Chapter XXV: Part 25

_Mr. Roscoe._--"Your very just and forcible remarks remind me of a paragraph in the _Edinburgh Review_,[35] which I marked for reference, and which, by your permission, I will read: it is an amplification of your remarks on this very objectionable feature of Tractarianism:--'The strongest and most irrefragable argument against the principles held by the Tractarians appears to us not their absurdity, though that is flagrant enough, but their essential uncharitableness. We stand absolutely confounded at the fatuity of men, who, with the New Testament in their hands, profess to be willing to fraternize with Rome, but cannot fraternize with Lutherans and Presbyterians; who affect to consider the points of difference between the Church of Spain and the Church of England less vital than those between the Church of England and that of Scotland; who, for the sake of such a figment as apostolical succession and other figments as shadowy, remorselessly exclude a large portion of the communities of Christendom from the very name, rights, and privileges of Christian churches; who can imagine the great doctrines in which both they and their opponents coincide, and which form the theme and triumph of inspired eloquence, of less moment than doctrines and rites on which the Scripture is ominously silent, or which seem to stand in shocking contrast to the moral grandeur and magnanimous spirit of the Christian institute. Yet so it is; and we need no other evidence of the degrading and narrowing effects of such principles than that this most melancholy result of them should inspire so little sorrow, or rather should be so frequently proclaimed more in triumph than with regret. The generality of the Oxford school proclaim the consequences of their principles not only with an arrogance which ill befits such equivocal conclusions, but without a particle of sorrow, which, if true, they would naturally excite in the breast of every benevolent man.'"

[35] April, 1843.

_Rev. Mr. Guion._--"As they are, in common with their Papal brethren, intolerant on _principle_, and that _principle one_ which, in their opinion, involves the honour of the church, and the final happiness of the soul of man, they cannot feel any regret, when adverting to its necessary consequences in its application to other churches and sects, without being self-convicted of positive inconsistency; they must adhere to their principle of exclusive intolerance, in spite of all the odium it may cast on their theory of belief. And this stern and steady adherence to a principle which compels them, as by the force of a Divine law, to prefer fraternizing with the Papacy, with all its arrogant claims, its assumed prerogatives, and its repugnant ceremonial regulations, rather than fraternize with their Protestant brethren who contend earnestly for the pure faith of the New Testament, is to me a conclusive proof that their theory of belief is anti-Christian in its character and tendency, as the unerring test may be applied to _principles_ as well as to _persons_--'_If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his_,' Rom. viii. 9."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"If we are to receive the doctrine of apostolical succession as correct, we must then admit as a fact what to every reflecting mind will appear most incongruous and extraordinary. The theory held by our Tractarian clergy in common with the Romish Church, is, That each bishop, from the apostolical times, has received in his consecration a mysterious gift, and also transmits to every priest in his ordination a mysterious gift, indicated in the respective offices by the awful words, 'Receive the Holy Ghost;' that on this the right of priests to assume their functions, and the preternatural grace of the sacraments administered by them, depends; that bishops, once consecrated, are invested with the remarkable property of transmitting the gift to others; that this has been the case from the primitive age till now; that this high gift has been incorruptibly transmitted through the hands of impure, profligate, heretical ecclesiastics, as ignorant and flagitious as any of their lay contemporaries; that, in fact, these gifts are perfectly irrespective of the moral character and qualifications both of bishop and priest; and reside in equal integrity in a Latimer or a Bonner--a virtuous man or a profligate--an imbecile or a genius."

_Rev. Mr. Guion._--"I believe, Sir," said he, addressing the Rev. Mr. Roscoe, "you were once a strenuous advocate of this theory of apostolical succession; will you permit me to ask you a few questions, which may tend to expose its gross absurdity--its shameless jugglery to magnify the glory of an ambitious priesthood, who evince more zeal and devotion in behalf of their own order than they do for the purity and spiritual triumphs of the Christian faith?"

_Rev. Mr. Roscoe._--"Yes, Sir; I confess, with some degree of shame, that I once entertained the belief that some mysterious gift was transmitted from the bishop to the priest at the time of his ordination."

_Rev. Mr. Guion._--"Was this gift, in your opinion or belief, transmitted to the intellect or to the heart, or to both? Or in other words, did it give additional acuteness to your intellectual faculty--extend the range of your knowledge of Divine truth, or did it increase the purity of your soul, and raise your affections to a higher pitch of devotional feeling?"

