UC-NRLF 
 
 $B ET7 534 
 
 
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IvIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California 
 
 Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. 
 
 Received October, i8g4. 
 lAcccssions No.SKi>^^3 - Class No. 
 

 
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 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/doesprotestantepOOgoodricli 
 
DOES THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH TEACH 
 
 EXCLUSIVE VALIDITY 
 
 ITS OWN ORDERS? 
 
 BY 
 
 THE REV. WILLIAM GOODE, M.A. 
 
 W 
 
 ^0^^^^ 
 
 0? TSK 
 
 TJSlVBP.vIT' 
 
 if^vSy 
 
 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF 
 
 EVANGELICAL KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 11 BIBLE HOUSE, ASTOR PLACE, 
 
 And 1224 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. 
 

 S^1^3 
 
 JOHN A. GRAY, 
 
 ^duter, 5tcrtotapfr, anU 33intitr, 
 
 i6 &,1S Jacob Street, New-York. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 In the year 1851, a member of the Tractarian party who had 
 joined the Church of Rome, addressed a note, under a false name, to 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, reqiiesttn^ an expression of his opin- 
 ion on the subject discussed in the following tract. 
 
 The Archbishop's reply, in which he repudiated the notion of the 
 exclusive validity of Episcopal orders, was immediately published, 
 with the view of bringing upon the writer the odium of the Tractarian 
 party. 
 
 This result of course followed ; and the Archbishop was assailed 
 with the rudeness and violence which so often mark the controversies 
 of parties conscious of their weakness. 
 
 The Archbishop, of course, could not reply to such assaults from 
 such a quarter ; but the cause of truth has derived this signal advan- 
 tage from them : the calling out of the Rev. and learned William 
 Goode, author of the works on the Rule of Faith, Baptism, and the 
 Eucharist. Mr. Goode submitted, in the Christian Observer for No- 
 vember, 1851, his *' Vindication of the Doctrine of the Church of 
 England on the validity of the Orders of the Scotch and Foreign Non- 
 Episcopal Churches," which not only vindicated the Archbishop, but 
 placed upon impregnable ground before the public that whole class of 
 Churchmen, including, as Mr. Goode asserts, " at least seven tenths of 
 the Clergy of the English Church," and more than nineteen twen- 
 
iv ADYERTISE]MENT. 
 
 tieths of the Laity who agree with the Primate, many of whom, 
 though not doubting the truth of their position, were unaware of 
 the full extent of the proofs which support it. 
 
 It was at once perceived that unless this argument could be over- 
 thrown, the cause of the High Church party, on the score of church 
 authority, was lost. His work was therefore attacked with still 
 greater asperity by the Bishop of Exeter, Archdeacon Churton, and 
 others deemed best qualified for the task ; to all of whom Mr. 
 Goode replied, substantiating every position he had taken by an array 
 of historical proofs which puts the question beyond the reach o 
 further candid dispute. In the course of the controversy, the fact 
 came out that the advocates of exclusiveness — even the most promi- 
 nent of them, to whose claim to superior learning the world had 
 been accustomed to defer — were exceedingly ill-informed of the facts 
 which are decisive in the argument. This was candidly admitted by 
 Mr. Maskell, the Bishop of Exeter's Chaplain, who said that the facts 
 were new to him, that they were incontrovertible, and so contrary to 
 what he had been led to suppose from the positive assertions of his 
 party, that, with his views, he could no longer, with any conscious- 
 ness of integrity, remain in the Church. He therefore seceded to the 
 Church of Rome, declaring it impossible to deny that the authorities 
 of the Church were with not only the merely Protestant^ but with 
 the " Evangelical " portion of it. 
 
 The following tract is a condensed statement of Mr. Goode's argu- 
 ment, as contained in the works above referred to, with an introduc- 
 tion, notes, and other original matter. Its plan has been submitted 
 to Mr. Goode, and meets his approval — although, of course, he is not 
 responsible for any thing here which is not found in the larger work 
 republished in this country in 1853. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 This tract is issued from the conviction that there can 
 be no end of controversy in the Episcopal Church so 
 long as the point which it discusses remains unsettled. 
 Whatever compromises may be effected, they Avill be 
 only temporary, or as a truce, so long as room is left 
 for candid minds to doubt whether the Church itself 
 does not teach the exclusive vaUdity of its own orders. 
 
 In order to a clearer comprehension of the whole 
 subject, the following summary of points is submitted : 
 
 1. The doctrine of the Church of England and of 
 our own upon the question in debate being identical, 
 whatever settles it for one settles it for both. 
 
 2. The preface to the Ordinal says : " It is evident 
 unto all men diligently reading Holy Scripture and 
 ancient authors, that from the apostles' time there have 
 been these orders," etc. 
 
 3. While the Evangelical portion of the Episcopal 
 Church might not be prepared to pronounce upon the 
 diligence of those readers w^ho have failed to see this, 
 it is evident to themselves, first, " from Holy Scripture," 
 that the Church, as constituted by the apostles, had 
 officers who exercised substantially the same powers as 
 
VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 those exercised by our present bishops ; and, second, 
 from " ancient authors," it is evident to them that these 
 orders have been continued in the Church from the 
 apostles' time, and they accept these facts as adequate 
 to the purpose for which they were cited — namely, a 
 full authorization of an Episcopal ministry. But, 
 
 4. The theory of "apostolical succession" as known 
 in controversy, goes far beyond this, and raises Epis- 
 copacy to a level with things positively commanded, 
 such as baptism and the Lord's supper ; so that without 
 it there can be no valid ministry and no valid sacra- 
 ments, and no body of professed Christians which has 
 
 it not can form any part of that Church to which the , . 
 promises are made in Scripture. It holds farther that W 
 any broken link in this personal and tactual succession 
 of bishoj)s, whether known or unknown, would be fatal 
 to all Church character thereafter. 
 
 5. Those and those only who hold this theory are, 
 strictly speaking. High Churchmen^ and it was to the 
 holders of it exclusively that the term was originally 
 applied. 
 
 6. The term is often used in a looser sense, and ap- 
 plied to those who attach great importance to her 
 minor observances, and are rigid in their observance of 
 its rubrics and forms, but who, nevertheless, repudiate 
 altogether the notion of the exclusive validity of Epis- 
 coj)al orders. In this larger but less accurate sense it 
 is sometimes employed by Mr. Goode, as when he 
 applies it to Cosin Bancroft and others, but in this re- 
 print it is a2:)plied only to those who hold the tlieory of 
 " exclusive validity." It may also be added that the 
 definition given above is approved bv Mr. Goode himself. 
 
 7. The " Low Church " view is,(^hat Episcopacy has 
 apostolic precedent, but not apostolic commandy Those 
 
INTRODUCTIOIS". VU 
 
 wlio accept this view take the precedent to be binding 
 upon themselves, and think it should be held binding 
 by all. But (to use the language of the old divines) 
 they do not believe Episcopacy to be essential to the 
 being of a church, but only to its better being. Had the 
 theory of the " apostolical succession " been true, with 
 all the consequences which flow from it, they think it 
 could not have been left without some divine command. 
 
 8. For the use of these terms, it is a sufficient reason 
 that it would be impossible to discuss the important 
 doctrines which they represent without them, or some 
 more cumbrous forms of speech which, nevertheless, 
 must be made to mean precisely the same things. It is 
 important, also, in such discussions, to aim at exactness 
 of definition, not only for the more easy and certain 
 ascertainment of truth, but to prevent the parties 
 whose views are controverted from thinking them- 
 selves misunderstood or wronged. 
 
 9. While the theory of the " apostolical succession " 
 was not universally held in the Church of Rome itself 
 before the Reformation, no trace of it is. to be found in 
 the Church of England until the time of Archbishop 
 Laud, who was the first to introduce it. The attempt 
 to enforce it, with its associated political system, over- 
 threw both the Church and the State, and finally proved 
 fatal to the house of Stuart, who were the blind votaries 
 of both. 
 
 10. Connected with the theory of the " apostolical 
 succession," and growing out of it, there is commonly 
 found a theory of regeneration and its related doctrines 
 incompatible with the doctrine of justification by faith ; 
 and hence results a system which is anti-evangelical — 
 generally in terms, and always in its tendencies and 
 spirit. 
 
Vm INTKODUCnOX. 
 
 11. The theory of the " apostolical succession," with 
 its inevitable and often admitted consequences, brings 
 those who hold it into direct and irreconcilable conflict 
 with the facts of God's providence — such, for example, 
 as the fruits of the Spirit existing outside of this suc- 
 cession for three hundred years without diminution of 
 amount or quality. 
 
 12. If the theory of the "apostolical succession" be 
 taught in Scripture, it justly unchurches a very large 
 proportion of Protestant Christendom. If it be held 
 by the Cl^urch of England, she also necessarily excom- 
 municates all other Protestant churches so called — not 
 only those in Great Britain and Ireland, but all the 
 churches of the Reformation in Germany, Holland, 
 France, and Switzerland. But if the Bible does not ^ 
 teach it, it is monstrous in men to invent it ; and if the\ 
 Church of England does not teach it, then those who 
 have propounded and pressed it as hers are responsible 
 
 for that uninterru]Dted succession of war which it has 
 produced, not only between Episcopalians and all other 
 Protestants, but among Episcopalians themselves. The 
 holders of this theory are, moreover, as has been well 
 remarked, challenged by every law of consistency to 
 take their places as spectators, while those whom it casts 
 out of the Church and out of the covenant — such as 
 Luther and Baxter, Brainerd and Jonathan Edwards — 
 are sent down alive into the pit. 
 
 13. It will not probably be contended that the great 
 mass of the people in the Episcopal Church are, or ever 
 have been. High Churchmen. It is certain that the pro- 
 portion of those holding this extreme theory never has 
 been relatively so small, since the revolution of 1688, as 
 it is now ; and hence, from the ill-success of its advo- 
 cates in teaching it even in their own Church, it might 
 
 / \ 
 
IXTRODUCTIOX. IX 
 
 be supposed they would be utterly discouraged, even 
 if they do not see by this time the impossibility of 
 making it a condition of all Christian progress. 
 
 14. There is a tendency in all independent churches 
 seeking to occupy the same ground, to magnify the 
 peculiarities which distinguish them, especially on the 
 l^art of their officers, whose interests are more imme- 
 diately connected with the favor with which those 
 pecuharities are received. 
 
 15. Uncharitableness is no less a sin in Episcopalians, 
 because they are themselves its victims at the hands of 
 others; and as a warning against those tempers and 
 condemnatory judgments to which extreme opinions 
 tend in the quarrels which they produce, let it be re- 
 membered that it is in their reflex bearing alone that 
 such judgments become absolutely determinative. " It 
 is when taken in this light that every sentence tells ; 
 nor could eternal justice itself ask for evidence more 
 conclusive than that which is comprised in the de- 
 liberately pronounced opinions which we form or assent 
 to when other men are judged. We decide, in each 
 instance, according to our own dispositions, principles, 
 and moral condition." 
 
 16. High Churchism was the sin of the Puritans, who^ 
 equalled Laud in denominational intolerance. Presby- 
 tery was of divine right, in the most exclusive sense. 
 Every thing but Presbytery was "Antichrist." But 
 having nothing in Scripture or history to sustain such a 
 theory, and no earthly interests consjoiring to keep it up, 
 they soon fell a prey to the reactions which it produced. 
 
 17. If it be alleged that the theory of "exclusive 
 validity" is the safer theory for the conservation of 
 the Church, as more certainly insuring a devotion to its 
 
X INTRODUCTIOX. 
 
 interests, it is denied both on theoretical and historic 
 grounds ; for, 
 
 (1.) The safety of the Church of England, as a Pro- 
 testant Church, must depend upon its being kept upon 
 the broad Protestant foundation on which the Reform- 
 ers placed it. The danger results from narrowing the 
 base and elevating the structure after the manner of 
 the obelisks which are prostrated while the pyramids 
 remain. 
 
 (2.) Nearly every secession from the Church — as 
 many as forty to one — has been from the ranks of those 
 who held the theory of " apostolical succession " in the 
 most exclusive sense, while those repudiating this 
 theory have chiefly furnished the men whose labors 
 have given extension to the Church, promoted its 
 spiritual life, attached the masses of the people to it, 
 irrespective of merely eleemosynary establishments at 
 home, and exclusively those who have propagated it, in 
 connection with the Gospel, in heathen lands. 
 
 18. The Reformed Churches on the Continent being, 
 from their geographical position, most exposed in the 
 conflict with Rome, had a rightful claim to the sympathy 
 and cooperation of the Reformed Church of England, 
 w^hich was providentially the best secured and most 
 powerful of them all. 
 
 19. This sympathy was extended, to the great benefit 
 ' of England herself, until the time of Laud. It was 
 
 reextended by the Church of the Commonwealth, not 
 only to the terror of the " bloody Piedmontese," but of 
 every papal throne in Europe. It was again withdrawn 
 at the Restoration, partially restored at the Revolution 
 of 1688, and now is but feebly felt, when the Protestant 
 interests of the Church of England itself demand that 
 it be vioforous and unremitted. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 20. The Episcopal Church, in its doctrine, discipline, 
 and worship, is firmly seated in the judgment and 
 affections of its Evangelical members, probably never 
 so much so as at present. This Church has an illustri- 
 ous past — taken now in its totality, it is by far the most'' 
 powerful of the ch^irches of the Keforraation. Its 
 future^ if faithful to its constitution, will be still more 
 illustrious in the work of evangelizing the world. In 
 this work it has capabilities sufiicient to engross all the 
 powers of its members, without diminishing aught, 
 either in theory or in action, from what is being done 
 by other Christians in the same work. 
 
 21. In view of the whole state of the Christian in- 
 terest and the signs of the times, it was never a ques- 
 tion of such urgent practical importance as now — not 
 what peculiarities of the different Protestant churches, 
 as such, may be yielded, in order to their fusion into 
 one, but what are the dogmas and tempers in each 
 which produce discord and weakness among themselves, 
 needlessly alienate them from one another, and so pre- 
 vent them from bearing down, with united force, upon 
 the very body of sin and death as exhibited in the 
 forms of Romanism, Rationalism, and Paganism. 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 The present question is simply tliis — ^wlietlier it is 
 a doctrine of the Church, of England that Episcopal 
 ordination is a sine qua non to constitute a valid 
 Christian ministry? In order to a true answer we 
 must examine 
 
 I. The Articles and other formularies which relate to it 
 taken in their literal sense, 
 
 II. The opinions of those laho drew up these standards^ 
 as ascertained hy their other writings^ to he taken as 
 guides to the sense in which they intended those stand- 
 ards to he received^ as also the opinions of the leading 
 divines of the Church onward for a hundred years, 
 
 III. The PRACTICE of the Church for a similar period^ 
 as a further guide to the true interpretation of the 
 standards. 
 
 I. The Articles and other formularies. The 23d Ar- 
 ticle reads as follows : " It is not lawful for any man 
 to take upon him the pffice of public preaching or 
 ministering the sacraments in the congregation, before 
 he be lawfully called and sent to execute the same ; 
 and those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent 
 which bQ chosen and called to this work by men who 
 have public authority given unto them in the congre- 
 
14 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 gallon to call and send ministers into the Lord^s vine- 
 yard." 
 
 It must be observed liow carefully this is worded, 
 so as not to limit a lawful ministry to those who have 
 EjDiscopal ordination, and it is hardly possible for one 
 acquainted with the circumstances of the times in 
 which it was written to read it and not see that this 
 carefulness was for the very purpose of not excluding 
 the ministry of the Foreign Non-Episcopal Churches. 
 
 But a more authentic interpretation of this Article 
 can hardly be conceived than that given by Thomas 
 Rogers, chaplain to Archbishop Bancroft, in his Ex- 
 position of the Articles^ published in 1607, as "perused, 
 and by the lawful authority of the Church of England 
 allowed to be public," and which the Archbishop or- 
 dered all the parishes in his province to supply them- 
 selves with. He deduces from the Article the six fol- 
 lowing propositions : 
 
 "1. None publicly may preach but such as thereunto are author- 
 ized. 2. They must not be silent who by office are bound to preach. 
 3. The sacraments may not be administered in the congregation but 
 by a lawful minister. 4. There is a lawful ministry in the Church. 
 5. They are lawful ministers which be ordained by men lawfully ap- 
 pointed to the calling and sending forth of ministers. 6. Before min- 
 isters are to be ordained, they are to be chosen and called." 
 
 And then, proceeding to point out the testimonies 
 we have in favor of the truth of these propositions, he 
 observes upon each, as he comes to it, that the For- 
 eign Reformed Churches maintain it. On the first, 
 " All this is acknowledged by the Reformed Church- 
 es ;" referring to the Helvetic, Bohemic, French, and 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 15 
 
 other Confessions. On the second: ''Hereunto bear 
 witness all the Churches of God which be purged 
 from superstition and errors ;" referring to the same 
 Confessions. On the third: "Hereunto do the 
 Churches of God subscribe ;" referring to the same 
 Confessions. On the fourth: "A truth also approved 
 by the Churches;" referring to the same Confessions. 
 On the fifth: "So testify with us the true Churches 
 elsewhere in the world;" referring to the same Con- 
 fessions. On the sixth: "And this do the Churches 
 Protestant by their Confessions approve ;" referring 
 to the same Confessions.^ 
 
 And this is not only a testimony as to the meaning 
 of the Article, but as to the light in which the For- 
 eign Non-Episcopal Churches were then regarded by 
 the authorities of our Church, even by Archbishop 
 Bancroft. 
 
 Proceeding to a later period, we find Bishop Bur- 
 net thus commenting on this Article : 
 
 "If a company of Christians find the public worship where they 
 live to be so defiled that they can not with a good conscience join in 
 it, and if they do not know of any place to which they can conveni- 
 ently go, where they may worship God purely and in a regular way ; 
 if, I say, such a body, finding some that have been ordained, though 
 to the lower functions, should submit itself entirely to their conduct, 
 or finding none of those, should by a common consent desire some of 
 their own number to minister to them in holy things, and should 
 upon that beginning grow up to a regulated constitution, though we 
 are very sure that this is quite out of all rule, and could not be done 
 
 * "The Faith, Doctrine, and Religion, &c., expressed in 39 Articles, &c. ; the 
 gaid Articles analyzed into propositions, and the propositions proved to be agree- 
 able both to the written word of God and to the extant Confessions of all the 
 neighbor Churches Chriatianly reformed.^'' 1607. 4to. 
 
16 THE DOCTRIXE, ETC. 
 
 without a very great sin, unless the necessity were great and appar- 
 ent ; yet if the necessity is real and not feigned, this is not con- 
 demned or annulled by the Article ; for when this grows to a consti- 
 tution, and when it was begun by the consent of a Body, who are 
 supposed to have an authority in such an extraordinary case, whatever 
 some hotter spirits have thought of this since that time^ yet we are 
 very sure^ that not only those ivho penned the Articles^ hut the Body 
 of this Church for above half an age after, did^ notioithstandlng those 
 irregularities^ acknowledge the Foreign Churches^ so constituted, to be 
 true Churches as to all the essentials of a Church, though they had 
 been at first irregularly formed, and continued still to be in om im- 
 perfect state. And therefore the general words in which this part of 
 the Article is framed, seem to have been designed on purpose not to 
 exclude them.^'' (Burnet's Exposition of the XXXIX. Articles, 5th 
 ed. 1746.) 
 
 And Professor Hey justly remarks, tliat fhe ex- 
 pression, "who have public authority given unto 
 them in the congregation," "seems to leave the man- 
 ner of giving the power of ordaining quite free : it 
 ■seems as if any religious society might, consistently 
 with this Article, appoint ofiicers, with power of or- 
 dination, by election, representation, or lot; as if, 
 therefore, the right to ordain did not depend upon 
 any uninterrupted succession,''^ {Lectures in Divinity^ 
 2d ed. 1822, vol. iv. p. 166.) 
 
