agreeable to the maxims of the principal author of that ordinal, Cranmer, who solemnly decided that "bishops and priests were no two things, but one and the same office." Ca this subject our controvertists urge, not only the authority of all the Latin and Greek ordinals, but also the confession of the above-mentioned Protestant divine, Mason, who says, with evident truth, "Not every form of words will serve for this institution (conveying orders) but such as are significant of the power conveyed by the order." In short, these objections were so powerfully urged by our divines, Dr. Champney, J. Lewgar, S. T. B. and others, that almost immediately after the last named had published his work containing them, called Erastus Senior, namely, in 1662, the convocation, being assembled, it altered the form of ordaining priests and consecrating bishops, in order to obviate these objections. But admitting that these alterations are sufficient to obviate all the objections of our divines to the ordinal, which they are not, they came above a hundred years too late for their intended purpose; so that if the priests and bishops of Edward's and Elizabeth's reigns were invalidly ordained and consecrated, so must those of Charles II.'s reign, and their succsssors, have been also. However long I have dwelt on this subject, it is not yet exhausted the case is, there is the same necessity of an apostolical succession of mission or authority, to execute the functions of holy orders, as there is of the holy orders themselves. This mission, or authority, was imparted by Christ to his apostles, when he said to them, As the Father hath sent me, I also send you, Mat. xx. 21, and of this St. Paul also speaks, where he says of the apostles, How can they preach unless they are sent? Rom. x. 15. I believe, sir, that no regular Protestant church, or society, admits its minister, to have, by their ordination or appointment, unlimited authority in every place and congregation: certain it is, from the ordinal and articles of the established Burnet's Hist. of Reform. vol. i Record, b. iii. n. 21, quest. 10. + Ibid. B. ii. c. 16. Lewgar was the friend of Chillingworth, and by him converted to the Catholic faith, which, however, he refused to abandon, when the latter re. lapsed into Latitudinarianism. The form of ordaining a priest was thus altered: "Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the church of God, now com mitted to thee by the imposition of our hands: Whose sins thou shalt for give, they are forgiven," &c.-The form of consecrating a bishop was thus enlarged: "Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a bishop in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost and remember, that thou stir up the grace of God, which is in thee." church, that she confines the jurisdiction of her ministers to "the congregation to which they shall be appointed."* Conformably to this, Dr. Berkley teaches, that "a defect in the mission of the ministry, invalidates the sacraments, affects the purity of public worship, and therefore deserves to be investigated by every sincere Christian." To this archdeacon Daubeny adds, that "Regular mission only subsists in the churches which have preserved apostolical succession." I moreover believe that in all Protestant societies the ministers are persuaded that the authority by which they preach and perform their functions is, some how or another, divine. But, on this head, I must observe to you, dear sir, and your society, that there are only two ways by which divine mission or authority can be proved or communicated; the one ordinary, the other extraordinary. The former takes place when this authority is transmitted in regular succession from those who originally received it from God: the other, when the Almighty interposes, in an extraordinary manner, and immediately commissions certain individuals to make known his will to men. The latter mode evidently requires indisputable miracles to attest it; and accordingly Moses and our Saviour Christ, who were sent in this manner, constantly appealed to the prodigies they wrought in proof of their di vine mission. Hence, even Luther, when Muncer, Storck, and their followers, the Anabaptists, spread their errors and devastations through Lower Germany, counselled the magistrates to put these questions to them, (not reflecting that the questions were as applicable to himself as to Muncer,)" Who conferred upon you the office of preaching? And who commissioned you to preach? If they answer, God, then let the magistrates say, prove this to us by some evident miracle: for so God makes known his will, when he changes the institutions, which he had before established." Should this advice of the first reformer to the magistrates be followed in this age and country, what swarms of sermonizers and expounders of the Bible would be reduced to silence! For, on one hand, it is notorious, that they are self-appointed prophets, who run without being sent; or, if they pretend to a commission, they derive it from other men, who themselves had received none, and who did not so much as claim any, by regu lar succession from the apostles. Such was Luther himself such also were Zuinglius, Calvin, Muncer, Menno, John Knox George Fox, Zinzendorf, Wesley, Whitfield, and Swedenborg None of these preachers, as I have signified, so much as pre Article 23. Form of rdering priests and deacons. ↑ Serm. at Consecr. of hop Horne. Sleidan. De Stat. Relig. 1. tended to have received their mission from Christ in the orat nary way, by uninterrupted succession from the apostles. On the other hand, they wer so far from undertaking to work real miracles, by way of proving they have received an extraordinary mission from Gal, that, as Erasmus reproached them, they could not so much as cure a lame horse, in proof of their divine legation. Should your friend, the Rev. Mr. Clark, see this letter, he will doubtless exclaim, that, whatever may be the case with dissenters, the church of England, at least, has received her inission and authority, together with her orders, by regular succession from the apostles, through the Catholic bishops, in the orninary way. In fact, this is plainly asserted by the bishop of Lincoln But take notice, dear sir, that though we were to admit of an apostolical succession of orders in the established church, we never could admit of an apostolical succession of mission, jurisdiction, or right to exercise those orders in that church: nor can its clergy, with any consistency, lay the least claim to it. For, first, if the Catholic church, that is to day, its "Laity and clegy, all sects and degrees, were drowned in abominable idolatry, most detested of God and damnable to man, for the space