ed upon him every epithet of honor. Could they have done all this, if they had considered him as subverting the very foundation of the church, by setting aside prelacy? When I look at the language of the first British Reformers 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 ordi nation 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 minis ter, dated April 6, 1582" Since you, the said "John Morison, were admitted and ordained to sa "cred orders, and the holy ministry, by the impo"sition 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

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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 Canter“bury, to celebrate divine offices, and to minister " the sacraments," &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 de. cisive, 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 55) among others, was enacted in 1604, when the church of Scotland was, as it now is, Presbyterian; and although the persons who 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, de

clares, that “ Archbishop Bancroft was the first man “ in the church of England 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 Eng“ lish 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 tiine, Archbishop Bancrofi proceeded to their consecration as Bishops, without requiring

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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 Prese byters, 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 introduce ed 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

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plan of accommodation was agreed upon and executed, though a much smaller number of the clergy ubmitted to its terms. And, which is a fact no less lecisive, at the Revolution in 1688, when PresbyCerianism 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 zumber of the people and their clergy, who were Il Presbyterian, removed from that country into he north of Ireland, where Episcopacy was also stablished. To accommodate a number of the lergy, 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 verceiving, as Bishop Burnet declares, that, for a

time after the commencement of the Refornation in Great-Britain, the validity of Presbyterian ordination was distinctly and uniformly acknowledged.

It were easy to fill a volume with testimony to the same amount. But it is not necessary.

If there be any fact in the history of the British churches capable of being demonstrated, it is, that

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