"lic authority given unto them in the congregation, to call and "send ministers into the Lord's vineyard." Here is not a syllable said of diocesan bishops, or of the necessity of episcopal ordination; on the contrary, there is most evidently displayed a studious care to employ such language as would embrace the other reformed churches, and recognize as valid their ministry and ordinances.

And that such was really the design of those who drew up the articles of the church of England, is expressly asserted by Bishop Burnet, who will be pronounced by all a competent judge, both of the import and history of these articles. This article, he observes, "is put in very general words, far from that magisterial stiffness "in which some have taken upon them to dictate in this matter. 66 They who drew it up, had the state of the several churches before "their eyes, that had been differently reformed; and although "their own had been less forced to go out of the beaten path than "any other, yet they knew that all things among themselves had "not gone according to those rules, that ought to be sacred in regu"lar times." And, in a subsequent passage, he explicitly declares, that neither the reformers of the Church of England, nor their successors, for nearly eighty years after the articles were published, did ever call in question the validity of the ordination practised in the foreign reformed churches, by presbyters alone. And again, he declares "Whatever some hotter spirits have thought of this, "since that time, yet we are very sure, that not only those who "penned the articles, but the body of this church, for above half "an age after, did, notwithstanding these irregularities, acknow"ledge the foreign churches, so constituted, to be true churches, as "to all the essentials of a church."

Those who wish to persuade us, that the venerable reformers of the church of England, held the divine right of diocesan episcopacy, refer us to the ordination service drawn up by them, the language of which, it is contended, cannot be interpreted, and far less justified, on any other principle. But those who insist on this argument, forget that the ordination service, as it now stands, differs considerbly from that which was drawn up by Cranmer and his associates. If I mistake not, that service, as it came from the hands of the reformers, did not contain a sentence inconsistent with the opinions which I have ascribed to them. Above an hundred years afterwards, in the reign of Charles II. this service was revised and

altered; and it is remarkable, that the greater part of the alterations were such as indicate a decided intention in their authors to make the whole speak a language more favourable to the divine appointment of episcopacy than formerly. In the opinion of good judges, the ordination service of the church of England does not even now, assert the divine institution of prelacy; but as left by the reformers, it certainly contained no such doctrine.

In conformity with this principle, an act of Parliament was passed, in the 13th year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, to reform certain disorders touching ministers of the church. This act, as Dr. Strype, an Episcopal historian, informs us, was framed with an express view to admitting into the church of England, those who had received Presbyterian ordination in the foreign reformed churches, on their subscribing the articles of faith. But can we suppose that both houses of parliament, one of them including the bench of Bishops, would have consented to pass such an act, unless the principle of it had been approved by the most influential divines of that church?

Nor was this all. The conduct of the English Reformers corresponded with their laws and public standards. They invited several eminent divines from the foreign Reformed churches, who had received no other than Presbyterian ordination, to come over to England; and on their arrival, in consequence of this formal invitation, actually bestowed upon them important benefices in the Church and in the Universities. A more decisive testimony could scarcely be given, that those great and venerable divines had no scruple respecting the validity of ordination by presbyters. Had they held the opinion of some modern Episcopalians, and at the same time acted thus, they would have been chargeable with high treason against the Redeemer's kingdom, and have merited the reprobation of all honest men.

But further; besides inviting these distinguished divines into England, and giving them a place in the bosom of their church, without requiring them to be re-ordained, Archbishops Cranmer and Grindal, and their associates, corresponded with Calvin ; solicited his opinion respecting many points in the reformation of the church; and not only acknowledged him in the most explicit manner, to be a regular minister of Christ, and the church of Geneva, to be a sister church; but also addressed him in terms of the

most exalted reverence, and heaped upon him every epithet of honour. Could they have done all this, if they had considered him subverting the very foundation of the church, by setting aside prelacy? When I look at the language of the first British reform ers towards this venerable servant of Christ; when I hear them, not only celebrating his learning and his piety in the strongest terms, but also acknowledging, in terms equally strong, his noble services in the cause of evangelical truth, and of the Reformation; and when I find the greatest divines that England ever bred, for near a century afterwards, adopting and repeating the same language, I am tempted to ask-are some modern calumniators of Calvin really ignorant of what these great divines of their own church have thought and said respecting him; or have they apostatised as much from the principles of their own reformers, as they differ from Calvin ?

