LECT. V.]

THE GROUND OF OUR CONFIDENCE.

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tion, and the salvation of our children, upon no "fabulous and endless genealogies and questions, which are not of goodly edifying. We have too much to do with realties, to be drawn aside by shadows." We rest our claim to the attention and regard we expect from our people, not upon our proving that all other denominations are churchless, Christless, and graceless-nor upon long-drawn catena of misquoted and misrepresented fathers-but, upon our manifestation to the consciences of them that hear us, of the truth as it is in Jesus-upon our exhibition of apostolic doctrine and apostolic practice-and upon our zealous efforts to impart to them, as instruments in God's hands, all spiritual gifts. These are the seals of our ministry, and these the evidences of our divine mission. God has not left us, brethren in the Lord, without authority, nor can any human anathema silence his voice, or prevent the outgoings of his gracious Spirit, in raising up, qualifying, and sending forth many laborers into the harvest of the ministry.

1) This is the language of the bishop of Chester, as applicable to this theory. Charge, edition 1838, see page 3.

ADDITIONAL NOTES TO LECTURE FIFTH.

NOTE A.

The following able remarks are from the Labyrinth, or Popish Circle, by Episcopius. (Taken from the Southern Christ. Advocate, March, 1841.) The controversy respecting the succession is useless and endless. ANTIQUITY and SUCCESSION is the endless burden of the papal song, and yet this is worthy of the highest admiration, that the principal declaimers on this topic are those who, perchance, never thoroughly examined the books and histories of the men from whom that antiquity and continued succession must be drawn and supported:-Or, if they have examined them, they are by no means fit persons to investigate them without affection or prejudice, since they are accustomed either foolishly to believe by means of some proxy, who in their estimation is most intimately acquainted with the matter, although such person is not unfrequently destitute of all correct knowledge of things:-or, without sense or judgment they eagerly catch at every word or syllable which they imagine may be rendered at all subservient to their purpose.

How irksome it must be to descend into the arena of disputation with such persons, every one will perceive. For who does not see the great labor that is required to determine questions which are to be demonstrated from the memory of past ages, from various books and histories, and which, even when established by solid reasons, so as to close the door to all future exceptions, shall still fail to produce any good effect in the minds of the opposite party!

Wherefore they who inculcate upon the body of the people, such matters as these, do nothing but involve them in an inextricable maze, out of which the unskilful multitude either despair of a happy exit, or, if they have any hope, remain still in the same uncertainty, being fatigued and confused by the too difficult labor of investigation. It is impossible for any other result to follow and this, indeed, is the most ready and effectual way of acquiring power to lord it over the consciences of simple people, and having bound them in a gordian knot, to persuade them to the belief of any thing. But let us put both these things in a little clearer light. I establish the first by the following arguments:

No man is able to deny that for the asserting of the antiquity not only of the church, but likewise of a continued and uninterrupted succession of bishops in the church, it is necessarily required (1.) a certain, undoubted, and accurate knowledge both of Latin and Greek authors, and of all the histories which have been written on the subject; and (2.) that to this knowledge ought to be added a sound and acute judgment, by which the examiner may discern with exactness, in their pages, the genuine from the spurious and adulterated books, true histories from interpolated ones, and those which have been fabricated by party feelings, passion, and preconceived opinions, from those which have been composed by persons who had no such undue bias or prejudice: so that he may reconcile contrary statements, and faithfully supply defects. Every one must at once perceive what labor, time, and anxiety this would require. Even among the most learned, during the entire space of 1800 years, not one has hitherto been found, who was adequate to this weighty performance. Are the uneducated and unskilful common people, then, who are considered by the papists to be unqualified for the examination of any one of the books of the holy scriptures, sufficient to undertake and go through this great work;-accurately to search all those volumes of ecclesiastical history with which whole barns might be filled and whole ships laden? The laity therefore in the Romish church, who, laying aside the holy scriptures, never cease

NOTES TO LECTURE V.

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to prattle about antiquity, and continued succession, betray a mind sufficiently stupid and foolish because they know nothing more, perhaps much less, about true antiquity and succession, than about the holy scriptures; or rather they are alike ignorant of both.

