other publications of the same school, I have often felt astonished
that the writers are not startled when advocating their favourite
dogma; because, if they could establish it as a positive truth,
they would prove self-destroyers--be guilty, in fact, of what I may
term ecclesiastical suicide. They maintain, first, that no one is
duly qualified to take office in the church of Christ--to preach
and administer the sacraments--until he is ordained by some bishop,
who can trace up his descent either to the apostle Peter or Paul.
And they maintain, in the next place, that, when so ordained, they
are in verity God's ambassadors to men; but, if not so ordained,
the laity cannot expect to receive any spiritual benefit from
their official labours. Or, in other words, each clergyman of our
church must be in the unbroken line of succession from the times of
the apostles, or he holds an office to which he has no legitimate
appointment, and administers sacraments which cannot take effect.
A Tractarian, then, _is_ either _in_ the unbroken line, or he _is
not in_ it--if _in_ the unbroken line, all is _right_; if _not in_,
all is _wrong_. If _in_, the people are blest; if _not in_, they
are unblest. He _believes_ he is _in_, but this does not prove that
he is; he may be mistaken, self-deceived, and quite unintentionally
deceiving others. And he cannot know he is _in_, unless he can
prove it, and prove it as all facts of history are proved, by moral
evidence. He may be able to prove his own ordination, and perhaps
the ordination of the bishop by whom he was ordained, and also a
few preceding bishops; but as an intelligent and conscientious
man, he ought not to administer the sacraments, or appear as a
clergyman amongst the people, till he has, with the clearest and
most unequivocal evidence, traced back the successive ordinations
of the bishops through the long lapse of past ages, up to the
time when Paul or Peter conferred the rite of ordination on the
bishops to succeed them. This done, he may remain in the priest's
office; but till this is done, on his own principle of belief and
reasoning, he ought to hold his peace--he ought to do nothing;
because he has no evidence that the laity can derive any spiritual
benefit from his ministrations. Thus his faith, and its consequent
reasoning, impose silence and inaction, till he has performed this
process of historical research; or, if he continue to labour, it
will inevitably be in a state of ceaseless disquietude, because,
ceaseless doubt.
_Rev. Mr. Roscoe._--"Soon after Dr. Hook preached his celebrated
sermon on _'Hear_ THE _church_,' I delivered one on the same
subject. On leaving the pulpit one of my hearers, a shrewd clever
man, followed me into the vestry, and, in the presence of my
wardens, asked me to hang up under the tablet containing the
ten commandments, a genealogical pedigree of my ecclesiastical
descent; assigning as a reason for such an application, that he
and his family had an interest in knowing it, as I had taught them
to believe that the efficacy of the sacraments on their souls
depended on my ecclesiastical legitimacy. I felt greatly mortified
by his application, and especially when my senior warden said
such a document, he had no doubt, would prove very satisfactory
to many--and would tend to allay the disquietudes of those who
sometimes complained that they derived no spiritual benefits from
the church sacraments."
_Rev. Mr. Guion._--"This is what ought to be done in self-defence,
and to satisfy the scrupulous anxiety of others; but who can
do it? that is the perplexing question. Dr. Hook says, and his
asseverations are echoed by his fellow-Tractarians, 'the prelates
who at this present time rule the churches of these realms were
validly ordained by others, who, by means of _an unbroken spiritual
descent_ of ordination, derived their mission from the apostles
and from our Lord. This continual descent is evident to every one
who chooses to investigate it. Let him read the _catalogues_ of
our bishops, ascending up to the most remote period. There is not
a bishop, priest, or deacon amongst us who cannot, _if he please_,
trace his own spiritual descent from St. Peter or St. Paul.'"
_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"Dr. Hook is a very rash man to give such a
boastful utterance, when he knows, or ought to know, that this
tracing of a spiritual descent is an absolute impossibility;[37]
it never has been done, and every attempt to do it has proved a
mortifying failure."
