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presbyter. But since the apostles gave very full and explicit directions to the churches they addressed, on all points deemed important; and were led to do so by the teaching of the Holy Ghost; it would have been the more necessary to guard their readers against the inference which must be otherwise drawn, as to the identity of these officers. Prelacy being true, and being of essential importance, we cannot imagine how the apostles should have said what they have spoken, and should have left unsaid what they might have so easily declared.

Christ commanded us to call no man master on earth, and before submitting, therefore, to this yoke of bondage, we must be certified of the authority by which it is imposed. Christ represented his kingdom as divided into different provinces, under the dominion of as many separate governors as he then had chosen ministers, and we ask where he has reduced it to one consolidated and absolute monarchy.1 Christ is held forth to us, every where, as the only head of his church; and as carrying on all its operations by his own immediate and divine presidency; and we ask where has he consigned this sceptre, and intrusted this rule, to prelates-these self-styled successors of the apostles ?2 Christ commanded his ministers to go forth as heralds, not as legislators—as servants, not as masters-as teachers of what he commanded, and not as enforcers of what he commanded not. The Jewish Rabbis are condemned for making the law of God,-which, like prelates, they professed fully to receive--of none effect by those traditions, with which they overlaid and obscured them. Now we must be certified that these prelatical church principles are not, likewise, traditions of the elders, and therefore to be condemned.

That which is essential to salvation, is held forth in scripture so plainly that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err. Such truths are as a city set on a hill, toward which we can hardly miss our way, if sincerly desirous to reach it. They are proclaimed so openly, so unreservedly, and so clearly, that whosoever believeth may be saved. But these writers would persuade us that the main difference between the Jewish and christian dispensations lies in the difficulty of discovering the precise requirements of the christian ritual; and that instead of being a law of liberty, it is a law of severity, of constraint, of formality, and of external rites. But is this indeed so? "To the law and the testimony."

1) See Mark 29, 30.

2) See the Dudleian Lecture, by the Rev. John Tucker, A. M., Boston, 1778. "The validity of presbyterian ordination argued from Jesus

Christ being the sole legislator and supreme head and ruler of the christian church."

3) See note C.

ADDITIONAL NOTES TO LECTURE SECOND.

NOTE A.

That we do not overcharge the picture, will appear from the statement of the question as given by its three ablest American advocates.

Dr. Bowden declares that he has proved "that diocesan (his own italics) episcopacy is of divine origin."* "I had proved," says he, "that bishops in the third century were diocesan; that they were raised from the presbyterate to the episcopate by a new ordination; that they possessed the supreme power of the keys; that they were the sole ordainers; that they alone confirmed; that all orders in the church were subordinate to them, and that bishops of this kind were instituted by CHRIST."t

The doctrine is thus laid down by Dr. Howe: "Well, the supposition is, that Christ established distinct grades of ministers, and conferred upon the highest grade the exclusive power of ordaining. When a minister of the highest grade, then, ordains, Christ ordains; when a minister of the second grade ordains, it is not Christ that ordains, but man. Thus episcopal ordination confers the sacredotal office; presbyterial ordination does not. If, therefore, the former ordination be laid aside, and the latter be substituted in its place, the sacredotal office must cease to exist; and as there can be no church without a ministry, the church must cease to exist also.

"Man can no more make a minister of Christ than he can make a Bible. The sacredotal power can come only from the great Head of the church; and it can come from him only in the way of his appointment.'

Dr. Cooke thus presents the question:§ "We have express warrant for saying, that there was an order of clergy superior to presbyters; that their superiority rests on the appointment of CHRIST, and that with this superior order alone were deposited all the treasures of ministerial order and succession. Moreover, that we have the positive testimony of those to whom this superior order committed the church, as their successors, that they, when the church was settled, dropped the name of APOSTLE, messengers, and, now that they were confined to the oversight of the church in one city and the district of county surrounding it, assumed to themselves the more appropriate name of OVERSEER or bishops, and continued to exercise the powers of the superior order,"|| viz. the apostolic order.

Bishop Meade, in his sermon at the consecration of Bishop Elliott, with a particular reference to Archbishop Laud, gives the following outline of the high-church doctrines on this subject:

1st. That before Jesus Christ left the world, he breathed the holy spirit into the apostles, giving them the power of transmitting this precious gift to others by prayer and the imposition of hands; that the apostles did so transmit it to others; and they again to others; and that in this way it has been preserved in the world to the present day.

*Letters, 2d series, Letter ii. p. 18.

