was to compare them with the first invisible archetypes of
unity, (as that is, indeed, his great design in those epistles, in op
position to the schisms then rising,) then it was very proper for
him to take notice only of the two orders which were then imme
diately concerned in the office of ministration, and then to com
pare them with God the Father, and the Logos ; because as this
unity consists in the uuity of the Head, and the Scripture tells us
that the Head of every man is Christ, so also the same Scripture
tells us that the Head of Christ is God  These things, there
fore, being thus solidly laid down by the first fathers, in their
disputes against their contemporary Heretics and Schismatics, all
the inferences thence deduced against them, will follow naturally
and undeniably .... It will follow, that disunion from the Bishop
was a disunion from Christ and the Father, and from all the
invisible heavenly Priesthood, and sacrifice, and intercession.
It will follow that disunion from any one ordinary, must conse
quently be a disunion from the whole Catholic Church, seeing it is
impossible for any to continue a member of Christ's mystical
body, who is disunited from the mystical head of it. It will
follow that visible disunion from the external sacraments of the
Bishop, is in the consequence a disunion from the Bishop, and

Collier. 87
from the whole Catholic Church in communion with him, who
ought to ratify each others' censures, under pain of schism if they
do not.
Collier, Bishop, and Confessor.— Moral Essays, Part III.
'Tis the bulk and serviceableness of business, and the use it
has in the world, which makes an employment honourable. And
can any thing compare with the Apostles in this particular?
Were they not to form and instruct the Church, and to govern
the most noble society upon earth? Were they not to publish the
Mysteries of Redemption, the offers of the New Covenant, and
the glories of the other world ? . . . . Fire in the figure of tongues
sat upon the heads of each of them. This was an emblem of
the gift of languages, and the miracle was as bright as the flame.
. . . .This was a glorious attestation, this must needs make their
commission undisputed, and their character indelible. Should a
Prince be proclaimed from the sky, anointed out of the Ampoul,
and crowned by an Angel, his authority could not be more visi
ble  I can't help saying, that, in my opinion, a Prince made
but a lean figure in comparison with an Apostle. What is the
magnificence of palaces, the richness of furniture, the quality of
attendance, what is all this to the pomp of miracles, and the
grandeur of supernatural power ?. . . . A Prince can bestow marks
of distinction, and posts of honour and authority ; but he can't
give the Holy Ghost, he can't register his favourites among the
quality of heaven, nor entitle them to the bliss of eternity. No,
— these powers were Apostolic privileges, and the enclosure of
the Church. The prerogative royal cannot stretch thus far ; these
jewels are not to be found in the Imperial crown  I need not
tell you how much they suffered through their progress, and how
gloriously they went off into the other world. But before their
departure, they took care to perpetuate their authority, and pro
vide governors for the Church. Thus the jurisdiction was con
veyed to Bishops and Priests ; this succession has continued with
out interruption for above sixteen hundred years.

88 Leslie.
Leslie, Presbyter and Confessor. — Case of the Regale and
Pontificate.
When any constitution of civil government dissolves itself,
another immediately succeeds ; or, if a Monarchy be turned into
a Commonwealth, or a Commonwealth into a Monarchy ; and
consequently that which was dissolved, is no more ; but we can
not say that the Church is no more. There is still a Church,
though in servitude, and nothing succeeds to it ; if it were dis
solved, there would be no Church, but nothing would come in its
room, unless you will say a privation, that is the want of a
Church .... The Church is a society spread over the earth ; and,
therefore, cannot be dissolved in any one kingdom or state ; nor
can the concessions of any national Church oblige the Church
Catholic ; no, nor oblige that national Church herself, otherwise
than according to the rules of the Catholic Church ; more than a
Committee of the House of Lords or Commons can oblige the
whole House, or govern themselves by any other rules than those
which are prescribed by the House 
The Church is laid as low and fenceless as the sand under
their [Atheism, Deism, &c.J storms, which had long since over
whelmed the City of God, (after the change of her governors) if the
Almighty promise (Matt. xvi. 18 ; xxviii. 20.) had not inter
posed to preserve some embers alive in the midst of these torrents.
And they will be preserved till the time appointed by God shall
come, when His breath shall put new life in them, to lick up that
sea that now covers, but cannot drown them  This is the city,
the society, over which the temporal governments of the earth have
assumed the dominion; and have said, " Let us break their bonds
asunder, and cast away their cords from us.'' ... .
And let not so weak a thought arise in your minds, as if all this
were only the self-seeking of the Clergy, out' of pride to advance
themselves. Alas ! it must have the quite contrary effect with
any of them who consider what a heavy charge they have under
taken, and what account will be exacted from them, for theirfaith-
ful discharge of it ! That the blood of all those souls who perish
through their negligence or default, will be required at their