_Rev. Mr. Roscoe._--"To be candid, Sir, I took for granted the truth of the doctrine as to the mysterious transmission of a mysterious something; but when I reflected on it, as I sometimes did, even before I was rescued from the meshes of Tractarian delusions, I felt as though my mind were revolving in a circle: I could see nothing; I could feel nothing. I was the same man in knowledge, in intelligence, in taste, and in devotional feeling, after the solemn words, _Receive the Holy Ghost_, were uttered, as I was before they fell from the lips of the bishop."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"It amounts then simply to this, and it is of no use to attempt to disguise the fact, that what is deemed the _essential part_ of the ordination service, is either a solemn farce, or it is a positive reality, and in that case it must be received without a particle of evidence in its support. The bishop who transmits the gift is not conscious that he possesses what he pretends to give; and the person who receives it is not conscious of receiving it at the time it is imparted: both the giver and receiver are in the same condition of unconsciousness, during the mysterious process of giving and receiving the inexplicable and inconceivable something, on which the authority of the priest to officiate, and the vital efficacy of all his ministrations, are made dependent. This is most marvellous! more like an extravagant invention to answer some special device, than a sober reality of Divine appointment."

_Rev. Mr. Guion._--"I have no doubt but a scrupulous and conscientious clergyman will sometimes feel a painful degree of perplexity when musing on the very mysterious process of bestowing and receiving this gift, so essential to the identity of his priestly character, and the vital efficacy of his official labours; and should he begin to doubt, as possibly he may, whether the bishop actually bestowed on him the gift, or whether he actually received it, his doubts must remain, and will very likely increase and multiply, because no living oracle, or conclusive evidence, or logical reasoning can afford him any relief. Though I am not very fond of introducing caustic irony in the discussion of such a grave question, yet the following paragraph from the _Review_ already quoted may not be inappropriate:--

"'We can imagine the perplexity of a presbyter thus cast in doubt as to whether or not he has ever had the invaluable 'gift' of apostolical succession conferred upon him. As that 'gift' is neither tangible nor visible, the subject neither of experience nor consciousness--as it cannot be known by any 'effects' produced by it--he may imagine, unhappy man! that he has been regenerating infants by baptism, when he has been simply sprinkling them with water. 'What is the matter?' the spectator of his distractions might ask. 'What have you lost?' 'Lost!' would be the reply; 'I fear I have lost my apostolical succession; or rather, my misery is, that I do not know and cannot tell whether I ever had it to lose!' It is of no avail here to suggest the usual questions--'When did you see it last?' 'When were you last conscious of possessing it?' What a peculiar property is that, of which, though so invaluable--nay, on which the whole efficacy of the Christian ministry depends--a man has no positive evidence to show whether he ever had it or not! which, if ever conferred, was conferred without his knowledge; and which, if it could be taken away, would still leave him ignorant not only when, where, and how the theft was committed, but whether it had ever been committed or not! The sympathizing friend might probably remind him, that as he was not sure he had ever had it, so, _perhaps_, he still had it without knowing it. '_Perhaps_,' he would reply, 'but it is certainty I want.' Such a perplexed presbyter, and doubtless there are many such, is in a regular fix; and there he must remain, calling on his idols for help, but, like the priests of Baal, calling in vain, as there is no power in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, which can rescue a man from the terror of his own delusions, till the delusions themselves are abandoned as visionary and absurd.'"

_Mr. Roscoe._--"This question of apostolical succession, when cleared of its legendary mysticism, and brought within the pale of sober reality, may be employed as a very cogent argument in confirmation of the historic truthfulness of the Christian faith and its institutions, in refutation of some of the objections of infidelity. 'The existence of such an order of _men as Christian ministers_, continually from the apostles to this day, is perhaps,' as Archbishop Whately remarks,[36] 'as complete a moral certainty as any historical fact can be; because it is plain that if, at the present day, or a century ago, or ten centuries ago, a number of men had appeared in the world, professing (as the clergy do now) to hold a recognized office in a Christian church, to which they had been regularly appointed as successors to others, whose predecessors, in like manner, had held the same, and so on, from the times of the apostles--if, I say, such a pretence had been put forth by a set of men assuming an office which no one had ever heard of before, it is plain that they would at once have been refuted and exposed. And as this will apply equally to each successive generation of Christian ministers, till we come up to the time when the institution was confessedly new--that is, to the time when Christian ministers were appointed by the apostles, who professed themselves eye-witnesses of the resurrection--we have a standing monument in the Christian ministry of the fact of that event as having been proclaimed immediately after the time when it was said to have occurred. This, therefore, is fairly brought forward as an evidence of its truth.'"

