fpiritual extraction to have been uninterrupted, as it would be to lay claim to an eftate without proving your natural defcent from the man whofe heir you pretend to be!

Though we boaft no great knowledge of the Scotch law of inheritance, we may fafely take it upon us to fay that this is a miflake. At the réformation, the eftate was not unoccupied, as this author's reafoning fuppofes. The bithops were then in the undisturbed poffeflion of it, and with their predeceffors had been in poffeflion for fifteen hundred years; they held it by the right, till that period deemed facred and unalienable, of fucceffion from the Apoftles, who were univerfally allowed to have been the firft owners; and they had no fufpicion of any flaw whatever in their own titles. Then indeed arofe certain prefbyters who claimed an equal right with the bifhops to the eftate; but it was referved for Dr. Campbell and Dr. M. to affirm that the bifhops themfelves could have no right to the inheritance of their fathers, unless each fhould prove, by authentic regifters or credible teftimony, his own fucceffion to have been uninterrupted! According to our notions of law and equity, and common fenfe, the onus probandi in fuch cafes falls not on the poffeffor of an eftate or title, but on the new claimant, who is bound, before he can take poffeffion himfelf, to prove that thofe who from generation to generation had been in actual poffeflion, had no right to what they poffeffed, or at leaft that his own right is preferable to their's.

There are in Scotland many noble families of great antiquity, from which other families fprang at remote periods, and were themfelves afterwards raifed to the peerage. The noble family of Gordon is one of thefe; but what would be thought of the Earls of Aboyn and Aberdeen, were they to go to the Duke of Gordon, and infift that they have as good a right to all his eftates and titles as he has; that as they are all peers, they are each of them as well entitled as himfelf to the rank of a duke; and that if he do not admit their claims, or prove the authenticity of his own pedigree, through all the generations that have intervened between himfelf and his. remoteft anceflor," he will expofe himfelf to the ridicule of all the world ?" If his grace fhould think any reply due to fo impertinent a demand, (which is not very probable), he might fay that he and his ancestors had held his eftates and titles for many generations, without having their rights of the authenticity of their pedigree queftioned; that he did not be→ lieve that either of them could be queftioned; and that if the wo noble lords thought otherwife, it was incumbent on them to point out, and prove when and how the failure had happened, before

before they prefumed to feize on any part of his property, or affume to themselves any one of his titles.

Similar in all refpects to this are the rights of the bifhops, and the claims of those prefbyters, who fince the reformation have arrogated to themfelves the epifcopal prerogatives. "To the former, as has been juftly obferved, it is fufficient to know that the government of the church, as originally established by the Apoftles, was epifcopal, in the diocefan fenfe of that word; that there is neither evidence nor probability, that, at any period anterior to the reformation, the epifcopal fucceffion had failed in any church on earth;" and that it is incumbent on those who think that in fome churches it had failed, to point out the time when, and the manner how the failure had happened.

This the prefent author undertakes to do on various principles. He feems to think-nay, he directly contends, that if a man, heretical in his opinions, immoral in his condu&, or irregularly baptized, fhould be promoted to the epifcopate, the fucceffion must fail in him. If a deift or an atheift, or unbaptized chriftian could, by confecration, be made a bishop, he fays that Satan himself might be made a bishop; and then he points out the heretical opinions and immoral lives of many of the popes? We thought that it had been the glory of the chriftian religion, and the comfort of private chrif tians, that the efficacy of the word and facraments hath no dependence whatever on the perfinal worth of those by whom they are adminiftered; and we really imagined that our bleifed Lord had been of the fame opinion. As he knew perfectly what is in man, he knew, from the beginning, that Judas was, in the worlt fenfe of the words, ambitious and covetous, and that he would betray him; and yet he made Judas an Apoftle, as we fimply thought, to fhow that the ordinances of his religion depend not on the perfonal qualities of him by whom they are adminiftered, but only on the authority by which the adminiftrator acts. Dr. Mitchell, however, thinks that our Saviour was miftaken; though, by his mode of reafoning to prove this point we fufpect that, if he has accomplithed any thing, he has deftroyed not only the epifcopal fucceffion, but allo the authority of the prefbyterian and independent minifters, and even the chriflian religion itself,

We take it for granted, till we fee the fecond edition of this book, that no man can be a chriftian, in the gospel fenfe of the word, who does not affociate with fome body of chriftians in the public worship of God, and in the participation of the Lord's fupper; we are likewife of opinion, as

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this author feems to be, that, in every congregation, there muft' be fome individual appointed, whether by the bishop, a number of co-prefbyters, or the people at large, to lead the devotions of the congregation, to preach the word, and to adminifter the facraments; and we alfo think with St. Paul, as we hope (though we are not certain) he does, that "the Lord hath ordained, that they who preach the Gospel fhould live of the Gofpel." But how is it poffible for a class of co-prefbyters, or an illiterate congregation, any more than for a bishop, to difcern the fecrets of the heart of a candidate for the holy miniftry, as Dr. Campbell termed it; to know that he is no infidel, or Simoniac, or immoral men; to know whether he has been regularly baptized or not; or to diftinguish extraordinary apparent zeal from deep hypocrify. This is obviously impoffible to every uninfpired tribunal, whether confifting of one or of many; and therefore we cannot admit, without renouncing our chriftianity, that all the fimony, and atheism, and hypocrify which he has attributed to the popes of Rome, have in the smallest degree tended to break the epifcopal fuc

ceffion.

