fined to the Bishops. Concil. Trident. sess. xxiii. c. 1, 2. p. 278, 279. can. ii, vii. p. 282, 283. Catech. Concil. Trident. de Ordin. Sacram. par. ii. c. 10, 23, 41. p. 220, 222, 227.

(4.) The fourth meaning is that which is apparently favoured by the Church of England: though, from the exposition of her sentiments by Hooker and Hall and Burnet, it may perhaps be doubted, whether, in absolute technical strictness, she holds the Episcopate and the Presbyterate to be two properly distinct Orders; or whether she symbolises with the Roman Church in deeming them only two Classes of one Order.

(5.) The fifth meaning is that which is prominently and rigidly advocated by the Tract-Writers and their reputed Adherents. Hence, in strict logical accordance with its unbending severity, they have discovered, in the Presbyteral Church of Scotland, the likeness of Samaria, which rejecting the genuine sons of Levi, had spurious Priests of the lowest of the people; furthermore propounding, that the fathers of that self-willed Society, which really is no Church but a mere Combination, lost the grace which seals the Holy Apostolic Line when they contumaciously renounced Episcopacy.

4. This distinction, between the Sense of the Church of England and the Sense of the Tract-Writers, may, very possibly, to some persons, occasion a measure of surprize. Yet, notwithstanding the especial claim of churchmanship preferred by those Writers, it is alike curious and certain, that they agree neither with the Church of Rome nor with the Church of England.

For, on the one hand, the Church of Rome maintains; that Bishops differ from Presbyters, not in Order, but solely in Jurisdiction: the two jointly forming only a single Order, which she denominates Sacerdotium or the Sacrificing-Priesthood, on the ground of its possessing the power of offering up the Sacrifice of the Eucharist. Concil. Trident. sess. xxiii. c. 1. p. 278. Catech. Concil. Trident. de Ordin. Sacram. par. ii. c. 10. p. 220.

And, on the other hand, the Church of England, while she receives the three Orders or (as she explains herself) Offices and Functions of Bishops and Presbyters and Deacons as having subsisted from the Apostolic Age, does not suppose

the power of Ordination to be so exclusively and (as it were) physically inherent in the Episcopate, as to render worthless and invalid, when cases of overruling necessity should occur, less regular consecrations of pious men to the Ministry. Hence, as the mixed Presbytero-Episcopal Ordination of Pelagius, when, in the year 558, he was consecrated Bishop of Rome by two Bishops and a Presbyter, because a third Bishop could not be procured, was always acknowledged, though irregular, to be nevertheless valid; so, in cases of necessity whether moral or physical, she denies not the similar validity of a purely Presbyteral Ordination; as, for instance, when various Reformed Churches were compelled to resort to it, because, through the determined opposition of their persecuting Popish Bishops, they had no alternative, save a choice of Non-Episcopal Ordination or of Gross Idolatry within the precincts of a Harlot-Church out of which the voice of inspiration itself had charged them to come forth.

5. My authority for this account of the Principle of the Anglican Church is the comment of men, whose heads, I suspect, were quite as sound as those of either our modern TractWriters or their Adherents. From among these, it will be sufficient to adduce three: Bishop Burnet, Bishop Hall, and the judicious Hooker.

(1.) Discussing expressly the twenty-third Article of the English Church, Bishop Burnet speaks as follows.

I come, in the next place, to consider the second part of this Article which is The Definition here given of those, who are legally called and sent.

This is put in very general words, far from that MAGISTERIAL STIFFNESS in which some have taken upon them to dictate in this matter. The Article does not resolve this into ANY PARTICULAR CONSTITUTION: but leaves the matter open and at large, for such accidents as had happened, and for such as might still happen. They, who drew it, had the state of the several Churches before their eyes that had been differently reformed: and, although their own had been less forced to go out of the beaten path than any other; yet they knew, that all things among themselves had not gone according to those rules that ought to be sacred in regular times. NECESSITY has no

law, and is a law to itself. Burnet on Art. xxiii. p. 322, 323. Oxon.

(2.) Exactly to the same effect runs the statement of Bishop Hall.

It is intended to raise envy against us, as the uncharitable censurers and condemners of those Reformed Churches abroad, which differ from our Government. Wherein, we do justly complain of a slanderous aspersion cast upon us. WE LOVE

AND HONOUR THOSE SISTER-CHURCHES AS THE DEAR SPOUSE

OF CHRIST. We bless God for them: and we do heartily wish unto them that happiness in the partnership of our administration, which, I doubt not, but they do no less heartily wish unto themselves.

Good words! you will perhaps say: but what is all this fair compliment, if our act condemn them, if our very tenet exclude them? For, if Episcopacy stand by Divine Right, what becomes of those Churches that want it ?

Malice and ignorance are met together, in this unjust aggra

vation.

