Short Reasons for Communion with the Church of England / Or, The Churchman's answer to the question, "Why are you a Member of the Established Church?"

by Thomas Tregenna Biddulph

But as that which is ancient may have been corrupted, antiquity alone would not fully justify my continuance in any visible Church, though it strongly enforces the necessity of earnestness and diligence in inquiring about the reality and nature of the supposed corruption, before I venture to quit the Church of which I have been made by baptism a member.

REASON III.

I maintain communion with the Church of England, not MERELY because she is established by law.

This, like the two former reasons, is a sufficient one to enforce my continuance in communion with the Church of England, unless she be found, after due inquiry, to be contrary, in her constitution or doctrines, to the word of God. For I am required to “submit myself to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake.” Nothing can justify my departure from a church so established, but the well-known decision in cases where the law of God and the law of man are in opposition to each other. In any such case the duty is clear to “obey God rather than man.”

Such an opposition may exist between human laws and the law of God; and therefore “I maintain communion with the Church of England, not MERELY because she is established by law.”

REASON IV.

But I maintain communion with the Church of England, because her government is episcopal, i.e. by Bishops; this being the mode of Church government which existed in the primitive Church, and was founded by the Apostles of our Lord.

In stating reasons for conformity which are to be comprised within a few pages, it is impossible to enter at large into the proof of the fact here asserted, viz. that the primitive church as founded by the Apostles of our Lord, was episcopal; or, in other words, that the power of ordination and government in the church was vested by the Apostles in officers superior to the order of Presbyters, and who are now called by the name of Bishops. I must therefore only state a few circumstances, which are capable of being clearly proved, without producing the evidence on which my belief of them is built.

1. Episcopal government, as established in the Church of England, has all the authority in its favour which prescription or long usage can give it. The most learned of its adversaries have never been able to fix on any period in the Christian Church, from the time of the Apostles to the Reformation, in which the ordination of men to the ministry of the gospel was considered to be vested in any other minister or ministers than a Bishop.

2. All the instances of ordination, recorded in the New Testament, are in favour of Episcopacy. For there is no single instance of ordination, on record there, performed by presbyters, or at least without the presence and co-operation of some officer superior to presbyters.