in Pennsylvania, will have weight with all Episcopa lians. In a pamphlet published by him, some years ago, entitled, "The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States considered," the principal object of which was to recommend a temporary departure from the line of Episcopal succession, on the ground that bishops could not then be had, we find the following passage, p. 28. "Now if even those who hold Episcopacy to be of divine right, conceive the obligation to it not to be binding when that idea would be destructive of public worship; much more must they think so, who indeed venerate and prefer that form as the most ancient and eligible, but without any idea of divine right in the case. This the author believes to be the sentiment of the great body of Episcopalians in America; in which respect they have in their favour, unquestionably, the sense of the church of England; and, as he believes, the opinions of her most distinguished prelates for piety, virtue, and abilities."

Another instance of concession from an eminent Episcopalian, is that of the late bishop of Lincoln, who, in his Elements of Christian Theology, a work of great authority and popularity in the church of England at this time, expresses himself in the following terms. Though I flatter myself that I have proved Episcopacy to be an apostolical institution; yet I readily acknowledge, that there is no precept in the New Testament, which commands that every church should be governed by bishops. No church can exist without some government. But though there must be rules and orders for the proper discharge of the offices of public worship; though there must be fixed regulations concerning the appointment of ministers; and

though a subordination among them is expedient in the highest degree; yet it does not follow that all these things must be precisely, the same in every Christian country. They may vary with the other varying circumstances of human society; with the extent of a country, the manners of its inhabitants, the nature of its civil government, and many other peculiarities which might be specified. As it hath not pleased our Almighty Father to prescribe any particular form of civil government, for the security of temporal comforts to his rational creatures; so neither has he prescribed any particular form of ecclesiastical polity, as absolutely necessary to the attainment of eternal happiness. The Scriptures do not prescribe any particular form of church government." Vol. II. p. 383, &c.

Archdeacon Paley is universally known as a distinguished writer, and as an eminent dignitary of the church of England. His concessions on the subject before us are quite as explicit and decisive as any of the foregoing. In his discourse on the Distinction of Orders in the church, in the second volume of his works, he maintains that neither the usages nor directions of the apostles warrant any exclusive form of church government. He remarks as follows: "Whilst the precepts of Christian morality, and the fundamental articles of its faith, are, for the most part, precise and absolute, of perpetual, universal, and unal terable obligation; the laws which respect the discipline, instruction, and government of the community are delivered in terms so general and indefinite as to admit of an application adapted to the mutable condition, and varying exigencies of the Christian church."

To the foregoing quotations I shall only add, that a number of the most learned divines of the church of England, when writing on other subjects, have indirectly made concessions quite as decisive as any that have been mentioned. Almost every divine of that church who has undertaken to explain the prophetic parts of the sacred writings, has Tepresented the reformed churches as "the Lord's sealed ones;" as his "anointed ones;" as the "witnesses against the man of sin;" as the "saints of the Most High;" as having "the temple of God," and his "altar." Among many that might be named in confirmation of this remark, the ingenious and excellent Mr. Faber, in a work published a few years ago, and which has received the decided approbation of his diocesan, expressly applies to the German Protestants, those prophecies which represent the purest part of the Christian church. He dates the death of the witnesses at the battle of Mulburg, in April, 1547, and their resurrection at Magdeburgh, in the year 1550. He does not claim for the church of England even the first rank among the witnesses, and much less the exclusive title to that honour.

The preceding quotations are only a small specimen of what might have been produced, if our limits admitted of their being further multiplied. Nothing would be more easy than to fill a volume with concessions of similar import; concessions made, not by men of obscure name and small learning; but by divines of the most exalted character for talents, erudition, and piety, that ever adorned the church of England; divines who shared her highest dignities, and who gave the most unquestionable evidence of attachment to her constitution. Those which we have de

They

tailed, however, are abundantly sufficient. prove that Presbyterians are not alone in considering the fathers as favourable to the doctrine of ministerial parity; that the great body of the reformers, and other witnesses for the truth, in different ages and nations, were, in the opinion of enlightened Episcopalians, friends and advocates of the same doctrine; that the notion of the exclusive and unalterable divine right of diocesan Episcopacy, has been not only rejected, but even reprobated, by some of the greatest divines of the church of England, in more indignant and severe language than I have permitted myself to use in the preceding pages; and that the most competent judges have considered a large majority of the English clergy, at all periods since the reformation, as advocates of the constitution of their national church, not on the principle of divine right, but of human expedi

ency.

29*

CHAPTER IX.

UNINTERRUPTED SUCCESSION.

This

For

THE perpetuity of the church is, undoubtedly, a doctrine taught in Scripture, and received by the great mass of serious Christians. By this is meant, that there always has been a visible church (that is, a body of people professing the true religion) ever since its first institution in the family of Adam, and that there always will be one to the end of the world. church has not been always equally visible. more than two thousand years it existed in the simple patriarchal form, without what we are accustomed to call a regular ministry, and without those external signs and seals by which its character has since been marked. For nearly two thousand more the church was constituted under a new form, and confined to a single family, without, however, destroying the continuity of the body. Since the coming of the Saviour in the flesh, the church, for more than eighteen centuries, has existed under a form still different from that of either of the former periods; and it is the common belief of Christians that she shall continue to exist under this form, without interruption, until her great • Head shall come "to be glorified in his saints, aud admired in all them that believe."

A large majority of Protestants, however, while they receive the doctrine, thus stated, of the uninterrupted continuance of the church, both past and fu