wisely desists, and rides off to St. James' palace to tell the queen and the nation that it is a nondescript thing, something like the manfish, found in the river Poick, that runs through the dark subterranean caverns of Adelsburg, supposed to be self-generating, and by the learned called proteus anguinus; a snake-like thing, in aspect somewhat human, but of varying form; and certainly the doctor might be farther from the mark. There is something subterranean about his Church; something amphibious; it has shewn itself a snake in human guise; its habits are protean, and it cannot bear the light. But let the doctor speak for himself. "I am come," says he, "to tell your majesty and the nation, that the Protestant Church of England is the old Catholic Church; though I confess it is not the whole, nor like any other branch throughout the world. Yet, as it is neither of the same faith nor the same discipline, nor united in itself in any one faith, nor joined in union with any other church, nor adhering to any one bond or centre of unity, except your majesty-and we can even be independent of you-therefore we must be the whole Catholic Church; for the Church is one, and we, differing from every body else, must be that one. And though the word Catholic, means universal, and our Church is not universal, yet it is no less the Catholic Church. I know it is called Protestant likewise; that is, protesting against every branch, and even the whole stock of the Catholic Church; but this does not alter the case-it is still the Catholic Church. I own I don't like the term Protestant, and have been long trying to wash this stain away; but I cannot, and therefore I have come to the conclusion that it is sometimes one and sometimes the other, and always both together. Yes, your majesty, I am bound, as a successor of the apostles, to tell you that our Church is both Catholic and Protestant! I hope the Holy Spirit is with me while I thus speak, and with you while you thus hear, that I may not give, and you not take offence!" I am sure that her majesty must have shook her head, and the reader of any reflection, will either button up his lips, or open them in the loud laugh. The English Protestant

Church, the ancient Catholic Church! Why, it is no more like it than Dr. Hook is like a mermaid; she is much more like the proteus anguinus than the god-like form which Solomon delineates, and of which he has prophesied, "Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee;" and of whom St. Paul has said, "He has purchased to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing."

But I am not ignorant of the distinction between orders and missions. A church may have true orders, i. e., the episcopal and priestly character, and, as such, apostolical succession, and thus be a continuation of the same national hierarchy, though it may fall into schism and heresy, or even be excommunicated: it is not so, however, as to jurisdiction, which flows from apostolical authority in the body of the Church Catholic, or its divinely appointed head, the Roman pontiff, and canonically exercised. Without this, there is no legitimate succession; and, therefore, although orders and succession may be preserved by regular ordination, they are lost, de jure: from the time a church falls into heresy or schism, that church, de facto, loses all lawful authority and mission; and if the canons are violated, orders are so far invalid, and the succession so far lost. Now it would not be difficult to prove that Cranmer's conse cration even was canonically invalid, ab initio, from the protest he made before his consecration; but I shall not dwell upon this certainly, from the schism of the English Church, all its authority and mission was unlawful, and more especially from the time of its excommunication. Still the main body of regular bishops existed till the reign of Edward VI, when the ordinal was altered; and all who were consecrated or ordained by that ordinal were neither bishops nor priests, as will be more fully shewn hereafter. In matters of faith and worship, Henry changed nothing except as related to the supremacy; he would allow no new sumpsimus in religion. Hence there was not that opposition that ought to have been by the clergy. They were divided on the subject of the divorce, and religion not being much outraged, their

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loyalty got the better of their conscience; for the Catholic clergy are ever ready to cling to their prince as far as may be, and in this case they did so farther than conscience could justify. But all were not deterred by fear, or blinded by interest; were not deceived by a shew of keeping up the Catholic religion by the Six Articles, when its head was gone, and its integrity left to the caprice of a monster's mind; all were not indifferent to the present, or unaware of the future. Many saw that the walls being broken down, and the keeper of the vineyard ejected from his charge, the wild beasts of the desert would revel in the spoil, and they dared to oppose the tyrant's will: the consequence was imprisonment, tortures, death. Among the numerous victims, we find a Fisher, bishop of Rochester, Sir Thomas More, lord chancellor, a Houghton, prior of the Charter House Monastery, who all perished in defence of the Church; the character of which men, especially the two former, was famed for learning, piety, and integrity, and is now held in esteem even by wise virtuous Protestants, and will ever be held in benediction by the children of the Catholic Church.

