SERMON VII.

ISAIAH lxii. 1.

For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.

HAVING already succeeded in proving, that the Roman Catholick is no more than a branch of the Apostolick Church; that the pope has no greater claim to preside over its concerns, than any other Christian bishop; and that consequently the English reformation, under the guidance of bishops, only restored things to their original purity and order: I proceed to notice an objection intimately connected with this part of my subject.

For when we assert, that by divine appointment, episcopal ordination is alone legitimate and valid, an indelible stigma is attempted to be fastened upon it, owing to the channel through which it has been derived. No matter indeed, if the bible has been transmitted through the same instrumentality; it is still pure and incorrupt. No matter, if the Almighty by means of the Roman Catholick has preserved to our use, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper; they are not the less sacred and divine. No matter, if presbyterian ordination itself, by confession, can only be traced upward through priests of the same communion; not one solitary voice is therefore raised to denounce it, as unwarranted and unscriptural.

And yet, the moment we vindicate the sole right of a bishop to ordain and send forth the ministers of Christ's flock, that very moment all the prejudices existing against, and all the odium attached to the Roman Church are unhesitatingly brought to act upon us. Episcopacy becomes at once a relick of popery; it is violently assailed as one of the most prominent marks of the beast, and is attempted to be written down and invalidated under the pretence of this polluted connexion.

But while I am far from being disposed to justify what protestants concur in considering the unhappy errours of a Church, that can still boast of her Ganganelli, her Fenelon, and her Bridaine; it is well to remind you of a principle universally admitted in the science of civil government and of jurisprudence. For who is there to imagine, that the legal acts of a monarch, and even of our own president are susceptible of being annulled, through any stain, which may attach to their private characters? Does it destroy the efficacy of their signatures to the laws of the land? Does it cancel all their appointments to the offices within their patronage? Or the judge upon the bench; does it vitiate his decisions, and vacate the official stations he has the power to fill? You know Brethren, as well as I can tell you, that personal purity and reputation have nothing to do with the lawful exercise of established authority. They neither add to, nor abstract one particle from all vested rights. The same principle prevails in religion. The minister of the gospel may be a concealed hypocrite, he may have a heart as black as hell itself, and still his merely instrumental acts have all the virtue and efficacy they could have, provided they had been celebrated by the purest hands and heart in the priesthood of Christ. Although his doctrines be false, and his life abominable in the eyes of God; upon its being ascertained by his fellow men, those, he married, are not remarried; those, he baptized, are not rebaptized; those, to whom he has administered the holy eucharist, are not therefore to believe, that it has not been worthily received. And precisely thus with ordination. I never knew a dissenting clergyman to be reordained, owing to the secret iniquity of his ordainers being afterwards revealed. I have never heard of an episcopalian divine, upon whom the ceremony was re-performed, because of the acknowledged delinquency of the bishop who first conferred upon him holy orders. And never, no never, but as a popular argument addressed to the ear, and not to the understanding, never can it be maintained, that the successive ordinations of a long line of Roman bishops have had the effect of vitiating the episcopal office, originated according to the will of heaven. It would subvert every thing sacred. It would subvert the bible, the sacraments, the ministry, and the Christian Church itself. I would indeed have all the ministers of Jesus to wash their hands in innocency, to be zealous and faithful in their holy calling; but if they will not, if they will pre

fer to be hypocrites with men and dissemblers with God; praised be his name, it defeats not his grace, it disturbs not his institutions, it works no corruption of blood, nor attaints the rights and privileges of their successors to the end of time; those rights and privileges remain as good and valid, as if they had been ordained by the twelve Apostles themselves. The argument of the Church in her twenty sixth article is conclusive, and if necessary could be fully sustained, by an appeal to the private characters of numbers of the Jewish hierarchy. "Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the ministrations of the word and sacraments > yet, forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ's, and do minister by his commission and authority, we may use their ministry, both in hearing the word of God, and in receiving the sacraments. Neither is the effect of Christ's ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God's gifts diminished from such, as by faith, and rightly, do receive the sacra ments ministered unto them, which be effectual, because of Christ's institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men. Nevertheless, it appertaineth to the discipline of the Church, that inquiry be made of evil ministers, and that they be accused by those that have knowledge of their offences: and finally being found guilty, by just judgment, be deposed."

