ON APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION.
On our return from Farmer Pickford's, we heard that the Rev. Mr. Roscoe and his lady had arrived rather unexpectedly at his brother's mansion; but we regarded it as a flying rumour without any foundation. However, the next morning Miss Roscoe called and confirmed the intelligence, and said she was commissioned to invite us to meet them and a select party on the following Monday evening. Addressing me, she said, "You will see a great change in my dear uncle. He is no longer the bigoted Tractarian, contending for legendary dogmas and ceremonial rites; but is now a devout and simple-hearted minister of Jesus Christ." We cordially accepted the invitation; and, on the appointed evening, had the pleasure of meeting our esteemed friends all in excellent health and spirits. After tea, a casual reference having been made by Mrs. John Roscoe to Williams' Missionary Enterprises,[31] we indulged for some time in a free and easy interchange of remarks on the labours of missionaries in foreign parts. This, somewhat unexpectedly, led to a grave discussion on the popular question of Apostolical Succession.
"In this extraordinary narrative," said the Rev. Mr. Roscoe, "which I have read with intense delight, we have a detailed account of the success of Mr. Williams' labours. In islands where an impure and demoralizing idolatry, which often demanded human sacrifices, existed from time immemorial, there is now a Christian population, organized into churches, observing the sanctity of the Sabbath, and the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper. The printing-press is also at work; the Bible is in free circulation; and the natives are exerting themselves in various ways for the spread of the gospel amongst their yet unenlightened brethren of other islands. In fact, there is such a moral and spiritual transformation that it cannot be accounted for, otherwise than by the concurrence of a supernatural power with the human agency which has been employed in effecting it."
Mr. Roscoe.—"The results of the labours of Mr. Williams and his coadjutors in the propagation of the gospel, form a very strong argument against the dogma of Apostolical Succession, for which a party in our church are contending with so much Jesuitical artifice and overbearing intolerance. Dr. Hook, one of their leaders, says—and all the clergy of his school subscribe to his sentiments—'Unless Christ be spiritually present with the ministers of religion in their services, these services will be in vain.' I admit this: but then he adds, what I cannot admit, because it is in palpable opposition to indisputable facts—'But the only ministrations to which he has promised his presence, are to those of the bishops who are successors of the first commissioned apostles, and the other clergy acting under their sanction and by their authority. I therefore,' he adds, 'at once abandon expediency, submission to constituted authority, decency, and order, as the ground of our defence of our clerical commission, and appeal to the promise given by Jesus Christ to his apostles, and which promise, by coming down to us as their successors, marks us exclusively for God's ambassadors.'[32]
"If we contrast this vain boasting of the Tractarians with indisputable facts, how strange does it appear! Here I find from the life of Williams, that instead of studying at Cambridge or Oxford, he was serving as an apprentice to an ironmonger, in the City Road, London; and, if not a positive infidel, he was addicted to habits of impiety, if not intemperance, spending his Sabbath evenings at a public tavern. On one occasion, a pious female friend saw him loitering about in front of the tabernacle in Moorfields, where he expected to meet the companions of his nightly revels; but to mortify them because they were not punctual to their engagement, he yielded to her entreaties to go with her into the tabernacle and hear the sermon." Then, taking up the Life of Williams,[33] which lay on a side table, he read the following passage:—"Such a state of mind was anything but favourable to the serious consideration of sacred subjects; and few ever entered the house of God less prepared to profit by its services. The Rev. Timothy East, of Birmingham, occupied the pulpit that evening, January 30, 1814, and preached from the weighty question, 'For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' (Mark viii. 36, 37). The word came with power, and with demonstration of the Holy Spirit upon the mind of his youthful auditor." "Now this young man," continued Mr. Roscoe, "reclaimed from the error of his ways by what Paul calls the foolishness of preaching, after tarrying at home long enough to give evidence of the genuineness of his conversion to God, and receive instruction to fit him for the work to which he had devoted himself, goes to the South Seas, learns the language of the natives, and commences the work of evangelizing them; and this book is a faithful record and report of his extraordinary labours. He received no episcopal ordination in the regular line of descent; but was he not God's ambassador of grace and mercy to these once savage and cannibal islanders? and if so, Dr. Hook asserts what is not absolutely true, that none are God's ambassadors except the clergy of the Church of England and Papal priests."