During this king's reign, the bishops and priests certainly were true bishops and priests, though many of them were not true men. This order continued, as I have said, to Edward's reign, during which the form of ordination was altered; the Catholic religion, as confirmed by the acts of Henry, abrogated; the new liturgy established; every doctrine and ancient practice annulled; and all things made to suit what had been done, and what they intended to do. And when the doctrine of the real presence and the sacrifice of the mass were discarded, the order of priesthood was not necessary; for where there is no altar,-no victim,—no sacrifice, there is no office of priesthood remaining. Consequently, in the new ordinal or form of ordination, no priestly character or power was given. Still, many of the clergy, bishops, and priests, had been ordained by the old formula; these continued true bishops and priests, while the rest were neither the one nor the other. Dr. Hook boasts, as his brethren are wont to do, that

the reformation of the Church was accomplished in due order by the bishops. It has been shewn that under Henry, all was done by the royal will, Cranmer being a ready tool for every purpose. That he had no conscience is evident; for, while a Protestant in his heart, he condemned Protestants to the stake, for the same principles he himself held, and afterwards professed; and, to please his royal master, and to preserve his emoluments and life, conformed to the Six Acts, taught transubstantiation, celebrated mass, administered communion in one kind, professed to live in celibacy, though he had privately married a wife, subscribed to the obligation of observing religious vows, the lawfulness of private masses, and the necessity of auricular confession; all which he disbelieved, and shook off as soon as the king was dead. No reformation, therefore, was made under this king, and consequently there was little for the conclave to do, and nothing they could do but yield or die. Under Edward, every thing was done by the royal will, at the suggestion of the courtiers and a few bishops in their interest. By these, the liturgy was reformed and pronounced, as I have said, to be the work of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Three years later, at the suggestion of foreign Protestants, Dr. Hook's sectarians, it was reformed again. Now the bishops objected, but Edward declared that, if they would not reform it, the new service should be freed from its blemishes without their assistance. Here, again, the royal will alone reformed the Church. The prelates who had known and believed the Catholic faith, though they had yielded too far, sat very uneasily under these changes, and Cranmer proposed to purge the Church of those whose disaffection was most notorious. Bonner, the bishop of London, was first selected. He told his accusers "he had three things-a few goods, a poor carcass, and a soul: the two former were at their disposal, the last was his own." He told them they were notorious heretics, and charged Cranmer with subserviency to men in power, and inconstancy in his religious principles. The next was Gardiner, bishop of Winchester; the third Heath, bishop of Worcester; the

fourth, Day, bishop of Chichester; the fifth, Tunstall, bishop of Durham. These prelates had been long imprisoned in the tower, and, after their trial, were kept in prison till the reign of Mary. The new doctrines mainly depended on the crown and its advisers; they did not take root in the country till power, fraud, the pulpit, and the press, and every species of penal law established them; and this every body knows. The clergy, for the most part, were hostile to them and the new liturgy, but were too much afraid of the penalties. If the church had been lawfully reformed by the bishops, according to the canons, there would have been no need of foreign auxiliaries; of kingly tyranny; of metropolitan hypocrisy, vacillation, force, and fraud; of legal proscription; imprisonment of bishops; dragooning of the clergy, and galling and ruinous penalties. A boy of ten years old could tell Dr. Hook this. In the midst of this ruin and confusion the boy Edward dies, and Mary comes to the throne. And now the sincerity of all the actors in the tragedy is brought to the test. Cranmer, who had bastardized the queen, divorced her mother, married and unmarried the king at his pleasure, and voted to death and signed the execution warrants of his wiyes, with a recklessness becoming a fiend of hell, now recants all, and is willing to be a Papist again, and say mass, and commit every other "abomination of Popery," providing he can save his life and emoluments; and, when he sees he cannot, then, and not till then, he acts the part, not of boldness and courage, becoming a good cause, as some, more superficial than wise, have said, but the part of a froward child, who hangs himself, or dashes out his brains for very spleen, when he cannot have his will.*

Thus the false guise of the man, which had marked him through life, covers his memory in death. Since I cannot be a Protestant archbishop, under a Protestant king, and Popish archbishop, under a Popish queen, as I cannot be dictator, apostate, and traitor, alternately, when interest serves, I will seem a martyr, and repay the consist

Macauley, the distinguished writer, and a Protestant, has drawn the same portraiture of Cranmer. See his Miscellanies, vol. i, p. 208, &c.-ED.

