living is the son of him who is called his father; and that the same might have been said of any archbishop or bishop, that ever sat in that or any other episcopal see, during the time of his being bishop." "Such, then, is the uninterrupted succession; a FACT to which every bishop, priest, and deacon in the wide world looks as the GROUND OF VALIDITY IN HIS ORDERS. Without this, all distinction between a clergyman and a layman is utterly vain, for no security exists that heaven will ratify the acts of an ILLEGALLY CONSTITUTED minister on earth. Without it, ordination confers none but humanly derived powers; and what those are worth, the reader may estimate, when we tell him, that on proof of a real fracture in the line of transmission between the first bishops of the American church and the inspired apostles, the present bishops will freely acknowledge themselves to be mere laymen, and humbly retire from their posts." Now, if this line of succession is firm any where, it must surely be so at its commencement. We have, therefore, entered at some length upon an examination of the first links of this boasted hierarchy. It may, we suppose, be safely assumed as an axiom, that what has no beginning can have no continuance and no end. And yet here, at the very outset of this gorgeous procession of popes and prelates, with their two attendant orders of priests and deacons, and after the most diligent search, we can discover no head-since that Peter ever was at Rome, is a matter of great uncertainty, that he was ever bishop of Rome utterly incredible, and that he was the first of an order of popes or diocesan prelates, an assumption without any manner of proof, human or divine. And while we are taught to believe that "order is heaven's first law," this august pageantry is led on by a host of crowded candidates for primacy and succession, who can be reduced to no terms; and between whose rival claims the universal church has, as yet, been unable to decide. Where, with "peremptory expectation," we look for assured certainty, all is doubt, ambiguity, and confusion. Not one single canon we have laid down, has been met in the attempted substantiation of the very first links in the chain. The facts themselves, and every thing about the facts of any importance, are equally covered with mysterious darkness. Taking, therefore, the Bible as our guide, and appealing to historic fact as our evidence, "we spurn with 1) So under "Schism," p. 418, he speaks of that "succession of minis terial authority without which there can be no church." out a doubt," the long train of pernicious absurdities, which are involved in this dogma of an unbroken prelatical succession.1 "If," says the author of "The Rights of the Christian Church," himself an episcopalian, "there is a line of succession on which the very being of the church depends, happy they who lived in the earliest, when the line was entire; while we, at so great a distance, can meet with nothing except uncertainty, perplexity, and despair. How can the majority of the christian world, the simple and unlearned, judge when this line is broken, and when not? What can be more absurd, than to send them to fathers, councils, and church history, for their information? If there was a particular set of men who, under a certain form, were to govern the church, and this was necessary to its being, Infinite Goodness would no doubt have made it most conspicuous to the bulk of mankind who they are. what other judgment, upon this hypothesis, can the most knowing make, than that 't is placing the government of the church on such a foot as must destroy the church itself." But "It is probable," says Dr. Claggett," "that the Roman church wants the first, and that there is now no true pope, or has been for many ages, for that church to be united to. For by their own confession, a pope simoniacally chosen, a pope intruded by violence, a heretic, nay, more, an atheist or an infidel, is no true pope. And many such there have been, of one sort or other, whose acts, therefore, in creating cardinals, &c., being invaliad, it is exceedingly probable that the whole succession has upon this account failed long ago." For, as he adds, "while there was no certain pope, there could be no certainty of the validity of any acts necessary to continue a succession of true popes.' Passing now from this threshold of the temple, and entering within the wide portals, which, like those of Egyptian Thebes, bespeak for the divinity worshipped there a power and glory coextensive with our spiritual nature, we find ourselves mournfully impressed with the striking analogy in the fate of both. All is "ruin wild and waste." The mighty fabric of ages has fallen. Its collossal pillars are in the dust. Its glory and its garniture are no more. The sands of the desert have overwhelmed even the dilapidated relics which lie far buried beneath their increasing mass. Such is the prospect which opens before the inquirer, who undertakes to trace out the relics of this apostolic succession, amid the desert wastes of church 1) See Spiritual Desp., p. 327. 