Wilson. 89
hands ! That they have to wrestle, not only with flesh and
blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of
the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits that are set up
in high places. And whoever opposes these with that truth and
freedom that is necessary, instead of honour must expect reproach
and persecution ; of which it is not the least, that they cannot
vindicate the honour of Christ's commission without being thought
to seek their own glory. Yet that must not hinder ; the succes
sors of the Holy Apostles must be content to pass, as they did,
" through evil report and good report, as deceivers, and yet
true." Wilson, Bishop, Confessor and Doctor. — Private Thoughts.
" He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold," &c. A
lawful entrance, upon motives which aim at the glory of God and
the good of souls; an external ca1! and mission, from the apostolic
authority of Bishops.
" A stranger will they not follow ;" that is, they ought not to
follow such as break Catholic Unity 
Whoever is associated in the Priesthood of Christ, ought, in
imitation of Him, to sacrifice Himself for the advantage of His
Church and for all the designs of God 
" Bishops and priests," saith St. Ambrose, " are honourable on
account of the sacrifice they offer." The power of the keys and
the exercise of that power, the due use of confirmation, and pre
vious to that of examination .... are matters of infinite and
eternal concern  (At the Lord's Supper. Before the
Service begins- ) May it please Thee, O God, who hast called us
to this ministry, to make us worthy to offer unto Thee this sacri
fice for our own sins and for the sins of the people. Accept our
service and our persons, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who
liveth and reio-neth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, One God,
world without end.— O reject not this people for me and for my
sins. Amen.
(Upon placing the Elements upon the Altar.) Vouchsafe to
iceeive these Thy creatures from the hands of us sinners, O Thou
self-sufficient God !

90 Bingham.
(Immediately after the Consecration. ) We offer unto Thee,
our King and our God, this bread and this cup. We give Thee
thanks for these and for all Thy mercies, beseeching Thee to send
down Thy Holy Spirit upon this sacrifice, that He may make
this bread the Body of Thy Christ, and this cup the blood of
Thy Christ ; and that all we, who are partakers thereof, may
thereby obtain remission of our sins and all other benefits of His
passion. And together with us, remember, O God, for good, the
whole mystical body of Thy Son ; that such as are yet alive may
finish their course with joy, and that we, with all such as are dead
in the Lord, may rest in hope and rise in glory, for Thy Son's
sake, whose death we now commemorate. Amen. May I adore
Thee, O God, by offering to Thee the pure and unbloody sacrifice,
which Thou hast ordained by Jesus Christ. Amen.
Whenever church discipline meets with discountenance, impieties
of all kinds are sure to get head and abound. And impieties unpu
nished do always draw down judgments. The same Jesus Christ,
who appointed baptism for the receivingmen into His Church and
family, has appointed excommunication, to shut such out as are
judged unworthy to continue in it  If baptism be a
blessing, excommunication is a real punishment ; there being the
same authority for excommunication as for baptism. And if men
ridicule it, they do it at the peril of their souls.
Bingham, Presbyter. — Sermons on Absolution. No. 2.
In the first place, the commission of power to Ministers to
retain and remit other men's sins, in whatever sense we take it,
is a great engagement on them to lead holy and pure lives them
selves. For it looks like an absurdity in practice, and is too
often really thought so, that men should be qualified to forgive
other men's sins, who are loaded with guilt and impurity them
selves. There is nothing so natural and obvious to us as,
Physician, heal thyself: and, therefore, if it be not a real objec
tion against their office, yet it is an unanswerable one against
their persons. If it do not destroy the tenor of their commission
in the nature of the thing, yet it certainly diminishes their
authority and reputation in the opinion of men ; when every
1

