"These uncovenanting doctors," says Mr. Bristed, in his "Thoughts on the American-Anglo Churches," "do actually make belief in a bishop more essential to salvation than faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In what part of the scriptures do these gentlemen find, that eternal life is made to hinge upon connexion with any particular external church order and government? The transit of an immortal soul from earth to heaven, or to hell, depends upon far other grounds, than whether he was an episcopalian, or presbyterian, or congregationalist. The word of God says: 'He that believeth, (in Christ, not in the bishop,) and is baptized, shall be saved; and he that believeth not, shall be damned.' Hence, faith in the redeeming God, is the indispensable condition of salvation; notwithstanding our divines place this condition upon the participation of christian ordinances at the hands of themselves and their authorized brethren." "What! ho! father Abraham!" said Mr. Whitfield, when preaching at Philadelphia-"whom have you in heaven? any episcopalians? No. Any presbyterians? No. Any baptists? No. Have you any methodists there? No. Any independents, or covenanters, or burghers, or anti-burghers? No. Whom have you, then, in heaven?" cried the impassioned preacher. 'We know not any of those names here; all who are here are christians-believers in Christ; men who have overcome by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of his testimony.' Is this the case?" continued the venerable speaker; "then, God help me! God bless us all to forget party names, and sectarian distinctions, and bigoted differences, and to become christians, indeed, and in truth. Amen! So may it be, amen!" "This father of the calvinistic methodists might have added an apostrophe to another distinguished personage, and said: “Ho! Beelzebub! ho, Satan! thou prince of darkness, thou destroyer of the souls of men! are there any papists in hell! Yes. Any protestant episcopalians? Yes. Any independents, or congregationalists? Yes. Any presbyterians? Yes. Any methodists? Yes. Any baptists? Yes. Any lay churchmen, teachers, and preachers, and expounders? Yes. Have you any christians? No. We have an innumerable multitude of formalists, and bigots, and sectarians, and persecutors of all persuasions and rupted and broken; and the office itself was to cease on the coming of Christ, after whom there could be no high priest; nor can Christ have any successor, and, therefore, he is said to be a priest forever; for he ever liveth the intercessor and sacrifice for mankind." Comment. on Heb. v. 4. See the absurdity of this theory fully exposed also in Dr. Bangs' Original Church of Christ, Numbers 15-19, pp. 97-243, and in the Rights of Christ. Ch. pp. 313, 314, 317, 364, 365. 1) Ibid, p. 256. denominations, of every tongue, and name, and country, in that region, soil, and clime, where their worm dieth not, and where their fire is never quenched. But we have not one solitary christian, of any age, or either sex."1 Who can tell the number of souls who have been lulled into the sleep of eternal death, by those teachers who place the external order of their church, upon a level with the merits of the Redeemer, to procure acceptance before God? Nay, as to non-episcopalians, episcopacy is the first, and faith in Christ only the second requisite; for, says the writer above cited, 1) The argument is thus presented in a late number of the Eclectic Rev.: "We will suppose again, that the catalogue could be completed, what would it avail them among a christian people, when it would appear that they inherit through such utter reprobates, infidels, simonists, and monsters, as all history shows have occupied the bishops' chairs, first in England, and next at the headquarters of Rome? John XII. was degraded by a council, that charged him with every abomination that ever disgraced a human monster. Leo, a wretch little better, was set up in his place. Yet Baronius and Binius trace the succession through John, and not through Leo. John was a simonist, a drunkard, a murderer, an adulterer, a worshipper of idols, and of the devil. Yet this monster was the channel through which our successionists claim to have received the Holy Ghost! Then, at another time, there were three popes, all making war upon each other, and fighting with armies to make their way to the apostolic chair, and convey the Holy Spirit's influence pure from the Fountainhead to all their christian successors. In the eleventh century simony was universally practised in Italy. It was for a long time much the same in England, and Godwin shows what exorbitant prices many of the English bishops procured ordination from the pope. 