intelligible sense of the term whatsoever, it is not the mystery of the thing that would at all shock our belief. We merely refuse to give the high-sounding name of regeneration to nothing, or to represent mighty causes in constant and irresistible operation -only in order to produce a nonentity. We cannot understand the doctrine that there are causes which produce no effects.

The following is an affecting specimen of Mr. Gladstone's high Church divinity, and directly tends to encourage that blind and delusive attachment to mere rites, that opus operatum of the sacraments, which is so fearfully prevalent among the members of the Establishment.

The sacraments are the peculiar and distinctive instruments, whereby men receive those essential elements which constitute their unity in Christ. They are appointed to be the universal medium of communion with Him. They are distinguished in some such especial respects from every other means of grace, that they are properly regarded as occupying a distinct place: not, be it observed, as first instruments of conversion, but as instruments of sanctification to the converted in the cases of adults, while only in the case of infants, who need no conversion from acquired guilt, is a sacrament appointed as the specific means of initiating holiness. If we compare them with other appointed means, their distinctive character, which they claim to bear as means of communion with Christ, and with one another in Christ, will be made more evident.

'If we compare them, firstly, with public worship, we see at once that attendance on public worship does not pointedly demand or exact from the individual any such direct and substantive participation as is required by the holy communion. If we compare them with the preaching of the word, the blessing which belongs thereto is, as a general rule, both inferior and more indeterminate for the word so preached is mingled with human imperfections; whereas, that which is received in the sacrament is wholly divine; and the reasonable assumption that the blessing is realized, is more nearly positive in the act of communicating than in hearing, which is almost entirely passive. If we look to the private acts of prayer and reading of the word, these have no witness but ourselves, and belong to us individually alone, and therefore in a subordinate capacity: for it is in our collective capacity as members of the Church that we are members and, by consequence, organs of Christ; and the purely individual functions of religion, essential as they are, are yet important chiefly as means to effectuate and establish us in our highest capacity as living portions of His body. Observe, lastly, that a heathen may attend Christian worship, may hear the word, may read, may pray-and yet may remain a heathen but he cannot, as a heathen, have part in the sacraments.' -Pp. 170-172.

But we must not pause any longer upon the absurdities and melancholy delusions of this chapter.

In

In chapter the fifth, Mr. Gladstone enters upon his favorite theme of the apostolical succession. If the other high Church principles he has undertaken to defend on the grounds of à priori probability and of natural adaptation to the purposes of the gospel, have given him some trouble, it may naturally be expected that he has had more than ordinary difficulty in dealing with this intractable piece of high Church folly. By dint, however, of sedulous and consistent use of all those artifices of controversy which he has so copiously employed in the previous parts of the work, he has given the matter perhaps as plausible an aspect as it is susceptible of, and has thrown as much of an air of intelligence into the face of that stupid and wooden idol as could fairly be expected. In the first place, as usual, he indulges in a great deal of pompous commonplace to which every one is sure to assent, and which may safely be admitted upon any theory whatsoever. See particularly pages 254–256. the next place, in tracing the beautiful adaptations,' as he calls them, of this doctrine to our state and necessities, and to the ' ends of the gospel,' he has taken care to keep out of sight, as usual, the gigantic and most pernicious evils to which it has always given rise, and to which, as we maintain, it must inevitably give rise. He has done just the same in treating of the doctrine of the sacraments. While enlarging on the fancied inestimable value of baptismal regeneration, he has quite forgotten to touch upon the terrible delusions which it is so calculated to promote and perpetuate; the blind and stupid notion that the sacraments are as such mysteriously efficacious, apart from the exercise of the understanding and the moral condition of the affections and the heart. In like manner when treating of the apostolical succession, he has quite forgotten to point out the terrible facilities which it opens to priestcraft, the superstitious ideas which it has ever tended to cherish on the subject of official sanctity, no matter what the moral character and ministerial qualifications of the priest. Where this is made the sine quâ non of a valid ministry, it is sure to assume a prime importance, and becomes in fact the distinctive mark of a true minister of Christ, to the neglect and disparagement of those moral qualifications and real aptitudes for the office which are the subjects on which Scripture chiefly insists. Indeed it cannot be otherwise; for he who does possess episcopal ordination, according to the theory of Mr. Gladstone's school, is assuredly a true minister of Jesus Christ even though he be no true Christian, and can regenerate by baptism and absolve from sins, even though himself the disgrace of his order.

In the next place, Mr. Gladstone takes care, of course, always to assume the very points which have been in such constant litigation, and to speak with the most edifying confidence

and presumption of the certainty of propositions which have scarcely a particle of probability to sustain them. As to any direct historical evidence on behalf of this preposterous doctrine, evidence which alone could satisfy any reasonable inquirer, and without which all his à priori plausibilities go for nothing, the very plan of his work enables him to decline it, or at best to treat it with a truly wise and discreet superficiality. "I do not 'profess to treat of these things fully;' this is the sort of answer which is ever ready when any real perplexity presents itself, and our author is thus sure to secure the advantage of keeping out of sight all the weaker parts of his argument. Now it is full, clear, scriptural warrant for the arrogant and outrageous assumptions involved in the doctrine of the apostolical succession for which we ask, and without which it is impossible we could ever be satisfied. So far from our expecting compliance with this reasonable demand, the more we examine the subject the more we are persuaded that the whole theory rests not upon one, but upon a number of gratuitous assumptions, each utterly destitute of intrinsic probability and of historic evidence. Where is the proof that it was ever intended that there should be successors to the office of the apostles, exercising the same supreme authority, without the inspiration and miraculous powers which alone could qualify men for its exercise? Where is the proof that if any were designed to take that office, it is bishops in the modern sense of that word, seeing that bishops and presbyters are used interchangeably throughout Scripture to designate the same office, and that a very different and inferior one? Where is the proof that ordination at the hands of such men is anything more than a simple designation to an office, an impressive rite of recognition, and nothing more? Where is the proof that it transmits that mysterious and awful 'gift' expressed in the ordination service? Where is the proof that it has been transmitted entire and intact, in periods of universal heresy and ignorance, through the hands of heretical, infidel, grossly ignorant, debauched, and profligate prelates? Do not the best of the early fathers acknowledge that the 'succession' to which alone they attach any value, is one which involves uncorruptedness of faith and purity of life, as well as lineal descent, and that if the former be wanting, the latter must go for nothing, and the orders thus conveyed become invalidated? Where is the proof, that even supposing scarcely any moral causes can invalidate the succession (for it would not be convenient to its advocates to admit that many such causes could do so, with the corruptions of the middle ages full in their view), where is the proof that there has been no accidental flaw in the long lineage? Who will undertake to make out a complete catalogue up to any one of the apostles,