Bingham. 91
profligate sinner can retort upon them and say, " Thou that teach-
est another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that preachest a man
should not steal, dost thou steal 1 Thou that sayest a man should
not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that makest
thy boast of the law, through breaking the law, dishonourest thou
God ?" It must needs take off very much from the veneration of
the Sacrament of Baptism, to have a man pretend to wash away the
sins of others, who is himself polluted and profane ; and equally
diminish the reverence which is due to the tremendous mystery
of the Eucharist, to have it ministered with unholy hands. It
cannot relish well with men, to hear an unsanctified mouth
giving blessing to others, who in effect is cursing himself; pray
ing that the blood of Christ may preserve others to eternal
life, while he himself is eating and drinking his own damnation,
not discerning the Lord's body. But above all, such a man
cannot with any tolerable decency or freedom, discharge the
office of punishing and correcting others, who is himself more
justly liable to rebuke and censure. With what face can he
debar others from Baptism or the Eucharist, who is himself un
qualified to receive either ? or exclude others from the Church,
who is himself unworthy to enter into it ? Nothing can be a
greater engagement upon Ministers to lead holy and pure lives,
than the consideration of the commission which Christ has
given them, to retain or remit other men's sins, whether in a
sacramental way, or a declaratory way, or a precatory way, or a
judicial way : because without purity, they can by no means
answer the end of this office, and the nature of their trust ; but
their mal-administration will rise up in judgment against them
and condemn them.
2. A second thing which this office of retaining and remitting
sins requires of Ministers, is great diligence in their studies and
labours, without which they can never be able sufficiently to
discharge it. The Church, indeed, has made some part of this
work tolerably easy, by a prudent provision of many proper
general forms of absolution : to which in her wisdom She may add
proper forms of excommunication and judicial absolution. But
when this is done, there still remains a great deal more belong-

92 Skelton.
ing to the full discharge of this office, for which the Church can
make no particular provision : and, therefore, that must be left
to the industry and diligence of Ministers, in their particular
studies and labours. And this requires both a diffused know
ledge, and great application ; to be able to understand the
nature of all God's laws, and the bounds and distinctions be
twixt every virtue and vice ; to be able to resolve all ordinary
cases of conscience, and answer such doubts and scruples as are
apt to arise in men's minds ; to know the qualifications of parti
cular men, and the nature and degrees and sincerity of their
repentance, in order to give them a satisfactory answer to their
demands, and grant or refuse them the several sorts of absolution,
as they shall think proper upon an impartial view of their state
and condition. He that thinks all this may be done without any
great labour and study, and a diligent search of the Holy Scrip
tures, the rule and record of God's will, seems neither to under
stand the nature of his office, nor the needs of men ; nor what it
is to stand in the place of Christ, and judge for him between
God and man. The Priest's lips should preserve knowledge :
and a man that considers the large extent of that knowledge,
together with the great variety of cases and persons to which he
may have occasion to apply it, would rather be tempted to cry
out with the Apostle, "Who is sufficient for these things?"
And if this be not an argument to engage a man to industry in
the office of a spiritual physician, it is hard to say what is so.
Skelton, Presbyter. — Discourse 71.
The next thing the Puritans took offence at, was the Hierarchy
of the Church. They looked on the Bishops as the instruments
of papal tyranny, and the corrupters of true religion. . . . They. . .
were, it seems, so ignorant, as not to know, that the Bishops, of all
men, had most reason to oppose the usurpation of the Bishop of
Rome, who had made himself the only Bishop, and reduced all the
rest to cyphers. Nor did they consider, whether it was in the
power of man to abolish, at his discretion, an order of the Church,
instituted by God Himself, merely because the men who filled this
order had degenerated, together with all the rest of the Church,

