may befal the State itself. She has endured for ten years, not only without essential injury, but with a decided and progressive growth in her general influence as well as her inward vigour, the ordeal of public discussion, and the brunt of many hostile attacks, in a time of great agitation and disquietude, and of immense political changes. There was a period when her children felt no alarms for her safety and then she was in serious peril. Of late their apprehensions have been violently and constantly excited; but her dangers have diminished; so poor a thing, at best, is human solicitude. Yes, if we may put any trust in the signs that are within her and upon her, if we may at all rely upon the results of the patient and deliberate thought of many minds, upon the consenting testimony of foes and friends, the hand of her Lord is over her for good, to make her more and more a temple of His spirit and an organ of His will. Surely He will breathe into her anew and more and more the breath of life, and will raise up in her abundantly power in the midst of weakness, and the sense of power in the midst of the sense of weakness-of weakness in so far as she is an earthen vessel, of power inasmuch as she is a heavenly treasure abiding therein. The might that none can withstand, the wisdom that none can pierce, the love that none can fathom, the revelation of truth whose light faileth not, the promise that never can be broken;-these are the pillars of her strength whereon she rests, we may trust, not more conspicuous by their height than secure upon their deep foundations.

APPENDIX.

A.-Page 248.

THE descendant of Dr. Doddridge, in editing the Correspondence and Diary of his ancestor, gives the following account of the theory of ordination among English dissenters :

"Ordination, as practised in accordance with the canons of Episcopacy, is entrusted to the bishops, and has two degrees. The first, investing the candidate with the office of a deacon, and the second with the functions and authority of the priesthood. The preliminary step comprehends three important points: evidence as to character, an examination as to a certain advance made in general learning, and a declaration of faith by a subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles. The rank of a deacon conveys the power of performing all religious rites, public and private, save the administration of the Eucharist. The dissenters practise ordination only in the second or higher sense; and these indeed with such peculiar modifications that the word becomes in a manner misapplied, and the term confirmation might be more appropriately employed.

"Each separate dissenting church society individually establishes its own regulations and discipline, and exercises a perfect and irresponsible authority in all spiritual matters within its own confines, its minister being no more than its leading head. Dissenting pastors are not therefore ordained to enforce spiritual order by a superior ecclesiastical power, and then placed over any particular church; but a candidate is first recommended to a church, with such evidence as to his scholastic acquirements, piety, and general character, as may be deemed satisfactory, opportunities having been given for ascertaining

his talents as a preacher: that candidate, if approved, receives an invitation from the church, and is thereby, in principle, fully authorised to act as its pastor.

"The ordination which follows the invitation is therefore rather a regulation of custom than an essential institution, and this indeed the mode of its performance may testify. The new pastor and his church mutually invite their friends among the neighbouring ministers, who attend on a certain day to sanction his installation by their presence, and to offer public prayers for his success in the new relation into which he has been admitted. A confession of faith is sometimes given by their new brother; and in the good old times (as will appear in the instance of Dr. Doddridge), a form of engagement towards the church, termed ordination vows, was also tendered, and bestowed a much greater solemnity upon the rite than it now possesses; but neither the confession nor the vows could be then demanded as a right. The ceremony therefore confirms rather than bestows authority, and must be repeated as to the same individual if he remove to any other church.”

In conformity with this fundamental difference in the theories of ordination, we find that in the year 1571, when the puritans in the House of Commons appointed a committee to confer with the bishops concerning the confirmation of a confession of faith by parliament, they left out from the articles of 1562, together with other articles relating to discipline, that which respects the consecration of bishops.*

See Neal's Puritans, chap. v. He adds: "By a clause in this Act, the parliament admits of ordination by presbyters without a bishop, which was afterwards disallowed by the bishops in this reign."

B. Page 320.

I readily admit that there may be points in which the citation. of testimonies from individual ministers or even rulers of the Church would be quite inconclusive, and equally applicable to either side of an argument. But it is not so, as I believe, in the case before us. While the press teems with explicit and weighty declarations, the stronger for being generally incidental, of the doctrines of authority and succession in the Church, and while some of our writers, with just or excusable apprehensions of excess, endeavour to moderate them, some again altogether to explode those particular forms of statement in which these truths have been advanced by others, I, at least, am quite unaware that any number of individual clergymen, much less that any considerable proportion of the ministers of the Church, either has propounded categorically, or has more circuitously insinuated, the contradictory positions, that the Church is without authority in controversies of faith; and that there is an ordinary ministry in the Church, not conferred by episcopal ordination, legitimate and valid like that which is so conferred.

On the contrary, I rely even less, perhaps, upon the first series of quotations, which I have made from uncontroversial writings, than upon those which I shall subjoin to them,† taken from the publications of men who have referred to the writers at Oxford, but either in terms of materially qualified approbation or of absolute censure. I rely much on their testimony to prove how unjustly these cardinal principles of our Church polity are confounded with the particular and private opinions of any teachers, inasmuch as no one of them denies the authority of the Church, or asserts that any ministry among us not held by succession and episcopal ordination is of the same

certain validity with, or similar in kind to, that which is conferred by the bishops of the Church.

At all events, I am estimating very moderately the effect even of this body of testimony, when I plead its sufficiency at least to prove that the maintenance of the doctrines of Authority and Succession is very far indeed from being peculiar to the authors of the series entitled Tracts for the Times, with those, if such there be, who profess adherence or allegiance to them.

The reader will observe that this most incomplete list embraces our published sentiments of nine of our bishops, of whom the most remote is Bishop Heber.

I.

1.-Succession.

We find accordingly that our Lord, on His own departure from the world, committed, in the most solemn terms, the government of His Church to His apostles. We find these apostles, in the exercise of the authority thus received, appointing elders in every city, as dispensers of the word and the sacraments of religion; and we find them also appointing other ecclesiastical officers, who were' to have the oversight of these elders themselves, and who, in addition to the powers which they enjoyed in common with them, had the privilege, which the others had not, of admitting, by the imposition of hands, those whom they thought fit, to the ministerial office.

And it is not too much to say that we may challenge those who differ from us to point out any single period at which the Church has been destitute of such a body of officers, laying claim to an authority derived by the imposition of hands from the apostles themselves; or any single instance of a Church without this form of government, till the Church of Geneva, at first from necessity, and afterwards from a mistaken exposition of Scripture, supplied the place of a single bishop by the rule