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selves universally so far varied from the apostolical institution as to have in one Church several bishops; each of whom consequently differs in the office he holds, as to a most important point, from one of the primitive bishops, as much as the governor of any one of our colonies does from a sovereign prince." In place of finding the validity of a Church in conformity to an apostolic precedent, which, if it existed, cannot be proved to be universally binding, he finds it in the fact that its institutions" are not in themselves superstitious or ungodly, not at variance with gospel principles, or with any divine injunction that was designed to be of universal obligation." He declares, moreover, that "there is not a minister in all Christendom who is able to trace up with any approach to certainty his own spiritual pedigree," and who can therefore be assured, on the High Church theory, of his proper qualification to administer a single sacrament. Frederic Myers, a writer whose ability seems to have greatly exceeded his fame, challenges apostolical succession in a kindred manner. "If we should know," he says, "without dispute, the names of all the persons who have filled any particular see from the apostles' times to our own, and the names of the persons by whom they were consecrated, this would go but a little way to the proof that any apostolic gift had been duly transmitted through the medium of this succession. For that some scheme of means is essential to the conferring of such a gift by one man to another will be admitted. Then what the essential means are must first be indisputably determined; and then whether these means have been in each case strictly 1 The Kingdom of Christ.

observed. The only proof which could be received as satisfactory in a case where such tremendous results depend upon the alternative must be one which shall afford a reasonable probability that in every one of the distinct terms of the series of ordinations between the apostles' times and our own, this scheme of means has been observed uniformly in all essential particulars. Now the evidence which is necessary to the establishing of this is of too complex and subtle a character to be conveyed through the ordinary channels of human testimony. Never in any religion in the world was there heard of anything so difficult as this theory of the transmission of an invisible latent gift of grace for nearly two thousand years being essential to the validity of priestly acts." Archdeacon Hare is no more friendly to the theory in question. He finds in the Scriptures no warrant for predicating the necessity of episcopacy. "Feeble and flimsy," he writes, "as are the Scriptural arguments on which the Romanists maintain the inalienable primacy of St. Peter, they are far more specious and plausible than those derived from the same source, on the strength of which it has been attempted to establish the absolute necessity of episcopacy to the existence of a Christian Church."" Dean Stanley very decisively impeaches the notion of the positive prescription and the sole right of episcopacy. "It is certain," he writes, "that throughout the first century, and for the first years of the second, that is, through the latest chapters of the Acts, the Apostolical Epistles, and the writings of

1 Catholic Thoughts on the Church of Christ and the Church of England, pp. 102, 103.

2 Quoted by James Rigg, Modern Anglican Theology.

Clement and Hermas, bishop and presbyter were convertible terms, and that the body of men so called were the rulers so far as any permanent rulers existed of the early Church. It is certain that, as the necessities of the time demanded, first at Jerusalem, then in Asia Minor, the elevation of one presbyter above the rest by the almost universal law which even in republics engenders a monarchical element, the word bishop gradually changed its meaning, and by the middle of the second century became restricted to the chief presbyter of the locality. It is certain that in no instance before the beginning of the third century is the title or function of the Pagan or Jewish priesthood applied to the Christian pastors." Professor Jowett subscribes to the conclusion that historical evidence for episcopacy, in the High Church sense, is fundamentally lacking. This is sufficiently indicated in his estimate of the testimony of the fathers of the third century, of whom he says: "We cannot err in supposing that those who could add nothing to what is recorded in the New Testament of the life of Christ and His apostles, had no real knowledge of lesser matters, as, for example, the origin of episcopacy.":

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Among those who have more recently handled the question of "comprehension," H. B. Wilson, author of one of the articles in the famous volume of "Essays and Reviews," has taken a radical view. He argues that, in

1 Christian Institutions.

2 The Epistles of Saint Paul.

The volume of Essays and Reviews was published in 1861. It called forth an attempt at prosecution, which failed in the court of final appeal. The contributors to the volume were Frederick Temple, Rowland Williams, Baden Powell, H. B. Wilson, C. W. Goodwin, Mark Pattison, and Benjamin Jowett. As most of the essays were rather directed against traditional

order to give the Establishment a truly national character, "the freedom of opinion which belongs to the English citizen should be conceded to the English Churchman"; and that "the freedom of opinion which is already practically enjoyed by the members of the congregation cannot without injustice be denied to its ministers." The State ought, he says, "without aiming at an universal comprehension, which would be utopian, to suffer the perpetuation of no unnecessary barriers, excluding from the communion or the ministry of the national Church." The language of Matthew Arnold implies, to say the least, no greater love for ecclesiastical fences. "The Church of our country," he writes, "is to be considered as a national Christian society for the promotion of goodness. To a rightjudging mind the cardinal points of belief for either the member or the minister of such a society are but two, Salvation by Righteousness and Righteousness by Jesus Christ." The following from Professor Jowett bears somewhat in the same direction: "If in the age of the apostles it seemed to be the duty of believers to separate themselves from the world and take up a hostile position, not less marked in the present age is the duty of abolishing in a Christian country what has now become an artificial distinction, and seeking by every means in our power, by fairness, by truthfulness, by knowledge, by views than constructive in their tendency, they formed together a rather heavy dose of negations, at least for the simple believer. Some statements in the book might have been better guarded and qualified than they were. Still it must be said that a good part of the volume was no discredit to the authors, and that the wide-spread disturbance which ensued in the ranks of the clergy betokened in their midst an abnormal amount of timid and technical supernaturalism.

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1 Last Essays on Church and Religion.

love unfeigned, by the absence of party and prejudice, by acknowledging the good in all things, to reconcile the Church to the world, the one half of our nature to the other; drawing the mind off from speculative difficulties, or matters of party and opinion, to that which almost all equally acknowledge, and almost equally rest short of, the life of Christ.” 1

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As respects the theological opinions of Broad Churchmen, we confine ourselves to very brief specifications of noteworthy points. Coleridge, after passing from a deistical type of Unitarianism into sympathy with a pantheistical philosophy, finally embraced the theistic and the trinitarian faith. Among the peculiarities of his doctrinal views were a distinction between the understanding and the reason used in the interest of the subjective verification of religious truth, the theory that the Bible is authoritative in its general tenor rather than infallible in subordinate particulars, a Kantian view of original sin as something generated by each will instead of being inherited, and the assignment of redemptive efficacy to the incarnation and manifestation of the divine in Christ rather than to an expiation alleged to have been accomplished through His death.

Something of the vein of Coleridge may be seen in F. D. Maurice, who, if not always a clear writer, has undoubtedly been an influential one. The extent to which he has impressed himself upon a wide circle of readers may be attributed in part to the leaven which his deep religious character imported into his productions. Rarely has one earned a nobler epitaph than is contained in this description of Maurice by his son: 1 Epistles of Saint Paul.

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