'Come here,' says Stillingfleet, 'to Rome, and here the succession is as muddy as the Tiber itself.' Iren. p. 322. Much good may it do to the successionists to take their fill of such a stream, and claim their descent through such channels. Yet all this comes, and infinitely more, if we had but room to state it, through their arrogant, thriftless, and contemptible boasts at of apostolical succession. It deserves to be held up to the utter scorn and ridicule of the whole protestant world. It is an outrageous insult to common sense. If the men who are now perpetrating it in the face of England, were open to the argumentum ad modestiam, we would just remind them, that the Homily for Whitsunday, pt. 2, declares that 'the popes and prelates of Rome, for the most part, are worthily accounted among the number of false prophets, and false Christs, which deceived the world a long while;' and then it prays, that the gospel of Christ may be received in all parts of the world, 'to the beating down of sin, death, the pope, the devil, and all the kingdoms of antichrist.' To these homilies, we believe, every clergyman subscribes, as containing 'a godly and wholesome doctrine, fit to be read in churches by ministers.' Yet we are now informed by these ministers of Christ, that these popes and prelates are the very men that have communicated to them exclusively the Holy Spirit and the apostolic doctrine. Gentlemen and christian ministers, what has become of your modesty and consistency? Can ye do all this in the face of God, and expect us, or this protestant nation, to believe and respect you? Why does not every honest clergyman disdainfully reject this wicked boast? "Since the Church of England has, by its public documents, denounced the church of Rome as a heretical, foul, filthy, and antichristian church, we should be glad to know how such a church could communicate the apostolical virtue? Indeed, the successionists shall take either of these alternatives and must take one of them. Let the church of Rome be a true church, "whoever is in communion with the bishop, the supreme governor of the church upon earth, is in communion with Christ, the head of it; and whoever is not in communion with the bishop, is thereby cut off from communion with Christ." or let it be false one. We care not which, for in either case the Church of England is condemned. If it was a true church, then the Church of England was guilty of schism in leaving it, and is itself a false church; and if the church of Rome was a false church, then it could not be a pure fountain of apostolical succession, and so your apostolicity is tossed from the one horn to the other of this dilemma. The doctrine of lineal descent is stultified equally, whichever proposition is assumed.' Prelates are very fond of caricaturing, and then grossly abusing, the doctrine of predestination, as being so merciless and exclusive. "Such an objection comes surely with an ill grace from those, who would have us believe that God has predestined to an exclusive personal election to all the privileges of the church on earth, and to the only covenanted salvation, the prelatical successors of the reverend line of popes, and those who will submit to their spiritual jurisdiction. "Such presumption and arrogance," says an episcopalian writer, (Bristed's Thoughts on the Am. Anglo Ch. p. 427,) "would be ridiculous, were it not truly lacrymable, that any one single, individual protestant can be found in the nineteenth century, so foolishly fanatic, so basely bigoted, so unchristian, so antichristian, as to advance this rankest of all the dogmas of popery. And these men, who thus liberally uncovenant, unchurch, unchristianize, all other denominations, call themselves Arminians; and profess to believe, that the Saviour died for all mankind, including heathens and Mahometans, as well as christians; and certainly, the warriors of the crescent, and the worshippers of the innumerable pagan deities, are quite as sturdy non-episcopalians, as the presbyterians, or congregationalists, or baptists, can possibly be." LECTURE XV. THE PRELATICAL DOCTRINE OF APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION SUICIDAL. WE now advance to another position, by which we would expose the unsoundness of this doctrine, and that is, that it is suicidal; and destructive in its application, to those who would audaciously stake on this filmy and unsubstantial vision, the whole destinies of the human family. This doctrine-that of apostolical succession, that is, its bold assumption, gives right to apostolic power, and secures to the church possessing it apostolic doctrine-is as destructice to its avowers, as it is intolerant to its rejectors. It is apostatical and not apostolical.-It overthrows the discipline of Christ; while it destroys the hopes of those who are true disciples of Christ. And while contending for Christ's seamless coat, crucifies him afresh in his living members. Archbiship Laud, the canonized saint and martyr of prelatists,1 confesses that this succession stands or falls with the opinion that the church of Rome "never erred" in fundamentals; and that on the ascertained genuineness and validity of her claims to the succession, depend the hopes of the English prelacy. Now, as the stream can rise no higher than its source, it follows that whatever virtue, power, authority, or truth, this succession is supposed to confer upon the hierarchy in England, it must confer, a fortiori, on the hierarchy of Rome. For if this succession is insufficient to authenticate the claims of the church of Rome, and to perpetuate in her, truth of doctrine and propriety of order; then neither can it enstamp with apostolic character, the doctrines and order of the Anglican prelacy. If after all, this boasted succession does not in fact preserve, or prove, truth; and does not, therefore, transmit necessarily authority 1) See The Cathedral. 2) See Neal's Puritans, vol. iii. pp. 189, 193. 3) Oxford Tracts, vol. i. p. 88. |