34.-Authority.

We cannot better explain how far ancient literature is to be rendered available to sacred purposes than by a transcription of a canon set forth by the Church of England in the same year with its Articles: Preachers shall not presume to deliver anything from the pulpit as of moment, to be religiously observed and believed by the people, but that which is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old or New Testament, and collected out of the same doctrine by the Catholic fathers and the bishops of the ancient Church." "A wise regulation," observes the judicious and able Dr. Waterland, "formed with exquisite judgment, and worded with the exactest caution.”—Ibid., Diss. iii. ch. ii.:

35.-Succession.

Mr. Witty, once a dissenting minister, in a published letter to the Bishop of Salisbury (Hatchard, 1832), gives the following among his reasons for seeking orders from the Church :

I. Because the polity of the Church of England is episcopal, and as such of Divine institution, and founded on primitive practice and apostolical authority. . . . Hence, in the Church of England are found the only Scriptural and truly authorised orders of ecclesiastical officers-bishops, priests, and deacons― without which, as Ignatius asserts, there can be no Church. -pp. 3, 4.

X. Because the Church of England has confined the power of ordination to bishops, thereby acting in strict accordance with apostolic precedents and primitive practice.—p. 18.

36. Succession.

Awful is the responsibility attaching upon each one of a class of persons (the clergy) who alone among men have the authoritative means committed to them of awakening, alarm

ing, and persuading the conscience and the heart, by the terrors and invitations of the glorious gospel.-Jachin, p. 15. Prize Essay, by W. Roberts, Esq., adjudged by Mr. Archdeacon Hodson and Mr. Chancellor Raikes, in 1838, on behalf of the Christian Influence Society.

On the other hand she (the Church) is menaced by a latitudinarian spirit which deems but lightly of her discipline, and those instituted forms and regulations which compose the system of her ecclesiastical government; lightly too of her derivative authority, delivered down by the successive imposition of hands, the symbol of her rule and ordination.Ibid., p. 91.

I next subjoin the sentiments of one whose name is very great :

37.-Authority.

It is now twenty years since I read Chillingworth's book; but certainly it seemed to me that his main position, that the mere text of the Bible is the sole and exclusive ground of Christian faith and practice, is quite untenable against the Romanists. It entirely destroys the conditions of a Church, of an authority residing in a religious community, and all that holy sense of brotherhood which is so sublime and consolatory to a meditative Christian. Had I been a Papist, I should not have wished for a more vanquishable opponent in controversy. -Coleridge's Table Talk, vol. i. p. 240.

And as the advocacy of such principles as these has been supposed to imply inclination to Romanism, I subjoin two strong passages from the same work of this very great man:

The present adherents of the Church of Rome are not, in my judgment, Catholics. We are the Catholics. We can prove that we hold the doctrines of the primitive Church for the first three hundred years. The Council of Trent made the Papists what they are.-Ibid., p. 31.

The adherents of the Church of Rome, I repeat, are not Catholic Christians. If they are, then it follows that we Protestants are heretics and schismatics.-Ibid., p. 32.

38.-Authority.

The continuance in the Church down to the present period of that apostolic authority, supported by miracles which attended its first institution; the transmission and actual existence on earth of the same heavenly light which first illuminated the inspired messengers of the Word, still revealing and diffusing eternal truth to mankind: these are illusions, obnoxious indeed to ridicule (from which nothing sacred is exempt), yet so true to nature, so congenial to a serious mind, and, I will venture to add, in their own nature so little unreasonable, that it is no wonder if all the argumentation which successive ages have directed against them has not much diminished their authority. Nor will the rage of the fanatic, or the sneers of the sceptic, or even the voice of reason herself, ever suppress the recurrence of so natural a sentiment. Could demonstration explode it, the delusion would still remain, as that irrefragable chain which proves the non-existence of matter is dissipated by our instincts of nature and the evidence of the senses.-The Present State of the Controversy between the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches, by Mr. Hunter Gordon, p. 34.

See also Dr. Hawkins's Bampton Lectures for 1840, Dr. Elrington's Sermon on the Apostolical Succession (Rivingtons, 1840), Dr. M'Caul's Sermon on the same subject, &c. &c.

II.

1.—Authority.

Generally speaking, I may say that, in these days of lax and spurious liberality, anything which tends to recall forgotten truths is valuable; and where these publications (the Tracts for the Times) have directed men's minds to such important subjects as the union, the discipline, and the authority of the Church, I think they have done good service; but there may be some points in which, perhaps from ambiguity of ex

pression or similar causes, it is not impossible but that evil, rather than the intended good, may be produced on minds of à peculiar temperament.-Charge by the Bishop of Oxford, 1838, p. 20.

2.-Succession.

First, then, for the great question of the very foundation and origin of your ministerial charge. Do you derive it in regular succession from those who were invested with it, and with the power of transmitting it, by the great Head of the Church?...

Can they,* I ask, without the most shameful disingenuousness, deny that it is the doctrine of our Church at least, be that doctrine true or untrue, that its ministers receive their commission from those who have themselves received authority to confer it in succession from the apostles, and, through them, from our Lord himself?-Bishop of Exeter's Charge, 1839, pp. 59, 63.

3.-Authority.

Neither let them forget that the Church itself, in some of its most authoritative formularies, appears at least to favour the opinion which they unsparingly condemn-that tradition has been given to us as an enduring channel of instruction in Christian truth, though not as the authority for any necessary doctrine. For instance, what will they say of the Apostles' Creed?....

A canon of the Convocation of 1571, which, I need not say, is part of the law of the Church, commands preachers to be careful never to teach anything in their sermons, as if to be religiously held and believed by the people, but what is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, and collected from that very doctrine by the Catholic fathers and ancient bishops.-Ibid., pp. 75, 76.

* The clergy.

Archdeacon Pott, in a Charge having for its object to dis-/ countenance any attempt or tendency to add anything to the Scriptures as the rule of faith, writes- Mod

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"Let the quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, be the challenge for traditionary testimonies, and we shall never shrink from that test."-Charge to the Clergy of London, May, 1839, p. 31.

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He quotes with approbation Stillingfleet's answer to Sargent:

"These objections do not reach us of the Church of England, which receives the three creeds, and embraces the four general councils, and professes to hold nothing contrary to any universal tradition of the Church." Adding, "We have often offered to put the controversies between us and the Church of Rome upon this issue. We received the Scriptures from universal tradition, derived from all the apostolical churches, so the creeds and the councils, and such an universal tradition is the thing we desire; but as for the Trent creed, our forefathers never knew or received it as part of that faith without which there is no salvation."-Ibid., p. 28.

5.-Authority.

I will readily take the tradition of Christian truth along with me as my guide to the knowledge of what Scripture reveals; but I will not exalt my guide into an oracle, nor, because the training hand and voice of the Church have been my first introduction to the Gospel, will I regard this my ecclesiastical education as essential to the due understanding of the Scriptures in order to salvation. As a valid and important confirmation, then, to the evidence of Scripture, on every point of faith and discipline, as a providential guide to the right understanding of the truth revealed in Scripture, and a reasonable inducement to the reception of that truth, I most highly esteem the mass of religious instruction which we familiarly designate

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