Samuel Johnson. 93
into superstition and luxury. Here again the scheme of our
opposerswas not to reform, but to destroy ; and what was equally
bold, to begin a new ministry, with hardly any other mission,
than such as a number of men, and sometimes one man only,
wholly unauthorized, for aught that others could perceive, should
assume. From men thus sending themselves, or sent by we know
not whom, we are to receive the sacraments  We must not
forget, however, that these new orders lay claim to scriptural
institution and primitive example. What, all of them ? And
without succession ? Do we hear of any man in Scripture who or
dained himself, or who presumed to take the ministry of God's word
and sacraments upon him, without being sent either immediately
or successively by Christ ? Or, can an instance of this kind be
assigned during the first fourteen centuries of the Church ? . . .
So sacred a thing is the succession of ordination, that the Holy
Ghost, who had already enabled Barnabas and Saul to preach the
word, ordered them to be " separated for the work whereunto He
had called them, by fasting, prayer, and imposition of hands," —
that is to be ordained : the Spirit of God hereby plainly showing,
that He himself would not break the successive order of mission
established in the Church.
Samuel Johnson. — iv tyiXoootyov crxfifiari Trpeo-ftevwi' r6v Qeiov
Xoyov. Sermon 7-
With regard to the order and government of the Primitive
Church, we may doubtless follow their [the ancients] authority
with perfect security ; they could not possibly be ignorant of
laws executed, and customs practised by themselves ; nor would
they, even supposing them corrupt, serve any interest of their
own, by handing down false accounts to posterity. We are,
therefore, to inquire from them the different Orders established in
the Ministry from the Apostolic ages ; the different employments
of each, and their several ranks, subordinations, and degrees of
authority. From their writings, we are to vindicate the establish
ment of our Church, and by the same writings are those who
differ from us in these particulars to defend their conduct.
Nor is this the only, though perhaps the chief use of these

94 Home.
writers; for, in matters of faith and points of doctrine, those at least
who lived in the ages nearest to the times of the Apostles un
doubtedly deserve to be consulted. The oral doctrines and occa
sional explications of the Apostles would not be immediately
forgotten, in the Churches to which they had preached, and
which had attended to them with the diligence and reverence
which their mission and character demanded. Their solution of
difficulties, and determinations of doubtful questions, must have
been treasured up in the memory of their audiences, and trans
mitted for some time from father to son. Every thing, at least,
that was declared by the inspired teachers to be necessary to
salvation, must have been carefully recorded ; and, therefore,
what we find no traces of in Scripture, or the early Fathers,
as most of the peculiar tenets of the Romish Church, must
certainly be concluded to be not necessary. Thus, by consulting
first the Holy Scriptures, and next the writers of the Primitive
Church, we shall make ourselves acquainted with the will of
God ; thus shall we discover the good way, and find that rest for
our souls, which will amply recompence our studies and inquiries.
Horne, Bishop and Doctor. — Charge at Primary Visitation of
his Diocese.
The Constitution and use of the Church of Christ is another
subject, on which our principles, for some years past, have been
very unsettled, and our knowledge precarious and superficial.
Ignorance is dangerous here, because there are so many whose
interest it is to flatter us in it, and take advantage of it. The
definition of the Church, contained in our Articles, was purposely
less definitive than it might have been, to avoid giving further
offence to those whom we rather wished to reconcile ; but it
does not appear, that the Church hath gained any thing by its
moderation ; it hath rather lost ; because in virtue of that mode
ration, it hath been pleaded against us, that Ecclesiastical Unity
may be dispensed with, and that all our differences in this matter
are only problematical and immaterial.
But salvation is a gift of grace ; that is, it is a free gift, to which
we have no natural claim. It is not to be conceived within our-