It is true, indeed, that a catalogue and index of bishops may be easily composed, in which the series and order in which they succeeded each other may be exhibited. But that is nothing to the purpose; for the Greek church, the Ethiopic, and others, have composed such catalogues in favor of their several pretensions.-"The church of Constantinople has one,' says Bellarmine, "from the time of the emperor Constantine, in an uninterrupted series, and Nicephorus likewise deduces the names of all the bishops, even from the time when the Apostle Andrew flourished." Yet Bellarmine, and with him all papists, deny that the Greeks can of right claim to themselves a proper succession. A succession of persons, therefore, is not deemed to be sufficient; but an additional requisite is, that it should be a legitimate succession, and such a one, that there shall not be found, in the line of the successive bishops, a single heretic, atheist, or apostate.

1. It is required, that it be legitimate; for, as the papal decree has it, (Dist. 79,) "if any one shall be enthroned in the apostolic see, by bribes, by human favor, or by popular or military tumult, without the unanimous and canonical election both of the cardinals and of the inferior clergy, let him not be accounted a successor of the apostles, but of the apostates." 2. It is required that there shall be no heretic in the succession of bishops; for it is on this account, as cardinal Bellarmine, and other popish doctors affirm, that the succession of the Constantinopolitan bishops (those of the Greek church) is not to be esteemed legitimate, because there have been heretics in the number. (Liv. iv. De notis Ecclesiæ, chap. 8.) If therefore any one wishes to form a correct judgment of the succession of the bishops of Rome, according to the canons of the Papists themselves, he must ascertain both these points with the greatest certainty.

But how is this possible? Who can know, without a shadow of doubt, whether all her bishops obtained the episcopacy lawfully? Did those of them who gained their dignity in the succession by simony, that is by money and gifts, (as Simon Magus wished to do,) or by force, intrigues, factions and bribery? But further, if any person, desirous of becoming acquainted with their history, shall discover that even the writers most devoted to the claims of the church of Rome frankly confess, not only that one or two, but that many different bishops of Rome attained to the pontifical dignity, who were convicted of open heresy, and accounted (by these chief writers of their own church) impious scoundrels, atheists, schismatics, rurfians, and debauchees, who by gifts and bribes, by force and factions, without any previous choice, or subsequent approbation on the part of the clergy, intruded themselves into the succession by foul machinations and dishonest stratagems, by deceit, and by the influence of their harlots, and kept mistresses, what diligent inquirer, I ask, can extricate himself from the maze of perplexities in which a knowledge of these circumstances will have involved him? If you say, "Credence in this matter is to be given to the best and the most faithful historians," you fall into a new labyrinth for I ask, who are those historians, and by what are they to be distinguished? Why should any one, by such a remark, derogate from the credit of the popish writers? For they cannot be deemed heretics, or hostile to the church of Rome, who were most subservient to it; and some of these writers were the greatest flatterers of the popes, and the most zealous abettors of the papal dignity. The papists must therefore allow, that writers of this character must have been constrained by the undoubted and known truth of the thing itself, to admit these facts into their writings. And suppose, for the sake of argument, that they who have recorded these corruptions had not been writers devoted to the papacy, what just reason can be given, why they should not be entitled, as faithful writers, to equal credit with the advocates of the pope, and of his assumptions? Friendship is as powerful as enmity, to prevent an author from recording the truth. He who would write a faithful history for future ages, ought to be free from all bias; but by what reason can we persuade ourselves, and convince our own mind, that there has ever been any such writer, especially if we live not in the same age with him? In this case, however, the testi

mony against the integrity of the succession of the Roman bishops, is given by writers whose prejudices were all in favor of the papacy.

He who divests himself of preconceived opinions, and who considers these things without prejudice, will clearly see that those who endeavor to shelter themselves under the plea of antiquity and succession, involve themselves in a labyrinth in which they are easily entangled, from which it is scarcely possible for them to be freed."