On the head of fimony Dr. M. writes moft plaufibly,because it is a fin more immediately connected than any other with holy orders, and because the church, in her canons, hath been peculiarly folicitous to guard against it. Yet a canon of the council of Lateran, under Nicolas II. even as quoted by himself, shows that even fimony did not nullify holy orders. "That council," he fays, " decreed, that if any man fhould accept ordination, even without paying for it, from the hand of a Simoniac, he fhould be turned out of the miniftry," (which furely implies that by his ordination he was in it); "though they allowed those who had been fo ordained before the meeting of the council, to retain the orders they had received." P. 258. But he contends, that the orders of a Simoniac are declared to be null by the fentence of heaven itself, if those orders be conferred by our forms. Though he profeffes not to know what is meant by the words " Receive the Holy Ghoft," he is yet fure that they mean fomething more than "Be thou a minifter in Chrift's fpiritual kingdom." We perfectly agree with him that this cannot be their meaning; but we hope not to be deemed prefumptuous when we fay, that to us there appears nothing hard to be understood in what he feems to think not intelligible. "Receive the Holy Ghoft for the office and work of a prieft or bishop in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the impofition of our hands," we have always confidered as a prayer that the Holy Ghoft may defcend on the perfon to be ordained, and fit him

for

for the office, which is committed to him not by that prayer, but, as is exprefsly declared, by the impofition of the ordainer's hands. Whatever be the merits or demerits of the man, it is the doctrine, we apprehend, of the church, that the office mentioned is as certainly committed to him as the hands of the bifhop or bifhops are thus folemnly laid on his head; and fhould his unworthinefs prevent the prayer from being granted, the graces of the Holy Ghoft would be withheld only from himfelf, and not furely from thofe among whom he may labour in the word and doctrine, or whom he may afterwards be employed to ordain.

But, fays Dr. Mitchell," the fentence which was pronounced on Simon the magician, is the fentence of heaven, under which Simoniacs are laid at this day." Be it fo; what was that fentence? Not that Simon could not have been erdained a priest or bishop,-for St. Peter faid no fuch thing. His words are--" Thy money perish with thee, because thou halt thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou haft (not thou canst never have, but) thou haft neither part nor lot in this matter," which was an unqueftionable truth.

But he has other arguments to prove that the fucceffion has been interrupted. He fays, that according to the doctrineof High Church, impofition of hands is effential to ordination; but he is certain that Gregory Thaumaturgus undertook the office of bifhop of Neocelarea, without that cere mony, and feems to think it probable that no apoftolical hands were laid on the head of Ignatius, to conftitute him bishop of Antioch. For the omiffion of the effential ceremony in the case of Thaumaturgus, his only evidence is the filence of Gregory of Nyffa, who, though he relates the very extraordinary way in which Thaumaturgus was dedicated to the fervice of God by the neighbouring bifhop of Amafea, makes no mention of his ordination by impofition of hands! In the cafe of Ignatius, he has fomething more than the filence of an individual to produce. "Was Ignatius, the bifhop of Antioch, ordained by the laying on of hands? Dr. Wake seems to doubt it much;" and he refers (p. 219) to Wake's

We have heard of a judge, who, when the witneffes examined before him bare no evidence against the point to be proved, infifted that their filence was proof in support of it. Perhaps Dr. Mitchell has taken his notions of evidence, as well of the law of inheritance, from this man, who is faid to have prefided in the Court of Exchequer in Scotland fome fixty or seventy years ago.

Ep. ad Edit. where thofe doubts are expreffed. What work of Dr. Wake's is here meant we really know not; but in the difcourfe prefixed to his tranflation of the Apoftolical Fathers, that learned man thus expreffes his doubts of the ordination of Ignatius.

"Though the ftory of our Saviour's taking St. Ignatius into his arms be of no credit ;- this is certain, that growing eminent both in the knowledge of the doctrine of Chrift, and in a life exactly framed according to the ftri&eft rules of it, he was, upon the death of Evodius, chofen by the Apoftles that were fill living, to be bishop of Antioch, the metropolis of Syria; and, whatever Anaftafius pretends, received impofition of hands from them."

The doubts thus expreffed, we are told in the margin, rest on the authority of Chryfoftom and Theodoret, together with the reafonings of Uther and Pearson—the former in his notes on the fpurious epifle to the people of Antioch, and the latter in his Vindicia Ignatiana.

Dr. Mitchell having taken it into his head that no layman can be ordained a bifhop without previously going through all the inferior ecclefiaftical degrees, boldly affirms that Cyprian, "the Apoftle of High Church," was from a layman elected and ordained bishop of Carthage, whence he withes it to be inferred, that the epifcopal fucceffion failed even in him! This, it must be owned, is a fevere blow to High Church, if it be indeed true, that, in ecclefiaftical degrees, the greater do not comprehend the lefs, and if Cyprian was ordained per faltum; but if neither of thefe pofitions can be admitted, High Church, odious as fhe is, may yet be fafe.

That in ecclefiaftical degrees, as in all ethers, the lefs is comprehended in the greater, is fo obvious to common fenfe and common honefty, that we fhall leave that question with the reader; and afk this learned man, what authority he has for affecting that Cyprian was ordained per faltum? Autho rity! why, the fact is recorded by Pontius, Cyprian's deacon, who wrote his life, and muft have been well acquainted with the facts which he relates. He must have been fo; but, we know not how, in our copy of that life, Pontius affirms the very reverfe of what, it feems, he fays in Dr. Mitchell's copy! In our copy, he fpeaks of Cyprian's intimacy with Cæcilius, a prefbyter, even when Cyprian himself was but a deacon, as Pontius was: Erat fanè illi etiam de nobis conterbernium viri jufti, &c.; 'he refers to many memorable things which he did while yet a layman, and many while he was a trefbyter-multa funt quæ ad huc plebeius, multa quæ jam pref

byter