Home. 95
selves, but to be received, in consequence of our Christian call
ing, from God Himself, through the means of His Ordinances.
These can no man administer to effect, but by God's own appoint
ment ; at first, by His immediate appointment, and afterwards,
by succession and derivation from thence to the end of the world.
Without this rule we are open to imposture, and can be sure of
nothing ; we cannot be sure that our ministry is effective, and
that our Sacraments are realities. We are very sensible the
spirit of division will never admit this doctrine ; yet the spirit of
charity must never part with it. Writers and teachers who make
it a point to give no offence, treat these things very tenderly ;
but he who, in certain cases, gives men no offence, will for that
reason give them no instruction. Light itself is painful to weak
eyes ; but delightful to them when grown stronger, and reconciled
to it with use; and he who was instrumental in bringing them to a
more perfect slate of vision, though less acceptable at first, may
yet, for his real kindness, be more cordially thanked afterwards,
than if he had made the ease and safety of his own person the
measure of his duty. It is by no means evident, that the Church
hath ever recommended itself the more by receding from any of
its just pretensions : generosity obliges and secures a friend; but
an enemy construes it into weakness, and then it never does any
good. Yet the adversaries of the Church of England have
always been persuading her to make the experiment, and have
promised great things from it ; with what views, it cannot be
difficult to discover. It was an unhappy circumstance, and had
very ill effects, when some pious men ' of more zeal than discre
tion, who set out on the work of reforming this nation, opened
an asylum for penitents, which took in people of all persuasions,
without exception of any. It came to be inferred from hence,
that souls might be saved as well without as with a Church ;
perhaps better ; and when men have once begun to neglect rules,
they go on to despise them, and know not where to stop, till all
things are brought into confusion 
The ancient Church is the standard by which all modern ones
1 Mr. Wesley, &c.

96 Home.
are to be examined ; and unless a man knows what the Church
was in centuries before the Reformation, he will see but darkly
into the troubled waters of later times, in which faction and party
have confounded things ; and it hath become as much the interest
of some, that the Church of Christ should be found every where,
as it is the desire of others that it should be found no where ....
If we would guard against popular mistakes in the subject at
large, it will be necessary to examine first, what the Church was
under the Old Testament ; for there we find its original establish
ment, its form, its authority, its ministry, its unity and uniformity,
its maintenance, its independence ; which things being so particu
larly laid down, no new establishment is to be found in the Epistles
or the Gospels of the New Testament, but the ancient constitution
is referred to, to show us, in certain cases, what ought to be from
what had been  From the Scripture we should proceed
next to observe, what the Church was in the first ages of the
Gospel, before worldly policy, miscalled moderation, had any
influence upon the opinions of Christians. There is an epistle of
St. Clement, on Church unity and Church authority, with which
all students in divinity should be acquainted. It will teach them
what the Christian society then was, and what it ought to be.
Ignatius and Cyprian, both of them martyrs, will give further
instruction. The latter is so particular and copious, that a code of
discipline might nearly be formed upon his authority. With
these preparations, we shall be the better able to judge of what
happened at the Reformation, when many things were right and
many wrong ; when the Church of England, by the singular
blessing of God, preserved its constitution and its doctrines, while
many of the reformed fell off by degrees, some into disorder, some
into dissolution. What remains with us we must defend and
preserve ; trusting that the same God who hatb raised this
Church, when trodden down to the dust, will never forsake us till
we forsake Him 
But I must now hasten, in the last place, to a subject of more
quietness or less suspicion [than the subject of civil government],
in which wise men of all persuasions are more nearly of a mind ;
I mean, the conduct of the Christian life. Modern times and

Horne. 97
new modes of education have given too great a latitude in the
articles of dress, and dissipation, and self-indulgence. Every
thing is to be avoided which tends to diminish that gravity and
seriousness which God expects to find in all those who are flying
from the wrath to come. It was observed of old, that when
inconsiderate people are avoiding one extreme, they commonly
fall into another, while reason and discretion keep the middle
way. When Protestants laid aside the austerities of super
stition, they began to see less harm in the liberties taken by the
world. The kind of life to which the first Christians conformed,
hath been considered as a sort of heroic piety, which had more of
suffering and mortification than are now required of us ; as if the
way to heaven could be easier, while the number of our tempta
tions is probably increasing from the refinements of modern times,
which, instead of giving us more liberty, call upon us for a greater
degree of caution and reserve 
To us Jesus Christ is the pattern of holiness, the great
exemplar of perfection, of whom we are first to learn, what no
heathen ever professed, to be "meek and lowly in heart;" and
accordingly, one of the best books extant on the Spiritual life, is
entitled, " The Imitation of Jesus Christ." Its language is bar
barous, but its matter is divine and heavenly, and hath administered
instruction and consolation to thousands of devout Christians.
The way of true devotion must still be understood to be the same
humble, secret, unaffected, unaspiring practice of piety, as it used
to be of old. The Cross, which Jesus Christ carried for our
salvation, is still the true emblem of our profession, from our
baptism to our departure out of this life, and is to be borne by us
in our minds, as a daily admonition to patient suffering and self-
denial. To assist us in the great duties of prayer and meditation, books
of devotion have their use ; but to us of the clergy, the liturgy of
our Church is the best companion ; and the daily use of it in our
churches and families is required by the canons. It cannot be
denied, that from various reasons prevailing amongst us, we are
much fallen off, of late years, from the practice of weekly prayers
in our churches. Where vei this has been neglected, we should
c