[36] Whately on the _Kingdom of Christ_, p. 180.

_Rev. Mr. Guion._--"Yes, Sir, the unbroken succession of the ministerial order, from the times of the apostles till now, is, in my opinion, an irrefutable evidence that Christianity took its rise at the period of its asserted origin, and that we have the _essential substance_, at least, of the same faith which the apostles established in Jerusalem, Ephesus, and other places; and that this same faith is administered by a distinct order of men, whose business it is, and ever has been, to propagate it and hand it down to the next generation succeeding them. As an argument of confirmation and defence in relation to the historic certainty of our faith and its institutions, it is of great value and importance; but, as Whately very justly remarks in his incomparable _Essays_, Successionists are guilty of a fallacy in the use which they make of it--'The fallacy consists in confounding together the unbroken apostolical succession of _a Christian ministry generally_, and the same succession in an unbroken line of _this_ or _that individual minister_.' The existence of the order may be traced up to the times of the apostles; but this supplies no evidence in proof that each, or any one minister of the order now living is a legitimate descendant, in the genealogical line, from either of the two favourite apostles, St. Peter or St. Paul. And hence the argument, which is a splendid triumph to Christianity, is a dumb oracle to Tractarianism."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"When reading the Oxford tracts, and some other publications of the same school, I have often felt astonished that the writers are not startled when advocating their favourite dogma; because, if they could establish it as a positive truth, they would prove self-destroyers--be guilty, in fact, of what I may term ecclesiastical suicide. They maintain, first, that no one is duly qualified to take office in the church of Christ--to preach and administer the sacraments--until he is ordained by some bishop, who can trace up his descent either to the apostle Peter or Paul. And they maintain, in the next place, that, when so ordained, they are in verity God's ambassadors to men; but, if not so ordained, the laity cannot expect to receive any spiritual benefit from their official labours. Or, in other words, each clergyman of our church must be in the unbroken line of succession from the times of the apostles, or he holds an office to which he has no legitimate appointment, and administers sacraments which cannot take effect. A Tractarian, then, _is_ either _in_ the unbroken line, or he _is not in_ it--if _in_ the unbroken line, all is _right_; if _not in_, all is _wrong_. If _in_, the people are blest; if _not in_, they are unblest. He _believes_ he is _in_, but this does not prove that he is; he may be mistaken, self-deceived, and quite unintentionally deceiving others. And he cannot know he is _in_, unless he can prove it, and prove it as all facts of history are proved, by moral evidence. He may be able to prove his own ordination, and perhaps the ordination of the bishop by whom he was ordained, and also a few preceding bishops; but as an intelligent and conscientious man, he ought not to administer the sacraments, or appear as a clergyman amongst the people, till he has, with the clearest and most unequivocal evidence, traced back the successive ordinations of the bishops through the long lapse of past ages, up to the time when Paul or Peter conferred the rite of ordination on the bishops to succeed them. This done, he may remain in the priest's office; but till this is done, on his own principle of belief and reasoning, he ought to hold his peace--he ought to do nothing; because he has no evidence that the laity can derive any spiritual benefit from his ministrations. Thus his faith, and its consequent reasoning, impose silence and inaction, till he has performed this process of historical research; or, if he continue to labour, it will inevitably be in a state of ceaseless disquietude, because, ceaseless doubt.

_Rev. Mr. Roscoe._--"Soon after Dr. Hook preached his celebrated sermon on _'Hear_ THE _church_,' I delivered one on the same subject. On leaving the pulpit one of my hearers, a shrewd clever man, followed me into the vestry, and, in the presence of my wardens, asked me to hang up under the tablet containing the ten commandments, a genealogical pedigree of my ecclesiastical descent; assigning as a reason for such an application, that he and his family had an interest in knowing it, as I had taught them to believe that the efficacy of the sacraments on their souls depended on my ecclesiastical legitimacy. I felt greatly mortified by his application, and especially when my senior warden said such a document, he had no doubt, would prove very satisfactory to many--and would tend to allay the disquietudes of those who sometimes complained that they derived no spiritual benefits from the church sacraments."