Do. Letter iii. p. 25. See also p. 26, 36. See also Works on Episcop. vol. ii. p. 68 and 73.

Vind. of the Prot. Episc. Ch. p. 354.

§ Works on Episcop. vol. ii. p. 250. ||Washington, 1841, p. 94.

"2d. That the gift thus transmitted empowers its possessors, 1st, to admit into, and exclude from, the mysterious communion called in scripture the kingdom of heaven, any one whom they judge deserving of it; and this, with the assurance that all whom they admit or exclude on earth and externally, are admitted or excluded in heaven and spiritually, in the sight of God and holy angels; that it empowers them to bless and intercede for, those who are within this kingdom, in a sense in which no other man can bless or intercede. 2d. To make the eucharistic bread and wine the body and blood of Christ in the sense in which our Lord made them so. 3d. To enable delegates to perform this great miracle by ordaining them with imposition of hands.

"According to this view of the subject, to dispense with episcopal ordination is to be regarded not as a breach of order merely, or a deviation from apostolical precedent, but as a surrender of the christian priesthood, a rejection of all the powers which Christ instituted episcopacy to perpetuate; and the attempt to institute any other form of ordination for it, or to seek communion with Christ through any non-episcopal association, is to be regarded not as schism merely, but as an impossibility."

In Nos. 51 and 52 of the Oxford Tracts we have these strong expressions: "Christ never appointed two ways to heaven; nor did he build a church to save some, and make another institution to save other men. There is no other name given under heaven among men whereby we can be saved, but the name of Jesus, and that is no otherwise given under heaven than in the church."

NOTE B.

On this point a few more references may be made.

This matter, says Episcopius in his Labyrinth or Popish Circle, Arg. vi., is so clear, that even the learned Jesuit, Cardinal Bellarmine, acknowledges these two things: 1. That the argument concerning succession is not adduced by his party to prove that the church in which this succession may be found, is on this account to be considered the true church, but only to prove that that is not the true church in which such succession is wanting. 2. That antiquity and continued succession avail nothing to the Greek church, or at least to that of Constantinople, nor even to all the eastern patriarchates, for proving them to be the true church, because the thread of legitimate succession among them has been broken by some of their bishops having been heretical. From these remarks it clearly follows, that when the succession is made out, the principal question respecting truth remains still to be determined. For when an uninterrupted succession is proved, if it cannot be infallibly collected and concluded that the church which has such succession is the true church; and if it must be rendered apparent that no heresies or heretical bishops have interposed in the succession; reason itself dictates that succession is introduced to little or no purpose, unless we are fully informed respecting that which constitutes the truth in doctrine; for whilst truth is unknown, it is impossible to determine what is or what is not heresy.

Of this succession, Turretine says it cannot be a note of the church;* "quid competit etiam falsis Doctoribus. Annas et Cajaphas successerunt Aaroni in sacerdotio, Scribæ and Pharisæi succedebant Patribus et Legis interpretibus, Ariani succedebant orthodoxis, Ecclesia Græca, quam Pontificii habent pro schismatica et hæretica, successione non interrupta Episcoporum ab apostolis gloriatur. Bellarminus ipse de notis Eccles. lib. 4, cap. 8, sub finem, fatetur, non posse inferri necessario Ecclesiam esse, ubi est successio. "Si successio localis est nota ecclesia, ergo multæ Ecclesiæ hæreticæ et schismaticæ sunt veræ ecclesia, quia possunt habere talem successionem, ubi falsi Doctores succedant in loca et in sades verorum Pastorum."

So also in his treatise, "De Secessione Necessaria ab Ecclesia Romana." he says, "Scribæ et Pharisæi succedebant versis doctoribus, qui tamen seductores erant, et veritatis hostes acerrimi. Sic Ariani succedebant orthodoxis; sic tenebræ luci; morbus sanitati; Tyrannus pio principi succedit."

See also Stapferi Institutiones Theologia Tom. 1, p. 423, § MDXXXVII.

*Opera Tom. iii. 121, twice.

†Op. Tom. iv. p. 216, 217.

That the Greek, Ethiopic, Syrian and other churches equally depend on an uninterrupted succession, see also, Dr. Willet, Syn. Pap. pp. 83, 84. Causa Episcop. Hier Lucif. Edinburgh, 1706, 4to. pp. 181, 182. Dr. Fulke Conf. Rhem. N. T. on Eph. iv. 13.

On the claims of the Greek church and its condemnation of others, including the Romish, see Pinkerton's Transl. of Platon's Summ. of Chr. Div. Edinburgh, 1814, p. 162, 163. See also, Tracts by the ever-memorable John Hales, of Eaton. London, 1727, p. 210.

