which Mr. Faber still clings for succour, notwithstanding what Bishop Taylor has said of it.

IV. Clemens of Alexandria is adduced with as little felicity as Mr. Faber's former witnesses. His testimony on this subject the reader will find in Potter on Church Government, (Ch. III. and IV.) where the archbishop proves that, although, in the passage cited by Mr. Faber, Clemens names but presbyters and deacons, yet that "in several other places he speaks of all the three orders as distinct from one another." But I suspect that this is not the first time that Clement of Alexandria also has been brought forth on this desperate service.

V. As to the opinions of such writers as Hooker and Hall, there is this general unfairness in alleging them as Mr. Faber has done-that, whatever they may have said in favour of the reformed churches abroad, their professed purpose was, to prove the invalidity of the orders assumed by the presbyterians in Scotland and England, whom they expressly precluded from all pretences of inevitable necessity, or necessity of any sort. Bishop Hall, as I have shewed, (British Magazine, Dec. p. 640,) denies in the strongest language that such a necessity ever yet existed. And this, not indeed when pressed by our enemies with the case of the foreign churches, but when refuting the pretensions of the presbyterians at home. Hooker's notion seems, from the context, to be grounded on the assumption that the whole church visible is the true original subject of all power; which, I apprehend, is not the conclusion one would naturally come to from the commission given by Christ to his apostles. But, even on Hooker's theory, I cannot see how anything less than a total departure of all the bishops of the church universal from the catholic faith could justify any particular church, or part of a church, in separating, not from a bishop, but from episcopacy, to do which, as Bishop Taylor truly remarks, "is the quintessence and spirit of schism, and a direct overthrow to Christianity, and "a confronting of a divine institution."*

For, let me ask, what degree of demonstration are we not bound to require before we admit that such a necessity has arrived? Can anything short of a miracle be sufficient warrant for overturning the constitution which Christ and his apostles founded, and which the whole catholic church for fifteen centuries believed to be vital and essential to Christianity? Those who make such an attempt must, at the very least, be able to shew that it was impossible, after never so long an interval of patient abstinence, to obtain orders elsewhere, except from an heretical bishop. "Where God," says Bishop Taylor, "ineans to found a church, there he will supply them with those means and ministers which himself hath made of ordinary and absolute necessity." (sect. xxxii.) "Necessity may excuse a personal delinquency, but I never heard that necessity did build a church." (ib.) “If God means to build a church in any place, he will do it by means proportionable to that end-that is, by putting them into a possibility of doing and acquiring those things which himself hath required, of

Episcopacy Asserted, sect. 46.

necessity, to the constitution of a church. So that, supposing that ordination by a bishop is necessary for the vocation of priests and deacons, as I have proved it is, and therefore for the founding or perpetuating of a church, either God hath given to all churches opportunity and possibility of such ordinations, and then the necessity of the contrary is but pretence and mockery or if he hath not given such possibility, then there is no church there to be either built or continued, but the candlestick is presently removed." (ib.)

Nor can I see how this doctrine of inevitable necessity involves less than the supposition that Christ may possibly fail to keep his promises of being with his apostles unto the end of the world, and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his church. As the argument is used in this controversy, it goes the length of supposing that his promises have actually, on more than one occasion, failed already. Further, granting that such a necessity should arrive, would it not be a necessity of doing in some sort without ministers, and not a power of creating them? For no one can give a power which he had not previously possessed. And therefore, if, without miraculous interposition, a presbyter is capable in such an emergency of imparting to another (whether laic or presbyter) the power of transmitting spiritual gifts, and, as Epiphanius would say, of begetting fathers to the church, he must have been equally capable of imparting it before the emergency occurred. This is well put by Scrivener in his "Actio in Schismaticos Anglicanos :"

"That such a necessity can be granted, in which lawful ministers can be made by those who are not ministers, or be created or ordained by ministers who have no lawful and ordinary power, I have not yet, after the most diligent search, been able to discover from scripture or ecclesiastical tradition. But I wish these doctors would in a peaceable discourse explain what may be the efficacy of that extreme necessity of which some speak. Do they not (at least so they seem to me) feign that to those labouring under extreme necessity there springs up a new power, which they did not at all possess before the necessity occurred? Nothing surely can be more vainly imagined. He, therefore, who teaches that power of ordaining a presbyter is simply absent from a minister, by what means will he allow it to be infused by urgent necessity? For necessity does not simply furnish any one with a new power, it merely removes external impediments; and that axiom which sophists misapply in this argument, "what ought not to be done, when done is valid," has no relevancy whatever when the doubt is concerning the original power itself, and whether the effect be real or fictitious. Since, therefore, we deny, both that there is power in the ordaining ministers, and that any effect has been produced by their ordination, why do they weary our ears with the vain clamour of the aforesaid canon, and contend that an action has been done validly, which we deny, and which they do not prove, to have been done at all."*