ent caution of the queen with my latest malice. Thus died Cranmer, the fiend of earth, and the crown prince of hell. The duke of Northumberland appears next, and, when about to pay the forfeit of his treasons, he acknowledged to the spectators the justice of his punishment; declared that he died in the faith of his fathers, though, through ambition, he had conformed to a worship which his heart condemned; and prayed for the return of his countrymen to the Catholic Church. A proof that he knew they had left it, and that the Protestant Church was, toto cœlo, different from the Catholic. Now, however, all things were reversed, and the old Church and religion were re-established. The deprived and imprisoned prelates were reinstated in their sees, and the two houses of parliament acknowledge their sin, and beg pardon on their knees, all which proves that it never entered into their heads, that the new religion was reformed legitimately, or that the Protestant Church was the same as the old Catholic Church; their consciences were awake, but their avarice for the plunder of the church was awake also. As soon as Mary was seated on the throne she of course released the bishops from the tower, but she did not force the Catholic religion on an unwilling people: she contented herself with asserting her right to have the Catholic worship performed in her own palace; but when the representatives of the nation returned to the Church, the bishops returned to their sees, except such as would not conform, and they were allowed to retire in peace, as Barlow and all the rest did, Cranmer not excepted. But the violence of the reformers, and seditious conduct of preachers, exciting the people to rebellion, made a different line of policy necessary. I need not pursue this subject farther than as a link in my argument; and this being sufficient, I pass to other points.

Dr. Hook reminds the queen, that, in the chapel of St. James' palace, "Young Edward imbibed the principles of divine truth from the lips of Ridley and Cranmer." Enough has been said, and whoever reads the history of Cranmer's career, will find that he was the last man to depend upon for principles of

any kind, much less those of divine truth. As to Ridley, he was not so base as Cranmer, but he was not a man of principle; for, during the reign of Henry, he conformed to all the theological caprice of that king; and, in Edward's reign he turned round to the new doctrine, and was one of those that pronounced the first composition of the Book of Common Prayer to be the dictate of the Holy Ghost, and its reformation, three years later, the dictate of the Holy Ghost. During the reign of Mary, however, these men perished: and nearly all the bishops consecrated by the old ordinal, returned to the Catholic Church; Barlow and Hodgskins did not. At the accession of Elizabeth all the Catholic prelates, except Kitchen, of Landaff, remained faithful, and were all removed from their sees and imprisoned, except Kitcken, who took the oath, and who was confirmed in his see. Hence it became necessary for the queen to provide a new hierarchy for her new Church. She applied to the old bishops to conform, and perform their functions in the new religion; but they all refused, and the queen resolved to supply their places by the exiles from abroad. Dr. Parker was fixed upon as metropolitan; but he was not a bishop, and must be consecrated, and four bishops were necessary for his consecration. But whence were they to be obtained, since only one lawful bishop was left ?—he of Landaff! Again, in what manner was Parker to be consecrated? The ordinal of Edward was abolished by parliament in the last reign, and the Catholic ordinal renewed; this again was now abolished! and no lawful ordinal existed. Canonists and theologians were consulted, and they determined that the queen's ́ authority as head of the church could supply every defect. Four personages were therefore appointed, viz: Barlow, who had been bishop of Bath, but was deprived of his episcopacy; Hodgskins, once suffragan of Bedford (both of whom are said to have been formerly consecrated according to the Catholic ordinal); and Scorey, the deprived bishop of Chichester, and Coverdale, the deprived bishop of Exeter, both of whom had been formerly consecrated according to Edward's ordinal; these four, without any

VOL. II.-No. 4.

jurisdiction, proceeded to confirm the election of Parker, and then consecrate him by Edward's ordinal. A few days afterwards Parker confirmed the election of Barlow to Chichester, and Scorey to Hereford; and then, taking these two as his assistants-for three were required by law-they confirmed and consecrated, by the same ordinal of Edward, all the other prelates elect. Thus they that required authority themselves, first consecrate and confirm an archbishop; and then the archbishop, thus confirmed and consecrated by men without authority, gives that authority to them, and, associating them to himself, consecrates all the other bishops of the kingdom; and they ordain the clergy. It may be asked, Why did not Kitchen, of Landaff, come forward? Whatever was the cause, he did not assist; it is said that he was applied to, and intended, but desisted at the warning voice of the Catholic archbishop. Perhaps he was not over anxious to go farther than he had done, for no doubt his conscience was not very easy at having taken the oath of the queen's supremacy; and, if he had assisted, it would not have rendered Parker's consecration more legally or canonically valid. The law required, for the consecration of an archbishop, an archbishop and two other bishops, or four bishops; and by bishops it did not mean deprived bishops, as Barlow, Scorey, and Coverdale were, or mere suffragans, as Hodgskins was; but bishops confirmed in their sees, having the office and jurisdiction of bishops. Now, if Kitchen had been present as bishop consecrator, he would have been the only one acknowledged by law, and he not an archbishop, and the others had no jurisdiction. It is true there were four reputed bishops present, but two of these, viz. Scorey and Coverdale, were not bishops at all, they having been consecrated only by Edward's ordinal, which did not even give the character and power of