NOTE C.

When we demand express scripture authority for that which is to be maintained, as of divine right, we do not mean that the proposition is to be discovered there, in so many words; but that if not there in words, it will be found to follow from its words, as a clear and evident consequence. "It is quite sufficient," to use the words of Dr. Howe, "if the institution (to wit, prelacy) be capable of being fairly proved (his italics) from scripture."

Such a clear and evident proof for them as such, has been ever required by protestant writers. This rule of protestantism is thus expressed by Conder, in his Nonconformity, vol. ii. p. 317. "The sufficiency of the Bible, as a rule of faith and practice, is to be considered as exclusive, not of other means of rational guidance, but of all other sources of authority in matters of religious duty. It is not implied, that nothing but what scripture commands is lawful, but that nothing which scripture has not made to be duty, can as respects the concerns of religion, be constituted our duty by the authority of man. The word of God is our only rule, in the sense both of a law and a standard; a rule sufficient, as opposed to all deficiency; exclusive, as relates to the divine authority from which it emanates; universal, as embracing all the principles of human actions; and ultimate, as admitting of no appeal. For all religious purposes, it is literally the only rule, because the divine command constitutes the only reason, as well as the only law of religious actions; and there can, therefore, be no scope for other rules, except with regard to the mere outward circumstantials of religious duties, which do not come within the obligations of any law."

This demand is fully sanctioned by Dr. Bowden, in the following canon:* "But as there is no probability that we shall meet one another upon this point, the least I think you can do, as a reasonable and candid opponent, is to consider these texts as involved in some degree of obscurity; and, therefore, upon every fair principle of criticism, not affording sufficient ground for either your practice or ours. It is conceded by all men of sense, that no doctrine should be founded upon a single passage of scripture, when that passage is not perfectly clear in itself; and especially when there are strong objections upon other grounds to any particular sense given to it."

That all things necessary to be believed, are to be found expressly in scripture. see taught by Hooker, Eccl. Pol. B. 3, § 2, vol. i p. 208 and 210, Hanbury's Ed. and B. 3, § 18.

When Elizabeth required her chaplain to perform divine service before a crucifix which she kept in her chapel, Dr. Cox wrote to her as follows: "I ought to do nothing touching religion, which may appear doubtful whether it pleaseth God or not; for our religion ought to be certain, and grounded upon God's word and will."t

See also Jackson's Works, vol. iii. p. 890. Oxf. Tr. vol. i. 42, 46, 48. Whateley on St. Paul, p. 366. Do. on Romanism, 173. Jeremy Taylor in Powell, p. 12. Dodsworth on Scripture, on p. 12. Potter on Ch. Govt. p. 119, and 278 and 281; see also p. 27. Stillingfleet, Iren, p. 118. Stillingfleet, Irenic, Pt. 2, ch. i. p. 151.

See also some good remarks in Dr. Mitchell's Letters to Bishop Skinner, London, 1809, Prel. Disc. p. 29, &c.

*Works on Episcop. vol. p. 153. McCrie's Life of Knox, vol. i. p. 156.

LECTURE III.

THE TRIBUNAL, BY WHICH THIS PRELATICAL DOCTRINE OF APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION MUST BE ADJUDICATED.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

The question before us, as fully stated in the preceding Lecture, is the prelatic doctrine of apostolical succession.

"The doctrine in dispute is this: that Christ founded a visible church as an ordinance forever, and endowed it once for all with spiritual privileges, and set his apostles over it, as the first in a line of ministers and rulers, like themselves, except in their miraculous gifts, and to be continued from them by successive ordination; in consequence, that to adhere to this church thus distinguished, is among the ordinary duties of a christian, and is the means of his appropriating the gospel blessings, with an evidence of his doing so not attainable elsewhere.”1

For the truth of this theory, we demand express and indubitable sanction from the word of God, the only tribunal by which this question can be finally and authoritatively settled.

In support of the reasonableness and propriety of this demand, we offered two arguments :

I. Such plain and evident corroboration is made necessary by the fact, that the claims involved in this doctrine were urged by the ancient heretics, and are now preferred by various bodies differing very materially from each other. Of necessity, therefore, recourse must be had to some umpire who can decide upon their respective claims. This umpire is the written word of God.

II. Such proof is necessary and reasonable, because if this doctrine, as is alleged, is of essential importance, then would it have been, as all articles of fundamental importance are, dis

1) Oxf. Tr. No. 74, vol. iii. p. 129.

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