"Fortius adhuc nos constringere videntur testimoniis tam Pontificiorum insignium, quam theologorum nostræ ecclesiæ, qui tam scriptis quam praxi asseruerunt presbyteris potestatem ordinativam; extrema saltem necessitate exigente. Quibus hactenus ego assentior; Licere, scil. fidelium cuivis gregi omni legitimo ministerio destituto, aliquem ex Laica conditione deligere in Evangelii annunciationem, et cohortationem ad mores pios. Ad sacramenta autem tractanda, qui ausim ego similiter affirmare, quum Lutherus, et Calvinus, et Perkinsius diserte scribunt irrita omnia esse sacramenta quæ a legitimo ministro non peraguntur! nec baptismo quidem excepto. Dari autem posse istiusmodi necessitatem, qua a non ministris fieri possint ministri legitimi, vel a ministris absque legitima potestate et ordinaria, creari, ordinarique, nondum a scripturis, aut traditione ecclesiarum scrutamine diligentissimo

There is, I apprehend, but too much reason to fear that such men as Hooker and Bishop Hall, (and Mr. Faber could easily have adduced many more,) in their anxiety to maintain a friendly union with the foreign churches, and thus, by making common cause, to strengthen this church and enfeeble the papacy, have deeply injured the cause of that truth which they loved and powerfully defended. Instead of neutralizing the force of their own invincible arguments in this process of temporizing expediency, had they uniformly and undeviatingly maintained the doctrine which they proved to be the only doctrine of scripture or the primitive church, I cannot but believe that the truth would have prevailed far more, or, more truly, have suffered far less, than it has, and the reformation have stood in a very different position, both here and on the Continent. From first to last, the obvious policy of the papal court has been to prevent protestant Europe from becoming united on the basis of antiquity; and I question if there be anything which has better served its purpose than this fiction of an inevitable necessity. I am not new in my judgment of this theory. To quote our admirable Bishop Taylor once more :

"But then, are all ordinations invalid which are done by mere presbyters, without a bishop? What think we of the reformed churches? For my part, 1 know not what to think. The question hath been so often asked, with so much violence and prejudice, and we are so bound by public interest to approve all that they do, that we have disabled ourselves to justify our own. For we were glad at first of abettors against the errors of the Roman church; we found these men zealous in it; we thanked God for it, as we had cause; and were willing to make them recompence, by endeavouring to justify their ordinations; not thinking what would follow upon ourselves. But now it is come to that issue, that our own episcopacy is thought not necessary, because we did not condemn the ordinations of their presbytery. Why is not the question rather, what we think of the primitive church, than what we think of the reformed churches? Did the primitive church and fathers do well in condemning the ordinations made by mere presbyters? If they did well, what was a virtue in them is no sin in us. If they did ill, from what principle shall we judge of the right of ordinations ?”*

This whole subject, I am persuaded, deserves a far more attentive consideration than it has ever yet received. The churches which renounced episcopacy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have ever since been departing further and further from the truth of the

investigare contigit. Quantæ autem extrema necessitatis, quas deprædicant nonnulli, vires sint, utinam tandem pacato commentario explicent hi doctores. Anne quod, (saltem mihi videntur) affingant subsilire statim potestatem extrema necessitate laborantibus, novam, et quæ nequaquam prius subesset, quam necessitas accideret? Nihil equidem vanius excogitari possit. Qui ergo simpliciter abesse facultatem ordinandi presbyterum, a ministro docet; quo pacto ab urgente necessitate infundi assentiet? Necessitas enim non simpliciter nova instruit quempiam potestate, sed impedimenta externa tollit tantum ; et illud axioma, quo in hac causa sophista abutun. tur, scil. Quod fieri non debet factum valet, nullum omnino locum habet, ubi de prima potentia dubitatur ; et, an effectus revera, vel fictà duntaxat fit. Negato igitur tam ministris consecrantibus potestatem in esse, quàm productum aliquem effectum, quorsum vano strepitu aures nostras verberant prædicti canonis, et valide factum contendunt, quod nos ne factum quidem esse affirmamus, nec isti demonstrant.”— - Apologia particularis pro Ecclesia Anglicana, seu Actio Historico Scholastica contra Novissimos Schismaticos Anglicanos. Authore Matthæo Scrivenero, Presbytero. Lond. 1672. 4to. pp. 66, 67.