 The same view is taken of the meaning of this Ar- 
 ticle by Bishop Tomline, ordinarily considered a sujffi- 
 ciently high churchman. {Expos, of Art ed. 1799, p. 
 376.) 
 
 It is quite clear that the words of the Article do 
 not maintain the necessity of Episcopal ordination ; 
 and consequently, as the object of the Article is to 
 show the doctrine of the Church of Eno;land on the 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 17 
 
 subject, it can not be said that the Church of England 
 maintains it. No one, therefore, has a right to put 
 forth such a doctrine as the doctrine of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 This is the only place in which our Church touches 
 the question of ordination in the abstract ; and we see 
 that it is carefully worded, so as to be consistent with 
 the constitution of the Foreign Eeformed Churches. 
 We shall see hereafter whether the contemporary in- 
 terpretation of the Article does not entirely accord 
 with that given above. 
 
 The Preface to the Ordi:n^ation Service reads 
 as follows : 
 
 " It is evident unto all men, dilfgently reading Holy Scripture and 
 ancient Authors, that, from the Apostles' time, there have been these 
 Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church — Bishops, Priests, and Dea- 
 cons. Which Offices were evermore had in such reverend Estimation, 
 that no man might presume to execute any of them, except he were 
 first called, tried, examined, and known to have such qualities as are 
 requisite for the same ; and also by public Prayer, with Imposition of 
 Hands, were approved and admitted thereunto by lawful Authority. 
 And therefore to the intent that these Orders may be continued, and 
 reverently used and esteemed in this Cliurch, no man shall be ac- 
 counted or taken to be a lawful Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, in this 
 Church, or suffered to execute any of the said Functions, except he 
 be called, tried, examined, and admitted thereunto, according to the 
 form hereafter following, 07' hath had Epiacopal Consecration or Or- 
 dination.'''' 
 
 Much stress is laid upon this Preface, and it is quo- 
 ted as the Church's declaration of the invalidity of 
 Non-Episcopal orders. But it is not pretended that 
 the language itself contains any such declaration. It 
 is an inference. Such a notion it is said must have 
 
18 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 been in the minds of the framers. Yet it has been 
 shown again and again that no such notion could by 
 any possibility have been in the minds of the framers, 
 insomuch that we can not suppress our amazement 
 that intelligent controversialists should continue to 
 quote it. The first part is the simple statement of a 
 fact, without intent on the part of the authors to pass 
 upon other forms of government, but as giving a suf- 
 ficient warrant for their own. 
 
 The second part, '^ or hath had Episcopal consecra- 
 tion," etc., was not added until a hundred years after, 
 that is to say in 1661, by the Laudean party under 
 Charles II. But even this goes no further than to 
 make Episcopal orders necessary for serving in an 
 Episcopal Church, (which is manifestly proper,) those 
 having only Presbyterian orders having previously 
 ministered in the Church of England. That the 
 Laudean divines did personally entertain these exclu- 
 sive views is certain, but it is equally certain that 
 they could have procured no judgment to be passed 
 by the legislature upon the character of the Foreign 
 Churches or the validity of their orders, nor does it 
 appear that they attempted it. 
 
 We are therefore unable to understand the follow- 
 ing remarks in a note in the Bishop of London's (the 
 late Bishop Blomfield's) sermons on the Church. 
 His Lordship says : 
 
 " Our Reformers, in the Book of Consecroftion, approved in the 
 36th Article, insist strongly on the necessity of Episcopal ordination^ 
 a point which, as Bishop Sanderson says, ' has been constantly and 
 uniformly maintained by our best writers, and by all the sober, or- 
 derly, and orthodox sons of the Church ;' but they do not presume 
 
THE DOCTKINE, ETC. 19 
 
 to say that it is impossible, under any circumstances, for a Cliurch to 
 exist without it. We may, however, set their formal approval of the 
 Consecration Book against the private opinions of Archbishop Cran- 
 mer, in his answers to the ninth question concerning church govern- 
 ment." (P. 62.) 
 
 ISTow the simple fact is, that there is not one word 
 about " the necessity of Episcopal ordination" in that 
 book, as drawn up by the Eeformers, and sanctioned 
 by the Article. The words that relate to that point 
 were not inserted in the book until the review in the 
 time of Charles II., and then refer only to the minis- 
 try of the Church of England. They do not declare 
 the necessity of Episcopal ordination to any valid 
 ministry; nor (we think) does Bishop Sanderson. 
 Consequently, the last observation falls to the ground ; 
 and we may observe, that "the private opinions of 
 Archbishop Cranmer" on the point, as shown in his 
 Answers (not to the ninth, but) to the tenth and 
 eleventh Questions on Church Government, were 
 shared with him, sufficiently for our present purpose^ by 
 many others of the leading divines of his day. 
 
 But still farther; by the 55th Canon of 1604, all 
 our clergy are required, in the bidding prayer before, 
 or rather in the commencement of the sermon, to pray 
 for "the Church of Scotland." Now the Church of 
 Scotland, at the time this canon was passed, was Pres- 
 byterian, as it now is. And, consequently, the very 
 men who are now protesting against the recognition 
 of any ordinations as valid but Episcopal, and con- 
 tending that it is the doctrine of our Church that there 
 is no such thing as a valid ministry but through an 
 apostolically descended episcopate, are by canon 
 
20 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 bound solemnly to recognize in their prayers every 
 Sunday the existence of a valid ministry without any 
 such ordination. For a prayer for the Presbyterian 
 "Church of Scotland" clearly involves such, a recog- 
 nition. 
 
 Some of her majesty's predecessors have occasion- 
 ally ordered this canon to be observed. It would be 
 but a fair return (though we are far from desiring it) 
 for the remarks in which certain parties are often in- 
 dulging themselves, that they should be favored with 
 a similar order. They are very fond of appealing to 
 rubrics and canons, when they suit their purpose ; 
 and none, we will venture to say, would be more un- 
 willing, consistently and impartially, to carry them out 
 into jDractice."^ 
 
 11. We come now to the ground taken on this sub- 
 ject by our early divines. This, in the absence of 
 any definite statement on the subject in our Formula- 
 ries, is clearly the best indication we can have of the 
 mind of our Church respecting it, and of the meaning 
 of any indirect notices touching it in our authoritative 
 documents. 
 
 Let us first hear what Mr. Keble himself is com- 
 pelled to admit on this point. Thus he writes : 
 
 *' Since the Episcopal succession had been so carefully retained in 
 the Church of England, and so much anxiety evinced to render both 
 her Liturgy and Ordination services strictly conformable to the rules 
 and doctrines of antiquity, it might have been expected, that the de- 
 fenders of the English hierarchy against the first Puritans should take 
 the highest ground, and challenge for the bishops the same unreserv- 
 
 * For a further examination of the doctrine of the Article see Appendix A. 
 
THE DOCTKINE, ETC. 21 
 
 ed submission, on the same plea of exclusive apostolic prerogative, 
 which their adversaries feared not to insist on for their elders and 
 deacons. It is notorious, however, that such was not in general the 
 line preferred [it was never adopted, as is confessed presently] by 
 Jewel, Whitgift, Bishop Cooper, and others, to whom the manage- 
 ment of that controversy was intrusted during the early part of Eliza- 
 beth's reign. They do not expressly disavow, but they carefully 
 shun, that unreserved appeal to Christian antiquity, in which one 
 would have thought they must have discerned the very strength of 
 their cause to lie. It is enough, with them, to show that the govern- 
 ment by archbishops and bishops is ancient and allowable ; they 
 never venture to urge its exclusive claim, or to connect the succession 
 with the validity of the holy sacraments ; and yet it is obvious, that 
 such a course of argument alone (supposing it borne out by facts) 
 could fully meet all the exigencies of the case. It must have occur- 
 red to the learned writers above mentioned, since it was the received 
 doctrine of the Church down to their days ; and if they had disap- 
 proved it, as some theologians of no small renown have since done, it 
 seems unlikely that they should have passed it over without some ex- 
 press avowal of dissent ; considering that they always wrote with an 
 eye to the pretensions of Rome also, which popular opinion had in a 
 great degree mixed up with this doctrine of apostolical succession.'' 
 . . . . " Farther, it is obvious that those divines in particular 
 who had been instrumental but a little before in the second change 
 of the Liturgy in King Edward's time, must have felt themselves in 
 some measure restrained from pressing with its entire force the eccle- 
 siastical tradition on church government and orders, inasmuch as in 
 the aforesaid revision they had given up altogether the same tradi- 
 tion, regarding certain very material points in the celebration, if not 
 
 in the doctrine, of the holy Eucharist It should seem 
 
 that those who were responsible for these omissions must have felt 
 themselves precluded, ever after, from urging the necessity of Epis- 
 copacy, or of any thing else, on the ground of uniform Church tradi- 
 tion."* 
 
 Sucli a passage as this presents many topics for re- 
 mark ; and we may observe, in passing, that the doc- 
 
 * Keble's Pref. to Hooker, pp. lix. — Ixii. 
 
22 THE DOCTRIlSrE, ETC. 
 
 trine of the necessity of Episcopacy seems to be con- 
 fessedly rested on tradition. But the object for which 
 we have quoted it, is to show the difficulties in which 
 Mr. Keble confessedly finds himself involved in deal- 
 ing with the views of our early divines on this sub- 
 ject. He admits, that they *' never venture to urge 
 the exclusive claim of the government by archbishops 
 and bishops, or to connect the succession with the va- 
 lidity of the holy sacraments." But then it is hinted 
 that they may have held it, because they have not 
 given an "express avowal of dissent" from it. 
 
 Now we hope our readers have too good an opinion 
 of the honesty and fair dealing of those venerable 
 men, not to feel assured, that, if they had held the 
 doctrine of the absolute necessity of the Episcopal 
 form of church government, they would have said so. 
 Can we suppose that, in the midst of that intimate 
 intercourse and communion they maintained with the 
 Foreign Non-Episcopal Churches, they would never 
 have admonished them of the fatal effect which their 
 want of the Episcopal form of church government 
 entailed upon their ministrations ? Would they have 
 acknowledged their ministers in the way they did, as 
 fellow-laborers in the Church of Christ ? 
 
 But in fact we shall find, from their own words, 
 that they do^ virtually at least, if not more expressly, 
 disavow the doctrine advocated by Mr. Keble and his 
 party. There was no necessity, at a time when no 
 one in our Church thought of upholding such a doc- 
 trine, for them to write formally and expressly against 
 it. But they do disavow such a notion, writing in a 
 way irreconcilable with their holding it. And we 
 
THE DOCTEINE, ETC. 23 
 
 must add farther, that it will be found that the authors 
 whom Mr. Keble quotes as having first advocated 
 his exclusive doctrine in our Church, bear witness 
 against it. 
 
 Having thus seen how much our opponents are 
 compelled to concede, let us proceed to consider the 
 following testimonies : 
 
 And we may notice, first, that even in the time of 
 Henry VIII., at the very dawn of the Eeformation, 
 the bishops and clergy of our Church put forth a 
 document containing the very doctrine on which the 
 validity of Presbyterian ordinations has been chiefly 
 rested, namely, the parity of bishops and presbyters, 
 with respect to the ministerial powers, essentially and 
 by right belonging to them. In the Institution of a 
 Chrisiian Man^ put forth by the bishops and clergy 
 in 1537, we read as follows : 
 
 "As touching the sacrament of holy orders, we think it convenient 
 that all bishops and preachers shall instruct and teach the people 
 committed unto their spiritual charge, first, how that Christ and His 
 apostles did institute and ordain, in the New Testament, that besides 
 the civil powers and governance of kings and princes, (which is called 
 potestas gladii, the power of the sword,) there should also be con- 
 tinually in the Church militant certain other ministers or officers, 
 which should have special power, authority, and commission, under 
 Christ, to preach and teach the word of God unto His people ; to dis- 
 pense and administer the sacraments of God unto them," etc. etc. 
 
 "That this office, this power and authority, was committed and 
 given by Christ and His apostles unto certain persons only, that is to 
 say, unto priests or bishops, whom they did elect, call, and admit 
 thereunto, by their prayer and imposition of their hands." 
 
 And, speaking of *' the Sacrament of Orders" to be 
 administered by the bishop, it observes, when noticing 
 
24 THE DOCTRIXE, ETC. 
 
 the various orders in tlie Churcli of Eome : " The 
 truth isj that in the New Testament there is no mention 
 made of any degrees or distinctions in orders^ hut only of 
 deacons or ministers^ and of priests or bishops^ And 
 throughout, when speaking of the jurisdiction and 
 other privileges belonging to the ministry, it sjDeaks 
 of them as belonging to "priests and bishops." 
 
 Again, in the revision of this work set forth by the 
 king in 1543, entitled A Necessary Doctrine and Eru- 
 dition for any Christian Man, in the chapter on "the 
 Sacrament of Orders," priests and bishops are spoken 
 of as of the same order. For after having spoken of 
 Timothy being "ordered and consecrated priest" by 
 St. Paul, and remarked, "whereby it appeareth that 
 St. Paul did consecrate and order priests and bishops 
 by the imposition of his hands ; and as the apostles 
 themselves, in the beginning of the Church, did order 
 priests and bishops, so they appointed and willed the 
 other bishops after them to do the like, as St. Paul 
 • manifestly showeth, in his Epistle to Titus, saying, 
 etc., and to Timothy, etc. ;" it subjoins, shortly after: 
 " Of these two orders only, that is to say, priests and 
 deacons, Scripture maketh express mention, and how 
 they were conferred of the apostles by prayer and 
 imposition of their hands.""^ 
 
 Now this view certainly goes far to remove the 
 difficulty as to recognizing tlie validity of Presbterian 
 ordination in the absence of bishops ; and this view 
 we see was entertained by the leading bishops and 
 clergy in this country at the very dawn of the Re- 
 
 * See Formularies of Faith, etc. pp. 101, 105, 278, 2S1. Oxford, 1S25. 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 25 
 
 formation; and tliose wlio are at all acquainted with 
 Ecclesiastical history, know that this view had long 
 been advocated by many of the divines of the Church 
 of Rome, especially among the scholastic divines, in- 
 cluding their great founder, Peter Lombard, the Mas- 
 ter of the Sentences. 
 
 Our opponents are fond of speaking of these early 
 documents, published at the very dawn of the Re- 
 formation, as authoritative proofs of the doctrine of 
 our Church. The above extracts may perhaps show 
 them, that, however pleasant the first taste may be, 
 there are some sours mixed up with the Romish sweets 
 which these works contain ; and if they will have the 
 one, they must be satisfied to take the other. 
 
 We decline, for the sake of a momentary gain, to 
 make any such illegitimate use of these documents. 
 But this we do say, that if even then the Tractarian 
 doctrine of Episcopacy was not held by our Church, 
 much less is it conceivable that it was held after the 
 current of our theology had taken a course so much 
 more decidedly Protestant, and our divines were re- 
 cognizing the ministers of the Foreign Non-Episcopal 
 Churches as their colleagues in the ministry. In these 
 extracts, we see the views on this subject with which 
 our divines commenced the work of Reformation ; and 
 it will hardly be urged that, when they went forward 
 on every other point, they retrograded in this. 
 
 But we have still stronger testimony to the views 
 
 of the leading divines of the English Church at this 
 
 period. In the autumn of 1540, certain questions 
 
 were proposed by the king to the chief bishops and 
 
 2 
 
26 THE DOCmiNE, ETC. 
 
 divines of the day,^ of wTaicli the tenth was this : 
 "Whether bishops or priests were first? and if the 
 priests were first, then the priest made the bishop." 
 With the wording of this question we have nothing 
 to do, and should certainly be sorry to be made 
 answerable for it ; but our object is to see what views 
 were elicited in the answers. Now to this question 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury (Granmer) replied: 
 " The bishops and priests were at one time, and were 
 not two things, but both one office in the beginning 
 of Christ's religion." The Archbishop of York (Lee) 
 says : " The name of a bishop is not properly a name 
 of order ^ hut a name of office^ signifying an overseer. 
 And although the inferior shepherds have also care 
 to oversee their flock, yet, forsomuch as the bishop's 
 charge is also to oversee the shepherds, the name of 
 overseer is given to the bishops, and not to the other ; 
 and as they be in degree higher, so in their consecra- 
 tion we find difference even from the primitive Church.' 
 The Bishop of London (Bonner) says: "I think the 
 bishops were first, and yet I think it is not of import- 
 ance^ whether the 'priest then made the bishop^ or else the 
 bishop the priest; considering (after the sentence of St. 
 Jerome) that in the beginning of the Church there 
 was none (or, if it were, very small) difference between 
 a bishop and a priest, especially touching the signifi- 
 cation." The Bishop of St. David's, (Barlow,) and 
 the Bishop elect of Westminster, (Thirlby,) held that 
 bishops and priests ^^ at the beginning were all one^ 
 
 * These questions and answers are given by Burnet, in his Histori/ oft^ie Re- 
 formation^ and Callyer, in his Ecclesiastical History. 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 27 
 
 Dr. Eobertson, in liis answer, says : ^' Nee opinor 
 absurdum esse, ut sacerdos episcopum consecret, si 
 episcopus liaberi non potest." Dr. Cox (afterwards 
 Bishop of Ely) says : " Although by Scripture (as St. 
 Hierome saith) priests and bishops be one, and there- 
 fore the one not before the other, yet bishops, as they 
 be now, were after priests, and therefore made of 
 priests." Dr. Eedmayn, the learned Master of Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, says : " They be of like begin- 
 ning, and at the beginning were both one, as St. 
 Hierome and other old authors show by the Scripture 
 whereof one made another indifferently." Dr. Edge- 
 worth says : ^' That the priests in the primitive Church 
 made bishops, I think no inconvenience, (as Jerome 
 saith, in an Epist ad Evagrium.) Even like as sol- 
 diers should choose one among themselves to be their 
 captain ; so did priests choose one of themselves to 
 be their bishop, for consideration of his learning, 
 gravity, and good living, &c., and also for to avoid 
 schisms among themselves by them, that some might 
 not draw people one way, and others another way, if 
 they lacked one Head among them." With respect to 
 the other answers, which are from the Bishops of 
 Eochester (Heath) and Carlisle, (Aldrich,) and Drs. 
 Day, Oglethorp, Symmons, Tresham, and Coren, it is 
 difficult to judge what the views of the writers would 
 have been on the point we are now considering. 
 
 All the leading divines, therefore, whose testimonies 
 we have just quoted, were of opinion that bishops and 
 priests were, properly and strictly speaking, of the 
 same order ^ though differing in degree. 
 
28 THE DOCTKIXE, ETC. 
 
 Nay, more ; we find by the answers to the next 
 question, that, even at that time, some were prepared 
 to t^ke the next step, and grant to presbyters, under 
 some circumstances, the power to ordain presbyters ; 
 and that most of them replied uncertainly to the ques- 
 tion. The question was this: "Whether a bishop 
 hath authority to make a priest by the Scripture or 
 no ? And whether any other hut only a bishop can maJce 
 a priestV The reply of Cranmer, Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, goes much beyond what we should wish 
 to plead for, and is as follows : "A bishop may make 
 a priest by the Scripture, and so may princes and 
 governors also, and that by the authority of God com- 
 mitted to them, and the people also by their election : 
 for as we read that bishops have done it, so Christian 
 emperors and princes usually have done it ; and the 
 people, before Christian princes were, commonly did 
 elect their bishops and priests." The answers given 
 by the rest to the latter part of the question were to 
 the following effect. Dr. Cox (made in 1559 Bishop 
 of Ely) and Dr. Tresham openly admit, that, in a case 
 of necessity, others may ordain besides bishops. The 
 Archbishop of York says, " That any other than 
 bishops or priests may make a priest, we neither find 
 in Scripture nor out of Scripture ;" clearly implying 
 that priests may make a priest. The Bishops of 
 Rochester and Carlisle, the Bishop elect of West- 
 minster, and Drs. Redmayn, Sj'mmons, Eobertson, 
 Leighton, Curren, Edgeworth, and Oglethorp, reply 
 only, that they have never read that others besides 
 bishops assumed the power of ordaining. The Bishop 
 of London and Dr. Day give no reply to this part of 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 29 
 
 the question. So that not one ventures to determine 
 definitively that the power of ordination belongs ex- 
 clusively to bishops. 
 