*

* All bishops are suffragans of their archbishop, but a mere suffragan is not bishop of a see, but one appointed to aid a bishop in his see, when that bishop has other high offices to perform in the state. The suffragan did not reside in the episcopal city, or take his title from it, but from some other town. Thus Bedford, Thetford, Leicester, Nottingham, and twenty-two other places were the seats of suffragans.

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priesthood, and consequently could not give the episcopal character. There is also reason to doubt whether Barlow himself, the actual consecrator of Parker, was ever consecrated. He is known to have declared, that episcopal consecration was a needless ceremony, and that the king could make a bishop without it. Numerous writers of that time express their doubts of his consecration and declare that after diligent research, during eighty years, by persons interested, they could find no evidence or record of his consecration. His real episcopacy, therefore, rests on mere circumstantial indications, and on no positive proof, which is necessary to establish his right to consecrate at all, had all the other requisites existed; and, if Parker's consecration was illegal, it was equally contrary to the canons of the Church Catholic. 1st. These require the approbation of the metropolitan before a person can be made bishop. Now an archbishop's metropolitan is the patriarch, and the Pope is patriarch of the west, but I need not say the Pope's approbation was neither asked nor given. The council of Nice ordained this, and the English Church receives the decrees of that council; the canons of the apostles ordain the same, and she professes to be apostolical. 2d. The canons require the consent of the other bishops of the province, or a majority of them; but Parker's consecration was performed without the consent of all the bishops, or any of them, unless Kitchen consented, and excepting these four deprived bishops, two of whom were not in any sense bishops, they being ordained by a false ordinal. If Elizabeth herself had thought these men qualified, she would not have endeavored to persuade the old Catholic bishops to have consecrated Parker, and imprisoned them for refusing; yet she tried them all one by one, but they refused, and preferred a prison to so foul a deed.* Matthew Parker, however, was thus

*It is pretended by the authors of the Oxford tracts. that the bishops of Mary's reign were usurpers. Now these were really Catholic bishops, truly and validly consecrated by the ancient ordinal, and that before she came to the throne; how then could they be usurpers? and how came Elizabeth to solicit them to resume their functions in her new religion? It is evident she would not have called upon Barlow or Parker if these would have truckled to her will.

consecrated, and consecrated by Edward's ordinal. This of itself, had all other requisites been present, annuls his consecration. If there was no breach in the apostolical orders and succession before, this snaps the bond asunder. And the fact that, after his consecration by these men, he gave them their episcopal authority and institution, shews that they had them not when they consecrated him archbishop. Yet from this hocus pocus origin all the Protestant clergy derive their clerical character. There is no other link between them and the ancient Church than this diddle de doodle of an archbishop; and this same ordinal of Edward continued in full force and unaltered for 104 years, and might have continued till the present day, had not Erastius Senior, in 1662, induced the convocation then sitting to alter the form, by convincing them that it was insufficient to convey any priestly or episcopal character. But this alteration came 104 years too late to be of any service to them. If they have any succession of apostolical orders the chain must be entire; but from the accession of Elizabeth, in 1558, until 1662 the bishops and clergy of the established Church were consecrated or ordained by Edward's ordinal; and all such as were ordained in Edward's time, were ordained by the same ordinal. Now this ordinal runs thus: "Take the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is in thee, by imposition of hands; for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and soberness." The slightest glance at these words will convince any sensible man that they give no episcopal or priestly power; they are more applicable to the confirmation of the baptized than to the clerical character. It is true they may be addressed to a bishop or priest already consecrated or ordained, by way of exhortation, as St. Paul addresses them to Timothy; but they won't do for the purpose of giving the priestly character. We will now see how the altered form stands. "Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a bishop in the Church of God, now committed unto thee, by the imposition of our hands, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy