with the understanding; they were not satisfied with that idea of the Sacraments, in which God, as it were, says to man, "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." They feared the notion of receiving spiritual blessing through the instrumentality of a sensible act, lest it should lead to the idolatry which had prevailed in connexion with an exaggerated form of that belief; and we dare not say that it was a root of pride in them which caused this course. They were holy men; but its result has been to reduce Divine revelation to the measure and standard of that thing, so poor in itself, though endowed with so noble capabilities--the actual human mind; and thus it is that we are led, nay compelled, to observe, that while on the one hand a spiritual life has been preserved in the Sacraments, upon the other it has been lost with them.

39. While we read in the history of these variations the admonitions necessary for our own security, and while we consequently remain careful and earnest to maintain the belief of a spiritual power residing in the Sacraments of the Church, let it not be supposed that that danger of which we have here written is the only one. It is the prevalent and besetting peril of our own day, and of the religion of our own day; and this is enough not to justify only, but to oblige us to direct our main watchfulness against it. We cannot but feel how the temper of the age tends to refer all matters, public and private, social and religious alike, to the jurisdiction of our present, or, in Scripture language, our carnal nature, working of course by the understanding; and how this creeps upon us in the

form of habit unperceived, so that the belief of a higher agency grows alien and unfamiliar, and alarms us when contemplated in singleness of aspect. Here therefore is indicated our first duty of watchful avoid

ance.

40. But it never can be otherwise than a high and important function to maintain the due analogy between God's ordinances of all kinds, and our view of them. The result of the course here recommended might be a relapse into Romanism, were we not to keep in mind some further caution. It was the tendency of Romanism to lay the general understanding of mankind asleep, instead of exercising that faculty in every one according to its capacity. Sacramental efficacy, and the efficacy of works performed as such (the former an exaggeration, the latter a fiction), threatened to monopolise the name and honour of religion. If Protestantism has avenged (so to speak) this injury, its vengeance may entail a greater, a more irremediable detriment, but there is no reason why we should be subject to either the one mischief or the other.

41. The Church contemplates with equal eye the whole of God's ordinances. It is not any blind sacramentism-any such regard even to these sublime ordinances as should imply depreciation, or a contracted view of others--that she would inculcate. The energy of preaching and of prayer, the high duty of searching the Divine Word, and bringing all the faculties of the mind to bear, according to our utmost

opportunities, upon the work of religion: these are all in her contemplation. She is in herself well armed against the peril that besets Romanism on the one hand; and it is the defect of her frail children, not of her fixed institutions, from which we have anything to apprehend upon the other.

42. Why should we not suffer the whole mind of God to take effect among us? He has, it seems, given us certain ordinances as means of grace, which. operating through the active faculties, go to insure the wakefulness of the intellect, and to carry it along in the work of religion. On the other hand, to preclude its encroachments, to repress pride, to sustain weakness, to refer us constantly and primarily to the state of the affections, to associate and bind us together in Christ, to manifest our entire dependence upon Him, and our high privilege in being so dependent, He has instituted other means of grace in which we are not at all, strictly speaking, co-operators, but mere receivers, though with certain preconditions. Thus His mercy provides for the entire nature of man; and supplies us with safe-guards, if we will but use them, against the opposite dangers that beset either theory of half truth-that which refers all grace to the human understanding as its channel, and that which, ascribing little or no spiritual advantage, as respects the mass of Christians, to its agency, deals with it insidiously, as with a hated foe, lulls it into religious torpor, and thereby prepares it to become the ready instrument of unbelief.

CHAPTER V.

THE APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION.

1, 2. Course proposed. 3-6. Questions suggested on Government and Succession in the Church. 7-12. Presumptions thereupon, 13-27. Of the Proofs of Succession from the Apostles generally. 28-31. How distinguished from Civil Succession. 32-36. Immense importance of this principle. 37. Succession, as in the Episcopate. 33-54. Upon the proofs of it, and the objections to them. 55, 56. Why the evidence is narrative not dogmatic. 57-59. There is a further bar to Presbyterian claims. 60. True issue. 61, 62, Testimony of the Church of England. 63-66. Scope and limits of these inquiries. 67-87. Tendencies of the doctrine of succession in various aspects. 88, 89. Conclusion.

1. EVEN for those who are possessed of the extensive learning, and of the exegetical talent, which are absolutely necessary for such a purpose, it would be hopeless to attempt giving, in a work of such design as this, any satisfactory epitome of the controversies, partly theological and partly historical, which have been connected with the Apostolical Succession in the Church. In the latter part of the second century of the Christian era, the subject came into distinct and formal view; and from that time forward it seems to have been considered by the great writers of the Catholic body a fact too palpable to be doubted, and too simple to be misunderstood. Irenæus* and Tertullian,†

*Adv. Hær. iii. 3. 1, 4.

De præscript. c. 20, 21. c. 32.

in their defences of the Christian faith against heresies, which then grew rife, argued not for but from the constitution of the ministry in the Christian Church, which they had received from their fathers, which as they alleged the Apostles had established, and which they deemed the most effectual and available testimony to the truth of such interpretations of Holy Scripture, as were advanced by themselves and denied by their opponents. But as every doctrine of our religion, however capable of being stated in a summary form and promptly received by a believing heart, has in turn become the text of almost interminable discussion, and has to some individuals or sects appeared problematical or unsound, while by the Church at large it has been held indubitable, so the doctrine of succession in the holy ministry, though not until a later period than perhaps any other subjected to scepticism, has within the last two centuries been deliberately disputed, upon the grounds of its historical credibility.

2. Those who wish to weigh in series all the points which have been raised from the time of Salmasius and of Blondel until the present day, and to decide upon the merits of each separate plea before they will consent to arrive at a practical conclusion, must dedicate to the task more time and labour than the great majority even of the best educated classes could afford to devote to it; and assumption upon the credit of others must, after all, be in general our resort. But there is no reason why, according to our means, we should not endeavour to obtain original acquaintance