[37] "There is not a minister in all Christendom" (says Archbishop
Whately, and he is an authority on this question), "who is able
to trace up with any approach to certainty, his own spiritual
pedigree. The sacramental virtue dependent on the imposition of
hands, with a due observance of apostolical usages, by a bishop
himself duly consecrated, after having been in like manner baptized
into the church and ordained deacon and priest--this sacramental
virtue, if a single link in the chain be faulty, must be utterly
nullified ever after in respect to all the links hanging on that
one. For, if a bishop has not been duly consecrated, or had not been
previously rightly ordained, his ordinations are null, and so are
the ministrations of those ordained by him, and their ordinations of
others, and so on without end. The poisonous taint of informality,
if it once creep in undetected, will spread the infection of nullity
to an indefinite and irremediable extent.
"And who can undertake to pronounce that, during that long
period usually designated as the dark ages, no such taint was
ever introduced? Irregularities could not have been wholly
excluded without a perpetual miracle; and that no such miraculous
interference existed we have even historical proof. Amidst the
numerous corruptions of doctrine and of practice, and gross
superstitions that crept in during those ages, we find recorded
descriptions not only of the profound ignorance and profligacy of
life of many of the clergy, but also of the grossest irregularities
in respect of discipline and form. We read of bishops consecrated
when mere children--of men officiating who barely knew their
letters--of prelates expelled and others put in their places
by violence--of illiterate and profligate laymen, and habitual
drunkards, admitted to holy orders; and, in short, of the prevalence
of every kind of disorder, and reckless disregard of the decency
which the apostle enjoins. It is inconceivable that any one, even
moderately acquainted with history, can feel a certainty, or
any approach to certainty, that, amidst all this confusion and
corruption, every requisite form was, in every instance, strictly
adhered to by men, many of them openly profane and secular,
unrestrained by public opinion through the gross ignorance of
the population among which they lived; and that no one not duly
consecrated or ordained was admitted to sacred offices."
The inference which the Archbishop* draws from these historic
statements is this: 'The ultimate consequence must be that any
one who sincerely believes that his claim to the benefits of the
gospel-covenant depends on his own minister's claim to the supposed
sacramental virtue of true ordination, and this again on perfect
apostolical succession as described, must be involved, in proportion
as he reads, and inquires, and reflects, and reasons on the subject,
in the most distressing doubt and perplexity."
* See _Essays on the Kingdom of Christ_, pp. 176-9.
_Rev. Mr. Guion._--"Two things in relation to this question of
spiritual descent are certain, at any rate they are as certain as
any positive and negative evidence can make anything certain--first,
our Tractarian clergy cannot prove their spiritual descent, and
therefore, on their own principle, they have no authority to
officiate in the church; and, secondly, if they could do this
thing, which has never yet been done, they cannot prove that they
are invested with the mysterious gift on which the validity of
their ministrations depends. Therefore, on their own principle, the
laity can derive no spiritual benefits from their labours. They
are a pompous order of self-created exclusionists, uttering great
swelling words of vanity, when, on their own principle, they are
self-convicted usurpers in the priestly office; and, while vaunting
that they, and they only, are God's ambassadors to man, they decline
producing their commission of appointment, even when pressed to do
so, though they say they could easily do it if they pleased."[38]
[38] It is a somewhat ominous sign that neither Dr. Hook nor any of
his brethren has been pleased to do this very easy thing, though
they have often been challenged to do it, as essential to their
priestly identity and the validity of their ministrations.
_Mr. Roscoe._--"But after all, the practical influence of those
high church principles, constitutes, in my opinion, the most cogent
argument against them. We shall find that pernicious as they are to
the clergy, they are still more fatal to the laity, though they do
not always operate with the same uniformity of result. Some they
lull into a callous apathy and indifference, from which nothing
can rouse them to the soul-stirring question--WHAT MUST I DO TO BE
SAVED? They have unbounded confidence in their parson, that he is
in the regular line of succession--firmly believe in the fact of
their regeneration in baptism, as they have seen the public record
of its performance--and calculate that when death comes, a despatch
will bring the duly qualified official to give them absolution and
the sacrament, and then the debt of nature may be paid without
reluctance, as their peace with God is settled, on the authority of
the unalterable laws of the church, of which they are _bona fide_
members and devoted advocates."
