Part 52

Having now finished supper, Mr. Lewellin read the 103d Psalm, after which I brought the evening to a close by conducting family prayer. On taking leave of the farmer, he said, "There are three things I shall never forget:--I shall never forget your first call, when you talked to me about the worth of my soul; I shall never forget your preaching in my barn; and I shall never forget this story about Zaccheus, which lets us know what Jesus Christ can do in a little time."

"I hope, Sir," said Mrs. Pickford, "you will come again and see us. We shall feel so much pleased and profited too."

We then shook hands with our hospitable entertainers, and returned to Fairmount, much gratified with the pleasant evening we had spent.

ON APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION.

On our return from Farmer Pickford's, we heard that the Rev. Mr. Roscoe and his lady had arrived rather unexpectedly at his brother's mansion; but we regarded it as a flying rumour without any foundation. However, the next morning Miss Roscoe called and confirmed the intelligence, and said she was commissioned to invite us to meet them and a select party on the following Monday evening. Addressing me, she said, "You will see a great change in my dear uncle. He is no longer the bigoted Tractarian, contending for legendary dogmas and ceremonial rites; but is now a devout and simple-hearted minister of Jesus Christ." We cordially accepted the invitation; and, on the appointed evening, had the pleasure of meeting our esteemed friends all in excellent health and spirits. After tea, a casual reference having been made by Mrs. John Roscoe to Williams' _Missionary Enterprises_,[31] we indulged for some time in a free and easy interchange of remarks on the labours of missionaries in foreign parts. This, somewhat unexpectedly, led to a grave discussion on the popular question of Apostolical Succession.

[31] _Missionary Enterprises in South Sea Islands._ By Rev. John Williams.

"In this extraordinary narrative," said the Rev. Mr. Roscoe, "which I have read with intense delight, we have a detailed account of the success of Mr. Williams' labours. In islands where an impure and demoralizing idolatry, which often demanded human sacrifices, existed from time immemorial, there is now a Christian population, organized into churches, observing the sanctity of the Sabbath, and the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper. The printing-press is also at work; the Bible is in free circulation; and the natives are exerting themselves in various ways for the spread of the gospel amongst their yet unenlightened brethren of other islands. In fact, there is such a moral and spiritual transformation that it cannot be accounted for, otherwise than by the concurrence of a supernatural power with the human agency which has been employed in effecting it."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"The results of the labours of Mr. Williams and his coadjutors in the propagation of the gospel, form a very strong argument against the dogma of Apostolical Succession, for which a party in our church are contending with so much Jesuitical artifice and overbearing intolerance. Dr. Hook, one of their leaders, says--and all the clergy of his school subscribe to his sentiments--'Unless Christ be spiritually present with the ministers of religion in their services, these services will be in vain.' I admit this: but then he adds, what I cannot admit, because it is in palpable opposition to indisputable facts--'But the only ministrations to which he has _promised_ his presence, are to those of the bishops who are successors of the first commissioned apostles, and the other clergy acting under their sanction and by their authority. I therefore,' he adds, 'at once abandon expediency, submission to constituted authority, decency, and order, as the ground of our defence of our clerical commission, and appeal to the promise given by Jesus Christ to his apostles, and which promise, by coming down to us as their successors, marks us _exclusively_ for God's ambassadors.'[32]

[32] See Dr. Hook's Sermons on Church and Establishments.

"If we contrast this vain boasting of the Tractarians with indisputable facts, how strange does it appear! Here I find from the life of Williams, that instead of studying at Cambridge or Oxford, he was serving as an apprentice to an ironmonger, in the City Road, London; and, if not a positive infidel, he was addicted to habits of impiety, if not intemperance, spending his Sabbath evenings at a public tavern. On one occasion, a pious female friend saw him loitering about in front of the tabernacle in Moorfields, where he expected to meet the companions of his nightly revels; but to mortify them because they were not punctual to their engagement, he yielded to her entreaties to go with her into the tabernacle and hear the sermon." Then, taking up the _Life of Williams_,[33] which lay on a side table, he read the following passage:--"Such a state of mind was anything but favourable to the serious consideration of sacred subjects; and few ever entered the house of God less prepared to profit by its services. The Rev. Timothy East, of Birmingham, occupied the pulpit that evening, January 30, 1814, and preached from the weighty question, 'For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' (Mark viii. 36, 37). The word came with power, and with demonstration of the Holy Spirit upon the mind of his youthful auditor." "Now this young man," continued Mr. Roscoe, "reclaimed from the error of his ways by what Paul calls the foolishness of preaching, after tarrying at home long enough to give evidence of the genuineness of his conversion to God, and receive instruction to fit him for the work to which he had devoted himself, goes to the South Seas, learns the language of the natives, and commences the work of evangelizing them; and this book is a faithful record and report of his extraordinary labours. He received no episcopal ordination in the regular line of descent; but was he not God's ambassador of grace and mercy to these once savage and cannibal islanders? and if so, Dr. Hook asserts what is not absolutely true, that none are God's ambassadors except the clergy of the Church of England and Papal priests."

[33] _The Life of the Rev. John Williams._ By the Rev. E. Prout. Snow, London.

_Mr. Stevens._--"The minister who preached the last anniversary sermons in my chapel, in behalf of our Sabbath-schools, informed me, when we were chatting about apostolic succession, that he knew the ecclesiastic ancestors of Mr. Williams, and gave me his pedigree, remarking that he was descended from 'a succession of bishops, who neither had palaces nor seats in the House of Lords.' Mr. Jay, of Bath, was the instrument employed by the Spirit of God in the conversion of the Rev. O. A. Jeary, of Rodborough, Gloucestershire, who was employed by the Holy Spirit in the conversion of the Rev. T. East, and he was employed by the same Divine agent in the conversion of the Rev. J. Williams. We thus see that the moral revolutions and spiritual transformations which have taken place in the South Sea Islands are not to be ascribed, in the slightest degree, either subordinately or instrumentally, to the intervention of Episcopal power or authority. Not one employed in any department of this wondrous work, occupied a position in the regular line of descent from the apostles, nor had any one of them received ordination from an Episcopal bishop."

_Rev. Mr. Guion._--"A Tractarian who admits the truthfulness of Mr. Williams' report of the success of his own labours, and those of his coadjutors, would probably look on this as an exceptional case to the established law of order prevalent in the church, which we all know requires ordination to precede preaching or the administration of the sacraments. And I see no very strong objection to this view of the matter, because we find that, even in apostolic times, the disciples who were scattered at the persecution of Stephen went to different places preaching the Word, though they were not ordained to the work as the apostles were (Acts xi. 19, 20)."

_Mr. Roscoe._--"I admit there is some force in the popular saying--'There is no rule without an exception;' and I admit, also, that the exception establishes rather than subverts the rule from which it is a deviation; but then there must be some proof that it is really an exception. Regarding the case of the dispersed disciples to which you have referred, I see no evidence in confirmation of its being a deviation from any fixed rule of government established within the pale of the church, because I find other cases reported which bear such a strong analogy to it, that I am compelled to believe that no absolute and undeviating regulations on this subject can be found in the New Testament. We find for example (Acts i. 26), that Matthias was chosen to the apostleship as the successor of Judas; but it does not appear from the record of the transaction, that he was ordained to this office by the other eleven apostles with whom he took rank. Again, the case of Paul is still more decisive against the Tractarian dogma that no one can preach or administer the sacraments with efficacy, unless he derive his official authority and power to do so from the apostles, or some one to whom they have delegated their authority and power. He assumed the designation of an apostle, and did the work of an apostle, some years before he saw any one of the twelve, acting as independently of them, as they did of him; and when they met at Jerusalem they did not require him to submit to ordination administered by them: and, at a subsequent period of his history, when he was called by the Holy Spirit (Acts xiii. 1-5) to go and preach the Word of God in the synagogues of the Jews in Seleucia and other places, he[34] was set apart to _this work_, not to _any office_, by _subordinate members_ of the church at Antioch, termed prophets and teachers, who, when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on Paul and Barnabas, sent them away. These things occurred just when a new system of government was introduced into the church, that was to be perpetuated through all future ages. Here, then, we see pious laymen sallying forth and preaching in different places the Lord Jesus, with such power that many believed and turned unto him (Acts xi. 19-21); and we see also some holding the highest office in the Christian church without undergoing the ceremony of consecration by pre-existing officials, and yet these facts are recorded in Scripture without any notification that they are exceptions to fixed and absolute laws. Such a notification would have proved a decisive evidence in confirmation of such laws had they been established. We thus see that the plain, indisputable facts of the New Testament are in direct opposition to the high church principles of our Tractarians."