Mr. Stevens.—"The minister who preached the last anniversary sermons in my chapel, in behalf of our Sabbath-schools, informed me, when we were chatting about apostolic succession, that he knew the ecclesiastic ancestors of Mr. Williams, and gave me his pedigree, remarking that he was descended from 'a succession of bishops, who neither had palaces nor seats in the House of Lords.' Mr. Jay, of Bath, was the instrument employed by the Spirit of God in the conversion of the Rev. O. A. Jeary, of Rodborough, Gloucestershire, who was employed by the Holy Spirit in the conversion of the Rev. T. East, and he was employed by the same Divine agent in the conversion of the Rev. J. Williams. We thus see that the moral revolutions and spiritual transformations which have taken place in the South Sea Islands are not to be ascribed, in the slightest degree, either subordinately or instrumentally, to the intervention of Episcopal power or authority. Not one employed in any department of this wondrous work, occupied a position in the regular line of descent from the apostles, nor had any one of them received ordination from an Episcopal bishop."
Rev. Mr. Guion.—"A Tractarian who admits the truthfulness of Mr. Williams' report of the success of his own labours, and those of his coadjutors, would probably look on this as an exceptional case to the established law of order prevalent in the church, which we all know requires ordination to precede preaching or the administration of the sacraments. And I see no very strong objection to this view of the matter, because we find that, even in apostolic times, the disciples who were scattered at the persecution of Stephen went to different places preaching the Word, though they were not ordained to the work as the apostles were (Acts xi. 19, 20)."
Mr. Roscoe.—"I admit there is some force in the popular saying—'There is no rule without an exception;' and I admit, also, that the exception establishes rather than subverts the rule from which it is a deviation; but then there must be some proof that it is really an exception. Regarding the case of the dispersed disciples to which you have referred, I see no evidence in confirmation of its being a deviation from any fixed rule of government established within the pale of the church, because I find other cases reported which bear such a strong analogy to it, that I am compelled to believe that no absolute and undeviating regulations on this subject can be found in the New Testament. We find for example (Acts i. 26), that Matthias was chosen to the apostleship as the successor of Judas; but it does not appear from the record of the transaction, that he was ordained to this office by the other eleven apostles with whom he took rank. Again, the case of Paul is still more decisive against the Tractarian dogma that no one can preach or administer the sacraments with efficacy, unless he derive his official authority and power to do so from the apostles, or some one to whom they have delegated their authority and power. He assumed the designation of an apostle, and did the work of an apostle, some years before he saw any one of the twelve, acting as independently of them, as they did of him; and when they met at Jerusalem they did not require him to submit to ordination administered by them: and, at a subsequent period of his history, when he was called by the Holy Spirit (Acts xiii. 1-5) to go and preach the Word of God in the synagogues of the Jews in Seleucia and other places, he[34] was set apart to this work, not to any office, by subordinate members of the church at Antioch, termed prophets and teachers, who, when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on Paul and Barnabas, sent them away. These things occurred just when a new system of government was introduced into the church, that was to be perpetuated through all future ages. Here, then, we see pious laymen sallying forth and preaching in different places the Lord Jesus, with such power that many believed and turned unto him (Acts xi. 19-21); and we see also some holding the highest office in the Christian church without undergoing the ceremony of consecration by pre-existing officials, and yet these facts are recorded in Scripture without any notification that they are exceptions to fixed and absolute laws. Such a notification would have proved a decisive evidence in confirmation of such laws had they been established. We thus see that the plain, indisputable facts of the New Testament are in direct opposition to the high church principles of our Tractarians."
