cuity, is to introduce a principle of universal and incurable scepticism into the interpretation of doctrines; insomuch that if it were admitted, we should despair, for our own part, of ever being able to say that any words could ever express a certain and fixed doctrine, or that any doctrine could ever be expressed in intelligible words.”—Mr. Davison's Article on Baptismal Regeneration, Quarterly Review, vol. xv. p. 478-485.

LECTURE II.

P. 46. 1. 9. "Now growth of every kind is a work of degrees," &c.] So Mr. Davison (on Baptismal Regeneration as above.) "That which is increased, say the old logicians, must be made greater by the continual addition of parts similar to itself."

P. 48. 7 lines from the bottom.

"Members of his

....

body, of his flesh, and of his bones."] St. Chrysostom interprets this passage as referring to Baptism . . . . πŵя οὖν ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ ἐσμεν, καὶ ἐκ τῶν ὀστῶν αὐτοῦ; . . ὅπερ δηλοῦν βούλεται τοῦτό ἐστιν, ὅτι . . . ἡμεῖς γεννώμεθα Ev T λOUTρ. Chrysost. in Epist. ad Ephes. Hom. 20. ed. Ben. tom. xi. p. 147.

...

P. 61. 1. 9. "The type of which is one individual man."] "Proinde ipse Jesus loquitur in ista prophetiâ: sed quædam in membris suis et unitate corporis sui, tanquam in uno quodam homine diffuso toto orbe terrarum, et succrescente per volumina sæculorum: quædam verò in seipso capite

nostro."

S. August. in Psalm. 118. Serm. 16. ed. Ben.

tom. iv. p. 1319.

P. 61. 1. 10. "One united body, made up of souls mystically knit together" &c.] "Ecclesiæ nomine non una anima, sed multarum unitas, vel potius unanimitas designatur." S. Bernard. in Cantic. 1478. See the Collect for All Saints' day. "O Almighty God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical Body of thy Son Christ our Lord," &c.

P. 66. 1. 10. "What is a Church without grace? and how can grace consist without truth?"] We acknowledge truth, then, to be an essential ingredient in the whole system of the Catholic Church; her holiness and her triumphs must ever bear a direct ratio to her orthodoxy; the succession of the Church is a succession of faithful men, that is, men who, as to essentials, hold the truth in righteousness; the succession of the ministry is properly the Apostolical descent of men who in the main are true expositors or handers down of the Catholic faith, or as Mr. Gladstone terms them "the ordained hereditary witnesses to the truth, conveying it to us through an unbroken series from our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles." Yet though this is one office of the Apostolical succession, it does not seem the main one; that being rather, as it would seem, the hereditary preservation, exercise, and tradition of "the Means of Grace." The final cause of the Church's office is not truth, which, however, is a property of Christ's body, but rather God's good pleasure for His own glory, to "purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works;" in short, not knowledge as

such, but sanctification; purification through God's truth. This is the ultimate effect of "Grace," and to this end the succession of the Church and the succession of the ministry are ordained; means of grace themselves, and means to the preservation and employment of other means, and, amongst the rest, of the Scriptures of truth. On the whole, then, it appears correct to speak of the Apostolical succession less as a channel of truth (though it is that also) than as a channel of the means of grace. There have been many hours of darkness in the Church's history, during which her teachers were "removed into corners," and truth was contented to retire into monasteries, finding only a few of the "hereditary witnesses" able and willing to vindicate her claims. But in the darkest times the means of grace (the furtherance of truth being also one of the fruits of grace) were uninterruptedly employed in originating and in fostering whatever of spiritual life and light there was in each generation in the Church. There never was a time when the clergy, though often mixing up much that was false or questionable with the fundamental verities of religion, did not instrumentally impart God's grace through His two sacraments. On these grounds I would submit, that the main office of the hereditary successors of the Apostles was not so much to bear witness to the truth (which they yet did directly by teaching the creeds, indirectly by their Christian profession and ministerial office, as facts presupposing the Christian verities) as to hand down, under a purer or a more debased form in a direct ratio to the truth which they held and taught, the sacraments and the other means of grace; the validity of which, the learning or the ignorance, the perfect orthodoxy or the partial error, of the clergy regularly ordained in any given generation can neither give nor take away, seeing that it is God which worketh the effect of His own sacra

ments and ordinances by the hands of His ministers as instruments, not as givers, of life.

P. 76. 3 lines from bottom. "Each succeeding age inherited the privileges of their progenitors in Christ: they did not renew and re-invent them," &c.] S. Pacianus (ap. Eccl. Anglic. Vind. Cathol., tom. ii. p. 316): "Jam et istud attendite, an hæc potissimum ædificata sit in fundamentis Prophetarum et Apostolorum ex ipso angulari lapide Jesu Christo, si ante te cœpit, si ante te credidit, si a fundamentis prioribus non recessit, si non illa migravit, si non a reliquo corpore separata, suos sibi magistros, et propria instrumenta constituit."

P. 77. 9 lines from bottom. "The succession we are here speaking of, as one means of grace, is not the Apostolical succession of ministers."] Let me, however, most earnestly remind the reader, that, whilst for the sake of clearness I treat of these two successions as if they were separable, I yet carefully consider them as combined together and in fact inseparable. Any attempt at divorcing the one from the other, nay, any exclusive exaltation of the one to the virtual forgetfulness or depreciation of the other, is not only inconsistent with truth, but is fraught with dangerous evil. There is a class of men, which affects to speak of the Church, even if regarded as one continuous body, yet as independent of an Apostolical Ministry and the tendency of this class is to schism, that is, ultimately to heresy. There is another class which is for ever preaching up an Apostolical succession of ministers, without saying a word about its correlative, (or rather that which comprehends it,) the succession and continuity of the Apostolical Church; and the tendency of their views is

sacerdotalism, i. e. a habit of regarding the ministers as the Church, and the people as simply made for them to rule over.

A right appreciation of these two combined and correlative successions would be an antidote to much popular error, such as that, by which a candidate for Holy Orders is commonly said to be intended and brought up for the Church, or again, as that which leads good Churchmen to speak of themselves as friends of the Church; an expression which evidently tends to make a man forget that he is a member of that Church, and that he is doing no more in her behalf than is conducive to his own best interests. In promoting her welfare and growth, he is actually promoting his own; so that to say he is friendly to the Church, involves the self-evident proposition that he is friendly to himself, for "who ever hated his own flesh?" To adopt Dr. Arnold's expression, all Christians should be taught to look upon themselves not "as friends or honorary members of the Church, but as its most essential parts."

The important share which the laity possess in the Church is forcibly expressed by the same powerful thinker. "The end of the Church he maintained to be the putting down of moral evil. And if this idea,' he asks, 'seems strange to any one, let him consider whether he will not find this notion of Christianity every where prominent in the Scriptures, and whether the most peculiar ordinances of the Christian religion are not founded upon it; or again, if it seems natural to him, let him ask himself whether he has well considered the legitimate consequences of such a definition, and whether, in fact, it is not practically forgotten?' Its true nature he (Dr. Arnold) believed to be not an institution of the Clergy, but a living society of all Christians. When I hear men talk of the Church,' he

e Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D.D., late Head Master of Rugby School, 2nd ed., vol. i. p. 219.