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guments with which, in old times, the constitution bore a greater resemblance truth was defended by Oxford against to the Anglican or to the Calvinistic Rome. In this stage of our combat model, has been fiercely disputed. It with Mr. Gladstone, we need few weapons except those which we find in the well-furnished and well ordered armoury of Chillingworth.

is a question on which men of eminent parts, learning, and piety have differed, and do to this day differ very widely. It is a question on which at least a full The transmission of orders from the half of the ability and erudition of Apostles to an English clergyman of Protestant Europe has, ever since the the present day must have been through Reformation, been opposed to the Ana very great number of intermediate glican pretensions. Mr. Gladstone persons. Now, it is probable that no himself, we are persuaded, would have clergyman in the Church of England the candour to allow that, if no evican trace up his spiritual genealogy dence were admitted but that which is from bishop to bishop so far back as furnished by the genuine Christian the time of the Conquest. There re-literature of the first two centuries, main many centuries during which the judgment would not go in favour of history of the transmission of his orders prelacy. And if he looked at the subis buried in utter darkness. And whe-ject as calmly as he would look at a ther he be a priest by succession from controversy respecting the Roman Cothe Apostles depends on the question, mitia or the Anglo-Saxon Wittenagewhether during that long period, some mote, he would probably think that thousands of events took place, any the absence of contemporary evidence one of which may, without any gross during so long a period was a defect improbability, be supposed not to have which later attestations, however nutaken place. We have not a tittle of merous, could but very imperfectly evidence for any one of these events. supply. It is surely impolitic to rest We do not even know the names or the doctrines of the English Church countries of the men to whom it is on a historical theory which, to ninetytaken for granted that these events hap-nine Protestants out of a hundred, pened. We do not know whether the would seem much more questionable spiritual ancestors of any one of our than any of those doctrines. Nor is contemporaries were Spanish or Ar- this all. Extreme obscurity overhangs menian, Arian or Orthodox. In the the history of the middle ages; and utter absence of all particular evidence, the facts which are discernible through we are surely entitled to require that that obscurity prove that the Church there should be very strong evidence was exceedingly ill regulated. We indeed that the strictest regularity was read of sees of the highest dignity observed in every generation, and that openly sold, transferred backwards and episcopal functions were exercised by forwards by popular tumult, bestowed none who were not bishops by succes- sometimes by a profligate woman on sion from the Apostles. But we have her paramour, sometimes by a warlike no such evidence. In the first place, baron on a kinsman still a stripling. we have not full and accurate informa- We read of bishops of ten years old, of tion touching the polity of the Church bishops of five years old, of many popes during the century which followed the who were mere boys, and who rivalled persecution of Nero. That, during this the frantic dissoluteness of Caligula, period, the overseers of all the little nay, of a female pope. And though Christian societies scattered through this last story, once believed throughthe Roman empire held their spiritual out all Europe, has been disproved by authority by virtue of holy orders de- the strict researches of modern critirived from the Apostles, cannot be cism, the most discerning of those who proved by contemporary testimony, or reject it have admitted that it is not by any testimony which can be re-intrinsically improbable. In our own garded as decisive. The question, island, it was the complaint of Alfred whether the primitive ecclesiastical that not a single priest south of the

Thames, and very few on the north, without exception to urge a lineal decould read either Latin or English. scent of power from the Apostles by And this illiterate clergy exercised continued succession of bishops in every their ministry amidst a rude and half-effectual ordination." There can be heathen population, in which Danish little doubt, we think, that the sucpirates, unchristened, or christened by cession, if it ever existed, has often the hundred on a field of battle, were been interrupted in ways much less mingled with a Saxon peasantry respectable. For example, let us supscarcely better instructed in religion. pose, and we are sure that no wellThe state of Ireland was still worse. informed person will think the suppo"Tota illa per universam Hiberniam sition by any means improbable, that, dissolutio ecclesiastica disciplinæ, illa in the third century, a man of no prinubique pro consuetudine Christiana ciple and some parts, who has, in the sæva subintroducta barbaries," are the course of a roving and discreditable expressions of St. Bernard. We are, life, been a catechumen at Antioch, therefore, at a loss to conceive how any and has there become familiar with clergyman can feel confident that his Christian usages and doctrines, afterorders have come down correctly. wards rambles to Marseilles, where he Whether he be really a successor of finds a Christian society, rich, liberal, the Apostles depends on an immense and simple-hearted. He pretends to number of such contingencies as these; whether, under King Ethelwolf, a stupid priest might not, while baptizing several scores of Danish prisoners who had just made their option between the font and the gallows, inadvertently omit to perform the rite on one of these graceless proselytes; whether, in the seventh century, an impostor, who had never received consecration, might not have passed himself off as a bishop on a rude tribe of Scots; whether a lad of twelve did really, by a ceremony huddled over when he was too drunk to know what he was about, convey the episcopal character to a lad of ten.