Rev. Mr. Ingleby.—"I have long maintained that this dogma of apostolical succession is an ecclesiastical monopoly which has no sanction from the Word of the Lord, and it is too selfish in its nature to harmonize with the free and generous spirit of the Christian dispensation. If it be the will of Jesus Christ, the supreme Legislator of his church, that no one shall preach the gospel or administer the sacraments with spiritual efficacy until he is ordained to the work by an apostle, or some bishop who can trace his lineal descent from an apostle with absolute certainty, how can such a restricted law as this be known unless he expressly enacts it either by an immediate revelation of his will, or through the medium of the inspired writers? No one pretends that an express revelation has ever been given in reference to such a restriction, and I have never been able to find an implied regulation in any chapter or verse of the New Testament. To say that we, and we exclusively, are the priests of the Lord, and, if you wish to be saved, you must intrust your souls to our ghostly power—that we, and we only, have the keys of the kingdom of heaven—that we open and shut by virtue of the authority delegated to us by St. Peter and St. Paul—is nothing less on the part of the Papal and Tractarian clergy than a monopoly of official authority and power, unsanctioned by the authority of Jesus Christ, and a subtle manœuvre to magnify their own order. That a Papist should believe this, who is trained in the belief that the laws and regulations of his church are absolute and unchangeable, is not surprising; but that a Protestant should believe it, who has free access to his Bible, and been taught to hold its absolute and exclusive authority on all articles of faith and practice, is indeed a moral paradox which I cannot explain."
Rev. Mr. Guion.—"Yes, Sir, it is a monopoly which has no sanction from Jesus Christ, the supreme Legislator in his church, and one which entails repulsive and fearful consequences. It compels its advocates to shun all Christian alliance with many of the excellent of the earth, and drives them into the closest connection with many who are moral miscreants, men of impurity, sceptics, and scoffers. Such men as Chalmers and Wardlaw, Robert Hall and William Jay, are branded as usurpers in the church, with whom it would be a sort of treason to associate, and whose ministrations must be denounced as a fatal curse to their deluded adherents, while those clergymen who have received the so-called apostolical ordination, however immoral they may be in conduct, or heterodox in teaching, are to be revered and obeyed as the true and faithful ministers of Jesus Christ. There is in all this something so repugnant to common-sense and Christian feeling—so derogatory to personal dignity and pure taste—and so calculated to excite the contempt of infidels against the whole clerical order, that I am astonished how any one who cherishes the slightest degree of reverence for the authority of Jesus Christ, or who has imbibed a particle of his pure and loving spirit, can submit to its dominion and governing power, especially when he is told that, if he has not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his."
Mr. Roscoe.—"Your very just and forcible remarks remind me of a paragraph in the Edinburgh Review,[35] which I marked for reference, and which, by your permission, I will read: it is an amplification of your remarks on this very objectionable feature of Tractarianism:—'The strongest and most irrefragable argument against the principles held by the Tractarians appears to us not their absurdity, though that is flagrant enough, but their essential uncharitableness. We stand absolutely confounded at the fatuity of men, who, with the New Testament in their hands, profess to be willing to fraternize with Rome, but cannot fraternize with Lutherans and Presbyterians; who affect to consider the points of difference between the Church of Spain and the Church of England less vital than those between the Church of England and that of Scotland; who, for the sake of such a figment as apostolical succession and other figments as shadowy, remorselessly exclude a large portion of the communities of Christendom from the very name, rights, and privileges of Christian churches; who can imagine the great doctrines in which both they and their opponents coincide, and which form the theme and triumph of inspired eloquence, of less moment than doctrines and rites on which the Scripture is ominously silent, or which seem to stand in shocking contrast to the moral grandeur and magnanimous spirit of the Christian institute. Yet so it is; and we need no other evidence of the degrading and narrowing effects of such principles than that this most melancholy result of them should inspire so little sorrow, or rather should be so frequently proclaimed more in triumph than with regret. The generality of the Oxford school proclaim the consequences of their principles not only with an arrogance which ill befits such equivocal conclusions, but without a particle of sorrow, which, if true, they would naturally excite in the breast of every benevolent man.'"
