ART. I.-SUCCESSION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND EXAMINED. BY REV. CHARLES ELLIOTT. Continued from page 152. AT the present time, when foreign bishops are to be ordained, a license must be obtained from the king before either of the arch. bishops can proceed to ordain; as was the case in 1787, when bishops were ordained for the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. In this case, too, both the parliament and the king have made the most sacrilegious infringement on the ministerial office that ever occurred in the annals of Christianity. I mean in limiting our Lord's commission so that no person thus ordained, or their successors for ever, shall be permitted to exercise their ministerial office in any part of the British dominions. Thus they sacrilegiously invaded our Lord's commission; and the American bishops and clergy servilely submitted to receive a null ordination, and act under the disability of this dis. franchisement until this day. This alone is proof positive that the king is the principal ordainer; and it also shows how unsound at bottom the fabled succession is, when so many ecclesiastical irregularities are interwoven in its very nature, and in its consequence limits our Saviour's commission, and nullifies the ministerial office. (6.) The king has the power of suspending or depriving bishops. This power appears to have been exercised previous to the Reformation; for William the Conqueror displaced Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, upon some frivolous pretences. But since the Refor. mation, the Protestant monarchs have frequently degraded bishops. Queen Elizabeth actually deprived fifteen Popish bishops on her accession to the throne, because they would not take the oath of supremacy. Charles II. suspended Archbishop Abbot for refusing to license a sermon, and the bishop of Gloucester for refusing to swear he would never consent to an alteration in the church. James II. suspended seven bishops; he also suspended the bishop of London because he refused to suspend Dr. Sharp. And at the time of the revolution, William III. deprived several bishops who refused to take the oath of allegiance, and from that were called non-jurors, and became the founders of a new sect, through which Mr. Seabury, the first bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, received epis. VOL. VIII.-July, 1837. 21 |