 Such was the doctrine of the leading divines of our 
 Church at this period on the subject. We may there- 
 fore safely leave it to the reader to determine, whether, 
 when in 1549 they put forth the Ordinal, with a Pre- 
 face in which they speak of the ^' three orders" of the 
 Christian ministry, they meant to assert, that the 
 Episcopal and Priestly orders were so completely two 
 distinct orders, that the special duties for the perform- 
 ance of which bishops had been set apart could under 
 no circumstances be performed by priests ; and were 
 not rather using the word "order" in a large and 
 general sense ; especially when we find that the Ser- 
 vices never apply the word order or ordering to the 
 making of bishops, but only in the case of deacons 
 and priests, and speak of the consecration of bishops ; 
 and that most of our early divines, as, for instance, 
 the most distinguished among the earliest defenders 
 of our Church against the Puritans, Archbishop 
 Whitgifb, held (as we shall show presently) that 
 bishops and priests are, strictly speaking, of the 
 same order.* 
 
 * The Bishop of Exeter admits that the Schoolmen Peter Lombard and others 
 did hold Bishops and Priests to be of the same order ^h\xi it was that they might 
 magnify the sacraments, and he quotes St. Thomas as follows : " Order may be 
 taken in two ways— in one as it la a sacrament ; and then, as has been said be- 
 fore, all order is ordained ad EucharisticR Sacrmnentivm; wherefore, since 
 the bishop has here no superior power to the priest's, quantum ad hoc^ Episco- 
 pate is not an Order. But Order may be considered in another way, that is, as 
 it is a certain office, in respect to certain sacred acts ; and so, as the bishop has 
 a power in hierarchical acts, in respect to the mystical Body [the Church] supe- 
 rior to the priest, the Episcopate will be an Order : and it is in this way that Dl- 
 
30 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 Let us proceed to the divines of Queen Elizabeth's 
 reign, when our Formularies were finally constituted 
 and established as (with a few exceptions) they now 
 stand. 
 
 Unfortunately, the question now at issue was not 
 so brought into controversy at that period as to ena- 
 ble us to find many direct testimonies upon the sub- 
 ject ; for no one but a professed Eomanist dreamed of 
 throwing a doubt upon the validity of the Orders of 
 the divines of the Foreign Non-Episcopal Churches. 
 We are therefore thrown upon their incidental notices 
 of the matter. But even where the witness is not di- 
 rect, it is sufiiciently plain to indicate the doctrine 
 held. And, in fact, the ground then taken on this 
 subject by our leading divines was much lower than 
 what the lowest of the (so-called) Low Churchmen of 
 modem times have ordinarily maintained ; for they 
 expressly defend the position, that the form of church 
 government adopted is a matter of indifference, left to 
 the free choice of each Church for itself. 
 
 We give the precedence, as the order of time de- 
 mands, to the learned Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Alley, 
 who in his Praelections upon 1 Peter, read publicly in 
 St. Paul's, in 1560, says : 
 
 " What difference is between a bishop and a priest, S. Hierome, 
 writing ad Titum, doth declare, whose words be these, ' Idem est er- 
 
 onysius, and even the Master himself [Iv. Diat, 24, s. i. m. iii.] speaks of it as an 
 Order." " And here," says Mr. Goode, " is just the 'very species of language to 
 which I referred as held, hy some of the Scholastic divines; attributing the 
 superiority of the Bishop^ not to his having superior powers so far as liis or- 
 ders icere concerned, hut only so far as concerned the office bestowed upon 
 him ; that is, the official duties he had to perform." 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. ;/ tv O^ 3i^ - 
 
 go presbyter, qui episcopus,' &c. ; a priest, tlierefore, is\tlie same that 
 a bisliop is, &c." 
 
 And liaving given Jerome's words in fall, lie adds : 
 
 *' These words are alleged, that it may appear priests among the 
 elders to have been even the same that bishops were. But it grew by 
 little and little that the whole charge and cure should be appointed to 
 one bishop within his precinct, that the seeds of dissension might ut- 
 terly be rooted out.'* (Alley's Poor 3farCs Library^ 2d ed. 1571, 
 tom. i. fol. 95, 96.) 
 
 It could hardly be doubted, then, bj one who held 
 this, that if the circumstances of the Church required 
 it^ Presbyterian ordination would be valid 
 
 About the same period, namely, in 1563, we have 
 a much stronger testimony from Dr. Pilkington, then 
 Bishop of Durham : 
 
 "Yet remains one doubt unanswered in these few words, when he 
 says, that ' the government of the Church was committed to bishops,' 
 as though they had received a larger and higher commission from 
 God of doctrine and discipline than other lower priests or ministers 
 have, and thereby might challenge a greater prerogative. But this 
 is to be understood, that the privileges and superiorities^ which bishops 
 have above other ministers^ are rather granted by men for maintaining 
 of better order and quietness in commotiivealths^ than commanded by 
 God in His word. Ministers have better knowledge and utterance 
 some than other, but their ministry is of equal dignity. God's com- 
 mission and commandment is like and indifferent to all, priest, bishop, 
 ?.rchbishop, prelate, by what name soever he be called. ... St. 
 Paul calls the elders of Ephesus together, and says, ' the Holy Ghost 
 made them bishops to rule the Church of God.' (Acts 20.) He writes 
 also to the bishops of Philippos, meaning the ministers. . . . St^ 
 Jerome, in his commentary on the first chapter Ad. Tit.., says that 'a 
 bishop and a priest is all one.' ... A bishop is a name of office, 
 labor, and pains." {Confut. of an Addition. Worlcs.^ ed. Park Soc. 
 pp. 493, 494.) 
 
32 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 Both these were among the Bishops who settled our 
 Articles, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 Our next witness shall be Bishop Jewel, of whose 
 standing in our Church it is unnecessary to add a 
 word. On the parity of order in priests and bishops, 
 he says : 
 
 *' Is it so horrible a oeresy, as he [Harding] maketh it, to say, that 
 by the Scriptures of God a bishop and a priest are all one ? or know- 
 eth he how far, and unto whom, he reacheth the name of an heretic? 
 Verily Chrysostom saith : ' Between a bishop and a priest in a man- 
 ner there is no difference.' (In 1 Tim. hom. 11.) S. Hierome saith. 
 . . . ' The apostle plainly teacheth us, that priests and bishops be 
 all one.' (ad. Evagr.) S. Augustine saith : 'What is a bishop but 
 the first priest ; that is to say, the highest priest ?' (In Qtecest, iV. et 
 V. Test. q. 101.) So saith S. Ambrose: ' There is but one consecra- 
 tion (ordinatio) of priest and bishop ; for both of them are priests, but 
 the bishop is the first.' (In 1 Tim. c. 3.) All these and other more 
 holy Fathers, together with St. Paul the apostle, for thus saying, by 
 M. Harding's advice, must be holdeu for heretics." (Def. of Apol. 
 Pt. ii. c. 9. div. i. Works^ p. 202. See also Pt. ii. c. iii. div. i. p. 85.) 
 
 But there is a passage in his writings still more 
 strongly bearing on the point in question. Harding 
 had charged our Church with deriving its orders from 
 apostate bishops, etc. Jewel replies : 
 
 " Therefore we neither have bishops without church, nor church 
 without bishops. Neither doth the Church of England this day de- 
 pend of them whom you often call apostates, as if our Church were 
 no Church without them. . , . If there were not one^ neither of 
 them nor of us left alive, yet would not therefore the whole Church of 
 England flee to Lovaiae, TertuUian saith : * And we being laymen, 
 are we not priests ? It is written, Christ hath made us both a king- 
 dom and priests unto God his Father. The authority of the Church, 
 and the honor by the assembly, or council of order sanctified of God, 
 hath made a difference between the lay and the clergy. Where as 
 there is no assembly of ecclesiastical order, the priest being there 
 
THE DOCTKIXE, ETC. 33 
 
 alone (without the company of other priests) doth both minister the 
 oblation and also baptize. Yea, and be there but three together, and 
 though they be laymen, yet is there a church. For every man liveth 
 of his own faith.'" {JDef. of Apol. Pt. ii. c. v. div. i. p. 129.) 
 
 It is needless to point out liow much this passage 
 implies. 
 
 We proceed to Archbishop Whitgift. 
 
 And first, as to the parity of order in bishops and 
 priests, he speaks thus : 
 
 "Every bishop is a priest, but every priest hath not the name and 
 title of a bishop, in that meaning that Jerome in this place [^Ad 
 Uvagr.] taketh the name of a bishop. . . . Neither shall you 
 find this word episcopus commonly used but for that priest that is in 
 degree over and above the rest, notwithstanding episcopus be oftentimes 
 called presbyter, because presbijier is the more general name''' {Def. 
 of Answ. to Adm. 1574, fol. p. 383.) 
 
 " Although Hierome confess, that by Scripture presbyter and epis- 
 copus is all one, (as in deed they be quoad ministerium,) yet doth he 
 acknowledge a superiority of the bishop before the minister. . . . 
 Therefore no doubt this is Jerome's mind, that a bishop in degree and 
 dignity is above the minister, though he be one and the self-same with 
 him in the office of ministering the word and sacraments." {lb. pp. 
 384, 385.) 
 
 Secondly, as to the form of government to be fol- 
 lowed in the Church. His adversary Cartwright, like 
 the great body of the Puritans, contended for the ex- 
 clusive admissibility of the platform of church gov- 
 ernment he advocated ; and, like Archdeacon Deni- 
 son, maintained that "matters of discipline and kind 
 of government are matters necessary to salvation and 
 of faith." And this is Whitgift's reply : 
 
 *' I confess that in a church collected together in one place, and at 
 liberty, government is necessary in the second kind of necessity ; but 
 
34 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 that any one kind of government ia so necessary that without it the 
 Cluirch can not be saved, or that it may not he altered into some other 
 kind thought to he more expedient^ I utterly deny, and the reasons that 
 move me so to do be these. The first is, because I find no one cer- 
 tain and perfect kind of government prescrihed or commanded in the 
 Scriptures to the Church of Christy which no doubt should have been 
 done, if it had been a matter necessary unto the salvation of the 
 Church. Secondly, because the essential notes of the Church he these 
 only ; the true preaching of the word of God, and the right administra- 
 tion of the sacraments : for (as Master Calvin saith, in his book against 
 the Anabaptists) : ' This honor is meet to be given to the word of 
 God, and to His sacraments, that wheresoever we see the word of 
 God truly preached, and God according to the same truly worshipped, 
 and the sacraments without superstition administered, there we may 
 without all controversy conclude the Church of God to be :' and a ht- 
 tle after: 'So much we must esteem the word of God and His sacra- 
 ments, that wheresoever we find them to be, there we may certainly 
 know the Church of God to be, although in the common life of men 
 many faults and errors be found.' The same is the opinion of other 
 godly and learned writers and the judgment of the Reformed Churches^ 
 as appeareth by their Confessions. So that notwithstanding govern- 
 ment, or some kind of government, may be a part of the Church, 
 touching the outward form and perfection of it, yet is it not such a 
 part of the essence and being, but that it may be the Church of 
 Clirist without this or that kind of government, and therefore the 
 kind of government of the Church is not necessary unto salvation.*' 
 {Ih, p. 81.) 
 
 '•'• I deny that the Scriptures do , . , set down any one certain form 
 and kind of government of the Church to he perpetual for all times^ per- 
 sons^ and places without alteration^ {Ih. p. 84.) 
 
 And speaking of the platform of cliurcli govern- 
 ment contended for by Cartwriglit, he says : 
 
 " Yet would I not have any man to think that -I condemn any 
 churches where this government is lawfully and without danger received; 
 only I have regard to whole kingdoms, especially this realm, where it 
 can not but be dangerous." {Ih. p. 658.) 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 35 
 
 In Tract 17; c. iv. lie undertakes expressly to prove, 
 " That there is no one certain kind of government in 
 the Church which must of necessity be perpetually 
 observed." {lb, p. 658.) And he remarks in it : 
 
 " It is plain that any one certain form or kind of external govern- 
 ment perpetually to be observed, is no where in the Scripture prescribed 
 to the Church; but the charge thereof is left to the Christian magis- 
 trate, so that nothing be done contrary to the word of God." (lb. p. 
 659.) 
 
 The equality of bishops and presbyters jure divino^ 
 was also expressly maintained at this period by the 
 learned Dr. W. Whitaker, Eeg. Prof, of Div. at Cam- 
 bridge. Among other remarks on the subject, he 
 says, referring to Jerome's words in his Commentary 
 on Titus^ c. i. ; 
 
 "Si Episcopi consueiudine non dispositione Dominica presby teris ma- 
 jores sunt, turn humano non divino jure totum hoc discrimen con- 
 stat." [Resp. ad Camp, defens. adv. J. Durceum. lib. vi. Op. torn. i. 
 p. 149.) 
 
 And to the -reference of his opponent to Jerome's 
 Epistle to Evagrius, showing that the power of ordi- 
 nation had been placed in the hands of the bishop, he 
 replies : 
 
 '' Quod autem affers ex eadem Epistola, ad humanam non divinam 
 constitutionem pertinet. Etsi enim ortu suo iidera erant ambo, postea 
 tamen (inquit Hieronymus) uniis electus est^ qui cceteris prceponeretar ; 
 atque inde natum est illud episcopi ac presby teri discrimen." (Ibid.) 
 
 Of course, then, that which owed its origin to hu- 
 man appointment might, by the same authority, in 
 any individual church, be laid aside. 
 2^ 
 
36 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 Our next witness shall be Hooker, in himself a 
 host. And when our readers have perused the ex- 
 tracts we are about to give from his writings, thej will 
 be able to judge of the honesty with which his name 
 has been used in favor of the exclusive doctrine of 
 the Tractarians, both in their Catenas and in their re- 
 cent onslaught on the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 
 "Now whereas hereupon (he observes) some do infer that no ordi- 
 nation can stand, but only such as is made by bishops which have 
 had their ordination likewise by other bishops before them, till we 
 come to the very Apostles of Christ themselves ; in which respect it 
 was demanded of Beza at Poissie, * By what authority he could ad- 
 minister the holy sacraments, &c.' [Our readers will observe the in- 
 stance ciiedj the very case now in question between the Archbishop 
 and his assailants.] ... To this we answer, that there may he 
 somttimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination made 
 WITHOUT A BISHOP. The whole Church visible being the true original 
 subject of all power, it hath not ordinarily allowed any other than 
 bishops alone to ordain ; howbeit, as the ordinary course is ordinarily 
 in all things to be observed, so it may be, in some cases, not unne- 
 cessary that we decline from the ordinary ways. Men may be extra- 
 ordinarily, yet allowably, two ways admitted unto spiritual f mictions in 
 the Church. One is, when God Himself doth of Himself raise up any. 
 . . . Another . . . when the exigence of necessity doth con- 
 strain to leave the usual ways of the Church, which otherwise we 
 would willingly keep." {Eccl. Pol. vii. 14. See also iii. 11.) 
 
 Here is a direct assertion of the validity of such 
 orders as those of Beza. 
 
 And in a former passage of the same book, he dis- 
 tinctly admits the power of the Church at large to 
 take away the Episcopal form of government from the 
 Church, and says : 
 
 '•''Lei them [that is, hishops'] continually hear in mind, that it is rather 
 the force of custom^ wherthythe Churchy having so lomj ftnind it good to 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 37 
 
 continue under the regiment of her virtuous hishojjs^ doth still uphold, 
 maintain^ and honor them in that respect^ than that any such true and 
 heavenly law can he showed by the evidence whereof it may of a truth 
 appear, that the Lord himself hath appointed presbyters forever to be 
 under the regiment of bishops f adding, that '''■their authority'^'' is " a 
 sword ivhich the Church hath power to take from them,'''' {lb. vii. 5. 
 See also i. 14 and iii. 10.) 
 
 And, therefore, tliough lie admits tlie office and 
 superiority of bishops to be of Apostolical institution 
 and takes much higher ground on the subject than 
 most of his contemporaries, yet all that he expressly 
 undertakes to prove on the subject is, that such supe- 
 riority is "a ihing alloivable^ lawful^ and goodJ'' {lb, 
 vii. 3.) 
 
 We will take the testimony of Hadrian Saravia ; 
 of whom Mr. Keble writes thus : 
 
 " Saravia is a distinct and independent testimony to the doctrine 
 
 of exclusive [the Italics are ours] divine right in bishops 
 
 And since Saravia was afterwards in familiar intercourse with Hooker, 
 and his confidential adviser when writing on nearly the same subjects, 
 we may with reason use the recorded opinions of the one for inter 
 preting Avhat might seem otherwise ambiguous in the other." {Fref. 
 to Hooker, p. Ixvii.) 
 
 Now certainly Hadrian Saravia took very high 
 ground in his defense of Episcopacy, maintaining that 
 the Episcopal authority was of Divine institution and 
 Apostolical tradition, and was taught as well by the 
 word of God as the universal consent of all Churches;^ 
 yet in the same work he speaks thus : 
 
 * Episcopalem authoritatem Divinae institutionis et Apostolicse traditionis esse 
 defendo, et id tarn Verbo Dei quam universali omnium Ecclesiarum consensu doceri. 
 {Defens. Tract, de div. 3£iiiisir. Ev. gradihus: In Epist. dedicat. Op. 1611.) 
 
38 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 ** In our fathers' memory Lutlier, Bucer, (Ecolampadius, and others, 
 had no other caUing than that which they had received in the Church 
 of Rome ; and when it happened to them to be called before Cicsar, 
 no question respecting their calling could ever be justly raised; and 
 if it had been, they had an answer ready more fit in my judgment 
 than that which was made at the Conference at Poissy. , . . For 
 although all who had assembled there before the king had not the 
 same kind of ordination, and some were ordained by bishops of the 
 Church of Rome, others by the Reformed Churches^ none of thein 
 ought to have been ashamed of his ordination. They might, so far as 
 I can see, without any danger, have professed that they had been 
 ordained and called, some by bishops of the Church of Rome, others 
 by orthodox presbyters^ in the order received in the Churches of Christ, 
 after an examination of their morals and doctrine, and with the au- 
 thority of the magistrate and consent of the people, with the impo- 
 sition of hands and prayer. Although I am of opinion that ordina- 
 tions of ministers of the Church properly belong to bishops, yet 
 necessity causes that when they are wanting and can not be had, 
 orthodox presbyters can in case of necessity ordain a presbyter ; which 
 thing, although it is not in accordance with the order received from 
 the times of the Apostles, yet is excused by the necessity of the case, 
 which causes that in such a state of things a presbyter may be a bishop. 
 Moreover, although the act is out of the usual order, the calling is 
 not to be considered extraordinary." [And then, having remarked 
 that no one ought to receive orders from an heretical bishop, and 
 that the Romish bishops were all heretics, he adds :] *' This also is 
 true, that in such a state of confusion in the Church, when all the 
 bishops fall away from the true worship of God unto idolatry, without 
 any violation of the government of the Church, the whole authority 
 of the Episcopal ecclesiastical government is devolved upon the pious 
 and orthodox presbyters, so that a presbyter clearly may ordain pres- 
 byters. . . . There is one God, one Lord Jesus Christ, one Church, 
 one Baptism, one Ministry. The difference there is between presby- 
 ters and pastors of the Church of Christ consists in the authority of 
 Ecclesiastical government. And this is not violated, when the higher 
 orders being in any way removed, those who are of the lowest grade 
 alone remain, with whom, consequently, the whole power of the keys 
 of the Church then resides. . . . But where all the bishops are 
 become impious heretics, the orthodox presbyters are freed from their 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 39 
 
 jurisdiction, and ought to vindicate to themselves the power of the 
 keys which they have received in their ordination. ... I cer- 
 tainly know not by what necessity Master Beza should have been 
 compelled to resort to an extraordinary calling. For I do not think 
 that either he^ or Nicholas Galasius^ or any other that may have been 
 then present^ not ordained by JRomish bishops^ took upon themselves 
 the ministry of the Word without a legitimate calling received in the 
 Churches of Christ.''''* 
 
 JSTor did lie hold that the Foreign Non-Episcopal 
 Churches were bound to seek Episcopacy from some 
 Eeformed Episcopal Church, for he says : " If they 
 call in the aid of our men, and wish to use their advice, 
 they can ; but if they do not, they ought not to arro- 
 gate to themselves any authority over them and their 
 churches, but to rejoice, and congratulate them upon 
 -their conversion, and offer them communion, {offerre 
 societatem,y \ 
 
 So that here again we have a direct testimony in 
 favor of the validity of the ordination of the Foreign 
 Non-Episcopal Churches. 
 