of eight hundred years," as the Homilies affirm,+ how could she retain this divine mission and jurisdiction, all this time, and employ them in commissioning her clergy all this time to preach up this "detestable idolatry?" Again, was it possible for the Catholic church to give jurisdiction and authority, for example, to archbishop Parker, and the bishops Jewel and Horne, to preach against herself? Did ever any insurgents against an established government, except the regicides in the grand rebellion, claim authority from that very government to fight against it, and destroy it? In a word, we perfectly well know, from history, that the first English Protestants did not profess, any more than foreign Protestants, to derive any mission or authority whatsoever from the apostles, through the existing Catholic church. Those of Henry's reign preached and ministered in defiance of all authority, ecclesiastical and civil Their successors in the reign of Edward and Elizabeth claimed their whole right and mission to preach and to minister from the civil power only. This Elem of Theol. vol. ii. p. 400 † Against the Perils of Idolatry, P. ii. § Archbishop Abbot having incurred suspension by the canon law, for Accidentally shooting a man, a royal commission was issued to restore him. On another occasion he was suspended by the king himself, for refusing to license a book. In Elizabeth's reign, the bish ups approved of prophesying, as it was called, the queen disapproved of it, and she obliged them to con demn it. latter point is demostratively evident from the act and the oath of supremacy, and from the homage of the archbishops and bishops to the said Elizabeth, in which the prelate elect "acknowledges and confesses, that he holds his bishopric, as well in spirituals as in temporals, from her alone and the crown royal." The same thing is clear from a series of royal ordinances respecting the clergy in matters purely spiritual, such as the pronouncing on doctrine, the prohibition of prophesying, the inhibition of all preaching, the giving and suspending of spiritual faculties, &c. Now, though I sincerely and cheerfully ascribe to my sovereign all the temporal and civil power, jurisdiction, rights, and authority, which the constitution and laws ascribe to him, I cannot believe that Christ appointed any temporal prince to feed his mystical flock, or any part of it, or to exercise the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven at his discretion. It was foretold by bishop Fisher in Parliament, that the royal ecclesiastical supremacy, if once acknowledged, might pass to a child or to a woman,* as, in fact, it soon did to each of them. It was afterwards transferred, with the crown itself, to a foreign Calvinist, and might have been settled, by a lay assembly, on a Mahometan. All, however, that is necessary for me here to remark is, that the acknowledgment of a royal ecclesiastical supremacy "in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things or causes," (as when the question is, who shall preach, baptize, &c. and who shall not; what is sound doctrine, and what is not,) is decidedly a renunciation of Christ's comission given to his apostles, and preserved by their successors in the Catholic apostolic church. Hence it clearly appears that there is and can be no apostolical succession of ministry in the established church more than in the other congregations or societies of Protestants. All their preaching and ministering, in their several degrees, is performed by mere human authority On the other hand, not a sermon is preached, nor a child baptized, nor a penitent absolved, nor a priest ordained, nor a bishop consecrated, throughout the whole extent of the Catholic church, without the minister of such function being able to show his authority from Christ for what he does, in the commission of Christ to his apostles: All power in heaven and on earth is given to mne : Go therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them, &c. Mat. xxviii 19; See his life by Dr. Bailey: also Dodd's Eccles. Hist. vol. i. + Oath of supremacy, Homage of bishops, &c. it is curious to see in queen Elizabeth's Injunctions, and in the 27th Article, the disclaimer of her "actually ministering the Word and the Sacrament." The question was not about this, but about the jurisdiction n mission of the ministry, and without being able to prove his claim to that commission o. Christ, by producing the table of his uninterrupted succession from the apostles. I will not detain you by entering into a com parison, in a religious point of view, between a ministry, which officiates by divine authority, and others which act by mere human authority; but shall conclude this subject by putting it to the good sense and candour of your society, whether, from all that has been said, it is not as evident, which, among the differeut communions, is THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH we profess to believe in, as which is THE CATHOLIC CHURCH? I am, &c. J. M. DEAR SIR, LETTER XXX. To JAMES BROWN, Esq. &c. OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. I FIND that your visiter, the Rev. Mr. Clark, had not left you at the latter end of last week; since it appears, by a letter which I have received from him, that he had seen my two last letters, addressed to you at New Cottage. He is much displeased with their contents, which I am not surprised at; and he uses some harsh expressions against them and their author, of which I do not complain, as he was not a party to the agreement entered into at the beginning of our correspondence, by the tenor of which I was left at full liberty to follow up my arguments to whatever lengths they might conduct me, without and person of the soci ety being offended with me on that account. I shall pass over the passages in the letter which seem to have been dictated by to warm a feeling, and shail confine my answer to those which contain something like argument against what I have advanced. The Reverend gentleman, then, objects against the claim of our pontiffs to the apostolic succession; that in different ages this succession has been interrupted, by the contention of rival Popes; and that the lives of many of them have been so criminal, that according to my own arguments, as he says, it is incredible that such pontiff's should have been able to preserve and convey the commission and authority given by Christ to his apostles. I grant, sir, that, from the various commotions and accidents to which all sublunary things are subject, there have been several vacancies, or interregnums in the Papacy; but none of them have been of such a lengthened duration as to prevent a moral continuation of the Popedom, or to hinder the |