Since the first century, not less, in all probability, than a hundred thousand persons have exercised the functions of bishops. That many of these have not been bishops by apostolical succession is quite certain. Hooker admits that deviations from the general rule have been frequent, and with a boldness worthy of his high and statesmanlike intellect, pronounces them to have been often justifiable. "There may be," says he, "sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination made without a bishop. Where the Church must needs have some ordained, and neither hath nor can have possibly a bishop to ordain, in case of such necessity the ordinary institution of God hath given oftentimes, and may give place. And therefore we are not simply

be a Christian, attracts notice by his abilities and affected zeal, and is raised to the episcopal dignity without having ever been baptized. That such an event might happen, nay, was very likely to happen, cannot well be disputed by any one who has read the Life of Peregrinus. The very virtues, indeed, which distinguished the early Christians, seem to have laid them open to those arts which deceived

"Uriel, though Regent of the Sun, and held The sharpest-sighted spirit of all in

Heaven."

Now this unbaptized impostor is evidently no successor of the Apostles. He is not even a Christian; and all orders derived through such a pretended bishop are altogether invalid. Do we know enough of the state of the world and of the Church in the third century to be able to say with confi. dence that there were not at that time twenty such pretended bishops? Every such case makes a break in the apostolical succession.

Now, suppose that a break, such as Hooker admits to have been both common and justifiable, or such as we have supposed to be produced by hypocrisy and cupidity, were found in the chain which connected the Apostles with any of the missionaries who first spread Christianity in the wilder parts of Europe, who can say how extensive the effect of this single break may be?

Suppose that St. Patrick, for example, | apostolical succession prove? He says if ever there was such a man, or Theo- that "we have among us the ordained dore of Tarsus, who is said to have hereditary witnesses of the truth, conconsecrated in the seventh century the veying it to us through an unbroken first bishops of many English sees, had series from our Lord Jesus Christ and not the true apostolical orders, is it not his Apostles." Is this the fact? Is conceivable that such a circumstance there any doubt that the orders of the may affect the orders of many clergy- Church of England are generally demen now living? Even if it were pos-rived from the Church of Rome? Does sible, which it assuredly is not, to prove not the Church of England declare, that the Church had the apostolical or- does not Mr. Gladstone himself admit, ders in the third century, it would be im- that the Church of Rome teaches much possible to prove that those orders were error and condemns much truth? not in the twelfth century so far lost that And is it not quite clear, that as far as no ecclesiastic could be certain of the the doctrines of the Church of England legitimate descent of his own spiritual differ from those of the Church of Rome, character. And if this were so, no subse- so far the Church of England conveys quent precautions could repair the evil. the truth through a broken series? Chillingworth states the conclusion at That the founders, lay and clerical, which he had arrived on this subject in of the Church of England, corrected these very remarkable words: "That of all that required correction in the docten thousand probables no one should trines of the Church of Rome, and be false; that of ten thousand re- nothing more, may be quite true. But quisites, whereof any one may fail, we never can admit the circumstance not one should be wanting, this to that the Church of England possesses me is extremely improbable, and even the apostolical succession as a proof cousin-german to impossible. So that that she is thus perfect. No stream the assurance hereof is like a ma- can rise higher than its fountain. chine composed of an innumerable The succession of ministers in the multitude of pieces, of which it is Church of England, derived as it is strangely unlikely but some will be through the Church of Rome, can out of order; and yet, if any one never prove more for the Church of be so, the whole fabric falls of ne- England than it proves for the Church cessity to the ground: and he that of Rome. But this is not all. shall put them together, and maturely Arian Churches which once predomiconsider all the possible ways of laps-nated in the kingdoms of the Ostrogoths, ing and nullifying a priesthood in the the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Church of Rome, will be very inclinable to think that it is a hundred to one, that among a hundred seeming priests, there is not one true one; nay, that it is not a thing very improbable that, amongst those many millions which make up the Romish hierarchy, there are not twenty true." We do not pretend to know to what precise extent the canonists of Oxford agree with those of Rome as to the circumstances which nullify orders. We will not, therefore, go so far as Chillingworth. We only say that we see no satisfactory proof of the fact, that the Church of England possesses the apostolical succession. And, after all, if Mr. Gladstone could prove the apostolical succession, what would the