 Let us take next the testimony of Dr. John Bridges, 
 then (1587) Dean of Salisbury, afterwards Bishop of 
 Oxford. ETe, as we shall see, agrees with Archbishop 
 Whitgift, that the form of church government is a 
 matter left to the discretion of each church. lie 
 speaks of it, indeed, in language which we can not 
 reconcile with the respect we feel due to the primitive 
 form of church government; but yet he was one of 
 the most able and distinguished prelates of that period. 
 
 * Defens. Tract, de div. Ministr. Ev. gradibus, &c. ch. ii. pp. 
 late fi'ora the Latin, 
 t lb. p. 18. 
 
40 THE DOCTKINE, ETC. 
 
 Witli respect to the question of order in tlie case of 
 bishops and priests, he expressly maintains that bishops 
 are superiors, " not in the office of their order ^ yet in the 
 office of their dignity ;" {Defense of the Governrrient 
 Estahlished in the Church of England^ 1587, 4to, p. 287 ;) 
 and he speaks of the Episcopal state as "a high call- 
 ing, not so much of superior dignity, as of superior 
 charge in governing of God's Church." (lb. p. 288.) 
 
 And on the subject of the Episcopal government 
 of the Cliurch — opposing the notion of the Puritans, 
 against whom he was writing, that one certain form 
 only was allowable — ^he writes thus : 
 
 " If now, on the other side, this be not a matter of necessity, but 
 such as may be varied, being but a fonn and manner of Ecclesiastical 
 government, as the observation of this feast and these fasts were of 
 accustomed order, not of necessity ; then, so long as it is used in 
 moderate sort, without tyranny or pride, nor any thing contrary to 
 the proportion of faith and godliness of life necessarily maintained 
 thereby, (for otherwise, if those fasts or this feast had been used to 
 be kept superstitiously, it had been so far forth to be condemned,) 
 there is no reason why we should break the bond of peace, and make 
 such trouble in the Church of God, to reject the government that in 
 the nature thereof is as much indifferent as the solemnizing this or that 
 day the memorial of tJie Lord^s resitrrectlon. And yet we celebrate 
 the same on the Sunday only, as those bishops of Rome at that time 
 did. "Which I hope we do without all offense, though we have no 
 precept in Scripture for it. And therefore, as Polycarpus and Ani- 
 cetus, differing in that point, notwithstanding did not violate the peace 
 and unity of the Church, so, according to Irenieus's rule, while no 
 such excessive superiority is maintained of us, as the Pope since that 
 time hath usurped, but such as we find practised in the primitive 
 Church and in the very apostles' age, we ought neither to condemn^ nor 
 speak, nor think evil of other good Churches that use another Ecclesi- 
 astical government than we do ; neither ought they to do the like of 
 ours. Not that every person in one and the same Church should use 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 41 
 
 this liberty of difference, without controhnent and restraint of the 
 superior in that Church wherein he liveth. For, though it were hiwful 
 for one Church to differ from another, being not so tied to uniformity, 
 as to unity; yet is it not meet for one Church to differ from itself; 
 but to be both in unity, and be ruled also by uniformity. Especially 
 where law binds them to obedience." (76. pp. 319, 320.) 
 
 Anotlier of the most able prelates of our Churcli, and 
 defender of it against the Puritans, was Dr. Thomas 
 Cooper, Bishop, first of Lincoln, and afterwards of 
 Winchester. In the year 1589, he published an 
 Admojiition to the People of England^ in answer to the 
 attacks of the Puritan party. And thus he defends 
 in this work the form of church government estab- 
 lished in this country : 
 
 " As touching the government of the Church of England, now de- 
 fended by the bishop •;, tliis I say : When God restored the doctrine 
 of the Gospel more sincerely and more abundantly than ever before, 
 under that good young prince. King Edward YI. ... by con- 
 sent of all the States of this land, this manner of government that 
 now is used was by law confirmed as good and godly. ... As 
 for this question of churcli government, I mean not at this time to 
 stand much on it. . . . Only this I desire^ that they will lay 
 down out of the loord of God some just proofs, and a direct com 
 mandment, that there should he in all ages and states of the Church 
 of Christ one only form of outward govermnent.''^ (Ed. Lond. 
 1847, pp. 61-63.) 
 
 So that, far from maintain'ng the necessity of the 
 Episcopal form of church government, he, on the con- 
 trary, challenges his opponents to prove that any 
 particular form of church government is necessary. 
 And he adds : 
 
 " Surely, as grave learned men as most that have written in this 
 time .... do make good proof of this proposition. Tha^ 
 
42 THE DOCTPJNE, ETC. 
 
 one form of church government is not necessary in all times and 
 places of the Church, and that their Senate or Seguiorie is not con- 
 venient under a Christian magistrate.'' 
 
 And after pointing out the different forms of 
 cliurch government that prevailed in tlie Foreign 
 Non-Episcopal Ctmrclaes, lie says : 
 
 " All those churches in which the Gospel in these days, after great 
 darkness, was first renewed, and the learned men whom God sent to 
 instruct them, I doubt not but have been directed hy the Spirit of 
 God to retain this liberty^ that in external government and other 
 outward orders, they might choose such as they thought in wisdom 
 and godliness to be most convenient for the state of their country 
 and disposition of the people. Why^ then^ should this liberty that 
 other coimtries have used under any color be wrested from us .^" {lb. 
 p. 66.) 
 
 " The reason that moveth us not to like of this platform of gov- 
 ernment is, that when we, on the one part, consider the things that 
 are required to be redressed, and on the other the state of our coun- 
 try, people, and common weal, we see evidently, that to plant those 
 things in this Church will draw with it so many and so great altera- 
 tions of the state of government and of the laws, as the attempting 
 thereof might bring rather the overthrow of the Gospel among us, 
 than the end that is desired." {lb. p.. 67.) 
 
 This of course disposes of the doctrine of our op- 
 ponents, root and branch. 
 
 We will add but one more authority for the reign 
 of Queen Elizabeth. We began with the Bishop of 
 Exeter; we will end with one of whose high au- 
 thority as the proper expounder of the doctrine of 
 our Church we have lately heard much — the Dean 
 of the Arches. We beg the attention of our oppo- 
 nents to the following statement of the very learned 
 and able Dean of the Arches in 1584, Dr. Richard 
 Cosin. It occurs in his answer, " jDublished by au- 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 43 
 
 thority," to a Puritan work, entitled An Abstract on 
 Certain Ads of Parliament. He is opposing the no- 
 tion that " a set form" of " external policy of disci- 
 pline and ceremonies" is " set down in Scripture," 
 and he says : 
 
 "Are all the churches of Denmark, Sweveland, Poland, Germany, 
 Rhetia, Vallis, Tellina, the nine cantons of Switzerland reformed, 
 with their confederates of Geneva, of France, of the Low Countries, 
 and of Scotland, in all points, either of substance or of circum- 
 stance, disciplinated alike ? Nay, they neither are, can be, nor yet 
 need so to be ; seeing it can not be proved^ that any set and exact 
 particular form thereof is recommended unto us by the word of God.''^ 
 {Answer to an Abstract, etc., 1584, 4to. p. 58.) 
 
 Such are the statements of some of the best au- 
 thorities for the doctrine of our Church in the time 
 of Queen Elizabeth, in whose reign our Articles and 
 Formularies were settled (with slight exceptions) in 
 their present form. And we now challenge the Arch- 
 bishop's assailants to produce their authorities for the 
 same period. Can they bring even one for their doc- 
 trine ? We do not believe it. And upon the testi- 
 monies of this period, be it remembered, must rest 
 the proof of the original and genuine doctrine of our 
 Eeformed Protestant Church. That there was a de- 
 clension from that doctrine afterwards, in many of 
 our divines, is freely confessed. But that proves 
 nothing. It can neither alter nor add to the doctrine 
 of our Church, as laid down in her Formularies 
 drawn up in the time of the divines from whom we 
 have been quoting. And we shall give presently a 
 series of testimonies, from their times to our own, 
 showing that their view has, in the main, been held 
 
44 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 by a large proportion of our greatest divines ever 
 since ; and ftxrtlier, that even the highest among our 
 eminent High Church, divines (as they are called) 
 have never advocated the extreme notions main- 
 tained by the Tractarians, and were not, therefore, 
 High Churchmen.'^ 
 
 The ground taken by our early divines, as shown 
 by the testimonies above given, was that the Episco- 
 pal form of church government is the best and the 
 most Scriptural, and comes recommended to us by the 
 practice of the Churcli even from the times of the 
 Apostles, but has not been authoritatively laid down 
 by Christ or his Apostles as of indispensable obliga- 
 tion, and therefore is not binding upon all Churches. 
 
 They did not oppose the early Nonconformists on 
 the ground of the absolute necessity of the Episco- 
 pal form of Church government, still less of a suc- 
 cession of bishops consecrated by bishops, to consti- 
 tute a Church. They left such notions to the Eo- 
 manists. But they found fault with them, as throw- 
 ing a well-constituted Church into confusion and dis- 
 order, as causing needless schisms and divisions, and 
 as sinfully disobeying the ordinances of the Supreme 
 Power in the State, which had established a Christ- 
 ian Church agreeable to Holy Scripture and Apos- 
 tolic practice. The high-flown claims of our Tracta- 
 rian High Churchmen to the exclusive admissihility of 
 one system of Church government, were the weapons, 
 
 * The only authorities quoted by the Bishop of Exeter as holding the doctrine 
 of exclusive validity in the reign of Elizabeth, are Hooker and Bishop Bilson. 
 The true testimony of Hooker is given above, and it can be shown from Bilson 
 that this particular question was not before his mind at all. He says that bishops 
 only can ordain in the Churcli of England. Elizabeth died in 1603. 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 45 
 
 not of tlie divines of our Church, but of their oppo- 
 nents, the Puritans. The Grenevan platform of 
 Church government was with the Puritans that 
 which alone was conformable to the word of God. 
 Every other, but especially the Prelatical, was to be 
 escliewed as an abomination. And, as to the power 
 of the civil ruler in religious matters, they spoke of 
 it — much as the Tractarians now speak of it ; except 
 that under Elizabeth they muttered in the dark what 
 under Victoria is proclaimed in the market-place."^ 
 Thus it is that extremes meet. 
 
 III. The PKACTiCE OF OUR Church for many 
 years after the Keformation entirely refutes the no- 
 tion that she holds the ordinations of the Scotch and 
 Foreign Non-Episcopal Churches to be invalid ; for, 
 until the period of the Restoralion^ ministers of those 
 Churches were admitted to the cure of souls in our 
 Church without any fresh ordination. 
 
 In 1582 (April 6) a license was granted by the 
 Vicar-General of the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 (Grindal) to a minister of the name of John Morri- 
 son, who had only Scotch orders, in the following 
 terms : 
 
 * Hence we may remark, by the way, that when we are considering the events 
 of that period, and the apparent (and to some extent real) absence of those prin- 
 ciples of toleration now so hajipily established among us, it must not be forgotten, 
 hat the object of the early Nonconformists was, not the mere toleration of their 
 own system, but the utter subversion of the system of church government then 
 established by the consent of the sovereign, the clergy, and the people, and the 
 substitution of their own in its stead. This was notoriously and confessedly their 
 aim ; and this it was which infused so much wrath and bitterness into the contro- 
 versies of the period. 
 
 [The Nonconformists after the Restoration, such as Baxter and his school, did 
 not take this ground. — Ed.] 
 
46 THE DOCTPvIXE, ETC. 
 
 " Since you, the aforesaid John Morrison, about five years past, 
 in the town of Garvet, in the county of Lothian, of the kingdom of 
 Scotland, were admitted and ordained to sacred orders and the 
 holy ministry^ by the imposition of hands, according to the laudable 
 form and rite of the Reformed Church of Scotland ; and since the 
 congregation of that county of Lothian is conformable to the ortho- 
 dox faith and sincere religion now received in this realm of England, 
 and established by public authority ; we, therefore, as much as lies 
 in us, and as by right we may, approving and ratifying the for ni of 
 your ordination and preferment (prcefectionis) done in such manner 
 aforesaid, grant to you a license and faculty, with the consent and 
 express command of the most reverend Father in Christ the Lord 
 Edmund, by the Divine providence Archbishop of Canterbury, to us 
 signified, that in such orders by you taken you may, and have power, 
 in any convenient places in and throughout the whole province of 
 Canterbury, to celebrate divine offices, to minister the sacra?nents, etc., 
 as much as in us lies, and we may de jure, and as far as the laws of 
 the kingdom do allow, etc." {Strype's Life of Grindal, Bk. 2, c. xiii. 
 p. 271 ; or Oxf ed. p. 402.) 
 
 To this we need only add the testimony of Bishop 
 Cosin, confessedly (as the phrase goes) a High Chtuch.- 
 man. He says, in an admirable letter on this subject, 
 written from Paris, Feb. 7, 1650, from which we 
 shall presently give a large extract : 
 
 " Therefore, if at any time a minister so ordained in these French 
 Churches came to incorporate himself in ours, and to receive a pub- 
 lic charge or cure of souls among us in the Church of England, (as I 
 have known some of them to have so done of late, and can instance in 
 many other before my Xm\c,)our bishops did notreordain him before 
 they admitted him to his charge, as they must have done, if his former 
 ordination here in France had been void. Nor did our laws require 
 
 MORE OF HIM THAN TO DECLARE HIS PUBLIC CONSENT TO THE RELIGION 
 RECEIVED AMONGST US, AND TO SUBSCRIBE THE ARTICLES ESTABLISHED." 
 
 (Letter to Mr. Cordel, in Basire's "Account of Bishop Cosin," an- 
 nexed to his "Funeral Sermon;" and also in Bishop Fleetwood's 
 Judgment of the Church of England in the case of Lay Baptism, 
 2d ed. Lond. 1*712, p. 52.) 
 
THE DOCTlllNE, ETC. 47 
 
 And the same testimony is borne bv Bishop Fleet- 
 wood, who says that this was " certainly her practice 
 [that is, of our Church] during the reigns of King 
 James and King Charles I. and to the year 1661. 
 We had many ministers from Scotland, from France, 
 and the Low Countries, who were ordained by pres- 
 byters only, and not bishops, and they were insti- 
 tuted into benefices with cure . . . and yet were 
 never reordained, but only subscribed the Articles." 
 {Judgm. of Ghurch of Eng. in case of Lay Baptism^ 
 1712. 8vo. pt. ii. Worhs^ p. 552.) 
 
 If these cases do not prove, that at least our 
 Church has never disowned the validity of the ordi- 
 nations of the Scotch and Foreign Non-Episcopal 
 Churches, and that her practice till the Eestoration 
 was to recognize their validity, nothing would do so. 
 For Dr. Cosin, who must have been well acquainted 
 with the matter, (having filled important posts in the 
 Church since the year 1616, and been librarian to 
 Bishop Overal, and domestic chaplain to Bishop 
 Neale,) speaks of it, not as a custom with some only, 
 but as the practice of "the bishops" generally, and 
 sanctioned by the law. 
 
 The last sentence in the extract from Dr. Cosin, no 
 doubt refers to the Act 13 Eliz. c. 12, in which it 
 was enacted, that any professing to be a priest or 
 minister of God's word and sacraments, who had been 
 ordained by any other form than that authorized by 
 Edward VI. and Quesn Elizabeth, should be called 
 upon to. declare his assent and subscribe to the Arti- 
 cles of religion. The parties more particularly in the 
 
48 THE DOCTRIXE, ETC. 
 
 eye of tlie framers of the Act were probably those 
 ordained by the Romish form, but the application of 
 the clause was of course general. 
 
 True, as we have already observed, after the Ee- 
 storation this was altered. The Act of Uniformity 
 13, 14 Car. II. c. 4 §§ 13, 14, requires that all admit- 
 ted to any '' ecclesiastical promotion or dignity what- 
 soever" in our Church, or to administer the Lord's 
 Supper, should have had " Episcopal ordination." 
 And a clause of a similar kind was added in the 
 Preface to the Ordination Services ; the words, " or 
 hath had formerly Episcopal consecration or ordina- 
 tion," being inserted at that time. 
 
 Bat this could not affect the doctrine of our 
 Church as previously laid down in the Articles. The 
 Article declaring the doctrine of our Church on the 
 subject of admission to the ministerial office remained 
 the same as it was when ministers of the Foreign 
 Non-Episcopal Churches were freely permitted to 
 minister in our churches. But the Episcopal form 
 of church government being established in our 
 Church, it was very reasonably required by the Act, 
 that all who held any " promotion" in it should have 
 received Episcopal ordination, and this especially at 
 a time when the benefices of the Church had been 
 filled by men attached to the Presbyterian form of 
 church government, and the Episcopalian ministers 
 ejected from them. The state of things at the time 
 shows the object which the Act had in view, as no 
 attempt had been made previouly to get such a law 
 passed against the admission of ministers of Non- 
 Episcopal Churches. And in the very next section 
 
THE DOCTKINE, ETC. 49 
 
 of the Act (§ 15) we find a recognition of those com- 
 munities as " the Foreign Keformed Churches." 
 The fact that our Church requires all who hold office 
 in her communion to be ordained according to that 
 form of church government which she has chosen to 
 follow, proves nothing as to her doctrine on the ab- 
 stract question of the validity of the Orders of Kon- 
 Episcopal Churches. 
 
 Once more ; if it were the case that our Church 
 held all but Episcopal ordinations to be invalid, and 
 that only those who have been ordained by bishops 
 are entitled to preach the word and administer both 
 the sacraments, the whole Bench of Bishops have 
 been for more than a century, if not at the present 
 moment, involved in the guilt of acting directly con- 
 trary to the doctrine of the Church ; for the mission- 
 aries sent out as ordained ministers by the Society 
 for the Propagation of the Gospel, which is under the 
 especial direction of the Bench of Bishops, used to be 
 for the most part only in Lutheran orders ; and if 
 the practice has been given up, its discontinuance 
 must be of very recent date. 
 
 On these grounds, then, namely, the witness of our 
 early divines, the statements of our Formularies, and 
 the practice of our Church, we maintain, without 
 hesitation, that our Church does not hold the doctrine 
 of the exclusive validity of Episcopal Orders. 
 
 We admit that, in that great alteration that gradu- 
 ally took place subsequently to the reign of Eliza- 
 beth, in the tone of the doctrine practically held in 
 our Church by many of her divines, there was a 
 great change on this point as well as others. 
 