9fS Jones.
exhort the people to the revival of it, if circumstances will possibly
permit ; and alarm them against a mistake, to which they are all
exposed, from a fanatical prejudice of baneful influence, namely,
that they come to Church only to hear preaching; and hence they
are indifferent, even on a Sunday, to the prayers of the Church,
unless there is a sermon.
Jones of Nayland, Presbyter. — Lectures on Hebrews, iii.
The Church, in its nature, always was what it now is, a society
comprehending the souls as well as the bodies of men ; and,
therefore, consisting of two parts, the one spiritual, answering to
the soul, and other outward, answering to the body. Hence,
some have written much upon a visible Church and an invisible,
as if they were two things ; but they are more properly one, as
the soul and body make a single person.
In the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the
Apostle gives such a description of that society, into which Chris
tians are admitted, as will show us the nature of it. " Ye are
come,'' says he, " unto Mount Zion," &c  The terms here
used give us a true prospect of the Church  This is that
Zion of the Holy One of Israel, to which the forces of the Gentiles
were to flow from all parts of the world .... the city of the
living God, distinguished from the cities of the world, as Jerusa
lem was from the cities of the heathens, who dedicated their
cities not to the living God, but to the names of their dead idols.
 This, being the city of the living God, must be an
immortal society, for the living God does not preside over dead
citizens ; He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the
living, and all the members of this society live unto Him 
It is, therefore, called the Heavenly Jerusalem, because it is of a
heavenly nature ; and it is called the Jerusalem which is above,
which is free, and is the mother of us all. ... Its spiritual nature is
further declared, in that it is said to comprehend an innumerable
company of angels  In the communion of the Church the
spirits of just men made perfect are also included. It is a society
which admits only the spirits of the living, and as such cannot
exclude the spirits of the dead ; and this confirms what we said

Ho rs ley. 99
above, that the Church is a spiritual community, comprehending
the dead as well as the living 
But it is now to be shown, secondly, that as the Church of God
hath always been the same in its nature, it hath likewise preserved
the same form in its external economy ; the wisdom of God
having so ordained, that the Christian Church under the Gospel
should not depart from the model of the Church under the Law.
For as the congregation of Israel was divided into twelve tribes,
under the twelve Patriarchs, so is the Church of Christ founded
on the twelve Apostles, who raised to themselves a spiritual seed
amongst all the nations of the world  There were then
three orders of priests in the Jewish Church ; there was the high
priest, and the sons of Aaron, and the Levites. In the Church of
Christ, there was the order of the Apostles, besides whom there
were the seventy Disciples sent out after them ; and, last of all,
the Deacons were ordained to serve under both in the lower offices
of the Church. The same form is still preserved in every regular
Church of the world, which derives its succession and authority
from the Church of the Apostles : after whom the Bishops suc
ceeded by their appointment, such as Timothy and Titus, in their
respective churches. This authority has been opposed in the
Christian as it was in the Jewish Church : Corah and his company
rose up against Moses and Aaron for usurping a lordly authority
over the people ; so, in the later ages of the Christian Church, a
levelling principle hath prevailed, which has appeared in many
different shapes 
The Church has also been remarkably conformable to itself in its
sufferings. There never was a time, so far as we can learn, when the
true Church of God, with its doctrines and institutions, was not
hated and opposed by the world ; either persecuted and oppressed
by powerful tyrants, or traduced and insulted by lying historians.
Horsi.ev, Bishop. • — Sermon on Matt. xvi. 18, 19.
The keys of the kingdom of Heaven here promised to St.
Peter .... must be something quite distinct from that with
which it hath "•enerally been confounded, the power of remission
and retention of sins, conferred by our Lorh, after His resur-

