-for each separate point which we would maintain. They assume that whatever doctrines or practices, whatever institutions, whatever regulations respecting Church-government, we can conclude, either with certainty, or with any degree of probability, to have been either introduced by the Apostles, or to have prevailed in their time, or in the time of their immediate successors, are to be considered as absolutely binding on all Christians for ever;-as a model from which no Church is at liberty to depart. And they make our membership of the Church of Christ, and our hopes of the Gospel-salvation, depend on an exact adherence to every thing that is proved, or believed, or even suspected, to be an apostolical usage; and on our possessing what they call Apostolical Succession; that is, on our having a Ministry whose descent can be traced up in an unbroken and undoubted chain, to the Apostles themselves, through men regularly ordained by them or their successors,

four; some, seven; so arbitrary and uncertain is the standard by which some would persuade us to try questions, on which they, at the same time, teach us to believe our Christian Faith and Christian Hope are staked!

"Scire velim, pretium chartis quotus arroget annus :

Est vetus atque probus, centum qui perficit annos.
Quid? qui deperiit minor uno mense vel anno,

Inter quos referendus erit? veteresne ?"

Horace, Epist. I. b. 2.

according to the exact forms originally appointed. And all Christians (so called) who do not come under this description, are to be regarded either as outcasts from "the Household of Faith," or at best as in a condition "analogous to that of the Samaritans of old" who worshipped on Mount Gerizim, or as in " an intermediate state between Christianity and Heathenism," and as "left to the uncovenanted mercies of God."

ordinances

from a firm

on a basis

of sand.

§ 18. Those who on such grounds defend the ChurchInstitutions and Ordinances, and vindicate the removed Apostolical Character, of our own (or indeed of foundation, any) Church,-whether on their own sincere and rested conviction, or as believing that such arguments are the best calculated to inspire the mass of mankind with becoming reverence, and to repress the evil of schism,-do seem to me, in proportion as they proceed on those principles, to be, in the same degree, removing our institutions from a foundation on a rock, to place them on sand. Instead of a clearly-intelligible, wellestablished, and accessible proof of Divine Sanction for the claims of our Church, they would substitute one that is not only obscure, disputable, and out of the reach of the mass of mankind, but even self-contradictory, subversive of our

P John iv.

True foun

dation of Church enactments.

own and every Church's claims, and leading to the very evils of doubt, and schismatical division, which it is desired to guard against.

The Rock on which I am persuaded our Reformers intended, and rightly intended, to rest the Ordinances of our Church, is, the warrant to be found in the Holy Scriptures written by, or under the direction of those to whom our Lord had entrusted the duty of "teaching men to observe all things whatsoever He had commanded them." For in those Scriptures we find a Divine Sanction clearly given to a regular Christian Community,-a Church; which is, according to the definition in our 19th Article,a “ a congregation (i. e. Society or Community; Ecclesia) of

In our Article as it stands in the English, it is “The visible Church of Christ is," &c. ; but there can be no doubt, I think, that the more correct version from the Latin (the Latin Articles appear to have been the original, and the English a translation-in some few places, a careless translation-from the Latin) would have been "A visible Church and a ". The Latin "Ecclesia Christi visibilis " would indeed answer to either phrase, the want of an article definite or indefinite in that language rendering it liable to such ambiguity. But the context plainly shows that the writer is not speaking of the Universal Church, but of particular Churches, such as the "Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Rome." The English translator probably either erred from momentary inattention, or, (more likely) understood by "Ecclesia," and by "the Church," the particular Church whose Articles were before him, the Church of England.

faithful men,' in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments duly administered according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things which of necessity are requisite to the same." Now since, from the very nature of the case, every Society must have Officers, appointed in some way or other, and every Society that is to be permanent, a perpetual succession of Officers, in whatever manner kept up, and must have also a power of enacting, abrogating, and enforcing on its own members, such regulations or bye-laws as are not opposed to some higher authority, it follows inevitably (as I have above observed) that any one who sanctions a Society, gives, in so doing, his sanction to those essentials of a Society; its Government,-its Officers,-its Regulations. Accordingly even if our Lord had not expressly said anything about "binding and loosing," still the very circumstance of his sanctioning a Christian Community would necessarily have implied his sanction of the Institutions, Ministers, and Government of a Christian Church, so long as nothing is introduced at variance with the positive enactments, and the fundamental principles, laid down by Himself and his Apostles.

The
English

reformers

§ 19. This, which I have called a foundation on a rock, is evidently that on which (as has been true foun- just observed) our Reformers designed to place our Church.

chose the

dation.

Claim of

the Minis

Anglican

Church.

While they strongly deny to any Church the power to "ordain any thing contrary to God's Word," or to require as essential to salvation, belief in any thing not resting on scriptural authority, they claim the power for each Church of ordaining and altering "rites and ceremonies," "so that all things be done to edifying," and nothing" contrary to God's Word." They claim on that ground for our own Church a recognition of that power in respect of the Forms of Public Service; -on the ground, that is (Art. 36) that these "contain nothing that is in itself superstitious and ungodly."

And they rest the claims of Ministers, not on ters of the some supposed sacramental virtue, transmitted from hand to hand in unbroken succession from the Apostles, in a chain, of which if any one link be even doubtful, a distressing uncertainty is thrown over all Christian Ordinances, Sacraments, and Church-privileges for ever; but, on the fact of those Ministers being the regularly-appointed officers of a regular Christian Community. "It is not lawful" (says the 23d Article) "for any man to take upon him