First, our position is only affirmative: implying the justifiableness and holiness of an Episcopal Calling, without any further implication.

Next, when we speak of Divine Right, we mean not an Express Law of God, requiring it upon THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF THE BEING OF A CHURCH, what hindrances soever may interpose; but a Divine Institution, warranting it where it is, and requiring it where it may be had. Every Church, therefore, which is capable of this Form of Government, both may and ought to affect it; as that, which is, with so much authority, derived, from the Apostles, to the whole Body of the Church upon earth. But those particular Churches, to whom this power and faculty is denied, lose nothing of THE TRUE ESSENCE OF A CHURCH, though they miss something of their glory and perfection, whereof they are barred by the necessity of their condition. Hall's Humble Remons. for Liturg. and Episc. Works, vol. ix. p. 634.

(3.) Nor is the language of Richard Hooker a whit less. explicit.

Men may be extraordinarily, YET ALLOWABLY, two ways,

admitted unto spiritual functions in the Church. One is, when God himself doth of himself raise up any, whose labour he useth, without requiring that men should authorise them.-Another extraordinary kind of vocation is: when the EXIGENCE OF NECESSITY doth constrain to leave the usual ways of the Church, which otherwise we would willingly keep; where the Church must needs have some ordained, and neither hath, nor can have possibly, a Bishop to ordain. In case of such NECESSITY, the ordinary institution of God hath given oftentimes, and may give, place: and therefore, WE ARE NOT, SIMPLY WITHOUT EXCEPTION, TO URGE A LINEAL DESCENT OF POWER FROM THE APOSTLES, BY CONTINUED SUCCESSION OF BISHOPS, IN EVERY EFFECTUAL ORDINATION. These cases of INEVITABLE NECESSITY excepted, none may ordain but only Bishops. Hooker's Eccles. Polit. book vii. § 4. vol. iii. p. 196. Oxon.

6. Now, unless these able men, to whom it were easy to add many others such as Stillingfleet and Wake and Sancroft and Tomline (See Essays on the Church, chap. xii. § III. 2. p. 319-322.), altogether misunderstood the Church of England, it will inevitably follow: that, in point of absolutely strict inherency, she holds, that the power of ordination resides both in Bishops and in Presbyters, whom, not without a shew of historical plausibility, the Church of Rome pronounces to be identical in Order though different in Jurisdiction; but that, in point of primeval discipline, she further holds, that this common power was, and therefore still ought to be, intrusted and (except in the exigence of inevitable necessity, as Hooker speaks) confined exclusively to Bishops. For, unless this be her view, no ordination, save by Bishops alone, could, under any circumstances, even when the hard choice should lie between Idolatry and Non-Episcopacy, be valid and effectual whereas, according to our three great authorities, she holds, that circumstances both have occurred and may again occur, in which the may be validly and sufficiently exercised by Presbyters alone. Here it is that she differs from those Pseudo-Churchmen, the modern Tract-Writers: who, while they confidently appeal to reluctant Antiquity for their own opinion, which vests, under every circumstance and without the slightest regard to the

power

exigence of necessity the exclusive power of ordination in the Episcopate inherently quoad Ordinem; prudently pass over the fact of the mixed consecration of Pelagius in the sixth century, and actually agree neither with the Church of Rome nor with the Church of England.

Here again it is, that the character of true Churches of Christ is vindicated, to the two ancient Communions of the Vallenses and the Albigenses, against the childish and unanglican cavil: that they possessed not the Apostolical Succession in the sense of the Tract-Writers, and therefore that they were not Churches through which the promises of Christ could have been accomplished. Even if it could be shewn, that they neither of them possessed a Clergy ordained step by step through the ministration of Bishops: still their case was a case, that strictly came within that inevitable necessity; which has been ruled, as the Sense of the Anglican Church, by our judicious Hooker. To them, consequently, apply, with full force, the words of that immortal writer in his immortal Work: We are not, simply without exception, to urge a lineal descent of power from the Apostles, by continued succession of Bishops, in every effectual ordination. Accordingly, unless I altogether mistake, they are owned of God himself to be Churches, under the well-ascertained symbol of two candlesticks, and under the remarkable character of two determined witnesses against the base idolatry and the unscriptural superstition of the middle ages. See my Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses, book iv. chap. 2, 3.

7. We may now form some estimate of the unseemly comparison, hazarded by the author of the eighty-fifth Tract.

Since he nakedly and familiarly speaks of the Apostolical succession, being himself at the same time one of the College of Tract-Writers, we have a fair right to conclude, that his view of the Apostolical Succession is the same as their view.

The matter, then, as propounded by this very rash theologian, will stand thus.

The Godhead of the Holy Ghost is revealed in Scripture with no greater clearness and precision, than the Doctrine of the Apostolical Succession of the Ministry, as that Doctrine is understood and explained by the Writers of the Tracts for the Times.