Very pertinent also are the remarks of Bishop Hoadley. (Preservative, p. 75, &c.) "I do not love, I confess, so much as to repeat the principal branches of their beloved scheme; they are so different, whencesoever they come, from the voice of the gospel. When they would claim you, as their fellow-laborers the papists do, by telling you that you cannot hope for the favor of God, but in the strictest communion with their church, (which is the true Church of England, governed by bishops in a regular succession,) that God hath himself hung your salvation upon this nicety;-that he dispenses none of his favors or graces, but by the hands of them and their subordinate priests;-that you cannot be authoritatively blessed or released from your sins, but by them who are the regular priests;-that churches under other bishops, (i. e. other than in a regular succession,) are schismatical conventicles, made up of excommunicated persons, both clergy and laity; out of God's church, as well as out of his favor :-I say, when such arguments as these are urged; you need only have recourse to a general answer, to this whole heap of scandal and defamation, upon the will of God, the gospel of Christ, and the Church of England in particular-that you have not so learned Christ, or the design of his gospel, or even the foundation of this particular part of his church, reformed and established in England. The following arguments will justify you, which therefore ought to be frequently in the thoughts of all, who have any value for the most important points. God is just, and equal, and good: and as sure as he is so, he cannot put the salvation and happiness of any man, upon what he himself has put it out of the power of any man upon earth, to be entirely satisfied in.-It hath not pleased God, in his providence, to keep up any proof of the least probability, or moral possibility, of a regular uninterrupted succession. But there is a great appearance, and, humanly speaking, a certainty of the contrary, that this succession hath been interrupted.'

NOTE B.

There is still another source of uncertainty, to which we may here allude. According to Maimbourg, the Jesuit, (Hist. du Grand Schisme, D'Occident, in Balt. Lit. and Rel. Mag. Ap. 1840, p. 146,) there have been about thirtyone established methods by which to make the popes the visible heads of the church. It appears that the election was made for the first five centuries by the clergy and the consent of the people-that the Arian King, Theodoric, usurped the right to create the pope himself, which example was imitated by the Gothic kings who followed him,-that this right was retained by Justinian, and afterwards regained by the tyranny of the marquis of Etruria and the counts of Tuscany, who created and deposed popes at their pleasure, instruments of their passions-and that for some centuries this power having been obtained by the cardinals, is still retained by them. Most certain it is, then, that either this office is of divine right, and then the mode of its transmitted inheritance must be equally of divine appointment, in which case it cannot be pretended that any valid or proper succession has been preserved, unless there are some thirty-one modes of such succession laid down in the word of God; for Maimbourg himself asserts that in the great Schism whose history he writes, "it was morally impossible to decide who were true popes, and who anti-popes ;"-or this office is not divine, but an usurpation and a despotism, and in this case it is equally a matter of indifference whether there have been thirty, or thirty thousand ways by which its retainers have gained possession of the papal chair. Most true it is, that if its present incumbents are validly elected and introduced, and therefore true successors for eleven centuries after Christ, no true pope could have occupied the see of Rome. See also Father Paul's Treatise on Benefices and Revenues. Westminst. 1727, p. 26.

LECTURE VI.

THE PRELATICAL DOCTRINE OF APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION TESTED

BY SCRIPTURE.

The claims which are involved in the doctrine of the apostolical descent, as maintained by many of its advocates, are not less arbitrary and despotic; not less exclusive of the just rights and privileges of other sovereignties; nor less regardless of their interest and happiness; than were those of the Babylonian despot. This doctrine being supposed true, there is but one church on earth, and that is the prelatic-there is but one order of ministry, and that is the succession of prelates-there is but one channel of efficacious grace, and that flows between the high embankments of prelacy—and there is but one covenanted gift of plenary mercy, and that is deposited in the hands of prelates.

This doctrine, in all its nakedness, and boldness, is proclaimed, as the fundamental principle of all church claims whatsoever, by the doctors of the Vatican and the Sorbonne; by the doctors of Maynooth, and the doctors of Oxford; by the Roman and the Anglican church. "It is the mystic pæan of sacerdotal power and glory."

Nor is this doctrine, at least in those essential elements, which drag with them, by necessary consequence, the whole train of awful and soul-shuddering consequences, received merely by those who are denominated high-churchmen, and who love and admire the church with an almost idolatrous attachment; but it is also, as would appear, avowed by many of those who are distinguished as evangelical, or low-church episcopalians.