* Episcopacy Asserted, scct. xxxii. See also Scrivener, p. 69.

gospel. Our church, which once seemed destined by the Almighty to restore the doctrine and government of the primitive church to the whole of Christendom, has lost much of her power and influence by the futile attempts of too many eminent (but in this particular, I fear, most mistaken) men to consolidate a union among protestants at the expense of what they believed to be catholic truth, and in direct opposition to what they themselves had demonstrated to be" the constant voice of Christendom, declaring ordinations made by presbyters to be null and void in the nature of the thing."* All they effected by this compromise of principle is, to supply topics of extenuation for the very schisms against which they were writing, the very schisms by which the energy and union of the reformation is frittered to pieces, and arguments and declarations for such writers as Mr. Faber. They descended from their high position in order, no doubt, that they might raise others. The attempt ended, as such attempts must ever end, in lowering their own tone of principle, without in the least improving those whom they had hoped to serve. The only bond of Christian unity is, Christian truth. The only weapon which can overthrow the powers of falsehood is, that faith which boldly and unflinchingly puts forward truth, and leaves results and consequences to Almighty God. Dear Sir, most truly yours, JOHN CLARKE CROSTHWAITE.

Trinity College, Dublin, Feb. 8th, 1839.

WALDENSES, IN WHAT SENSE HÆRETICI.

SIR,-The same circumstances which prevented my sooner seeing Mr. Gilly's letter of December last, led to my citing a passage of the Croisade, &c., in ignorance that he had previously quoted it.

As he is not a controversialist, (from which I understand that he has nothing to do with this astonishing paradox about the apocalyptic witnesses,) he can certainly have no object in colouring the truth of this matter. The interest he takes in the modern Vaudois cannot surely make him desirous of believing that they are the same in discipline and doctrine as the Pauperes de Lugduno were in the twelfth century. He might as well desire that his Anglican parishioners of this day should have been just such six hundred years ago, as desire to find the presbyterians of the Calvinistic reformation existing in the same shape in the heart of the middle ages. There is no motive whatever (if once we are rid of the Witnesses) for even wishing to establish a point which has so little appearance of probability.

I have not the book of Alanus by me, but only extracts from it made some years ago. That the Waldenses are called by him hæretici and Waldo an hæresiarch, I will admit. I dare say it has been done often and by many. And I will endeavour to point out in what sense Alanus, and perhaps others, seem to have called them so; and

Bishop Taylor, ib.

in what sense also Alanus, and the Inquisitors, and the Provençal poets, at the same time declared them not to be so.

Every person who separated at any time from the main and catholic body of the church to follow the suggestions of a particular leader was a chooser, or haireticos, and every such leader was an hæresiarch, or leader of the free choice. This might arise in two ways,-on points of discipline or authority, and on points of creed or doctrine, as distinguished from the former; for I do not say that points concerning church authority may not be important points of doctrine. Hæretic and sectary are perfect synonymes, for no difference can be found between choosing a peculiar leader and following one. If, therefore, a certain Thompson preaches the unlawfulness of wearing a surplice, and the duty of separating from a church in which surplices are worn, and I accordingly separate myself and follow him, I become a Thompsonian heretic, by virtue of the choice I have presumed to make for myself, and a Thompsonian sectary by following him. To say that the Waldenses were heretics was merely affirming the one fact of which their whole history consisted-viz., that they were a sect.

Nevertheless, a distinction has always been observed between the schismatic (that is to say, the man who is a heretic, or chooser, merely as to modes of communion, ministration, and church discipline,) and the herectic, absolutely so called, who rejects the essential (or supposed essential) articles of belief. So the presbyterians were schismatics, and the Socinians heretics.

There can, I think, be no doubt that in this latter and distinctive sense the term heretic is applied to the Paulician Dualists of Languedoc, and withheld from the schismatic and ascetic enthusiasts of Waldo. It is evident that both Latin scholars, ecclesiastical tribunals, and vernacular minstrels, were agreed to distinguish the sect or heresy of Waldenses from the sect or heresy of heretics. It is a most important fact; and if Mr. Gilly cannot solve it better, he must acquiesce in the above solution of it. Had the work been before me, I should have given this explanation in the first instance; otherwise, I am under no mistake on the main point.

It follows of necessity that Waldo had taught no material points of pure doctrine, falling under the anathema of the church. The remaining question is, what points will fall within that exception? And that requires more learning than I have ready at command. He clearly could not have denied the inspiration of scripture, the divinity and incarnation of the consubstantial Word, the procession of the Holy Ghost, &c. It is equally clear (independent of all the testimony to that effect) that he could not have partaken in the condemned opinions of Berengarius concerning the holy eucharist. And I do not believe that any persons could have denied the mediation of the Virgin, the saints, and good angels, and yet have come off with the character of simple schismatics, untainted with heresy.

It is an undeniable truth, that the ecclesiastical powers regarded them as disobedient children, and dangerous contemners of authority, but not as persons in whose hands the then established dogmas of faith had suffered. That makes an end of the whim of their bearing