50 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 We find Lord Bacon complaining, just at the close 
 of the reign of Elizabeth, that ,some of the clergy 
 denied the validity of the Orders conferred in the 
 Foreign Non-Episcopal Churches. He says : *' Some 
 indiscreet persons have been bold in open preaching 
 to use dishonorable and derogatory speech and cen- 
 sure of the Churches abroad ; and that so far, as 
 as some of our men, as I have heard, ordained in 
 foreign parts, have been pronounced to be no law- 
 ful ministers." {Advertisement touch, the Controv. of 
 the Church of Eng. ; Works, ii. 514, ed. 1819.) 
 
 This is another proof that men so ordained were 
 allowed by public authority to minister in our 
 Church ; and also, no doubt, a proof that there had 
 then arisen a school of divines among us that denied 
 the validity of their Orders. But whatever might 
 be the case with some hot-headed men in our 
 Church, we do not find the more eminent divines even 
 of that new school taking such ground. The utmost 
 length to which they go, is to leave the question of 
 the validity of such ordinations doubtful, and decline 
 the determination of it ; always, as far as we can re- 
 collect, protesting against their having any notion of 
 denying to the Foreign Non-Episcopal Churches the 
 character and essential privileges of Churches of 
 Christ, however imperfectly constituted they might 
 consider them to be. 
 
 Bishop Andrews, for instance, might perhaps have 
 felt a difficulty with respect to much that our earlier 
 divines had written upon the subject; but, neverthe- 
 ess, he says, when speaking on the subject of the 
 
THE DOCTKIIS^E, ETC. 51 
 
 proper form of government for the Churcli, in his 
 Letters, in 1618, to Du Moulin: 
 
 " And yet, though our government be by Divine right, it follows 
 not, either that there is ' no salvation,' or that ' a Church can not 
 stand without it.' He must needs be stone blind, that sees not 
 Churches standing without it : he must needs be made of iron, and 
 hard-hearted, that denies them salvation. We are not made of that 
 metal ; we are none of those ironsides ; we put a wide difference be- 
 twixt them. Somewhat may be wanting that is of Divine right, (at 
 least in the external government,) and yet salvation may be had. 
 . . . . This is not to damn any thing, to prefer a better tJiing 
 before it : this is not to damn your Church, to recall it to another 
 form, that all antiquity was better pleased with, that is, to ours : and 
 this, when God shall grant the opportunity, and your estate may 
 Dear it." {Second Lett, to JDu Moulin. See Wordsw. Christ. Instit. 
 vol. iii. p. 239.) 
 
 After liim, Arclibishop Bramliall took the highest 
 ground among, the eminent divines of that day in 
 favor of Episcopacy ; but, nevertheless, was far from 
 pronouncing all but Episcopal Orders invalid. 
 Writing, in 1643, against the Separatists, (as the Dis- 
 senters were then called,) he says : 
 
 " In a diiference of ways, every pious and peaceable Christian, out 
 of his discretion and care of his own salvation, will inquire which is 
 * via tutissima' — ' the safest way.' .... And seeing there is 
 required to the essence of a Church — first, a pastor; secondly, a 
 flock ; thirdly, a subordination of this flock to this pastor — where wg 
 are not sure that there is right ordination, what assurance have we 
 that there is a Church ? [But then he immediately adds] I write not 
 this to prejudge our neighbor Churches. I dare not limit the extra- 
 ordinary operation of God's Spirit, where ordinary means are want- 
 ing without the default of the persons. He gave His people manna 
 for food whilst they were in the wilderness. Necessity is a strong 
 plea. Many Protestant Churches lived under kings and bishops of 
 another communion ; others had particular reasons why they could 
 
52 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 not continue or introduce bishops; but it is not so ivith us. 
 . . . . But the chief reason is, because I do not make this way 
 
 TO BE SIMPLY NECESSARY, BUT ONLY SHOW WHAT IS SAFEST, whcrC SO 
 
 many Christians are of another mind. I know that there is great dif' 
 ference between a valid and a regular ordination ; and what some 
 choice divines do write of case of necessity, and for my part am apt 
 to beUeve that God looks upon His people in mercy, with all their 
 prejudices ; and that there is a great latitude left to particular 
 churches in the constitution of their ecclesiastical regiment, accord- 
 ing to the exigence of time, and place, and persons, so as order 
 and his own institution be observed." {Serpent-Salve^ § 25. Works^ 
 Oxf ed. vol. iii. pp. 475, 4*76.) 
 
 Again, in another subsequent work, (written about 
 1659,) lie writes : 
 
 " I can not assent to his minor proposition, that either all or any 
 considerable part of the Episcopal divines in England do unchurch 
 either all or the most part of the Protestant Churches. Ko 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 Swed- 
 ish, Danish, Bohemian Churches, and many other Churches in Po- 
 lonia, Hungaria, and those parts of the world which have an ordi- 
 nary 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 confes- 
 sions, 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 the most part of the Protestant Churches,' 
 that, being all put together, they amount not to so great a proportion 
 as the Britannic Churches alone. And if one secluded out of them 
 all those who want an ordinary succession without their own faults, 
 out of invincible ignorance of necessity, and all those who desire to 
 have an ordinary succession, 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 
 
r.^'j^: 
 
 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. ^*^^ ^53 
 
 V ^^^^" 
 upon both ears. Episcopal divines do not deny those ^Churches to 
 he true Churches wherein salvation may bs had. We advise t/hejtHj^^as 
 it is our duty, to be circumspect for themselves, and not to put it to 
 more question, whetlier 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 labor under invincible necessity. . . . Episcopal divines 
 will readily subscribe to the determination of the learned Bishop of 
 Winchester [Andrews] in his Answer to the Second Epistle of Moli- 
 nce.us [quoting the passage we have given above.] This mistake 
 proceedeth from not distinguishing between the true nature and es- 
 sence of a Church, which we do readily grant them^ and the integrity 
 and perfection of a Church, which we can not grant them without 
 swerving from the judgment of the Catholic Church." ( Vindlc. of 
 himself and the Episcopal Clergy^ c. 3 ; WorTcs^ vol. iii. pp. 517, 
 518. See also his Replication to the Bishop of Ghalcedon^ Answ. to 
 Pref § 1 ; Works, iii., 25, 26 ; and c. 1, § 2. lb. 69, 70.) 
 
 And here we must not omit to notice, in passing, 
 (what this last extract indicates, and is fully con- 
 firmed elsewhere in his Worhs^) that there is another 
 material difference in his views from those of our 
 modern Tractarians, namely, that what he specially 
 contends for, is a succession of pastors, not necessa- 
 rily bishops consecrated hy bishops^ and that out of 
 these pastors one should be appointed as president 
 over the rest ; and, therefore, he speaks favorably of 
 the Lutheran Churches. He says, elsewhere, ex- 
 pressly, of " most" of the Protestant Churches " in 
 High Germany," ^' all these have their bishops or su- 
 perintendents, ivhich is all' one f . . . "three 
 parts of four of the Protestant Churches have either 
 bishops or superintendents, which is alloneJ^ {Sirpent- 
 Salvs; Worhs^ iii. 480, 485.) He does not, therefore, 
 insist so much upon a succession of bishops conse- 
 
54: THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 crated by bishops, as upon the adoption of the Epis- 
 copal form of government. But this by the way. 
 
 We may judge, then, from these passages of 
 Bishop Andrews and Archbishop Bramhall, what 
 would have been the feelings of the most eminent 
 even of our High Church divines respecting the lan- 
 guage adopted on this subject by the Tractarian 
 school. 
 
 We will now add a few of the numerous testimo- 
 nies that could be given from the writings of our 
 most celebrated divines, since the close of Queen 
 Elizabeth's reign to the present day, showing the 
 light in which they regarded the Orders of the Scotch 
 and Foreign Non-Episcopal Churches. 
 
 Of Archbishop Bancroft's opinion we may form 
 some judgment from the countenance he gave to the 
 work of his chaplain, Eogers, on the XXXIX. Arti- 
 cles, already quoted. But, indirectly, we have a still 
 more express testimony of his judgment on the sub- 
 ject, as well as of several of his brother bishops, in 
 the following passage in Archbishop Spotiswood's 
 History of Scotland, The Archbishop relates that 
 when, in 1610, a regular episcopate was about to be 
 conferred upon the Church of Scotland, by the con- 
 secration of three Scottish clergymen (of whom 
 Spotiswood himself was one) as bishops of that 
 Church, by the Bishops of London, Ely, and Bath, 
 at the chapel of London- House : 
 
 "A question in the mean time was moved by Dr. Andrews, 
 Bishop of Ely, touching the consecration of the Scottish bishops, 
 who, as he said, ' must first be ordained presbyters as having re- 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 55 
 
 ceived no ordination from a bishop.' The Archbishop of Canter, 
 bury, Dr. Bancroft, who was by, maintained, ' that thereof there 
 was no necessity, seeing where bishops could not be had, the ordina- 
 tion given by the presbyters must be esteemed lawful ; otherwise, 
 that it might be doubted if there were any lawful vocation in most 
 of the Reformed Churches.' This applauded to by the other 
 bishops, Ely acquiesced ; and at the day and in the place appointed 
 the three Scottish bishops were consecrated." {Spotistoood's Hist, 
 of Church and State of Scotland, 4th ed. 16'77, fol. p. 614.) 
 
 Next, let US hear Arclibishop Usher's judgment, 
 given at the latter end of his life : 
 
 *' I have ever declared my opinion to be, that episcopus ef presby- 
 ter gradu tantmn differunt non ordine, and consequently that in 
 places where bishops can not be had, the ordination by presbyters 
 standeth valid ; yet, on the other side, holding as I do that a bishop 
 hath superiority in degree above a presbyter, you may easily judge 
 that the ordination made by such presbyters as have severed them- 
 selves from those bishops unto whom they had sworn canonical 
 obedience, can not possibly, by me, be excused from being schisraa- 
 tical. And howsoever I must needs think that the Churches which 
 have no bishops are thereby become very much defective in their 
 government, and that the Churches in France, who living under a 
 Popish power, can not do what they would, are more excusable in 
 this defect than the Lrow Countries, that live under a free State, yet, 
 for the testifying my communion with these Churches, (which I do 
 love and honor as true members of the Church universal,) I do pro- 
 fess that, with like affection, I should receive the blessed sacrament 
 at the hands of the Dutch ministers, if I were in Holland, as I 
 should do at the hands of the French ministers if I were in Charen- 
 tone." {^Judgment of tfie late Archbishop of Armagh^ etc. By N. 
 Bernard. Lond. 1657, 8vo, pp. 125-12V.) 
 
 No one probably will question the high yalue 
 which Bishop Hall had for Episcopacy, manifested in 
 his Treatise on the subject Yet, in a Discourse ad- 
 dressed to the Clergy of his Diocese as Bishop of 
 
66 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 Norwich, when speaking of the differences between 
 the Church of England and the Non-Episcopal 
 Churches abroad, he writes thus : 
 
 " Blessed be God, there is no difference in any essential matter be- 
 twixt the Church of England and her sisters of the Reformation. 
 We accord in every point of Christian doctrine without the least va- 
 riation ; their public Confessions and ours are sufficient convictions 
 to the world of our full and absolute agreement. The only differ- 
 ence is, in the form of outward administration ; wherein also we 
 are so far agreed, as that we all profess this form not to he essential 
 to the being of a Churchy though much importing the well or better 
 being of it, according to our several apprehensions thereof; and 
 that we do all retain a reverence and loving opinion of each other in 
 our own several ways ; not seeing any reason why so poor a diversity 
 should work any alienation of affection in us one towards another." 
 (7%e Peacemaker- ^ § 6, published in 1647. WorUs^ by Pratt, vol. viii. 
 p. 56.) 
 
 So also our learned Bishop Davenant : 
 
 " In a disordered Church, where all the bishops have fallen into 
 heresy or idolatry, where they have refused to ordain orthodox min- 
 isters, where they have considered those only who are associates of 
 their faction and error to be worthy of holy orders, if orthodox 
 presbyters (for the preservation of the Church) are compelled to or- 
 dain other presbyters, I could not venture to pronounce such ordi- 
 nations useless and invalid." And this he proceeds to apply to the 
 case of certain Protestant Churches. {Determ. qucest^ etc. Cant. 
 16S4, fol., q. 42, p. 191.) 
 
 And in his Letter to Mr. Dury, on promoting 
 peace among the Protestant Churches, he says : 
 
 " Moreover, I doubt not at all but that the Saxon and Helvetian 
 Churches, and others which either consent with these, or those, ac- 
 knowledge themselves to have, and to desire to retain, brotherly 
 communion with the English, Scottish, Irish, and other Foreign Re- 
 formed Churches. Surely, as concerning us, although we consent 
 
THE D0CTEII!^E, ETC. 67 
 
 not with them in all points and title of controversial divinity, yet we 
 acknowledge them brethren in Christ, and protest ourselves to have a 
 brotherly and holy communion with them." (Prefixed to his Exhort. 
 to broth, comm. betwixt the Protestant Churches. Lond. 1641. 12mo, 
 p. 33. See also the Treatise following it.) 
 
 One of the most eminent and able divines of our 
 Church was Bishop Morton, of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, bishop successively of Chester, Litchfield, and 
 Durham. And thus he speaks : 
 
 " Where the bishops degenerate into wolves, there the presb3i;ers 
 regain their ancient right of ordaining, (consecrandi.) I call it an. 
 cient, because that the Episcopate and the Presbyterate are, jure 
 divino^ the same, is laid down by Marsilius, Gratian, etc." {Apol. 
 Cathol. pt. 1, lib. 1, c. 21. Ed. 2d, Lond. 1606, 8vo, p. '74.) 
 
 Another able prelate of our Church at this period, 
 and a strenuous defender of Episcopacy, was Dr. 
 George Downham. But in a sermon on this subject, 
 after having undertaken to show the jus divinum of 
 Episcopacy in the sense of being an apostolical insti- 
 tution, he guards himself against being supposed to 
 take the ground which the Puritans took in behalf 
 of their platform of church government, namely, that 
 because it was to be found in the Scriptures, there- 
 fore it was "perpetually and unchangeably neces- 
 sary in all Churches," remarking : 
 
 " Although we be well assured that the form of government by 
 bishops is the best, as having not only the warrant of Scripture for 
 the first institution, but also the perpetual practice of the Church 
 from the Apostles' time to our age for the continuance of it ; not- 
 withstanding, we doubt not, but where this may not be had, others 
 may be admitted; neither do we deny but that silver is good, 
 though gold be better." (Serm at Consecr. of JBp. of Bath and 
 Wells. 1608, 4to, p. 95.) 
 
 8^ 
 
68 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 And ill his Defence of this sermon, referring to this 
 passage, he says : 
 
 " Which objection and answer I inserted of purpose into the ser- 
 mon, to preserve the credit of those Reformed Churches where the 
 Presbyterian discipline is established, and that they might not be ex- 
 posed or left naked to the obloquies of the Papists," {fief, of Serm. 
 etc. 1611, 4to, lib. 4, c. 7, pp. 145, 146.) 
 
 And expressly, on the point of ordination, he 
 
 says : 
 
 "Thus have I reported the judgment of the ancient Church as. 
 cribing the ordinary right of ordination to bishops, but yet, not so 
 appropriating it unto them as that extraordinarily and in case of 
 necessity it might not be lawful for presbyters to ordain ; and much 
 less teaching (as the Papists imagine) absolutely a nullity in the ordi- 
 nation which is not performed by a bishop. For suppose a Church 
 (the state of some Reformed Churches) either altogether destitute 
 of a bishop, or pestered with such as the Popish prelates are, 
 heretical and idolatrous, by whom no orthodoxal ministers might 
 hope to be ordained, we need not doubt but that the ancient 
 Fathers would, in such a case of necessity, have allowed ordination 
 without a bishop, though not as regular, according to the rules of 
 ordinary church government, yet as effectual and as justifiable in 
 the want of a bishop." {Serm. pp. 42, 43.) 
 
 Lord Bacon, though a layman, may fairly claim a 
 place among our witnesses. We have already no- 
 ticed his rebuke of some of the hot spirits of his day 
 for their language on the subject ; but let us hear the 
 impartial testimony of such a mind as his on the 
 general question : 
 
 "For the second point, that there should be but one form of dis- 
 cipline in all Churches, and that imposed by necessity of a com- 
 mandment and prescript out of the word of God ; it is a matter 
 volumes have been compiled of, and therefore can not receive a 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 59 
 
 brief redargution. I, for my part, do confess, that in revolving the 
 Scriptures, I could never find any such thing : but that God had left 
 the like liberty to the Church government, as he had done to the 
 civil government ; to be varied according to time, and place, and ac- 
 cidents, which nevertheless his high and divine providence doth 
 order and dispose. For all civil governments are restrained from 
 God unto the general grounds of justice and manners; but the 
 policies and forms of them are left free : so that monarchies and 
 kingdoms, senates and seignories, popular states and communalties, 
 are lawful, and where they are planted ought to be maintained invi- 
 olate. So likewise in church matters, the substance of doctrine is 
 immutable ; and so are the general rules of government ; but for 
 rites and ceremonies, and for the particular hierarchies, policies, and 
 discipline of churches, they be left at large." Cert. Consid, touch- 
 ing Pacif. of Church; Works, ed. 1819, vol. ii. pp. 529, 530.) 
 
 Our next witness shall be one who was confessedly 
 one of the most able divines of his time, and ranks 
 high, we believe, with our opponents ; we mean, 
 Dean Field. 
 
 Discussing the question, '' whether the power of 
 ordination be so essentially annexed to the order of 
 bishops, that none but bishops may in any case or- 
 dain," he points out what is ''implied in the calling 
 of ecclesiastical ministers," and that the bishop of a 
 church is only that presbyter that is appointed to be 
 " specially pastor of the place, who for distinction 
 sake is named a bishop, to whom an eminent and 
 peerless power is given for the avoiding of schisms 
 and factions ;" and maintains that 'Hhe power of ec- 
 clesiastical or sacred order" '' is equal and the same 
 in all those whom we call presbyters, that is, fatherly 
 guides of God's Church and people ; and that only 
 for order's sake, and the preservation of peace, there 
 
60 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 is a limitation of the use and exercise of the same ; 
 adding : 
 
 " Hereunto agree all the best learned amongst the Romanists 
 themselves, freely confessing that that wherein a bishop exeelleth a 
 presbyter is not a distinct and higher order or power of order ^ hut a 
 kind of dignity and office or employment only.'''' *' Hence it foUow- 
 eth, that many things which in some cases presbyters may lawfully 
 do, are peculiarly reserved unto bishops, as Hierome noteth, rather 
 for the honor of their ministry than the necessity of any law. 
 And, therefore, we read, that presbyters, in some places, and at 
 some times, did impose hands and confirm such as were baptized 
 which, when Gregory, bishop of Rome, would wholly have forbid- 
 den, there was so great exception taken to him for it, that he left it 
 free again. And who knoweth not, that all presbyters, in cases of 
 necessity, may absolve and reconcile penitents, a thing in ordinary 
 course appropriated unto bishops ? And whynot^ hythe same reason^ 
 ordain presbyters and deacons in cases of like necessity ? For see- 
 ing the cause why they are forbidden to do these acts, is, because to 
 bishops ordinarily the care of all churches is committed, and to them 
 in all reason the ordination of such as must serve in the Church per- 
 taineth that have the chief care of the Church, and have churches 
 wherein to employ them ; which only bishops have as long as they 
 retain their standing, and not presbyters, being but assistants to 
 bishops in their churches ; if they become enemies to God and true 
 religion, in case of such necessity, as the care and government of 
 the Church is devolved to the presbyters remaining Catholic and be- 
 ing of a better spirit, so the duty of ordaining such cls are to assist 
 or succeed them in the work of the ministry pertains to them like- 
 wise.'''' ..." Surely, the best learned in the Church of Rome 
 in former times durst not pronounce all ordinations of this nature to 
 be void. For not only Armachanus, a very learned and worthy 
 bishop, but as it appeareth by Alexander of Hales, many learned 
 men in his time, and before, were of opinion that, in some cases, 
 and at some times, presbyters may give orders, and that their ordi- 
 nations are of force ; though to do so, not being urged by extreme 
 necessity, can not be excused from over-great boldness and presump- 
 tion." {Of the Church, ed. 1628; lib. 3, c. 39, pp. 155-157. See 
 also ib. lib. 5, c. 27, p. 500.) 
 