2) P. 359, Lond., 1707, ed. third. 3) Notes of the Church, p. 181. history. Confusion thickens upon him at every step, while his covetous guides become the more vainly confident and garrulous, just in proportion as the absence of all marks of truth leave room for imagination to weave its fictions, and superstition to enforce its dreams. "The religious system professed in the christian church had, in the course of two hundred years, reckoning from the death of the last of the apostles, BECOME CAPITALLY DISTINGUISHED from the christianity of the apostles." Already had the prelacy erected itself into an established system, and triumphed over the lower orders, now reduced to comparative vassalage, and over the laity, now excluded from their rightful participation in the administration of the affairs of the church. Of course, every thing was made to conspire to the glorification of this first order of the ministry-the prelates-who were in the third century formally inducted into the office and undisputed title of successors of the apostles.2 Very little credence can, therefore, be given to the tales recorded of their own greatness and inherent dignity, by those who persecuted, even to banishment or death, such refractory sons of the church as dared to question their title deeds of official sanctity and supremacy. Of all authorities drawn from the fathers in support of this system, we may say, many are to no purpose-many are ambiguous many refer simply to authority and office, without determining the meaning of the words, and are irrelevantmany are spurious and forged-and all are the declarations of men, taught to believe that the advantage of the church was to be sought as paramount to all other claims whatever." The line of prelatic succession, therefore, which wants coherence at its very starting point, becomes more and more attenuated, until we find it broken by a thousand intersecting claims, decrees, anathemas, canons, and usurpations. By making diocesan prelates the only representatives and successors of the apostles, the standing of all the churches in the first and purest ages is for ever blasted; since there was no such official personage as a prelate, to be found in all their catalogues -no dioceses having been erected until the fourth century.* The same conclusion may be drawn from innumerable other 1) Spirit. Desp., p. 326, and Anct. Christ., part 5th. 2) See Bingham, b. 2, ch. 2, and Cyprian in Schism, p. 124. 3) See Palmer on the Church, vol. ii., part 7, ch. 3. 4) Palmer, vol. ii., p. 544, and full on in Clarkson's Primitive Episcop., p. 226 and 230; Baynes' Diocesan's Tryall, Lond., 1621, where this subject is fully argued. Baxter's Treatise on Episcopacy, Lond., 1681, part i. facts, having reference to the subject, the form, and the ministers, in the case of each separate consecration. But it is altogether unnecessary to go into this investigation at any length. Contested elections, the decrees of councils-the rivalry of opposing claimants-excommunications, anathemas, and depositions, which affected all the acts of the individuals to whom they applied the intrigue, violence, and bloodshed, with which such contests for office were carried on-the undenied, because undeniable atrocity, atheism, infidelity, licentiousness, heresy, and murder, which characterized many in this "unbroken succession," these facts, which even Baronius could not deny, who confesses that, in a succession of fifty popes, there was not a pious man that there were no popes at all for years together -at other times two or three at once-and between twenty and thirty schisms, one of which lasted for thirty years1-these plain and incontestable facts render all such investigations supererogatory to the clear decision of this question. It never yet has been determined what popes have been true popeswhich of the rival claimants are to be received-nor what councils are to be our guide in coming to a conclusion.2 But, again, we are taught, as by Bellarmine, that heresy, when held by any church, and persisted in by that church, is sufficient to destroy its claim to be a true church. Now, that which is of sufficient potency to overthrow the pretensions of any body to the character of a church, must necessarily be destructive, also, of the claims of such a body to an