Rev. Mr. Guion.—"As they are, in common with their Papal brethren, intolerant on principle, and that principle one which, in their opinion, involves the honour of the church, and the final happiness of the soul of man, they cannot feel any regret, when adverting to its necessary consequences in its application to other churches and sects, without being self-convicted of positive inconsistency; they must adhere to their principle of exclusive intolerance, in spite of all the odium it may cast on their theory of belief. And this stern and steady adherence to a principle which compels them, as by the force of a Divine law, to prefer fraternizing with the Papacy, with all its arrogant claims, its assumed prerogatives, and its repugnant ceremonial regulations, rather than fraternize with their Protestant brethren who contend earnestly for the pure faith of the New Testament, is to me a conclusive proof that their theory of belief is anti-Christian in its character and tendency, as the unerring test may be applied to principles as well as to persons—'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his,' Rom. viii. 9."
Rev. Mr. Ingleby.—"If we are to receive the doctrine of apostolical succession as correct, we must then admit as a fact what to every reflecting mind will appear most incongruous and extraordinary. The theory held by our Tractarian clergy in common with the Romish Church, is, That each bishop, from the apostolical times, has received in his consecration a mysterious gift, and also transmits to every priest in his ordination a mysterious gift, indicated in the respective offices by the awful words, 'Receive the Holy Ghost;' that on this the right of priests to assume their functions, and the preternatural grace of the sacraments administered by them, depends; that bishops, once consecrated, are invested with the remarkable property of transmitting the gift to others; that this has been the case from the primitive age till now; that this high gift has been incorruptibly transmitted through the hands of impure, profligate, heretical ecclesiastics, as ignorant and flagitious as any of their lay contemporaries; that, in fact, these gifts are perfectly irrespective of the moral character and qualifications both of bishop and priest; and reside in equal integrity in a Latimer or a Bonner—a virtuous man or a profligate—an imbecile or a genius."
Rev. Mr. Guion.—"I believe, Sir," said he, addressing the Rev. Mr. Roscoe, "you were once a strenuous advocate of this theory of apostolical succession; will you permit me to ask you a few questions, which may tend to expose its gross absurdity—its shameless jugglery to magnify the glory of an ambitious priesthood, who evince more zeal and devotion in behalf of their own order than they do for the purity and spiritual triumphs of the Christian faith?"
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"Yes, Sir; I confess, with some degree of shame, that I once entertained the belief that some mysterious gift was transmitted from the bishop to the priest at the time of his ordination."
Rev. Mr. Guion.—"Was this gift, in your opinion or belief, transmitted to the intellect or to the heart, or to both? Or in other words, did it give additional acuteness to your intellectual faculty—extend the range of your knowledge of Divine truth, or did it increase the purity of your soul, and raise your affections to a higher pitch of devotional feeling?"
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"To be candid, Sir, I took for granted the truth of the doctrine as to the mysterious transmission of a mysterious something; but when I reflected on it, as I sometimes did, even before I was rescued from the meshes of Tractarian delusions, I felt as though my mind were revolving in a circle: I could see nothing; I could feel nothing. I was the same man in knowledge, in intelligence, in taste, and in devotional feeling, after the solemn words, Receive the Holy Ghost, were uttered, as I was before they fell from the lips of the bishop."
Mr. Roscoe.—"It amounts then simply to this, and it is of no use to attempt to disguise the fact, that what is deemed the essential part of the ordination service, is either a solemn farce, or it is a positive reality, and in that case it must be received without a particle of evidence in its support. The bishop who transmits the gift is not conscious that he possesses what he pretends to give; and the person who receives it is not conscious of receiving it at the time it is imparted: both the giver and receiver are in the same condition of unconsciousness, during the mysterious process of giving and receiving the inexplicable and inconceivable something, on which the authority of the priest to officiate, and the vital efficacy of all his ministrations, are made dependent. This is most marvellous! more like an extravagant invention to answer some special device, than a sober reality of Divine appointment."