There is also another objection to our episcopacy, which nothing but my desire to be very full and explicit in the present discussion could induce me to regard as deserving a reply. For inasmuch as the principle for which we contend, necessarily demands an uninterrupted succession of episcopal ordination from the Apostles' time to our own; this succession has been triumphantly affirmed to be a mere fable. It is said to have been lost in the revolution of ages, and to have no present existence, save in the vain imagination and usurped authority of presumptuous men.

But to this I answer, that those, whom we are accustomed to honour as the fathers of the Church, always preserved with the greatest care the catalogues of Bishops in the respective sees from the beginning, and that they have been in several instances continued down to our own age, as may be seen in the celebrated work of the historian Mosheim. And even admitting that our op ponents are in this one particular partially right; admitting contrary

to the testimony of the most learned modern divines, that there are defects in those catalogues, that some names are omitted, and others erroneously inserted: All this would not disturb our claims in the slightest degree: For what is meant by an uninterrupted succession? Not the regular and consecutive induction of bishop after bishop in the same city, town or country. For had the continent of Asia been sunk in the ocean long centuries since, it would not have impaired the validity of the episcopal office in Europe or Africa; although Palestine in Asia was the country in which that office was first conferred.

Much less is it requisite, that the incumbent of any diocess should have been consecrated by his immediate predecessor. The vacanc'y itself is usually created by death, and then, would not the ordination of a bishop of Antioch, by the bishop of Jerusalem, of Smyrna, or of Ephesus, be equally legal and binding, as if it had been performed in his life time by the hands of the deceased ecclesiastick? Our friends devoted to the government by presbyters will not deny it. A presbyter of their Church, ordained in England, on his removal to this country, can succeed to the ministry of the ablest divine they have ever possessed. And so in the case of episcopacy; no matter where the ordaining bishop resides, all whom he ordains, whether bishops, presbyters, or deacons, retain their orders unto death, although they should repair to the uttermost parts of the earth.

The senior bishop of our country, for example, was raised to the episcopate in London, and his residence on this side of the Atfantick has not deprived him of his commission, nor are those upon whom he has conferred the same office, the less bishops than they would be, provided he could trace up a line of predecessors in Philadelphia to the Apostolick age. All therefore, that is essential to an uninterrupted succession, is embraced by the well known fact, that bishops have from time immemorial conveyed to others the same ministerial rank and authority, they themselves enjoyed, and which Christ and his Apostles introduced into the primitive Church. The circumstances of time, place, and residence are altogether immaterial. The actual succession has never been lost or impaired, because ever since the first institution of the Christian ministry, bishops have always existed, and always exercised what they considered the exclusive right to ordain and send forth their successors and other labourers into the vineyard of Christ.

I have already, Brethren, adverted to the first successful innova tion upon this divinely established ministry in holy things. It was in the beginning of the sixteenth century, after fifteen hundred years of the Christian dispensation had rolled away, and the circum stances attending it are entitled to a brief review. The reformation commenced by Zuinglius and Luther had extended to Geneva, a beautiful town of Switzerland, and shortly afterwards the residence of the celebrated Calvin. This great man embraced with eagerness the reformed doctrines, and propagated them with all the zeal, inspired by the conviction of their truth, and all the success, usually following in the train of piety, learning, and talent. Confining himself at first, to what were really the corruptions of papacy, he did not immediately introduce the presbyterian form of government. He had himself been a presbyter of the Church of Rome, and although he necessarily retained the same office, notwithstanding his change of sentiment upon many subjects, it did not enter into his mind, that he was, in virtue of this inferiour rank, authorized to confer it upon others, by the imposition of his own hands.

Humanly speaking, it was an unfortunate circumstance, that at this important period, there was not in Germany or Switzerland, in France or Italy, a single Roman Catholick bishop, who renounced his opinions and joined the ranks of the reformers. Had it been otherwise, through his instrumentality, the reformation might have proceeded in the most unexceptionable manner. It might, and I

am free to declare that it would. Calvin was not then in favour of a government by presbyters. He advocated no such change. He knew that episcopacy was of divine origin. He was so far from denouncing it as a corruption, that he would gladly have received and acted upon it, in the final settlement of the Church at Geneva.

I am free to declare all this, because he has left it upon record. These are his words, "If they would give us such a hierarchy, in which the bishops have such a pre-eminence, as that they do not refuse to be subject to Christ, and to depend upon him, as their only head, and refer all to him; then I will confess, that they are worthy of all anathemas, if any such shall be found, who will not reverence it, and submit themselves to it with the utmost obedience." Can any language be more forcible or determinate? He is most anxious for bishops of the reformed religion,-"If they will give us such a hierarchy." He declares of those, who would dare to oppose.