The

Vandals, and the Lombards, were all episcopal churches, and all had a fairer claim than that of England to the apostolical succession, as being _much nearer to the apostolical times. In the East, the Greek Church, which is at variance on points of faith with all the Western Churches, has an equal claim to this succession. The Nestorian, the Eutychian, the Jacobite Churches, all heretical, all condemned by councils, of which even Protestant divines have generally spoken with respect, had an equal claim to the apostolical succession. Now if, of teachers having apostolical orders, a vast majority have taught much error, if a large proportion have taught deadly heresy, if, on the other hand, as Mr. Gladstone him.

self admits, churches not having apos- the eighty-seven questions which Bishop tolical orders, that of Scotland for Marsh, within our own memory, proexample, have been nearer to the pounded to candidates for ordination. standard of orthodoxy that the majo- We should be loth to say that either of rity of teachers who have had aposto- these celebrated prelates had intruded lical orders, how can he possibly call himself into a Church whose doctrines upon us to submit our private judg-he abhorred, and that he deserved to be ment to the authority of a Church on stripped of his gown. Yet it is quite the ground that she has these orders? certain that one or other of them must Mr. Gladstone dwells much on the have been very greatly in error. John importance of unity in doctrine. Unity Wesley again, and Cowper's friend, he tells us, is essential to truth. And John Newton, were both Presbyters of this is most unquestionable. But when this Church. Both were men of ability. he goes on to tell us that this unity Both we believe to have been men of is the characteristic of the Church of rigid integrity, men who would not England, that she is one in body and have subscribed a Confession of Faith in spirit, we are compelled to differ which they disbelieved for the richest from him widely. The apostolical suc-bishopric in the empire. Yet, on the cession she may or may not have. But subject of predestination, Newton was unity she most certainly has not, and strongly attached to doctrines which never has had. It is matter of perfect no- Wesley designated as "blasphemy, which toriety, that her formularies are framed might make the ears of a Christian to in such a manner as to admit to her tingle." Indeed, it will not be disputed highest offices men who differ from each that the clergy of the Established other more widely than a very high Church are divided as to these quesChurchman differs from a Catholic, or tions, and that her formularies are not a very low Churchman from a Presby-found practically to exclude even scruterian; and that the general leaning pulously honest men of both sides from of the Church, with respect to some her altars. It is notorious that some of important questions, has been some- her most distinguished rulers think this times one way and sometimes another. latitude a good thing, and would be sorry Take, for example, the questions agi- to see it restricted in favour of either tated between the Calvinists and the opinion. And herein we most cordiArminians. Do we find in the Church ally agree with them. But what beof England, with respect to those ques- comes of the unity of the Church, and tions, that unity which is essential to of that truth to which unity is essentruth? Was it ever found in the tial? Mr. Gladstone tells us that the Church? Is it not certain that, at the Regium Donum was given originally to end of the sixteenth century, the rulers orthodox Presbyterian ministers, but of the Church held doctrines as Cal- that part of it is now received by their vinistic as ever were held by any Came- heterodox successors. "This," he says, ronian, and not only held them, but "serves to illustrate the difficulty in persecuted every body who did not which governments entangle themhold them? And is it not equally cer-selves, when they covenant with arbitain, that the rulers of the Church have, trary systems of opinion, and not with in very recent times, considered Calvin- the Church alone. The opinion passes ism as a disqualification for high pre-away, but the gift remains." But is it ferment, if not for holy orders? Look at not clear, that if a strong Supralapsathe questions which Archbishop Whit-rian had, under Whitgift's primacy, left gift propounded to Barret, questions a large estate at the disposal of the framed in the very spirit of William bishops for ecclesiastical purposes, in Huntington, S. S. And then look at