THE DOCTRIlNrE, ETC. 61 
 
 Anotlier most important witness on this subject is 
 Archdeacon Francis Mason, the eminent defender of 
 the Episcopate of the English Church against the 
 Komanists. In 1641, a tract written by him was 
 published, vindicating " the validity of the ordination 
 of the TYiinisters of the Reformed Churches beyond the 
 seas f^ being some papers originally intended by 
 him to form part of his celebrated Vindication of 
 the Church of England^ but for some reason omitted. 
 Its publication in this way has caused some (especi- 
 ally Mason's translator, Lindsay,) to cast a suspicion 
 upon its genuineness ; but not only is it spoken of as 
 his by his contemporary, Dr. Bernard, Usher's chap- 
 lain, (Judgment of the late Archbishop of Armagh^ 
 1657, p. 133,) and first appeared hi a Collection of 
 Tracts of which Usher was partly the author, but in a 
 letter of Dr. Ward (then Master of Sidney College, 
 Cambridge) to Usher, written shortly after the pub- 
 lication of the first edition of Mason's work in 1613, 
 we find the following passages : "I pray you inform 
 me, what the specialties are which are omitted in Mr. 
 Mason's book. I would only know the heads." 
 And then returning to the subject at the close of the 
 letter, he says; " I had no leisure when I was with 
 you to inquire how Mr. Mason doth warrant the vo- 
 cation and ordination of the ministers of the Ee- 
 formed Churches in Foreign parts." {Parr^s Life 
 and Letters of Usher ^ 1686, foL, p. 31.) 
 
 Now in this tract Mason says : 
 
 The bishop " in his consecration receiveth a sacred office, an 
 eminency, a jurisdiction, a dignity, a degree of Ecclesiastical pre- 
 eminence." " He hath no higher degree in respect of intentions or 
 
62 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 extension of the cliaracter ; but he hath a higher degree, that is, a 
 more excellent place in respect of authority and jurisdiction in 
 spiritual regiment. Wherefor seeing a presbyter is equal to a bishop 
 171 the power of order, he hath equally intrinsical power to give or- 
 dersr (Pp. 160, 261.) 
 
 The speaker for the Komanist, (for it is written in 
 the form of a dialogue,) making the precise objection 
 of the Tractarians, observes, " the preeminence of 
 bishops is jure divino ,'' to which Orthodox answers 
 thus : 
 
 "First, if you mean by jure divino^ that which is according to the 
 Scripture, then the preeminence of bishops is jure divino; for it 
 hath been already proved to be according to the Scripture. Se- 
 condly, if by jure divino you mean the ordinance of God, in this 
 sense also it may be said to be jure divino. For it is an ordinance 
 of the apostle, whereunto they were directed by God's Spirit, even 
 by the spirit of prophecy, and consequently the ordinance of God. 
 But if by jure divino, you understand a law and commandment of 
 God, binding all Christian Churches, universally, perpetually, un- 
 changeably, and with such absolute necessity, that no other form of 
 regiment may in any case be admitted ; in this sense neither may we 
 grant it, nor yet can you prove it, to be jure divino.^"* *' The apos- 
 tles, in their lifetime, ordained many bishops, and left a fair pattern 
 to posterity. The Church, following the commodiousness thereof, 
 embraced it in all ages through the Christian world." (lb. p. 163.) 
 
 The Archdeacon then proceeds to defend the va- 
 lidity of the ordinations in the Foreign Eeformed 
 Churches, first on the ground of necessity ; to which 
 the objector, after some discussion, ultimately re- 
 plies : " Suppose that ordination might be devolved 
 to presbyters in case of necessity ; yet the necessity 
 ceasing, such extraordinary courses should likewise 
 cease. Why, then, do they continue their former 
 practice? Why do they not now seek to receive 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 63 
 
 their orders from Protestant bishops ?" To which 
 Orthodox replies, " The Churches of Germany need 
 not to seeh to foreign bishops^ because they have superin- 
 tendents or bishops among themselves. And as for other 
 places which embrace the discipline of Geneva j they also 
 have bishops in effect ;" which he proceeds to prove by 
 showing that they have among them those who have 
 "the substance of the office." And he concludes: 
 " Thus much concerning the ministers of other Ee- 
 formed Churches, wherein, if you will not believe us 
 disputing for the lawfulness of their calling^ yet you 
 must give us leave to believe God Himself from 
 heaven approving their ministry by pouring down a 
 blessing upon their labors." {lb. pp. 173-176.) 
 
 Another eminent divine of our Church was Dr. 
 Crakanthorp ; and he likewise justifies the Foreign 
 Non-Episcopal Churches in this matter on the ground 
 of necessity ; and as it respects their not taking the 
 first opportunity of restoring the Episcopal form of 
 government, only remarks : 
 
 "Optamus quidem ex anirao, ut cum lex ilia necessitatis jam 
 ablata sit, vclint et omncs Ecclesiae ad priscum et ab universali Ec- 
 clesia constantissime observatura ordinem, et ordinandi modum re- 
 dire ; clavesque suas Episcopis restituant : sed optamus, non cogimus. 
 Jus ct impenum in eoricm Eccleslas nee hahemus oios, nee desidera- 
 mus.'^ {Defens. Eccles. Anglic. London, 1625, 4to. c. 41, § 12, 
 pp. 246, 24Y.) 
 
 We must not forget also to notice the similar testi- 
 mony of the learned Dr. Willet, in his Synopsis 
 Papismi^ of which the fifth edition was published in 
 1634, under the authority of the king's letters patent ; 
 
64 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 but we must content ourselves with referring our 
 readers to the work. (See bth Gontrov. q. 3, p. 276.) 
 But one of the most important testimonies as to 
 the doctrine of our Church and her most able divines 
 on this subject, is that of Bishop Cosin, to which we 
 have already referred. It occurs in a letter written 
 from Paris in 1650 to a Mr. Cordel, who scrupled to 
 communicate with the French Protestants. To the 
 objection of Mr. Cordel, that ^'they have no priests/' 
 Dr. Cosin thus replies : 
 
 *' Though we may safely say and maintain it, that their ministers 
 are not so duly and rightly ordained as they should be by those pre- 
 lates and bishops of the Church who since the apostles' time have 
 only had the ordinary power and authority to make and constitute a 
 priest, yet tlmt, by reason of this defect, there is a total nullity in 
 their ordination, or that they he therefore no priests or ministers of 
 the Church at all, because they are ordained by those only who are no 
 more but priests and ministers among them ; for my part, I would he 
 loath to affirm and determine it against them. And these are my 
 reasons. First: I conceive that the power of ordination was re- 
 strained to bishops rather by apostolical practice and the perpetual 
 custom and canons of the Church, than by any absolute precept that 
 either Christ or His apostles gave about it. Nor can I yet meet with 
 any convincing argument to set it upon a more high and divine insti- 
 tution. From which customs and laws of the Universal Church 
 (therein following the example of the apostles) though I reckon it to 
 be a great presumption and fault for any particular Church to recede, 
 and may truly say that fieri non oportuit, (when the college of mere 
 presbyters shall ordain and make a priest,) yet I can not so peremp- 
 torily say, that factum non valet^ and pjro7iounce the ordination to 
 be utterly void. For as in the case of baptism, we take just excep- 
 tion against a layman or a woman that presumes to give it, and may 
 as justly punish them by the censures of the Church wherein they 
 live, for taking upon them to do that office, which was never com- 
 mitted unto them ; yet, if once they have done it, we make not their 
 act and administration of baptism void ; nor presume we to iterate 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 65 
 
 the sacrament after them ; so may it well he in the case of ordination 
 and the ministers of the Reformed Congregations in France ; who 
 are liable to give an account both to God and His Church in general 
 for taking upon them to exercise that power which bj the perpetual 
 practice and laws of His Church they were never permitted to exer- 
 cise, and may justly be faulted for it, both by the verdict of all 
 others who are members of the Catholic Church, (as we are that ad- 
 here to the laws of it more strictly and peaceably than they do,) and 
 by the censures of a lawful meeting or general council in that 
 Church, which at any time shall come to have authority over them. 
 And yet all this while, the act which they do, though it be disorderly 
 done, and the ordinations which they make, though they make them 
 unlawfully, shall not he altogether null and invalid, no more than 
 the act of .baptizing before mentioned, or the act of consecrating 
 and administering the Eucharist by a priest that is suspended and re- 
 strained from exercising his power and office in the Church. 
 Therefore, if at any time a minister so ordained in these French 
 Churches came to incorporate himself in ours, and to receive, a pub- 
 lic charge or cure of souls among us in the Church of England, (as I 
 have known some of them to have so done of late, and can instance 
 in many other before my time,) our bishops did not reordain him be- 
 fore they admitted him to his charge, as they must have done, if his 
 former ordination here in France had been void. Nor did our laws 
 require more of him than to declare his public consent to the reli- 
 gion received amongst us, and to subscribe the Articles established. 
 And I love not to be herein more wise or harder than our own 
 Church is, which, because it hath never publicly condemned and pro- 
 nounced the ordinations of the other Reformed Churches to be void, 
 as it doth not those of the unreformed Churches, neither among the 
 Papists, (though T hear that the ministers here in France and Geneva 
 use so to do, who will not admit a Papist priest himself to exercise 
 the office of a minister among them till they have reordained him ;) 
 for my part, as to that particular, / dare not take upon me to con- 
 demn or determine a nullity of their own ordiiiations against them ; 
 though in the interim I take it to be utterly a fault among them, and 
 a great presumption, deserving a great censure to be inflicted on 
 them, by such a power of the Church as may, by the grace of God, 
 be at any time duly gathered together hereafter against them, as well 
 for the amendment of many other disorders and defects in their 
 
66 THE DOCTRIXE, ETC. 
 
 Church as for this particular inorderly ordination and defect of Epis- 
 copacy amongst tliem. Besides that this their boldness, presump- 
 tion, and novelty (in setting up themselves without any invincible 
 necessity that they had so to do, against the apostolical practice and 
 perpetual order of God's Church till their days) was always faulted, 
 and reserved for farther censure, in due time, which they have 
 justly merited. Secondly.* There have been both learned and emi- 
 nent men, (as well in former ages as in this, and even among the Ro- 
 man Catholics as well as Protestants,) who have held and maintained 
 it for good and passable divinity, that presbyters have the intrinsical 
 power of ordination in ache primo ; though for the avoiding of 
 schism (as St. Hierom speaks) and preserving order and discipline 
 in the Church, they have been restrained ever since the first times, 
 and still are, (but where they take a liberty to themselves that was 
 never duly given them,) from exercising their power in actu se- 
 cundo ; and, therefore, that however their act of ordaining of other 
 presbyters shall be void, according to the strictness of the canon, (in 
 regard they were universally prohibited from executing that act, and 
 breaking the order and discipline of the Church,) yet that the 
 same act shall not be simply void in the nature of the thing, in re- 
 gard that the intrinsical power remained, when the exercise of it 
 was suspended and taken from them. Of this opinion and judgment 
 in old time were St. Hierom and his followers, alleged by Gratian, 
 dist. 93 ; and of later times, the Master of the Sentences, lib. iv. 
 dist. 24 ; Bonavent,- ibid. 9, 3, art. 2 ; with other schoolmen, as Au- 
 reol. ibid. art. 2 ; and Anton, de Rosellis, De Potest. Imper. et 
 Papally part iv. c. 18 ; and in this later age, not only Armachanus, 
 in Sum. ad qucest. art. 1, 11, c. 2, 3, etc., and c. 7, Alphons. a Cas- 
 tro, (verb. Episcopus,) Mich. Medina, Be sacr. horn. orig. lib. 1, c. 
 5, among the Roman Catholics ; but likewise Cassander in Consult. 
 art. 14, besides Melancthon, Clementius, [? Chemnitius,] Gerardus, 
 and Calixtus, amongst the Protestants ; and Bishop Jewel, (Def 2, 
 p. c. 3, d. 1, etc. 9 div. 1 ;) Dr. Field, of the Church, lib. 3, c. 39 ; 
 Hooker, Eccles. Pol. lib. 3, § 3, ult., and Mason, among the divines 
 of our own Church. All which authors are of so great credit with 
 you and me, that though we are not altogether of their mind, yet we 
 
 * We have taken the liberty of making the second reason commence here, (as 
 it evidently does,) instead of at the beginning of the previous sentence. 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 67 
 
 would be loath to let the world see that we contradict them all, and 
 condemn their judgment openly ; as needs we vnicst, if we hold the 
 contrary, and say that the ministers of the Reformed French 
 Churches, for want of Episcopal ordination, have no order at all." 
 [Our readers will observe here what the view of Bishop Cosin was as 
 to the sentiments of Jewel, Hooker, Field, and Mason.] 
 
 Dr. Cosin adds several other reasons, with which, 
 however, we need not trouble our readers, except the 
 following : 
 
 " If the Church and kingdom of England have acknowledged them, 
 (as they did in admitting of them when they fled thither for refuge, 
 and placing them by public authority in divers of the most eminent 
 cities among us, without prohibition to any of our own people to go 
 and communicate with them,) why should we, that are but private 
 persons, utterly disclaim their communion in their own country ?" 
 
 And, therefore, he concludes that : 
 
 *' Considering there is no prohibition of our Church against it, {as 
 there is against our communicating with the Papists, and that well- 
 grounded upon the Scripture and will of God,) I do not see but that 
 both you, and others that are with you, may (either in case of neces- 
 sity, when you can not have the sacrament among yourselves, or in 
 regard of declaring your unity in professing the sam'e religion, which 
 you and they do) go otherwhiles to communicate reverently with 
 them of the French Church."* 
 
 Similar sentiments are expressed by him in a letter 
 published by Dr. E. Watson, (Lond. 1684, 8vo,) en- 
 titled Dr. Cosines Opinion^ when Dean of Peterborough^ 
 and in exile^ for communicating rather with Geneva than 
 Rome; and also in his last Will, inserted in the Pre- 
 face to his Regni Anglice Relig, et Guhern. Eccles. 
 Lond. 1729, 4to. 
 
 * The whole of this letter is given by Basire and Bp. Fleetwood, (as referred to 
 above.) 
 
68 THE DOCXrvIXE, ETC. 
 
 It is almost unnecessary to refer to the Irenicum 
 of Bishop Stillingfleet, (first pablished by him in 1659, 
 and a second time in 1662,) where he maintains, in a 
 long and elaborate discussion of the question, that no 
 particular form of Church government is necessary, 
 and points out that " the stoutest champions for Epis- 
 copacy" had acknowledged, "that ordination per- 
 formed by presbyters in cases of necessity is valid;" 
 "which," he adds, "doth evidently prove that Epis- 
 copal government is not founded upon any unalter- 
 able Divine right." (Pt. ii. c. 8.) 
 
 Thus also speaks Dean Sherlock: 
 
 *' I do allow Episcopacy to be an Apostolical institution, and the 
 truly ancient and catholic government of the Church, of which more 
 hereafter ; but yet in this very book I prove industriously and at 
 large, that in case of necessity, when bishops can not be had, a church 
 may be a truly catholic church, and such as we may and ought to com- 
 municate with, without bishops, in vindication of some Foreign Re- 
 formed Churches who have none ; and therefore I do not make Epis- 
 copacy so absolutely necessary to catholic communion as to unchurch 
 all churches which have it not.*' " The Church of England does not 
 deny but that, in case of necessity, the ordination of presbyters may 
 be valid." ( Yindic. of some Prot. Principles, &c., reprinted in Gib- 
 son's Preserv. vol. iii. pp. 410, 432.) 
 
 So the excellent Dr. Claget : 
 
 *' The Church of England doth not unchurch those parts of Chris- 
 tendom that hold the unity of the faith." (See Brief Disc. cone, the 
 Notes of the Church, pp. 166-169.) 
 
 Even the non-juror Archbishop Sancroft, in some 
 Admonitions issued to the clergy of his Province in 
 1688, speaks in fraternal terms of the Foreign R3- 
 formed Churches, exhorting his clergy — 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 69 
 
 ** That they warmly and most affectionately exhort them [that is, 
 *'our brethren the Protestant Dissenters"] to join with us in daily fer- 
 vent prayer to the God of peace for the universal blessed union of all 
 Reformed Churches both at home and abroad against our common ene- 
 mies ; that all they, who do confess the holy name of our dear Lord, 
 and do agree in the truth of His holy word, may also meet in one 
 holy communion, and live in perfect unity and godly love." (Z>' Oyhfs 
 Life of Sancrofi^ i. 325; or Wilk. Cone. iv. 619.) 
 
 For the sentiments of Archbisliop Wake, to the 
 same effect, our readers may consult some letters 
 (written in 1719) given in the 4:th Append, to Mo- 
 sheimJs Eccles, Hist translated by Maclaine, Cent, xviii. 
 No. xix.-xxii.; one of which is to "the pastors and 
 professors of Geneva," whom he addresses as fr aires 
 cliarissimi ; and in another (No. xix) he says : 
 
 *' Ecclesias Reformatas etsi in aliquibus a nostra Anglicana dissen- 
 tientes, libenter amplector. Optarem equidem regimen episcopale. 
 . . . . et ab iis omnibus fuisset retentum. . . . Interim absit 
 ut ego tam ferrei pectoris sim, ut ob ejusmodi defectum (sic mihi 
 absque omni invidia appellare liceat) aliquas earum a communione 
 nostra abscindendas credam ; aut, cum quibusdam fiiriosis inter nos 
 scriptoribus, eas nulla vera ac valida sacramenta habere, adeoque vix 
 Christianos esse pronuntiem." (Mosheim, by Maclaine, vol. vi. p. 
 184, ed. 1826.) And in a letter to Father Courayer, dated July 9, 
 1724, he again expresses the same sentiments. (Mosheim^ ib. p. 30, 
 Cent. xvii. § 23.) 
 
 In 1764:, we have Archbishop Seeker following 
 him in the same strain : 
 
 " Our inclination is to live in friendship with all the Protestant 
 Churches. We assist and protect those on the continent of Europe 
 as well as we are able. We show our regard to that of Scotland as 
 often as we have an opportunity." (Answ. to Mayhew, p. 68. Life 
 prefixed to Sermons^ ed. 1770, p. Ixvi.) 
 
70 THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 
 
 And, defending our Keformation, in one of Lis 
 sermons against the Komanists, he says : 
 
 " Supposing we had even acted without, and separated from, our 
 Church governors, as our Protestant brethren abroad were forced to 
 do : was there not a cause ? When the word of God was hidden 
 from men . . . when Church authority, by supporting such things 
 as these, became inconsistent with the ends for which it was estab- 
 lished, what remedy ivas there hut to throw it off and form new estab- 
 lishments ? If in these there were any irregularities, they were the faults 
 of those who forced men into them, and are of no consequence in com- 
 parison vjith the reason that made a change necessary.^' (Serm. vol. 
 vi. pp. 400, 401.) 
 