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or satisfactorily settle any one of the endless disputes upon that subject? and, lastly, what is conveyed after all, what transmitted, when it is acknowledged that this mysterious 'gift conveyed in ordination from hand to hand, involves no miraculous powers, no accession of intellect, no increase of purity, but leaves the bishop or the priest who was wicked or stupid before ordination, as wicked and stupid after it? Yes, there is one thing gained; a notion is encouraged that the external marks of being a minister of Christ are the primary things, to which the moral qualifications for the office are subordinate; for if the bishop be properly consecrated, and the priest be episcopally ordained, -in other words, if he be in the line of the succession, he bears the character of a true minister of Christ, and can truly perform the functions of the office; and no destitution of intellectual or moral aptitudes can divest him of the one, or unfit himfor the other.

We repeat, then, that the whole doctrine of the apostolical succession rests not upon one, but upon a number of gratuitous assumptions, utterly destitute either of historical evidence or of intrinsic probability; and yet Mr. Gladstone, good easy man! believes it all, nay thinks it so very clear, that he affirms that both to the minister and to his charge, it must be a consoling and sustaining evidence of authority co-ordinate in value and importance with that which arises from the possession of all the requisites 'of Christian character and virtue,' from unimpeachable rectitude and transparent consistency, as well as from the self-recommended sublimity and efficacy of the truths thus inculcated and enforced by all the persuasive influence of an upright and a holy example. We can hardly help laughing while we make the statement. Mr. Gladstone seems to think, for example, that the doctrine of the apostolical succession is so very clear, that if such men as Howe, or Baxter, or Robert Hall, had happened to possess that unspeakable privilege of episcopal ordination, it would have really added to the weight of the truths they uttered, and the efficacy of the consolations they offered as they sat by the bedside of the sick and the dying: that they would have spoken with greater weight, could the object of their solicitude but have known that they had received their commission through a long line of ignorant, heretical, or impure ecclesiastics. We fear that if the legitimate claims of these great men (we mean legitimate according to the gospel, which gives as the sole criterion of who are true ministers and who are not, By their fruits shall ye know them,' not according to Mr. Gladstone's criterion of historical derivation) could not enforce the truths they uttered, their case would be beyond the help of the doctrine of 'aposto'lical succession.'

But we must remind Mr. Gladstone that his statement involves something more, from the assertion of which, if he be a

consistent man, he will not flinch. If the doctrine of the apostolical succession be supposed to be true, it will not only add weight to him who has all the moral requisites of a Christian minister, but give weight to him who has not; in other words, it leads us to the pleasant conclusion that he who is no true Christian, may nevertheless be a true minister of Christ; a doctrine which the successionists do not scruple generally to avow. If historical derivation of the office through the legitimate channels be made the criterion, it cannot be otherwise; he who has been episcopally ordained has authority to teach and to preach, whatever else he may be; he who has not, has no authority to do the one or the other. It must, no doubt, be an unspeakable consolation to the dying man to know that his ghostly adviser, who sits by his bedside, though profligate, or frivolous, or infidel at heart, and giving the lie in his whole life and conduct to all the solemn truths he is uttering, has yet received his commission through all the impurities of the middle ages! Query; what ought to be the strength of historical testimony to a doctrine which will make the teaching of such a man authoritative and efficacious? in other words, what amount of historical testimony would suffice to convince us of a truth which our senses contradict, as, for example, that arsenic is wholesome, and that darkness is light? The obvious answer is, None. If the doctrine of the apostolical succession, therefore, were as clear as it is dubious, it could not reconcile us to any of those enormities in which it involves us: but to suppose it capable, endlessly disputed as it has been even amongst the learned, of affording consolation to the unlearned, except by misleading them into a grossly superstitious and dangerous view of official sanctity, is the very height of absurdity. Our Lord's rule is plain and simple, like every other rule he gave us, "By their fruits ye shall know them;' the apostolical succession, on the other hand, seems to say, by their fruits ye shall not know them; but by this-have they been episcopally ordained or not? Mr. Gladstone's statement is so very amusing that we shall here cite it.

'Now let us suppose such a mind tempted, for example, with rationalizing doubts, questioning whether there really be anything of spiritual grace in the gospel, and seeking advice and counsel from a minister of God, it may be upon the bed of agony or in the very grasp of death. Grant that the consulted party may have the requisites of Christian character and virtue, as well as competent abilities; grant that he may appear to speak so as we, in our human frailty, should judge suitable to the dispensations of our heavenly Father-still, when the moral being is rocked from its foundations, and a part of the incumbent trial is to satisfy the disquieted and turbulent questioner within that the matter spoken is such as befits the high origin it