_Rev. Mr. Guion._--"This is what ought to be done in self-defence, and to satisfy the scrupulous anxiety of others; but who can do it? that is the perplexing question. Dr. Hook says, and his asseverations are echoed by his fellow-Tractarians, 'the prelates who at this present time rule the churches of these realms were validly ordained by others, who, by means of _an unbroken spiritual descent_ of ordination, derived their mission from the apostles and from our Lord. This continual descent is evident to every one who chooses to investigate it. Let him read the _catalogues_ of our bishops, ascending up to the most remote period. There is not a bishop, priest, or deacon amongst us who cannot, _if he please_, trace his own spiritual descent from St. Peter or St. Paul.'"

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"Dr. Hook is a very rash man to give such a boastful utterance, when he knows, or ought to know, that this tracing of a spiritual descent is an absolute impossibility;[37] it never has been done, and every attempt to do it has proved a mortifying failure."

[37] "There is not a minister in all Christendom" (says Archbishop
Whately, and he is an authority on this question), "who is able
to trace up with any approach to certainty, his own spiritual
pedigree. The sacramental virtue dependent on the imposition of
hands, with a due observance of apostolical usages, by a bishop
himself duly consecrated, after having been in like manner baptized
into the church and ordained deacon and priest--this sacramental
virtue, if a single link in the chain be faulty, must be utterly
nullified ever after in respect to all the links hanging on that
one. For, if a bishop has not been duly consecrated, or had not been
previously rightly ordained, his ordinations are null, and so are
the ministrations of those ordained by him, and their ordinations of
others, and so on without end. The poisonous taint of informality,
if it once creep in undetected, will spread the infection of nullity
to an indefinite and irremediable extent.

"And who can undertake to pronounce that, during that long
period usually designated as the dark ages, no such taint was
ever introduced? Irregularities could not have been wholly
excluded without a perpetual miracle; and that no such miraculous
interference existed we have even historical proof. Amidst the
numerous corruptions of doctrine and of practice, and gross
superstitions that crept in during those ages, we find recorded
descriptions not only of the profound ignorance and profligacy of
life of many of the clergy, but also of the grossest irregularities
in respect of discipline and form. We read of bishops consecrated
when mere children--of men officiating who barely knew their
letters--of prelates expelled and others put in their places
by violence--of illiterate and profligate laymen, and habitual
drunkards, admitted to holy orders; and, in short, of the prevalence
of every kind of disorder, and reckless disregard of the decency
which the apostle enjoins. It is inconceivable that any one, even
moderately acquainted with history, can feel a certainty, or
any approach to certainty, that, amidst all this confusion and
corruption, every requisite form was, in every instance, strictly
adhered to by men, many of them openly profane and secular,
unrestrained by public opinion through the gross ignorance of
the population among which they lived; and that no one not duly
consecrated or ordained was admitted to sacred offices."

The inference which the Archbishop* draws from these historic
statements is this: 'The ultimate consequence must be that any
one who sincerely believes that his claim to the benefits of the
gospel-covenant depends on his own minister's claim to the supposed
sacramental virtue of true ordination, and this again on perfect
apostolical succession as described, must be involved, in proportion
as he reads, and inquires, and reflects, and reasons on the subject,
in the most distressing doubt and perplexity."

* See _Essays on the Kingdom of Christ_, pp. 176-9.

_Rev. Mr. Guion._--"Two things in relation to this question of spiritual descent are certain, at any rate they are as certain as any positive and negative evidence can make anything certain--first, our Tractarian clergy cannot prove their spiritual descent, and therefore, on their own principle, they have no authority to officiate in the church; and, secondly, if they could do this thing, which has never yet been done, they cannot prove that they are invested with the mysterious gift on which the validity of their ministrations depends. Therefore, on their own principle, the laity can derive no spiritual benefits from their labours. They are a pompous order of self-created exclusionists, uttering great swelling words of vanity, when, on their own principle, they are self-convicted usurpers in the priestly office; and, while vaunting that they, and they only, are God's ambassadors to man, they decline producing their commission of appointment, even when pressed to do so, though they say they could easily do it if they pleased."[38]

[38] It is a somewhat ominous sign that neither Dr. Hook nor any of
his brethren has been pleased to do this very easy thing, though
they have often been challenged to do it, as essential to their
priestly identity and the validity of their ministrations.