 Still more strongly speaks the late Bisliop Tom- 
 line : 
 
 " I readily acknowledge that there is no precept in the Xew Testa- 
 ment which commands that every Church should be governed by 
 bishops. No Church can exist without some government ; but though 
 there must be rules and orders for the proper discharge of the offices 
 of public worship, though there must be fixed regulations concerning 
 the appointment of ministers ; and though a subordination among 
 them is expedient in the highest degree, yet it does not follow that 
 all these things must be precisely the same in every Christian coun- 
 try ; they may vary with the other varying circumstances of human 
 society, with the extent of a country, the manners of its inhabitants, 
 the nature of its civil government, and many other peculiarities which 
 might be specified. As it has not pleased our Almighty Father to 
 prescribe any particular form of civil government for the security of 
 temporal comforts to His rational creatures, so neither has He pre- 
 scribed any particular form of ecclesiastical polity as absolutely ne- 
 cessary to the attainment of eternal happiness. ... As the 
 Scriptures do not prescribe any definite form of church government, 
 so they contain no directions concerning the establishment of a power 
 by which ministers are to be admitted to their sacred office." And 
 therefore, though he advocates Episcopal ordination as " instituted 
 by the apostles," he does not maintain it as necessary. (Expos, of 
 Art. 23, ed. 1799, pp. 396, 398.) 
 
THE DOCTRINE, ETC. 71 
 
 We clos3 tlie list with tlie testimony of our late 
 respected Primate^ Dr. Howley. 
 
 In a statement published by his authority in 1841, 
 the Foreign Protestant Non-Episcopal Churches are 
 spoken of as "the less perfectly constituted of the 
 Protestant Churches of Europe." {Statem, resp. Jeru- 
 salem Bishopric^ p. 5.) 
 
 And in 1835, a letter was addressed by the same 
 Prelate, in the name of himself and his ^^ brother bish- 
 ops'^ to "the Moderator of the Company of Pastors 
 at Geneva," expressing their ''^high respect for the 
 Protestant Churches on the Qontinent^'' and speaking of 
 the Genevan Beformation as a "noble achievement, 
 which brought light out of darkness, and rescued your 
 Church from the shackles of Papal domination and 
 the tyrannical imposition of a corrupt faith, and a 
 superstitious ritual," wrought by " illustrious men, 
 who, under the direction of Almighty God, were the 
 instruments of this happy deliverance," "an event 
 not less glorious to Geneva than conducive to the 
 success of the Keformation." The whole letter has 
 been so recently published in the public Journals, 
 that we need only give these short extracts. 
 
 Could it have been supposed, that, sixteen years 
 after, his successor in the Primacy was to be assailed 
 with a storm of vituperation, and even branded by 
 an Archdeacon of his Province as a heretic, for merely 
 saying that the Church of England does not deny 
 the validity of the Orders of such Churches ? 
 
 But in those sixteen years a new school has sprung 
 up in our Church, chiefly composed of its younger 
 members, who having formed in their own minds, 
 
72 THE DOCTKINE, ETC. 
 
 from tlieir perusal of Eomisli and Tractarian works, 
 a Procrustean standard of ecclesiastical doctrine and 
 polity, are apparently endeavoring, in the total disre- 
 gard of the manifest tenets of our Church, to force 
 upon it a position and character which its whole his- 
 tory repudiates. The right of private judgment has 
 rarely been exercised with more unbridled arrogance 
 than by those among us who professedly disown it. 
 Under the thin veil of high-sounding phrases, "the 
 Church," "Catholic consent," and such like, the Eom- 
 ish dreams of hot-headed or prejudiced, and often 
 very ill-informed individuals, are urged upon the 
 public as indubitable verities, which it were a sin to 
 suppose that our Church does not hold; and by which 
 all who differ from them, from the highest to the 
 lowest, are to be judged. "We say deliberately, even 
 as to the heads of the party, very ill-informed indi- 
 viduals ; and on this ground, that whatever may be 
 their learning in other respects, (and it is too often to 
 be seen principally in the trifles of the Church cere- 
 monial,) they seem rather to avoid than examine those 
 sources of information which best show what the 
 doctrine of our Church really is, as was abundantly 
 proved in the Gorham case ; and palm upon our 
 Church views and doctrines which they have gathered 
 by their private judgment from antiquity. 
 
 But our space warns us that we must restrain our 
 pen. We deeply regret that our Church should be 
 continually suffering from these internal dissensions. 
 But we fear that, if she is still to remain a witness for 
 Protestant truth, a conflict awaits her, both from in- 
 ternal and external foes, more severe than any she 
 
THE DOCTKINE, ETC. ' 73 
 
 has yet encountered. Would tliat we could see a 
 more lively consciousness of this coming struggle 
 manifested among those, lay and clerical, who, under 
 God, must be the instruments for her preservation. 
 Few, however, seem to realize the true character of 
 the present times. 
 
 Meanwhile, no fear need be entertained that the 
 public discussion of Tractarian dogmas will show that 
 our Church has a leaning toward them. Just the 
 contrary will, we are convinced, be the case. And 
 we leave the Archbishop's assailants quietly to weigh 
 the testimonies given above, and judge for themselves 
 how much they are likely to gain by their recent out- 
 break — an outbreak as unprecedented for its contempt 
 for constituted authorities as it is destitute of even 
 the shadow of an excuse for it. 
 4 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 Further illustrations and proofs are here given 
 from the replies which Mr. Goode made to the various 
 attacks'^ upon his Yindication, 
 
 02^ THE DOCTRINE OF THE ARTICLES. 
 
 {Reply to Bishop of Exeter.) 
 
 The 19th Article is " Of the Church," and stands 
 thus: "The visible Church of Christ is a congrega- 
 tion of faithful men, in which the pure word of God 
 is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered 
 according to God's ordinance, in all things that of 
 necessity be requisite to the same." 
 
 From this the Bishop of Exeter deduces three posi- 
 tions: First^ that in any body professing to be a 
 Church of Christ, "the pure word of God" is to be 
 preached; a deduction which I shall not dispute. 
 Secondly^ it must be ^^ preached ;^'' "THAT IS," says his 
 Lordship, " publicly set forth for the instruction of 
 the people hy persons duly empowered^ or sent ^ for that 
 purpose ; for we know from St. Paul that the word 
 can not be 'preached' — ^that is, not merely recited or 
 
 * These attacks raised side issues which showed the weakness of the cause 
 which they were raised to defend. To reproduce them would be a weariness to 
 the reader, and expose us to the charge of proving a second, third, and fourth 
 time what liad been alreadj^ made certain. The only points of any interest in the 
 various pamphlets are added in the extracts following. 
 
APPENDIX. 75 
 
 taught, but proclaimed with assurance and authority — 
 except by those who are duly *sent/ authorized by 
 Him whose word they proclaim, Krjpvice; — men unto 
 whom God * hath committed the word of reconcilia- 
 tion/ " (P. 14.) 
 
 Now I beg to ask, where does his Lordship find all 
 this in the Article ? The Article merely uses the word 
 "preached." Does his Lordship really suppose that 
 any one in search of truth will allow him to raise out 
 of this single word his whole doctrine of the sort of 
 commission necessary to qualify a man for preaching 
 the Gospel ? Has he forgotten that even laymen were 
 sometimes allowed to preach in the early Church, and 
 that in the presence of a bishop ? Or, still more, has 
 he forgotten that '^they which were scattered abroad, 
 upon the persecution that arose about Stephen, tra- 
 velled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, 
 preaching the wordj etc. . . . And the hand of 
 the Lord was with them, and a great number believed 
 and turned unto the Lord ?" (Acts 11 : 19-21.) Or 
 (to mention no more) has he forgotten Apollos, who, 
 when "knowing only the baptism of John," and 
 therefore certainly not ordained by any apostle or 
 Christian bishop, "spake and taught diligently the 
 things of the Lord," which I suppose amounts to 
 preaching; and after receiving farther instruction from 
 Aquila and Priscilla, " helped them much which had 
 believed through grace ; for he mightily convinced 
 the Jews, and that publicly , showing by the Scriptures 
 that Jesus was Christ?" (Acts 18 : 24, etc.) All 
 these, it seems, knew nothing of the Bishop of Exe- 
 ter's doctrine, that nobody might, or even could^ 
 
16 APPENDIX. 
 
 "preach," but one specially ordained and publicly set 
 apart by Divine commission for the purpose. 
 
 Of course I am not here touching the question of 
 the necessity of an inward Divine call and qualifica- 
 tion for being an ambassador of Christ, or of what 
 Apostolical practice teaches us to be proper for the 
 due appointment of a preacher of the Gospel in a 
 regularly constituted Church. All I wish now to 
 point attention to is the absurdity (for I can use no 
 milder term) of attempting to raise a whole system 
 of church government out of the single word 
 "preach." 
 
 His Lordship's third deduction is that, as the Arti- 
 cle requires, that in a Church "the Sacraments be 
 duly ministered in all those things that of necessity 
 are requisite to the same," and the 25th Article says, 
 that sacraments are "effectual signs of grace, etc., by 
 which God doth work invisibly in us," etc. ; and a 
 Homily says, that " in them God embrace th us," etc. ; 
 "manifestly, therefore, among ^ those things that of 
 necessity are requisite to the duly ministering the 
 same' must be authority from God^ given to those who 
 minister them;" and it is added, that "our Church 
 has not left the point to be deduced by our sense of 
 what is right: it is expressly declared in the 26th 
 Article that they who minister the Sacraments * do 
 not the same in their own name, but in Christ's, and 
 do minister by his commission and authority f'' and 
 hence the consequence is deduced, that the Sacra- 
 ments can only be " duly ministered" "by those who 
 have cormnission and authority from God given to 
 them for that purpose;" in other words, individuals 
 
APPENDIX. 77 
 
 divinely commissioned *'for tbat purpose." Now, 
 one single consideration annitiilates the whole of this 
 argumentation; for if it were correct, lay-baptism 
 would be wholly invalid, which the Bishop well 
 knows is not the doctrine of our Church ; and there- 
 fore his third deduction is as groundless as his second. 
 The question, whether non-episcopally ordained min- 
 isters may not be said to minister by Chrisf s commis- 
 sion and authority, is one that will more properly 
 come under consideration in reviewing the meaning 
 of the 23d Article ; to which the Bishop next directs 
 our attention. 
 
 This Article is entitled, "Of ministering in the 
 Congregation," and runs thus: "It is not lawful for 
 any man to take upon him the office of public preach- 
 ing or ministering the Sacraments in the congregation, 
 before he be lawfully called and sent to execute the 
 same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called 
 and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by 
 men who have public authority given unto them in 
 the congregation to call and send ministers into the 
 Lord's vineyard." 
 
 It is difficult to understand how any one can read 
 this Article, and not see how carefully it is worded 
 so as not to exclude from " lawful calling" the min- 
 isters of the Foreign Protestant Churches. As Pro- 
 fessor Hey says, in his Commentary on the Articles^ 
 the expression " who have public authority given 
 unto them in the congregation," "seems to leave the 
 manner of giving the power of ordaining quite free ; 
 it seems as if any religious society might, consistently 
 with this Article, appoint officers, with power of Or- 
 
^8 APPENDIX. 
 
 dination, bj election, representation, or lot; as if, 
 therefore, the right to ordain did not depend upon 
 any uninterrupted succession^'' {Lect in Div. vol. iv. 
 p. 166.) And when we recollect the nature of the 
 intercourse and communion that took place between 
 our Eeformers and those Churches and their minis- 
 ters, both at the time when these Articles were first 
 drawn up, in the reign of Edward VI., and at their 
 reestabUshment in the reign of Elizabeth, there is 
 but one way of accounting for a long argumentation, 
 an effusion of ink covering eighteen pages, to prove 
 that by '-men to whom public authority is given," 
 etc., the Article ^^must mean Bishops'^ (!) and that 
 *' our Church holds that the poicer of Ordination is in 
 Bishops onlyP (! !) (P. 83.) 
 
 Further, of the 23d Article, the Bishop of Exeter 
 says that it asserts "the necessity of lawful mission 
 generally in the former of its two propositions — in 
 the latter, the necessity that this mission he mediately 
 from God^ transmitted by succession from those 
 
 "WHO, AT the first, RECEIVED THE POWER OF THUS 
 
 giving it immediately from our Lord Himself." 
 (Pp. 19, 20.) Such is the doctrine which his Lord- 
 ship has the courage to assert is laid down in the latter 
 part of the Article ! 
 
 He says : " There are three several members of the 
 proposition which we are considering : I. That lawful 
 mission to the Christian ministry must be from Grod 
 by an outward call. H. That we must not look for 
 any outward call from God except mediately through 
 men. HI. That it must be given through men who 
 have themselves received the power of transmitting 
 
APPE:fiDix. 79 
 
 it, publicly given to them by those who have them- 
 selves publicly received the power of giving that 
 power from otliers similarly empowered; in other 
 words, in uninterrupted succession from the Apostles 
 themselves." (P. 20.) 
 
 Now here it is obvious, that his Lordship has drawn 
 from the Article propositions not contained in it. 
 The Article does not touch the question of the call 
 ^''from God^'' but only that of the external call by 
 men. To assert, therefore, that the Article says that 
 lawful mission must be "/rom God by an outward 
 call" is a direct and palpable misrepresentation of it. 
 
 And the Bishop's own authority, Bishop Pearson, 
 whom he so highly extols (p. 52) — and not without 
 reason — might have shown him, and in the very pas- 
 sage to which he has referred us, his error in intro- 
 ducing these words into the Article. For Bishop 
 Pearson, treating of the mode of Ordination in the 
 Church of England, says: "Ordinaria vocatio fit a 
 Deo et per homines. Quatenus est a Deo^ est interna ; 
 quatenus est per homines, est externa," {Minor 
 Theol Wks. i. 291, 292.) 
 
 In defense of the third proposition, the Bishop ar- 
 gues thus : That when the Article says that the per- 
 sons through whom lawful mission must be given, 
 are " men who have public authority given unto them 
 in the congregation," it clearly means that this power 
 " is so given by God — puhlice in Ecclesia ; that is, in 
 some outward manner by which it shall be publicly 
 known in the Church to be given;" the Divine Being 
 being represented, after the first bestowal of the power, 
 by a succession of representatives of those to whom 
 
80 APPEISTDIX. 
 
 the power was first given. For, says tlie Bishop, " as 
 these [that is, modern Bishops who give power of mis- 
 sion] must in like manner have received their power 
 of mission from others, who had received it in Uke 
 manner, the series must be carried backwards, until, 
 as we before said, it reaches the Apostles, whom our 
 Lord sent, ^ as the Father had sent Him,' that is, with 
 power to send others." (P. 22.) 
 
 This is the foundation on which his whole argu- 
 mentation rests; and it is clearly derived from his 
 ADDING words to the Article calculated to carry out 
 his own views. The Article clearly implies, that 
 there is power in a Church to authorize certain of its 
 members to call and appoint others to the office of 
 the ministry, which exactly meets the case of the 
 Foreign Protestant Churches. The words " authority 
 given unto them hy God in the Congregation," are 
 very different from what we find in the Article. 
 They would imply that the Congregation, or Church, 
 had no voice in the matter, and could not authorize 
 any of their body to do any act of the kind. So that 
 the words which the Bishop has thus foisted into the 
 Article completely change the character of its doc- 
 trine. They just determine what the Article has 
 studiously left open, and determine it in opposition 
 to the known sentiments of those who drew up the 
 Article. They make it necessary that the mission 
 should be given by some individual or individuals 
 specially, and individually, and j5ublicly commis- 
 sioned by God himself, apart from the Church, to be- 
 stow it ; while the terms of the Article imply that 
 God has left sufficient power with the Church to act 
 in such a matter. 
 
APPENDIX. 81 
 
 The Article is evidently drawn up so as to compre- 
 hend the Foreign Protestant Churches. It does not 
 pretend to define exactly what our own Church's par- 
 ticular mode of calling and sending ministers is ; but 
 it states the limits of what may be considered a lawful 
 calling. Most just and pertinent are the remarks of 
 Bishop Burnet, in his Exposition of this Article : 
 
 " If," he says, " a company of Christians find the public worship 
 where they live to be so defiled that they can not with a good con- 
 science join in it, and if they do not know of any place to which 
 they can conveniently go, where they may worship God purely and 
 in a regular way : if, I say, such a Body finding some that have been 
 ordained, though to the lower functions, should submit itself en- 
 tirely to their conduct ; or, finding none of those, should hy a com- 
 mon consent desire some of their own number to ^ninister to them in 
 holy things, and should, upon that beginning, grow up to a regulated 
 constitution, though we are very sure that this is quite out of all rule, 
 and could not be done without a very great sin, unless the necessity 
 were great and apparent ; yet, if the necessity is real and not feigned, 
 this is not condemned or annulled hy the Article ; for when this 
 grows to a constitution, and when it was begun by the consent of a 
 Body who are supposed to have an authority in such an extraordi- 
 nary case, whatever some hotter spirits have thought of this since 
 that time, yet we are very sure, that not only those who penned the 
 Articles, hut the hody of this Church for ahove half an age after, 
 did, notwithstanding those irregularities, acJcjiowledge the Foreign 
 Churches so constituted to he true Churches as to all the essentials of 
 a Church, though they had heen at first irregularly formed, and con- 
 tinned still to he in an imperfect state. And, therefore, the 
 
 GENERAL WORDS IN WHICH THIS PART OP THE ARTICLE IS FRAMED, 
 SEEM TO HAVE BEEN DESIGNED ON PURPOSE NOT TO EXCLUDE THEM." 
 
 In fact, the Article requires nothing more as ne- 
 cessary for lawful calling than what is required in the 
 Confessions of several of the Foreign Protestant 
 Non-Episcopal Churches ; as, for instance, the Hel- 
 4^ 
 
82 APPENDIX. 
 
 vetic, (Art. 16,) Botiemian, (c. 9,) and Belgic, (Art. 
 81.) And, therefore, the Bishop might just as well 
 attempt to fasten his doctrine upon the Confessions 
 of these Non-Episcopal Churches as upon that of 
 the Church of England. 
 
 And so completely opposed is Hooker to the 
 Bishop's interpretation of the Article, that he dis- 
 tinctly intimates that there is no " heavenly law" 
 whereby it may appear, '' that the LordIiims3lf hath 
 appointed presbyters forever to be under the regi- 
 ment of Bishops," and that "their authority" is " a 
 sword which the Church hath power to take from them^''^ 
 (Ecd. Pol, vii. 5 ;) and expressly says that " the whole 
 Church visible" is " the true original subject of all 
 power ;" and that though " it hath not ordinarily al- 
 lowed any other than Bishops alone to ordain, how- 
 beit, as the ordinary course is ordinarily in all things 
 to be observed, so it may be, in some cases, not un- 
 necessary that we decline from the ordinary ways ; 
 and that "there may be sometimes very just and 
 sufficient reason to allow Ordination made without a 
 Bishop." {lb. 14.) 
 
 But the 23d Article, says his Lordship, " leaves to 
 a subsequent Article, the 36th, to tell us who they 
 are to whom this power is given ;" the 36th Article 
 sanctioning the Ordinal. (P. 27.) 
 