One question was, whether God had from eternity reprobated certain persons; and why? The answer which contented the Archbishop was Affirmative, et quia voluit."

the hope that the rulers of the Church would abide by Whitgift's theology, he would really have been giving his substance for the support of doctrines which he detested? The opinion would

have passed away, and the gift would | sents as her distinguishing glory, that have remained. it is, in fact, a bundle of religious sysThis is only a single instance. What tems without number. It comprises wide differences of opinion respecting the religious system of Bishop Tomthe operation of the sacraments are held line, and the religious system of John by bishops, doctors, presbyters of the Newton, and all the religious systems Church of England, all men who have which lie between them. It comprises conscientiously declared their assent to the religious system of Mr. Newman, her articles, all men who are, according and the religious system of the Archto Mr. Gladstone, ordained hereditary bishop of Dublin, and all the religious witnesses of the truth, all men whose systems which lie between them. All voices make up what, he tells us, is the these different opinions are held, voice of true and reasonable authority! | avowed, preached, printed, within the Here, again, the Church has not unity; pale of the Church, by men of unquesand as unity is the essential condition | tioned integrity and understanding. of truth, the Church has not the truth. Do we make this diversity a topic Nay, take the very question which we of reproach to the Church of England? are discussing with Mr. Gladstone. To Far from it. We would oppose with what extent does the Church of Eng- all our power every attempt to narrow land allow of the right of private judg- her basis? Would to God that, a hunment? What degree of authority does dred and fifty years ago, a good king she claim for herself in virtue of the and a good primate had possessed the apostolical succession of her ministers ? power as well as the will to widen it! Mr. Gladstone, a very able and a very It was a noble enterprise, worthy of honest man, takes a view of this matter William and of Tillotson. But what widely differing from the view taken by becomes of all Mr. Gladstone's eloothers whom he will admit to be as quent exhortations to unity? Is it able and as honest as himself. People not mere mockery to attach so much who altogether dissent from him on this importance to unity in form and name, subject eat the bread of the Church, where there is so little in substance, to preach in her pulpits, dispense her shudder at the thought of two churches sacraments, confer her orders, and carry in alliance with one state, and to enon that apostolical succession, the na-dure with patience the spectacle of a hunture and importance of which, accord-dred sects battling within one church? ing to him, they do not comprehend. Is this unity? Is this truth?

And is it not clear that Mr. Gladstone is bound, on all his own principles, to It will be observed that we are not abandon the defence of a church in putting cases of dishonest men who, which unity is not found? Is it not for the sake of lucre, falsely pretend clear that he is bound to divide the to believe in the doctrines of an esta- House of Commons against every grant blishment. We are putting cases of of money which may be proposed for men as upright as ever lived, who, the clergy of the Established Church differing on theological questions of in the colonies? He objects to the the highest importance, and avowing vote for Maynooth, because it is monthat difference, are yet priests and pre-strous to pay one man to teach truth, lates of the same Church. We there- and another to denounce that truth as fore say, that on some points which falsehood. But it is a mere chance Mr. Gladstone himself thinks of vital whether any sum which he votes for importance, the Church has either not the English Church in any colony will spoken at all, or, what is for all prac-go to the maintenance of an Arminian tical purposes the same thing, has not or a Calvinist, of a man like Mr. Froude, spoken in language to be understood or of a man like Dr. Arnold. It is a even by honest and sagacious divines. mere chance, therefore, whether it will The religion of the Church of England go to support a teacher of truth, or is so far from exhibiting that unity of one who will denounce that truth as doctrine which Mr. Gladstone repre- | falsehood.