100 Heber.
rection, upon the apostles in general, and transmitted through
them to the perpetual succession of the priesthood. This is the
discretionary power lodged in the priesthood of dispensing the
sacraments, and of granting to the penitent and refusing to the
obdurate the benefit and comfort of absolution. The object of
this power is the individual upon whom it is exercised, according
to the particular circumstances of each man's case. It was exer
cised by the apostles in many striking instances. It is exercised
now by every priest, when he administers or withholds the sacra
ments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, or, upon just grounds,
pronounces or refuses to pronounce upon an individual the sen
tence of absolution.
Heber, Bishop. — Sermons in England, No. xii.
We must return then, after all, (in ordinary cases, and where
an immediate and supernatural commission from the Holy Ghost
is neither proved nor pretended,) to the appointment and ordina
tion of those among our fellow-creatures who exercise a legitimate
authority in the Church of Christ, and who, as being appointed
by God, are placed in God's stead, and commissioned by Him
to dispense those graces which are necessary for the feeding of His
flock, and to designate those labourers who are henceforth to work
in His harvest.
And having arrived at this point of the discussion, even if that
discussion were to proceed no further, and if the Scriptures had
given us no information as to the persons by whom this authority
was to be exercised, the validity of our ordinations would still
be sufficiently plain, and the danger of separation from, or rebel
lion against, our Church would be sufficiently great and alarm
ing; inasmuch as, where no distinct religious officer was instituted
by God, the appointment of such officers must necessarily have
devolved on the collective Christian Church, and on those supreme
magistrates who, in every Christian country, are the recognized
organs of the public will and wisdom  It happens, how
ever, to be in our power to show (if not an explicit direction of
Christ for the form of our Church government, and the manner
of appointing our spiritual guides), yet a precedent so clear, and
7

Heber. 101
a pattern so definite, as to leave little doubt of the intentions of
our Divine Master, or of the manner in which those intentions were
fulfilled by His immediate and inspired Disciples. Nor will the
force of such precedent and example on the practice of succeeding
Christians be regarded as trifling by those who consider that it is
on such grounds as these that the obligation rests of many
observances which are allowed by all parties to be essential ;
among which may be classed the baptism of infants, the observance
of the Lord's Day, and our participation in the Lord's Supper.
But, without entering into the question of the absolute necessity
of this rule, and without judging those other national Churches
which have departed from it, it is evident that those Churches are
most wise and most fortunate, who have continued in the path
which Christ and His Apostles have trodden before ; and that
religious insubordination is then most unreasonable and most
dangerous, when exerted against a form of polity which the ma
jority of our fellow-Christians, the wisdom of our civil governors,
and the full stream of precedent, from the time of the Apostles
themselves, combine to recommend to our reverence.
We find, accordingly, that our Lord, on His own departure
from the world, committed, in most solemn terms, the government
of His Church to His Apostles. We find these Apostles, in the
exercise of the authority thus received, appointing Elders in every
city, as dispensers of the word and the sacraments of religion ;
and we find them also appointing other Ecclesiastical Officers, who
were to have the oversight of these Elders themselves ; and who, in
addition to the powers which they enjoyed in common with them,
had the privilege, which the others had not, of admitting, by the
imposition of hands, those whom they thought fit to the ministe
rial office ...
And it is not too much to say, that we may challenge those
who differ from us, to point out any single period at which the
Church has been destitute of such a body of officers, laying claim
to an authority derived by the imposition of hands from the
Apostles themselves ; or any single instance of a Church without
this form of government, till the Church of Geneya, at first from
necessity, and afterwards from a mistaken exposition of Scrip-