Another testimony as to the light in which ordination by presbyters was viewed by the most distinguished reformers of the Church of England, is found in a license granted by archbishop Grindal, to the Rev. John Morison, a Presbyterian minister, dated April 6, 1582: "Since you, the said John Morison, were "admitted and ordained to sacred orders, and the holy ministry "by the imposition of hands, according to the laudable form and "rite of the reformed church of Scotland. We, therefore, as much "as lies in us, and as by right we may, approving and ratifying "the form of your ordination and preferment, done in such

manner aforesaid, grant unto you a license and faculty, that in "such orders, by you taken, you may, and have power, in any "convenient places, in and throughout the whole province of "Canterbury, to celebrate divine offices, and to minister the sacra"ments," &c. Here is not only an explicit acknowledgment that ordination by presbyters is valid, but an eulogium on it as laudable, and this not by an obscure character, but by the primate of the Church of England.

An acknowledgment, still more solemn and decisive, is made in one of the Canons of the Church of England, in which all her clergy are commanded "to pray for the churches of England, "Scotland, and Ireland, as parts of Christ's holy Catholic church, "which is dispersed throughout the world." This canon (the 55th) among others, was enacted in 1604, when the church of Scotland was, as it now is, Presbyterian; and although the persons who

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were chiefly instrumental in forming and adopting these canons, had high episcopal notions; yet the idea that those churches which were not episcopal in their form, were not to be considered as true churches of Christ, seems at this time to have been entertained by no person of any influence in the church of England, This extravagance was reserved for after times, and the invention of it for persons of a very different spirit from that of the Cranmers, the Grindals, and the Abbots of the preceding age.

Dr. Warner, a learned episcopal historian, declares, that "Archbishop Bancroft was the first man in the church of Eng"land who preached up the divine right of Episcopacy." The same is asserted by many other episcopal writers; and this passage from Warner is quoted with approbation by bishop White of Pennsylvania, in his Case of the Episcopal Churches, in showing that the doctrine which founds Episcopacy on divine right, has never been embraced by the great body of the most esteemed divines in the church of England.

Another fact which corroborates the foregoing statement is, that Dr. Laud, afterwards Archbishop, in a public disputation before the University of Oxford, venturing to assert the superiority of bishops, by divine right, was publicly checked by Dr. Holland, professor of divinity in that university, who told him that "he was a schismatic, and went about to make a division between the English and other reformed churches."

The reformation in Scotland commenced in the year 1560. The constitution of that Church was formed, as every one knows, on the Presbyterian plan. This form was retained until the year 1610, when prelacy was violently introduced, against the sense of the nation. In that year Spotiswood, Lamb, and Hamilton, were consecrated bishops in London, by some of the English prelates; and on their return home, imparted the episcopal dignity to a number of others. As they had been presbyters before this time, archbishop Bancroft proceeded to their consecration as bishops, without requiring them to be previously re-ordained as priests, expressly delivering it as his opinion, that their former Presbyterian ordination was valid. The church of Scotland remained episcopal until the year 1639, when prelacy was abolished, and the bishops deposed. On this occasion three of these prelates renounced their episcopal orders, were received by the Presbyterian

clergy as plain presbyters, and officiated as such while they lived. The rest were either excommunicated from the church, or deprived of their ministerial functions. In the year 1661, Episcopacy was again introduced into Scotland, and remained the established religion of the country until the Revolution of 1688, when it was again set aside, and Presbyterianism restored, which remains to the present day.

Now it is a remarkable fact, that, amidst all these revolutions in the church government of Scotland, the validity of ordination by presbyters, was never denied or called in question. We have already seen that Archbishop Bancroft pronounced the Presbyterian ordination of Spotiswood, Lamb, and Hamilton, to be valid. But further; in 1610, when prelacy was first established, the bishops agreed that the body of the Presbyterian clergy should be considered as regular ministers in the church, on consenting to acknowledge them as their ecclesiastical superiors, without submitting to be re-ordained. And this arrangement was actually carried into effect. Again, in 1661, at the second introduction of episcopacy, the same plan of accommodation was agreed upon and executed, though a much smaller number of the clergy submitted to its terms. And, which is a fact no less decisive, at the revolution in 1688, when Presbyterianism was restored, four hundred episcopal clergymen came into the bosom of the Presbyterian church, acknowledged the validity of her orders and ministrations, and were received into connexion with her on the basis of such acknowledgment. Nor is this all. About the time of the first introduction of Episcopacy into Scotland, a number of the people and their clergy, who were all Presbyterian, removed from that country into the north of Ireland, where Episcopacy was also established. To accommodate a number of the clergy, who were in this situation, the bishops in England drew up and transmitted to Ireland a plan of proceeding in their case, which recognized the validity of their ordination, and by means of which, without being re-ordained, they were actually incorporated with the established church. It is not possible to contemplate this series of facts, without perceiving, as Bishop Burnet declares, that, for a long time after the commencement of the reformation in Great Britain, the validity of Presbyterian ordination was distinctly and uniformly acknowledged.