the one ordinary, the other extraordinary. The former takes place, when this authority is transmitted in regular succession from those who originally received it from God; the other, when the Almighty interposes, in an extraordinary manner, and immediately commissions certain individuals to make known his will to men. The latter mode evidently requires indisputable miracles to attest it; and accordingly Moses and our Saviour Christ, who were sent in this manner, constantly appealed to the prodigies they wrought in proof of their Divine mission. Hence even Luther, when Muncer, Storck, and their followers, the Anabaptists, spread their errors and devastations through lower Germany, counselled the magistrates to put these questions to them, (not reflecting that the questions were as applicable to himself as to Muncer and Storck,) Who conferred upon you the office of preaching? And who commissioned you to preach? If they answer, God: then let the magistrates say: Prove this to us by some evident miracle: for so God makes known his will, when he changes the institutions which he had before established.' (1) Should this advice of the first Reformer to the magistrates be followed in this age and country, what swarms of ser monizers and expounders of the Bible would be reduced to silence! For, on one hand, it is notorious, that they are self-appointed prophets, who run without being sent; or, if they pretend to a commission, that they derive it from other men, who themselves had received none, and who did not so much as claim any, by regular succession (1) Sleidan. De Stat. Relig. I. v. from the Apostles. Such was Luther himself; such also were Zuinglius, Calvin, Muncer, Menno, John Knox, George Fox, Zinzendorf, Wesley, Whitfield, and Swedenborg. None of these preachers, as I have signified, so much as pretended to have received their mission from Christ in the ordinary way, by uninterrupted succession from the Apostles. On the other hand, they were so far from undertaking to work their miracles, by way of proving that they had received an extraordinary mission from God, that, as Erasmus reproached them, they could not so much as cure a lame horse, in proof of their divine legation. Should your friend, the Rev. Mr. Clark, see this letter, he will doubtless exclaim, that, whatever may be the case with Dissenters, the Church of England, at least, has received her Mission and authority, together with her orders, by regular succession from the Apostles, through the Catholic Bishops, in the ordinary way. In fact, this is plainly asserted by the Bishop of Lincoln. (1)-But take notice, dear Sir, that though we were to admit of an Apostolical succession of Orders in the Established Church, we never could admit of an Apostolical succession of Mission, Jurisdiction, or right to exercise those orders in that Church: nor can its clergy, with any consistency, lay the least claim to it. For, first, if the Catholic Church, that is to say, its 'Laity and Clergy, all sects and degrees, were drowned in abominable idolatry, most detested of God and damnable to man, for the space of 800 years,' as the Homilies affirm, (2) how could she retain this (1) Elem. of Theol. vol. ii. p. 400. lished Church, more than in the other congregations or Societies of Protestants. All their preaching and ministering, in their several degrees, is performed by mere human authority. (1) On the other hand, not a sermon is preached, nor a child baptized, nor a penitent absolved, nor a priest ordained, nor a Bishop consecrated, throughout the whole extent of the Catholic Church, without the Minister of such function being able to show his authority from Christ for what he does, in the commission of Christ to his Apostles: All power in heaven and on earth is given to me: Go therefore teach all nations, baptizing them, &c. Matt. xxviii. 19; and without his being able to prove his claim to that commission of Christ, by producing the table of his uninterrupted succession from the Apostles.-I will not detain you by entering into a comparison, in a religious point of view, between a Ministry, which officiates by Divine authority, and others which act by mere human authority; but shall conclude this subject by putting it to the good sense and candour of your Society, whether, from all that has been said, it is not as evident, which among the different communions is THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH we profess to believe in, as which is THE CATHOLIC CHURCH? I am, &c. J. M. (1) It is curious to see in Queen Elizabeth's Injunctions, and in the 37th Article, the disclaimer of her actually ministering the Word and the Sacraments.' The question was not about this, but about the jurisdiction or Mission of the Ministry. LETTER XXX. To JAMES BROWN, Esq., &c. DEAR SIR, OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. I FIND that your visitor, the Rev. Mr. Clark, had not left you at the latter end of last week; since it appears, by a letter which I have received from him, that he had seen my two last letters, addressed to you at New Cottage. He is much displeased with their contents, which I am not surprised at; and he uses some harsh expressions against them and their author, of which I do not complain, as he was not a party to the agreement entered into at the beginning of our correspondence, by the tenour of which, I was left at full liberty to follow up my arguments to whatever lengths they might conduct me, without incurring the displeasure of any person of the society on that account. I shall pass over the passages in the letter which seem to have been dictated by too warm a feeling, and shall confine my answer to those which contain something like argument against what I have advanced. The Reverend Gentleman, then, objects against the claim of our Pontiffs to the Apostolic succession; that in different ages this succession has been interrupted by the contentions of rival Popes; and that the lives of many of them have been so criminal, that, according to my own argument, as he says, it is incredible that such Pontiffs should have been able to preserve and convey the commission and authority given by Christ to his Apostles.I grant, Sir, that, from the various commotions and accidents to which all sublunary things are subject, there have been several vacancies, or interregnums in the Papacy; but none of them have been of such a lengthened duration, as to prevent a moral continuation of the Popedom, or to hinder the execution of the important offices annexed to it. I grant also, that there have been rival Popes and unhappy schisms in the Church, particularly one great schism, at the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century: still the true Pope was always clearly discernible at the times we are speaking of, and in the end was acknowledged even by his opponents. Lastly, I grant that a few of the Popes, perhaps a tenth part of the whole number, swerving from the example of the rest, have, by their personal vices, disgraced their holy station but even these Popes always fulfilled their public duties to the Church, by maintaining the Apostolical doctrine, moral as well as speculative, the Apostolical Orders, and the Apostolical Mission; so that their misconduct chiefly injured their own souls, and did not essentially affect the Church. But if what the Homilies affirm were true, that the whole Church had been drowned in idolatry for 800 years,' she must have taught and commissioned all those whom she ordained, to teach this horrible apostacy; which she never could have done, and at the same time have retained Christ's commission and authority to teach all nations the gospel. This demonstrates the inconsistency of those clergymen of the Establishment, who accuse the Catholic Church of Apostacy and Idolatry, and at the same time boast of having received, through her, a spiritual jurisdiction and ministry from Jesus Christ. Your Visitor next expatiates, in triumphant |