_Mr. Roscoe._--"But after all, the practical influence of those high church principles, constitutes, in my opinion, the most cogent argument against them. We shall find that pernicious as they are to the clergy, they are still more fatal to the laity, though they do not always operate with the same uniformity of result. Some they lull into a callous apathy and indifference, from which nothing can rouse them to the soul-stirring question--WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? They have unbounded confidence in their parson, that he is in the regular line of succession--firmly believe in the fact of their regeneration in baptism, as they have seen the public record of its performance--and calculate that when death comes, a despatch will bring the duly qualified official to give them absolution and the sacrament, and then the debt of nature may be paid without reluctance, as their peace with God is settled, on the authority of the unalterable laws of the church, of which they are _bona fide_ members and devoted advocates."

_Mr. Stevens._--"I knew an instance in which these high church principles had a contrary effect; they plunged an old friend of my own into a state of mental perplexity and depression, which was not only painful but appalling. This friend was a sincere and a conscientious member of the Church of England, and a firm believer in the Tractarian doctrines of the Oxford school; but happening to meet with Archbishop Whately's _Essays on the Kingdom of Christ_, he began to entertain some doubts that he was not quite so safe, in relation to eternity, as he had been accustomed to believe. On one occasion, he confidentially disclosed his fears and his misgivings to myself, confessing that they arose from the degree of uncertainty attachable to the legitimacy of the spiritual descent of his Rector from the apostles, and the consequent validity or invalidity of the administrations of the sacraments. I wished to direct his attention to a safer way to final happiness than through the medium of the sacraments; but his predeliction for the church and its ordinances was so inveterate, that I could not succeed; his long-cherished associations prevented the free exercise of his reasoning faculty, and in this state of perplexity and depression, he lived for years: he died a few months since, but how he died, I know not, though I fear he died under the spell of the awful delusion in which he had lived."

_Mrs. John Roscoe._--"I recollect a somewhat similar occurrence, happening to a near and dear friend of my own, but with a very different result. She also was a member of the Church of England, and a great admirer of the Oxford tracts, which she read, and, I may say, studied with close attention, having no more doubt of the reality of baptismal regeneration than she had of the fact that her Vicar had administered it to her. However, some circumstances, though I never heard what they were, led her to suspect that there was a difficulty, if not an impossibility, for any one minister of the Episcopal church being able to trace up with absolute certainty his spiritual descent from either of the apostles, and for a while she felt perfectly bewildered. At length she was advised by a pious friend to turn from man to God: to put aside the Oxford tracts, and search the Scriptures, to exercise her own judgment when doing so, and pray to the Holy Spirit for wisdom and grace to lead her in the right way to mental peace and to heaven. She did so, and now she has made her escape from the delusive errors of Tractarianism, and feels secure, because she now builds her hope of pardon and salvation, not on sacraments or ceremonies, but on Christ, the sure foundation which the Lord hath laid, and not man."

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"This painful controversy which is shaking our church from its centre to its remotest extremities--alienating friendships, making us a by-word amongst Papists, and a scorn amongst infidels--will, I fear, continue to rage for a long time to come; but I am sanguine in my anticipations of the final issue. Our church was slumbering in ease and security, paying but little attention to her responsibilities to her Divine Lord and Master; but these corruptions of heresy and error have roused her, and called upon her faithful sons to come forward in the defence and support of the truths of the New Testament. If we act wisely, we shall be prepared to surrender any tenet or mode of expression incorporated in our prescribed formularies or other articles of belief, which has not the direct sanction of the Word of God; and shall evince a greater zeal for the extension and for the triumphs of Christianity herself, than the honour and glory of our own church or its ministerial orders. If we can bring our minds to this resolve, and if we rely on Him who is the invisible Head of his visible church, we need fear no evil; the truth, however obscured for a time, will at length shine forth, and the fabrics of human superstition and device totter and fall like the dwelling of the _foolish man, which built his house upon the sand_."

END OF VOL. I.

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Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.

The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs, thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the List of Illustrations.

Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed.

In the table of contents the transcriber has changed the page number for "A Village Funeral" from 187 to 186.

Page 105: The page number in the caption has been changed from 165 to 105 to match the table of contents order.

For "Spiritual Regeneration a Reality", the page number has been changed from 337 to 336.

Page 324 The transcriber has added the word "to" after the word "wrath": "Will they, if warned to flee from the wrath come, apprehend any danger ..."

Also on page 324 "though he lives and his a sceptic or a blasphemer"-- The transcriber has changed "his" to "he is".