102 Jebb.— Van Milder I.
ture, supplied the place of a single Bishop by the rules of an
oligarchical presbytery.
Jebb, Bishop. — Pastoral Instructions, Discourse i.
" And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the
world ;" — a promise not occasional or temporary, like that of mi
raculous powers ; but conveying an assurance, that Christ Him
self, wdl, in spirit and in power, be continually present with His
Catholic and Apostolic Church ; with the bishops of that Church,
who derive from the Apostles by uninterrupted succession, and
with those inferior, but essential orders of the Church, which are
constituted by the same authority, and dedicated to the same
service. Van Mildert, Bishop. — Bampton Lectures. Sermon viii.
The system, of which the Apostles had laid the foundation,
was to be carried on through succeeding generations ; but with a
gradual diminution of that extraordinary aid, which the circum
stances of the case rendered no longer necessary. . . . Yet since
the object to be attained was not temporary, but to continue
from age to age, the mode, the form, and the instrument to be
employed, were still to be conformable to the primitive institu
tion. Accordingly, the Apostles ordained successors to them
selves, and took measures for perpetuating in the Church a
standing ministry of diverse orders and gradations. In so doing,
they showed in what sense we are to interpret our Lord's
assurance, that He would " be with them always, even unto the
end of the world." ....
The evidences, from the best historical records, to the simple
fact that a visible Church of this description has actually sub
sisted from the time of our Lord and His Apostles to this
moment, are too well known to require a detail'. Nor is there
any defect of similar evidence, to show that, whatever errors or
corruptions may have occasionally found admittance into it, the
Church itself has proved a successful instrument in the hands of
Providence, both of transmitting the unadulterated Word of God
from generation to generation, and also of promulgating and

Van Mildert. 103
maintaining all its great fundamental truths ; nay, perhaps, of
preserving even the very name as well as substance of Christ
ianity, which, humanly speaking, would probably have been
long since extinct, had it not been nurtured and cherished by this
its appointed guardian and protector 
Let us take for instance, those articles of faith which have
already been shown to be essential to the Christian Covenant : —
the doctrines of the Trinity, of our Lord's Divinity and Incarna
tion, of His Atonement and Intercession, of our sanctification by
the Holy Spirit, of the terms of acceptance, and the ordinances
of the Christian Sacraments and Priesthood. At what period of
the Church have these doctrines, or either of them, been by any
pnblic act disowned or called in question ! We are speaking
now, it will be recollected, of what in the language of Ecclesias
tical history, is emphatically called the Church ; that, which has
from age to age borne rule, upon the ground of its pretensions to
Apostolical succession. And to this our inquiry is necessarily
restricted 
Surely, here is something to arrest attention ; something to
awaken reflection ; something which they who sincerely profess
Christianity, and are tenacious of the inviolability of its doctrines,
must contemplate with sentiments of awe and veneration. For,
though a sceptic may contend that this species of evidence does
not amount to a direct and demonstrative proof of the truth of
the doctrines ; yet if they be not true, how shall we account for
their having been so uninterruptedly transmitted to these latter
times? How have they withstood the assaults of continued
opponents ? opponents, wanting neither talents nor inclination to
effect their overthrow ? If these considerations be deemed in
sufficient, let the adversary point out by what surer tokens we
shall discover any Christian community, duly answering the
Apostle's description, that it is " built upon the foundation of
the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the
chief Corner-Stone ?"

104 Mont.
Mant, Bishop. — Parochial Sermons, xxvii.
Nor had He in this appointment a view to those times only, in
which the appointment was made ; but He designed that it should
be extended to all future ages ; for so we must understand the
words which He pronounced immediately after giving His
apostles their authority to baptize : " lo, I am with you always,
even unto the end of the world." A promise this which cannot be
supposed to have respect to the persons of the Apostles alone, who
in the common course of nature were soon to be taken from the
world, to the end of which the promise itself was to extend. . . .
In conformity with this meaning, the Apostles, who were them
selves holy men and full of the Holy Ghost, did send other per
sons ; to whom again, they gave power and authority to send
others, through whom the office of ministers of the Gospel has
been handed down in regular and uninterrupted succession from
the Apostles to the present time.

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