Rev. Mr. Guion.—"I have no doubt but a scrupulous and conscientious clergyman will sometimes feel a painful degree of perplexity when musing on the very mysterious process of bestowing and receiving this gift, so essential to the identity of his priestly character, and the vital efficacy of his official labours; and should he begin to doubt, as possibly he may, whether the bishop actually bestowed on him the gift, or whether he actually received it, his doubts must remain, and will very likely increase and multiply, because no living oracle, or conclusive evidence, or logical reasoning can afford him any relief. Though I am not very fond of introducing caustic irony in the discussion of such a grave question, yet the following paragraph from the Review already quoted may not be inappropriate:—
"'We can imagine the perplexity of a presbyter thus cast in doubt as to whether or not he has ever had the invaluable 'gift' of apostolical succession conferred upon him. As that 'gift' is neither tangible nor visible, the subject neither of experience nor consciousness—as it cannot be known by any 'effects' produced by it—he may imagine, unhappy man! that he has been regenerating infants by baptism, when he has been simply sprinkling them with water. 'What is the matter?' the spectator of his distractions might ask. 'What have you lost?' 'Lost!' would be the reply; 'I fear I have lost my apostolical succession; or rather, my misery is, that I do not know and cannot tell whether I ever had it to lose!' It is of no avail here to suggest the usual questions—'When did you see it last?' 'When were you last conscious of possessing it?' What a peculiar property is that, of which, though so invaluable—nay, on which the whole efficacy of the Christian ministry depends—a man has no positive evidence to show whether he ever had it or not! which, if ever conferred, was conferred without his knowledge; and which, if it could be taken away, would still leave him ignorant not only when, where, and how the theft was committed, but whether it had ever been committed or not! The sympathizing friend might probably remind him, that as he was not sure he had ever had it, so, perhaps, he still had it without knowing it. 'Perhaps,' he would reply, 'but it is certainty I want.' Such a perplexed presbyter, and doubtless there are many such, is in a regular fix; and there he must remain, calling on his idols for help, but, like the priests of Baal, calling in vain, as there is no power in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, which can rescue a man from the terror of his own delusions, till the delusions themselves are abandoned as visionary and absurd.'"
Mr. Roscoe.—"This question of apostolical succession, when cleared of its legendary mysticism, and brought within the pale of sober reality, may be employed as a very cogent argument in confirmation of the historic truthfulness of the Christian faith and its institutions, in refutation of some of the objections of infidelity. 'The existence of such an order of men as Christian ministers, continually from the apostles to this day, is perhaps,' as Archbishop Whately remarks,[36] 'as complete a moral certainty as any historical fact can be; because it is plain that if, at the present day, or a century ago, or ten centuries ago, a number of men had appeared in the world, professing (as the clergy do now) to hold a recognized office in a Christian church, to which they had been regularly appointed as successors to others, whose predecessors, in like manner, had held the same, and so on, from the times of the apostles—if, I say, such a pretence had been put forth by a set of men assuming an office which no one had ever heard of before, it is plain that they would at once have been refuted and exposed. And as this will apply equally to each successive generation of Christian ministers, till we come up to the time when the institution was confessedly new—that is, to the time when Christian ministers were appointed by the apostles, who professed themselves eye-witnesses of the resurrection—we have a standing monument in the Christian ministry of the fact of that event as having been proclaimed immediately after the time when it was said to have occurred. This, therefore, is fairly brought forward as an evidence of its truth.'"
Rev. Mr. Guion.—"Yes, Sir, the unbroken succession of the ministerial order, from the times of the apostles till now, is, in my opinion, an irrefutable evidence that Christianity took its rise at the period of its asserted origin, and that we have the essential substance, at least, of the same faith which the apostles established in Jerusalem, Ephesus, and other places; and that this same faith is administered by a distinct order of men, whose business it is, and ever has been, to propagate it and hand it down to the next generation succeeding them. As an argument of confirmation and defence in relation to the historic certainty of our faith and its institutions, it is of great value and importance; but, as Whately very justly remarks in his incomparable Essays, Successionists are guilty of a fallacy in the use which they make of it—'The fallacy consists in confounding together the unbroken apostolical succession of a Christian ministry generally, and the same succession in an unbroken line of this or that individual minister.' The existence of the order may be traced up to the times of the apostles; but this supplies no evidence in proof that each, or any one minister of the order now living is a legitimate descendant, in the genealogical line, from either of the two favourite apostles, St. Peter or St. Paul. And hence the argument, which is a splendid triumph to Christianity, is a dumb oracle to Tractarianism."