_Mr. Stevens._--"I knew an instance in which these high church
principles had a contrary effect; they plunged an old friend of my
own into a state of mental perplexity and depression, which was
not only painful but appalling. This friend was a sincere and a
conscientious member of the Church of England, and a firm believer
in the Tractarian doctrines of the Oxford school; but happening to
meet with Archbishop Whately's _Essays on the Kingdom of Christ_,
he began to entertain some doubts that he was not quite so safe, in
relation to eternity, as he had been accustomed to believe. On one
occasion, he confidentially disclosed his fears and his misgivings
to myself, confessing that they arose from the degree of uncertainty
attachable to the legitimacy of the spiritual descent of his Rector
from the apostles, and the consequent validity or invalidity of the
administrations of the sacraments. I wished to direct his attention
to a safer way to final happiness than through the medium of the
sacraments; but his predeliction for the church and its ordinances
was so inveterate, that I could not succeed; his long-cherished
associations prevented the free exercise of his reasoning faculty,
and in this state of perplexity and depression, he lived for years:
he died a few months since, but how he died, I know not, though I
fear he died under the spell of the awful delusion in which he had
lived."
_Mrs. John Roscoe._--"I recollect a somewhat similar occurrence,
happening to a near and dear friend of my own, but with a very
different result. She also was a member of the Church of England,
and a great admirer of the Oxford tracts, which she read, and, I
may say, studied with close attention, having no more doubt of the
reality of baptismal regeneration than she had of the fact that
her Vicar had administered it to her. However, some circumstances,
though I never heard what they were, led her to suspect that there
was a difficulty, if not an impossibility, for any one minister of
the Episcopal church being able to trace up with absolute certainty
his spiritual descent from either of the apostles, and for a while
she felt perfectly bewildered. At length she was advised by a pious
friend to turn from man to God: to put aside the Oxford tracts, and
search the Scriptures, to exercise her own judgment when doing so,
and pray to the Holy Spirit for wisdom and grace to lead her in the
right way to mental peace and to heaven. She did so, and now she has
made her escape from the delusive errors of Tractarianism, and feels
secure, because she now builds her hope of pardon and salvation,
not on sacraments or ceremonies, but on Christ, the sure foundation
which the Lord hath laid, and not man."
_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"This painful controversy which is shaking
our church from its centre to its remotest extremities--alienating
friendships, making us a by-word amongst Papists, and a scorn
amongst infidels--will, I fear, continue to rage for a long time
to come; but I am sanguine in my anticipations of the final issue.
Our church was slumbering in ease and security, paying but little
attention to her responsibilities to her Divine Lord and Master; but
these corruptions of heresy and error have roused her, and called
upon her faithful sons to come forward in the defence and support
of the truths of the New Testament. If we act wisely, we shall be
prepared to surrender any tenet or mode of expression incorporated
in our prescribed formularies or other articles of belief, which
has not the direct sanction of the Word of God; and shall evince a
greater zeal for the extension and for the triumphs of Christianity
herself, than the honour and glory of our own church or its
ministerial orders. If we can bring our minds to this resolve, and
if we rely on Him who is the invisible Head of his visible church,
we need fear no evil; the truth, however obscured for a time, will
at length shine forth, and the fabrics of human superstition and
device totter and fall like the dwelling of the _foolish man, which
built his house upon the sand_."
END OF VOL. I.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as
printed.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
paragraphs, thus the page number of the illustration might not match
the page number in the List of Illustrations.
Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where
the missing quote should be placed.
In the table of contents the transcriber has changed the page number
for "A Village Funeral" from 187 to 186.
Page 105: The page number in the caption has been changed from 165 to
105 to match the table of contents order.
For "Spiritual Regeneration a Reality", the page number has been
changed from 337 to 336.
Page 324 The transcriber has added the word "to" after the word
"wrath": "Will they, if warned to flee from the wrath come,
apprehend any danger ..."
Also on page 324 "though he lives and his a sceptic or a blasphemer"--
The transcriber has changed "his" to "he is".