 The Bishop then gives the passage thus : "To the 
 intent that these Orders should be continued and 
 reverently used and esteemed in the Church of Eng- 
 land," "no man shall be accounted or taken to be a 
 lawful Bishop, Priest, or Deacon in the Church of 
 England, or suffered to execute any of the said func- 
 
APPEJ^DIX. 83 
 
 tions, except he be called, tried, examined, and ad- 
 mitted thereunto, according to the form hereafter 
 following, or hath formerly received Episcopal consecra- 
 tion or ordination r 
 
 And in his Lordship's observations upon this 
 passage, he lays the greatest stress upon the conclud- 
 ing words: '^ or hath formerly received Episcopal 
 consecration or ordination." Now these words, as 
 his Lordship well knows, were not inserted till the 
 revision of the Book in 1661, by the Laudian di- 
 vines, who then had the upper hand. He knows 
 also, upon the testimony of Bishop Cosin and 
 others,^ Ijhig before him when he wrote, that, in the 
 previous period of our Church, persons having only 
 Presbyterian Orders were admitted to minister in our 
 Church, and that it was the general opinion of the 
 Bishops that there was nothing to prevent this. 
 Hence, not only was there evidence, that our Church 
 admitted the validity of the Orders of the Foreign 
 Protestant Churches, so far as those churches them- 
 selves were concerned, but persons so ordained were 
 allowed to minister in our own Church. And the 
 insertion of those words in 1661, requiring Episcopal 
 Ordination for those who minister in our Ghurch-^ob' 
 viously with a view to the Presbyterians, who, in the 
 civil war, had usurped the places of the Episcopalian 
 clergy — can not affect the doctrine of our Church on 
 the abstract question, whether the Foreign Protestant 
 Churches are destitute of any validly ordained pas- 
 tors. 
 
 * See Doctrine, etc., pp. 29, 30. 
 
84 APPENDIX. 
 
 The direction here given, as it stood both before 
 and after the Eeview in 1661, is strictly limited to 
 what is required " in the Church of England.'''' There 
 is a marked abstinence from any statement of the 
 necessity of Episcopal Orders for a valid ministry, 
 which it is impossible to conceive that our Keform- 
 ers would have observed, if they had held the Bishop 
 of Exeter's notions. And when we couple this with 
 their known conduct towards the Foreign Protestant 
 Churches, not the smallest doubt can be left upon 
 the mind of any reasonable inquirer after the truth 
 that they did not hold them. 
 
 But the Bishop supports his view by two argu- 
 ments. The first is this. He says : " If persons from 
 Berlin and Geneva, calling themselves ministers of 
 Christ's Church, are really such ministers, it would 
 be a direct act of schism for our Church to reject 
 their ministry ; for all who are Christ's ministers at 
 all, are His ministers throughout His whole Church,'^ 
 (P. 30.) But what a mere cobweb is this ! Has not 
 a Church a right to say to those ministers who come 
 here from a Church under a different form of gov- 
 ernment : " We have laid down a rule which we con- 
 sider most in accordance with Apostolical usage, re- 
 quiring a certain mode of introduction to the minis- 
 try among us, and we think it inexpedient to break 
 it by admitting others not so qualified ?" Does it 
 follow from this, that our Church holds them to be 
 destitute of all right to exercise the ministerial ofilce 
 any where? Where does his Lordship derive his 
 authority for denying to his Church such a pruden- 
 tial mode of action, and shutting her up to the alter- 
 
APPENDIX. 85 
 
 native of either admitting to hold office in her com- 
 munion any minister of a Foreign Church, whatever 
 its form of government may be, or denying that 
 such a one has any right to exercise the ministerial 
 office to any body of Christians on the face of the 
 earth? The fact is, that his Lordship has in this 
 point, as well as in his advocacy of the exclusive ad- 
 missibility of one form of Ecclesiastical government, 
 been following in the steps of the early Puritans. 
 His own words are almost identical with those of the 
 notorious Puritan Travers to Archbishop Whitgift. 
 Travers, to show that he had a right to be allowed to 
 minister in the Church of England, though having 
 only Presbyterian Orders, (and he could hardly be 
 said to have any,) urged, that, "the universal and 
 perpetual practice of all Christendom, in all places, 
 and in all ages, proveth the ministers lawfully made 
 in any Church of sound profession in faith, ought to 
 be acknowledged such in any other ;" he means, so 
 as to be allowed to minister in it. To which Arch- 
 bishop Whitgift (who, as we know from his writings, 
 admitted the validity of the Orders of the Foreign Pro- 
 testant Churches^ but held that " the laius of this realm 
 require that such as are to be allowed as ministers in 
 this Church of England should be ordered by a Bishop^ 
 and subscribe to the Articles before him") replies to 
 the argument thus: "Excepting always such 
 Churches as allow of Presbytery, and practise it." 
 He considered that in such a case an Episcopal 
 Church might fairly object to one not ordained as she 
 required, acting as one of her own ministers. But 
 he did not deny the validity of Presbyterian Orders 
 
86 APPENDIX. 
 
 in the abstract. In tlie same paper to wliich I am 
 now referring, lie admits that Whittingham '^ was or- 
 dained minister bj those which had authority in the 
 Church" in which he was ordained, though he held 
 such Orders not a sufficient qualification for minister- 
 ing in the Church of England. (See Stnjpe's Whit- 
 gift, App. bk. 3, n. 30.) 
 
 The second argument is this, that if any of the 
 ministers of Non-Episcopal Churches wish to be min- 
 isters of the Church of England, '' they must, as a 
 preliminary, renounce all claim at present to any 
 ministerial character whatsoever," and " present them- 
 selves as lay candidates for holy orders ;" ^' and yet 
 for our Church thus to insist on their submitting to 
 be ordained anew, if they already have Orders, 
 would be, not merely an act of schism, hut a manifest 
 desecration of Christ's ordinance, a most sinful rejection 
 of His commission.'''' (Pp. 30, 31.) 
 
 High-sounding words these, no doubt, and very 
 characteristic of their author. But the question is, 
 Wliat truth is there in them ? None at all. There 
 is no such ^^ renunciation" required. And the whole 
 notion about the '' desecration of Christ's ordinance" 
 involved in such a step, is entirely opposed to the 
 views of our best divines of all parties. What does 
 Archbishop Bramhall says in his Letters of Orders, 
 when ordaining one who had previously had only 
 Scotch Presbyterian Orders : " iVb/i annihilantes 
 priores ordines, (si quos liabuit,) nee invaliditatem 
 eorundem deter minantes, multo minus omnes ordines 
 sacros Ecclesiarum Forinsecarum condemnantes, quos 
 proprio Judici relinquimus, sed solummodo sup- 
 
APPENDIX. B1 
 
 PLENTES, quicquid prius defuit per canones Ecclesice 
 Anglicanoe requisitum^ et providentes paci Ecclesise, 
 ut schismatis tullatur occasio, et conscientiis fidelium 
 satisfiat, nee ulli dubitent de ejus ordinatione, ant 
 actus sous presbjteriales tanquam iiivalidos aversen- 
 tur." {Works^ Oxf. ed. vol. i. p. xxxvii.) 
 
 L:t his Lordship's friends determine which is the 
 best authority, the Bishop of Exeter or Archbishop 
 Bramhall. 
 
 But, as this is an important point, I shall add some 
 farther testimonies. 
 
 And, first, let us hear the opinion of Archbishop 
 Leighton, one whose learning as well as piety is un- 
 questionable. When consecrated Bishop, in 1661, 
 by some of the English bishops, he was required by 
 them to submit to be first ordained Deacon and 
 Priest, on the ground partly of the Act of Uni- 
 formity, and partly that, though it might be reasona- 
 ble to allow Presbyterian Orders under some circum- 
 stances, yet that his had been received from those 
 who were in a state of schism, and had without rea- 
 son revolted from their bishops. And Leighton's 
 view on the subject is thus stated by his intimate 
 friend. Bishop Burnet : " Leighton did not stand 
 much upon it. lie did not think Orders given without 
 bishops were null and void. He thought the forms of 
 government were not settled by such positive laws as 
 were unalterable ; but only by Apostolic practices, 
 which, as he thought, authorized Episcopacy as the 
 best form. Yet he did not think it necessary to the 
 being of a Church. But he thought that every Church 
 might make such rules of Ordination as they pleased. 
 
88 APPENDIX. 
 
 and that they might re'ordain all that came to them from 
 any other Church ; and that the reordaining a priest or- 
 dained in another Church im^ported no more hut that they 
 received him into Orders according to their rules, and did 
 not infer the annulling the Orders he had formerly re- 
 ceivedy {Hist, of his Own Times, vol. i. p. 140.) 
 
 The testimony of A^rchbishop Leighton, therefore, 
 is directly against the Bishop on all the points of the 
 case. 
 
 But a still more important testimony perhaps than 
 even these is that of the learned Bingham, the au- 
 thor of the Antiquities of the Christian Church. He 
 says, in his French Church's Apology for the Church of 
 England : 
 
 " Nor do I see what can be urged farther in this case, unless it be the 
 business of reordination, which some reckon so great a charge against 
 the Act of Uniformity ; because it obliges every beneficiary to receive 
 Episcopal ordination, according to the form and rites of the Church 
 of England. But what harm there is in this, I confess I 7iever yet 
 could see ; and I am sure there is nothing in it contrary to the princi- 
 ples or practice of Geneva, nor perhaps of the whole French Church. 
 For at Geneva it is their common practice, whenever they remove a 
 minister from one Church to another, to give him a new and solemn 
 ordination by imposition of hands and prayer. . . . Now, if it 
 be lawful, by the rules of the Church of Geneva, for a minister to 
 receive a new solemn ordination, when he is translated from one 
 Church to another ; why can not men in England consent to receive 
 a new ordination, when the law requires it, in order to settle them- 
 selves regularly in any Church ? especially when it is for the sake of 
 peace and union, and to take ofif all manner of doubtfulness and scru- 
 ples from the people. / dispute not now, whether their former ordina- 
 tions were valid [this question, we see, he does not consider to affect 
 the point to be determined, namely, whether they could properly 
 submit to reordination] ; it is certain, they are not more valid than 
 those of Geneva ; nor can they themselves think them more valid 
 
APPENDIX. 89 
 
 than the ministers of Geneva think theirs ; wherefore, if it be lawful 
 at Geneva for a minister to receive a new ordination, because the 
 laws require it, I do not see what can make it unlawful in England to 
 submit to the same thing, in compliance with the law, when men have 
 no other regular way to settle themselves in any cure ; lei their opinion 
 of their former ordination he what it will, which comes not into the 
 PRESENT DISPUTE. For cvcu supposiug their former ordination [that is, 
 the Presbyterian in this country'] to he valid^ I show they may submit 
 to a new ordination without sin; and if the will be peaceable, they 
 ought to do it, after the example of Geneva, rather than set up sep- 
 arate meetings and preach against the will of their superiors, to the 
 disturbance of the peace of the Church." {Bingham's Works, vol. 
 ix. ed. 1845, pp. 296, 297.) 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 ON THE MEANING OF THE TEEM "DIVINE 
 INSTITUTION." 
 
 {From reply to Mr. Harrington,) 
 
 It would surely have been more unambiguous to 
 speak of the Apostolical institution of Episcopacy, 
 than to use the epithet Divine, I am quite aware that 
 it has been frequently used, and also of the sense in 
 which it may be legitimately applied ; but I am also 
 aware, that whenever the matter has been contro- 
 verted, it has been found necessary to point out two 
 or three senses in which the word "Divine" may be 
 used, and (with very few exceptions) to admit that in 
 one only is it applicable to the origin of Episcopacy, 
 namely, as instituted by men divinely inspired ; and 
 in a formal definition of this kind,- a vague phrase- 
 ology is surely to be avoided. Now of the Apostoli- 
 
90 APPENDIX. 
 
 cal institution of Episcopacy I make no doubt ; but 
 then I have equally little doubt of tlie Apostolical 
 institution of the practice of anointing the sick with 
 oil. And though I would not place the importance 
 of one on a par with the importance of the other, yet 
 if the mere fact of a thing having been Apostolically 
 instituted, renders its observance indispensably neces- 
 sary in all ages and all parts of the Church of Christ, 
 the one of these is as indispensably necessary as the 
 other. And if this argument does not hold good, 
 then the argument of Mr. Harrington for the indis- 
 pensable necessity of Episcopacy from this fact falls 
 to the ground. 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 ON THE MEANING OF THE TERM "NECESSITY" WHEN 
 USED BY SOME OF OUR DIVINES AS ALONE JUSTI- 
 FYING PRESBYTERIAN ORDINATION. 
 
 {Reply to Harrington.) 
 
 It is often said, that such and such Presbyterian 
 Churches might now, if they pleased, receive Epis- 
 copacy from more than one Episcopal Church, and, 
 therefore, that they can not urge the plea of necessity. 
 But it is clear that the word necessity was not used 
 by them in this strict sense. I refer, in proof of this, 
 to the language of Saravia and Crakanthorp," both 
 of them men in the highest repute with my oppo- 
 
 * See Doctrine, etc., pp. 22, 39. 
 
APPENDIX. 91 
 
 nents ; and tlie latter of wliom distinctly says, speak- 
 ing of his wish that those Churches would avail them- 
 selves of the opportunity they then possessed of ob- 
 taining Episcopal Orders, ^^ sed optamus^ non cogimus: 
 jus et iinperium in eorum Ecclesias nee hahemus nos^ nee 
 desideramusr And this opportunity they have had 
 for more than two centuries just as much as at the 
 present day ; so that all the testimonies of our divines 
 since that period, such as Mason, Cosin, etc. etc., were 
 written under similar circumstances to those which, 
 now exist. 
 
 It is clear, also, that when Saravia spoke of neces- 
 sity, he was alluding to a necessity arising from the 
 corruption of the Bishops in any particular Church 
 for the sound presbyters of that Church to perpetuate 
 their order by admitting others to it themselves, 
 though under ordinary circumstances they would have 
 had no right to do so. He was contemplating each. 
 Church as an independent community that had a right 
 to order its own affairs. 
 
 And when it is urged, that no necessity exists now 
 for the Foreign Eeformed Churches lacking Episco- 
 pacy, because certain Episcopal Churches would give 
 them Bishops, I am much, inclined to doubt whether 
 even this could be proved, for there may be still many 
 impediments, some arising out of their relations to 
 the different States in which they are found, to their 
 reception of Episcopacy, whatever may be tke willing- 
 ness of other Ohurcbes to give it to them. 
 
92 APPENDIX. 
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 
 0]Sr THE MEANING OF THE TERM JUS DIVINUM. 
 
 {Reply to Bishop of Exeter.) 
 
 Bishop Sanderson points out two different senses 
 of tlie phrase jus divinum^ observing : 
 
 "Sometimes it importeth a Divine precept (which is indeed the 
 primary and most proper signification) when it appeareth by some 
 clear, express, and peremptory command of God in His Word, to be 
 the will of God that the thing so commanded should be perpetually 
 and universally observed. Of which sort, setting aside the Articles 
 of the Creed, and the moral duties of the law, (which are not much 
 pertinent to the present inquiry,) there are, as I take it, very few 
 things that can be said to be of Divine positive right under the 
 New Testament. TJie preaching of the Gospel and administration 
 of the Sacraments are two ; which, when I have named, 1 think I 
 have named all. But there is a secondary and more extended signi- 
 fication of that term, which is also of frequent use among divines. 
 In which sense such things as, having no express command in the 
 Word, yet are found to have authority and warrant from the institu- 
 tion, example, and approbation either of Christ Himself or His 
 Apostles ; and have (in regard of the importance and usefulness of 
 the things themselves) been held, by the consentient judgment of all 
 the Churches of Christ in the primitive and succeeding ages, needful 
 to be continued ; such things I say are (though not so properly as 
 the former, yet) usually and interpretative said to be of Divine 
 right. Of which sort I take the observation of the Lord's day, the 
 ordering the keys, the distinction of presbyters and deacons, and 
 some other things (not all perhaps of equal consequence) to be. 
 Unto Jus Divinum in that former acceptation, is required a Divine 
 precept ; in this latter, it sufi&ceth thereunto that a thing be of Apos- 
 tolical institution or practice. Which ambiguity is the more to be 
 
APPENDIX. 93 
 
 heeded, for that the observation thereof is of great use for the 
 avoiding of sundry mistakes, that through the ignorance or neglect 
 thereof daily happen to the engaging of men in endless disputes, 
 and entangling their consciences in unnecessary scruples." 
 
 And having thus pointed out these two senses of 
 the term Jus Divinum^ he proceeds to show in what 
 manner the phrase is to be applied in the matter of 
 Episcopacy. And he says : 
 
 " Now that the government of the Churches of Christ by bishops 
 is of Divine right in that first and stricter sense, is an opinion at 
 least of great probability, and such as may more easily and upon 
 better grounds be defended than confuted. . . . Yet because it 
 is both inexpedient to maintain a dispute where it needs not, and 
 needless to contend for more, where less will serve the turn ; I find 
 that our divines that have travailed most in this argument, where 
 they purposely treat of it, do rather choose to stand to the tenure of 
 Episcopacy ex Apostolica designatione^ than to hold a contest upon 
 the title of Jus Divinum, no necessity requiring the same to be 
 done. They, therefore, that so speak of this government as estab- 
 lished by Divine right, are not all of them necessarily so to be under- 
 stood, as if they meant it in that first and stricter one. Sufficient it 
 is for the justification of the Church of England in the constitution 
 and government thereof, that it is (as certainly it is) of Divine right 
 in the latter and larger signification : that is to say, of Apostolical 
 institution and approbation ; exercised by the Apostles themselves, 
 and by other persons in their times, appointed and enabled thereunto 
 by them, according to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by 
 virtue of the commission they had received from him.'' 
 
 So that all he ventures to say in favor of Episco- 
 pacy being jure divino in the strict sense of the 
 phrase — which alone would make it of absolute ne- 
 cessity — is that it appears to him to be " an opinion 
 at least of great probability ;" and he admits, that 
 our divines for the most part only contend for the 
 apostolical institution of Episcopacy. 
 
94 APPENDIX. 
 
 He then remarks, that this latter view is "a part 
 of the established doctrine of the Church of Eng- 
 land," (in which I entirely agree with him,) and that 
 it " hath been constantly and uniformly maintained 
 by our best writers, and by all the sober, orderly, 
 and orthodox sons of this Church." {Episcop. not 
 prejud. to Reg, Power ^ Lond. 1673, Sec. II. §§ 3-6.) 
 
 The latter is a somewhat large assertion, but no 
 doubt true of a great majority of such divines. But 
 then, as I have already abundantly shown, those 
 among them who held this view maintained also the 
 validity under some circumstances of Presbyterian 
 Ordinations. 
 
 APPENDIX E. 
 
 MORALITY OF TRACTARIA:N'ISM. 
 
 {Introduction to Vindication.) 
 
 There is nothing more painful perhaps in the 
 whole Tractarian movement, than the frequent dis- 
 regard to truth by which, throughout its course, it 
 has been characterized. Men entertaining Tractarian 
 views are in a false position in our Church, and conse- 
 quently are continually driven into all sorts of incon- 
 sistencies and offenses against truth. And no decla- 
 matory asseverations of their doctrines being the 
 genuine doctrines of the Church of England can de- 
 ceive any who give the slightest attention to the sub- 
 ject, and desire to know the truth. They com- 
 
APPENDIX. 95 
 
 menced with a profession of slavish submission to 
 bishops ; and their doctrine demands it of them. 
 Their conduct is the very reverse, to a degree that 
 make us compare it with thankfulness with that of 
 the supposed undervaluers of the Episcopate, the, to 
 use the ordinary name. Evangelical body, towards 
 other prelates in past times. Their Catenas parade 
 with the most unblushing effrontery the names of 
 divines who have directly and clearly opposed their 
 views, as of advocates in their favor. The interpre- 
 tation they are compelled to give to our Articles and 
 Formularies (to say nothing of the veil of secresy 
 thrown over their practices) is such as to make the 
 more honest among their disciples writhe under the 
 consciousness of the duplicity of the course marked 
 out for them. This is not the mere accusation of an 
 opponent ; it is the confession of those who have 
 belonged to them. Witness (to refer to no other au- 
 thority) the pamphlet, not long since published, enti- 
 tled The Morality of Tractarianism, Whenever they 
 have tried their ground before a public tribunal, they 
 have been utterly defeated. In the face of facts like 
 these, frothy declamations, protesting that they are 
 the true exponents of the doctrine of the Church of 
 England, will deceive none but those who wish to be 
 deceived. 
 
 
 
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