Rev. Mr. Ingleby.—"When reading the Oxford tracts, and some other publications of the same school, I have often felt astonished that the writers are not startled when advocating their favourite dogma; because, if they could establish it as a positive truth, they would prove self-destroyers—be guilty, in fact, of what I may term ecclesiastical suicide. They maintain, first, that no one is duly qualified to take office in the church of Christ—to preach and administer the sacraments—until he is ordained by some bishop, who can trace up his descent either to the apostle Peter or Paul. And they maintain, in the next place, that, when so ordained, they are in verity God's ambassadors to men; but, if not so ordained, the laity cannot expect to receive any spiritual benefit from their official labours. Or, in other words, each clergyman of our church must be in the unbroken line of succession from the times of the apostles, or he holds an office to which he has no legitimate appointment, and administers sacraments which cannot take effect. A Tractarian, then, is either in the unbroken line, or he is not in it—if in the unbroken line, all is right; if not in, all is wrong. If in, the people are blest; if not in, they are unblest. He believes he is in, but this does not prove that he is; he may be mistaken, self-deceived, and quite unintentionally deceiving others. And he cannot know he is in, unless he can prove it, and prove it as all facts of history are proved, by moral evidence. He may be able to prove his own ordination, and perhaps the ordination of the bishop by whom he was ordained, and also a few preceding bishops; but as an intelligent and conscientious man, he ought not to administer the sacraments, or appear as a clergyman amongst the people, till he has, with the clearest and most unequivocal evidence, traced back the successive ordinations of the bishops through the long lapse of past ages, up to the time when Paul or Peter conferred the rite of ordination on the bishops to succeed them. This done, he may remain in the priest's office; but till this is done, on his own principle of belief and reasoning, he ought to hold his peace—he ought to do nothing; because he has no evidence that the laity can derive any spiritual benefit from his ministrations. Thus his faith, and its consequent reasoning, impose silence and inaction, till he has performed this process of historical research; or, if he continue to labour, it will inevitably be in a state of ceaseless disquietude, because, ceaseless doubt.
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"Soon after Dr. Hook preached his celebrated sermon on 'Hear THE church,' I delivered one on the same subject. On leaving the pulpit one of my hearers, a shrewd clever man, followed me into the vestry, and, in the presence of my wardens, asked me to hang up under the tablet containing the ten commandments, a genealogical pedigree of my ecclesiastical descent; assigning as a reason for such an application, that he and his family had an interest in knowing it, as I had taught them to believe that the efficacy of the sacraments on their souls depended on my ecclesiastical legitimacy. I felt greatly mortified by his application, and especially when my senior warden said such a document, he had no doubt, would prove very satisfactory to many—and would tend to allay the disquietudes of those who sometimes complained that they derived no spiritual benefits from the church sacraments."
Rev. Mr. Guion.—"This is what ought to be done in self-defence, and to satisfy the scrupulous anxiety of others; but who can do it? that is the perplexing question. Dr. Hook says, and his asseverations are echoed by his fellow-Tractarians, 'the prelates who at this present time rule the churches of these realms were validly ordained by others, who, by means of an unbroken spiritual descent of ordination, derived their mission from the apostles and from our Lord. This continual descent is evident to every one who chooses to investigate it. Let him read the catalogues of our bishops, ascending up to the most remote period. There is not a bishop, priest, or deacon amongst us who cannot, if he please, trace his own spiritual descent from St. Peter or St. Paul.'"
Rev. Mr. Ingleby.—"Dr. Hook is a very rash man to give such a boastful utterance, when he knows, or ought to know, that this tracing of a spiritual descent is an absolute impossibility;[37] it never has been done, and every attempt to do it has proved a mortifying failure."