apostolical succession, since this is itself one of the assigned marks of a true church. And will any man venture to deny, that among those whose names are necessary to make up the line of this prelatical succession, there have been many who have been avowed heretics, and who have employed all their influence for the promotion of heresy? Was not this the case with Zepherynus, Marcellinus, Liberius, Felix, Anastasius, Honorius, and, not to enlarge, with John the XXIII., who denied a future life ?4 1) See in Neal's Puritans, vol. iv., p. 211, and Edgar's Variations of Popery, and Newman on Romanism, lect. xiv. 2) See this strongly urged against Romanists, (though the author was committing suicide,) by Mr. Newman_on Romanism, pp. 151, 152, and see Palmer, vol. ii., part 6, ch. vi., p. 432, &c. And against prelatists generally, in Plea for Presb., 1840, p. 84, &c. 3) De Not. lib. iv. cap. 8. Palmer on the Church. 4) See Bishop Williams in Notes of the Ch., p. 102. Also, Dr. Thorpe in ibid, pp. 131, 132, § 7. "Infallible Heads of the Infallible Church."-"John XXII. was a heretic, and denied the immortality of the soul. John XXIII., Gregory XII., and Benedict XIII., were all popes and infallible heads of the church at the same time, and the council of Constance cashiered the whole of them as illegitimate. The council of Basil convicted Pope Eugenius of schism and heresy. Pope Without attempting to go into any consecutive or elaborate examination of the history of this succession, some general remarks may be satisfactory to those who have not access to other sources of information. Not to speak further of the asserted unchristian character of the Romish prelatical succession, it can, we think, be clearly shown, that many links are defective and invalid, even in the chain of the Anglican succession, and that it can be made to rest upon no tenable or sufficient ground. It can be clearly shown, we say, that many links are defective and invalid, even in the chain of the Anglican succession. At a certain period, the see of Armagh was occupied for eight generations by individuals who had never received any ordination whatever. Hooker admits that ordinations had oftentimes been effected without a bishop to ordain, "and therefore," he says, "we are not simply, without exception, to urge a lineal descent of power from the apostles, by continued succession of bishops in every effectual ordination." Stillingfleet declares, that "by the loss of records of the British churches, we cannot draw down the succession of bishops from the apostles' times."2 There is, in fact, no reckoning for the first five hundred and ninety-six years, until the time when Augustine was sent from Rome to re-establish christianity in Britain. Nor is the re Marcellinus actually sacrificed to idols. Pope Liberius was an Arian, and subscribed to that creed. Anastatius was excommunicated as a heretic by his own clergy. Silvester II. sacrificed to the devil. Formosus was promoted to the chair through perjury. Sergius III. caused his predecessor's body to be dug out of the grave, its head cut off, and then flung into the Tiber. Boniface deposed, imprisoned, and then plucked out the eyes of his predecessor. In a word, many of the popes have been atheists, rebels, murderers, conjurors, adulterers and sodomites. Papal Rome has far exceeded in crime her pagan predecessor. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that the popes, though always assuming a new name, yet never take the name of Peter. It is a curious fact that they always shun it. Those who have received that name at the font have always changed it when they reached the chair. Petrus de Parantasis changed his name to Innocent IV. Petrus Caraf became Paul V. Sergius III.'s christian name was Peter. This practice looks like conscious guilt. They fear the name of Peter would but too plainly show their apostacy from the apostle 1) Eccl. Polity, b. 111. Lond., 3) "Thus far, indeed, we have no mention of bishops in the British church, nor do we find ANY FURTHER information on the subject AT ALL, until the year 314." Rev. Henry Cary on "the Apostolical succession in the Church of England," p. 8. According to Mr. Jones, of Oswestree, in his Historical Treatise "of the Heart and its True Sovereign," there was left in England in 668 but one remaining successor of Augustine and his monks, and that was Winet, a Simonist. All the rest of the bishops were of British ordination, who, as this same divine of the English church testifies, all denied their ordination from Scotch presbyters. See Baxter's True and Only Way of Concord, Lond. 1680. monition, II. Pre "A long interval of heathen darkness now followed, (i. e. the death of |