[34] If we suppose, with some of the Tractarians, that he was now ordained to the _apostolic office_, then we have a series of irregularities: he labours for years before he receives ordination, and when he does receive it, it is not from the hands of _apostles_, but some very _inferior officials_ connected with the church at Antioch.

_Rev. Mr. Ingleby._--"I have long maintained that this dogma of apostolical succession is an ecclesiastical monopoly which has no sanction from the Word of the Lord, and it is too selfish in its nature to harmonize with the free and generous spirit of the Christian dispensation. If it be the will of Jesus Christ, the supreme Legislator of his church, that no one shall preach the gospel or administer the sacraments with spiritual efficacy until he is ordained to the work by an apostle, or some bishop who can trace his lineal descent from an apostle with absolute certainty, how can such a restricted law as this be known unless he expressly enacts it either by an immediate revelation of his will, or through the medium of the inspired writers? No one pretends that an express revelation has ever been given in reference to such a restriction, and I have never been able to find an implied regulation in any chapter or verse of the New Testament. To say that we, and we exclusively, are the priests of the Lord, and, if you wish to be saved, you must intrust your souls to our ghostly power--that we, and we only, have the keys of the kingdom of heaven--that we open and shut by virtue of the authority delegated to us by St. Peter and St. Paul--is nothing less on the part of the Papal and Tractarian clergy than a monopoly of official authority and power, unsanctioned by the authority of Jesus Christ, and a subtle manoeuvre to magnify their own order. That a Papist should believe this, who is trained in the belief that the laws and regulations of his church are absolute and unchangeable, is not surprising; but that a Protestant should believe it, who has free access to his Bible, and been taught to hold its absolute and exclusive authority on all articles of faith and practice, is indeed a moral paradox which I cannot explain."

_Rev. Mr. Guion._--"Yes, Sir, it is a monopoly which has no sanction from Jesus Christ, the supreme Legislator in his church, and one which entails repulsive and fearful consequences. It compels its advocates to shun all Christian alliance with many of the excellent of the earth, and drives them into the closest connection with many who are moral miscreants, men of impurity, sceptics, and scoffers. Such men as Chalmers and Wardlaw, Robert Hall and William Jay, are branded as usurpers in the church, with whom it would be a sort of treason to associate, and whose ministrations must be denounced as a fatal curse to their deluded adherents, while those clergymen who have received the so-called apostolical ordination, however immoral they may be in conduct, or heterodox in teaching, are to be revered and obeyed as the true and faithful ministers of Jesus Christ. There is in all this something so repugnant to common-sense and Christian feeling--so derogatory to personal dignity and pure taste--and so calculated to excite the contempt of infidels against the whole clerical order, that I am astonished how any one who cherishes the slightest degree of reverence for the authority of Jesus Christ, or who has imbibed a particle of his pure and loving spirit, can submit to its dominion and governing power, especially when he is told that, _if he has not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his_."

_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:--