Rev. Mr. Guion.—"Two things in relation to this question of spiritual descent are certain, at any rate they are as certain as any positive and negative evidence can make anything certain—first, our Tractarian clergy cannot prove their spiritual descent, and therefore, on their own principle, they have no authority to officiate in the church; and, secondly, if they could do this thing, which has never yet been done, they cannot prove that they are invested with the mysterious gift on which the validity of their ministrations depends. Therefore, on their own principle, the laity can derive no spiritual benefits from their labours. They are a pompous order of self-created exclusionists, uttering great swelling words of vanity, when, on their own principle, they are self-convicted usurpers in the priestly office; and, while vaunting that they, and they only, are God's ambassadors to man, they decline producing their commission of appointment, even when pressed to do so, though they say they could easily do it if they pleased."[38]
Mr. Roscoe.—"But after all, the practical influence of those high church principles, constitutes, in my opinion, the most cogent argument against them. We shall find that pernicious as they are to the clergy, they are still more fatal to the laity, though they do not always operate with the same uniformity of result. Some they lull into a callous apathy and indifference, from which nothing can rouse them to the soul-stirring question—What must I do to be saved? They have unbounded confidence in their parson, that he is in the regular line of succession—firmly believe in the fact of their regeneration in baptism, as they have seen the public record of its performance—and calculate that when death comes, a despatch will bring the duly qualified official to give them absolution and the sacrament, and then the debt of nature may be paid without reluctance, as their peace with God is settled, on the authority of the unalterable laws of the church, of which they are bona fide members and devoted advocates."
Mr. Stevens.—"I knew an instance in which these high church principles had a contrary effect; they plunged an old friend of my own into a state of mental perplexity and depression, which was not only painful but appalling. This friend was a sincere and a conscientious member of the Church of England, and a firm believer in the Tractarian doctrines of the Oxford school; but happening to meet with Archbishop Whately's Essays on the Kingdom of Christ, he began to entertain some doubts that he was not quite so safe, in relation to eternity, as he had been accustomed to believe. On one occasion, he confidentially disclosed his fears and his misgivings to myself, confessing that they arose from the degree of uncertainty attachable to the legitimacy of the spiritual descent of his Rector from the apostles, and the consequent validity or invalidity of the administrations of the sacraments. I wished to direct his attention to a safer way to final happiness than through the medium of the sacraments; but his predeliction for the church and its ordinances was so inveterate, that I could not succeed; his long-cherished associations prevented the free exercise of his reasoning faculty, and in this state of perplexity and depression, he lived for years: he died a few months since, but how he died, I know not, though I fear he died under the spell of the awful delusion in which he had lived."
Mrs. John Roscoe.—"I recollect a somewhat similar occurrence, happening to a near and dear friend of my own, but with a very different result. She also was a member of the Church of England, and a great admirer of the Oxford tracts, which she read, and, I may say, studied with close attention, having no more doubt of the reality of baptismal regeneration than she had of the fact that her Vicar had administered it to her. However, some circumstances, though I never heard what they were, led her to suspect that there was a difficulty, if not an impossibility, for any one minister of the Episcopal church being able to trace up with absolute certainty his spiritual descent from either of the apostles, and for a while she felt perfectly bewildered. At length she was advised by a pious friend to turn from man to God: to put aside the Oxford tracts, and search the Scriptures, to exercise her own judgment when doing so, and pray to the Holy Spirit for wisdom and grace to lead her in the right way to mental peace and to heaven. She did so, and now she has made her escape from the delusive errors of Tractarianism, and feels secure, because she now builds her hope of pardon and salvation, not on sacraments or ceremonies, but on Christ, the sure foundation which the Lord hath laid, and not man."
Rev. Mr. Ingleby.—"This painful controversy which is shaking our church from its centre to its remotest extremities—alienating friendships, making us a by-word amongst Papists, and a scorn amongst infidels—will, I fear, continue to rage for a long time to come; but I am sanguine in my anticipations of the final issue. Our church was slumbering in ease and security, paying but little attention to her responsibilities to her Divine Lord and Master; but these corruptions of heresy and error have roused her, and called upon her faithful sons to come forward in the defence and support of the truths of the New Testament. If we act wisely, we shall be prepared to surrender any tenet or mode of expression incorporated in our prescribed formularies or other articles of belief, which has not the direct sanction of the Word of God; and shall evince a greater zeal for the extension and for the triumphs of Christianity herself, than the honour and glory of our own church or its ministerial orders. If we can bring our minds to this resolve, and if we rely on Him who is the invisible Head of his visible church, we need fear no evil; the truth, however obscured for a time, will at length shine forth, and the fabrics of human superstition and device totter and fall like the dwelling of the foolish man, which built his house upon the sand."
END OF VOL. I.