then must all the Successors of the Apostles have the same power the Rule is known à quatenus ad omne It is plain by this that Apostolical Succession in the sence of those times was not any such fine Aerial Thread as this Man speaks of but Conformity to the Apostles model in Government and Worship and those that best observe that are in the truest sence the Apostles Successors whether the Line has been broke by intervening Hereticks and Schismaticks or no. We all grant that for Persons wilfully to withdraw themselves from such particular Churches as are framed according to Scripture Rules and impose no new or needless terms is to act Schismatically because such wilful Separation when no cause is given cannot be without breach of Charity with our Fellow Christians which is the Scripture Notion of Schism and this Mr. Henry himself grants and calls it Separation for Separation's sake which T.W. might have taken notice of had he designed fair dealing But this is not at all proved to be our case We earnestly desire Episcopacy may be reduced to its proper Sphere that every particular Church may have its Bishop and Presbyters and so power within it self to admonish suspend and reject scandalous Persons we desire the Rules of the Gospel may be carefully lookt into and a Model of Government and Worship taken from thence such as may be likely to answer the great Ends of Church Societies that nothing may be imposed but what is either expresly commanded or has a natural and proper tendency to promote that which is so then would the Worship of God appear like it self rational grave and majestical becoming reasonable Creatures to offer and a Being of perfect Simplicity and Spirituality to receive nor would we as we are accused under pretence of Spirituality reject the natural decorum of an Action in Divine Worship but only lay aside those Formalities that are over and above natural decency which in civil converse are counted foppish and daily grow out of repute betwixt Man and Man and are no where so improper as in the Service of God It is certainly a very odd Custom these Men have taken up against us if they find in any of the Fathers the word Bishop they presently transfer it a Diocesan Prelate if they read of Breaking off from the Communion of the Bishop it must be immediately applyed to the practice of Dissenters in England When alas till the Extent of Power way of coming into Office and Charge terms of Admission c. be proved to be tantamount to what they now are bare words will conclude nothing at all And yet without so much as offering to prove any thing of this T.W. will needs perswade Mr. H. to confess himself a Schismatick and so out of the Catholick Church and possibility of Salvation Though we need not concern our selves to soften or extenuate the fault of Schism no such thing being proved against us yet it may not be amiss to take notice how this eager Man over-shoots himself in these matters he first makes all those Churches Schismatical that do not agree with the Primitive Catholick Church in Faith Worship and Government without adjusting the measures of such Agreement as if every little difference made a Schism which would bear hard upon all the Churches at this day in the World And when he has done this he cuts off all these Schismatical Societies from being parts of the Catholick Church or under a possibility of Salvation It must needs follow from hence that Popish Churches to say nothing of others must be Schismatical for they vary notoriously from the Primitive in Faith Government and Worship as I suppose this Man will grant all those Churches therefore since this Variation were no parts of the Catholick Church that is no Churches at all and by consequence according to him their Bishops must be but Lay-Impostors their Ordinations null and void the Line of Communication broken the Apostolical Power lost and all England in a state of Damnation and all this is the Effect of over-great earnestness to prove the Dissenters Schismaticks We have with a great deal of Patience examined T. W's Notions of the Church of Communion and Unity and whether there be any thing observable in them besides Ignorance Confusion and Contradiction is left to the Judgment of the Reader That which remains is to view the Remarks he has made upon Mr. H's Book The Instance of Eldad and Medad was never designed to run of all four but thus far 't is to the purpose as it proves that God has not limited his People in Religious Actions so nicely to the publick places as some would pretend and that even good Men are apt too severely to censure such actions when managed out of the usual Method before they fully understand the reason of the thing and that meek and humble Men like Moses who are more concerned for the Substance than Circumstances of Religion would not deny the Church the advantage of those Gifts which God has bestowed upon Men even though the exercise of them might seem to derogate from their own Grandeur those general Inferences naturally follow from the place and the application of them is not improper as this Man fancies whatever the Office of this Man was to be yet doubtless this Act of prophecying was of a Sacred rather than a Civil nature and though under that Oeconomy the Priests were principally engaged in the Ceremonial part of Worship yet in the Moral part the Prophets often bore a share which was discovering the mind of God to the People and pressing them to Obedience and it is to this rather than the Priestly Office that a Gospel Minister succeeds If these Men demand we should give as signal proof of our Authority to the Bishops as Eldad and Medad could to Moses I hope we may expect that the Bishops should give as signal proof of their Authority as Moses could do but if extraordinary Commission need not be pretended in the one case we suppose there 's as little need of it in the other and we are ready to give satisfaction to all the World of the ordinary Warrant which consists in suitable Qualifications enquired into and approved by such as the Scripture calls Bishops Upon Mr. H's bare mentioning of the Worshippers of the Diana of their own opinion T. W. charges him with saucy Language but Mr. H. needs not come to this Man to learn how to speak the reflection Mr. H. made was general that there are such cannot be denied and let it fall where 't is due but why must this of Necessity be spoke of the Bishops such an invidious innuendo in the last Reign might have cost a Man dear of which Mr. Baxter is a memorable Instance But T.W. will answer for the Bishops and they are certainly very happy in such an Advocate that if the Punctilio's of Opinion do not cause a separate Communion they will not censure that for
find that it was designed to out-live their Persons and therefore in this we know of no Successors that they have their call to this Apostolical power was extraordinary their Authority was Universal their Commission extended to the whole World and was the same in all Churches Now to say that the Bishops which are stated Pastors in an Organical Church are the Apostles Successors in this Apostolical power is destructive to their own Notion of Church Government and would give the Bishop of Rome as great power in England as the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury when there is one Indeed as the Apostolical power did contain eminenter the Pastoral power so far the Bishops or Pastors of Churches do succeed them but this cannot be properly called an Apostolical Succession I shall not dispute with him the Episcopal Jurisdiction of Timothy and Titus it signifies nothing till the Nature and Extent of that Office be first determined out of Scripture Dr. Hammond tells us all the Elders we read of in Scripture were Bishops and that every particular Church had at least one of these and no doubt but Ephesus and Creet had such Bishops as well as other Churches but whether Timothy and Titus were such is not certain or material though their frequent removes from place to place at the command of the Apostles makes it very probable that their Office was itinerant and unfixed But 't is pretty to hear him say these two were ordained the Bishops of Ephesus and Creet by the Apostles Was there any Apostle then besides Paul concerned in it But here lyes the Trick they must needs be two Bishops and the Apostolical Succession must begin in them and therefore it was necessary to mention their Ordination by Apostles in the plural because it does not agree with the nature of a proper Succession that two Bishops should succeed one Apostle in his Apostolical power for then Timothy would have been as much Bishop of Creet as of Ephesus and Titus as much Bishop of Ephesus as Timothy for the Apostolical power vested by Succession in them extended as much to the one as the other and as much to all the World as to either And how pray could Timothy and Titus succeed the Apostles in the Sees of Ephesus and Creet whilst the Apostles were yet living Were they translated to a higher Seat or suspended or degraded for not owning the Authority of the Civil Magistrate To be the Apostles Successors in Apostolical power the Apostles yet alive and in plenitude of power is a very great Mystery and something akin to the honest Vicar of Newport's quondam Prayer that King Charles the Second might out-live all his Successors Whereas he says no Presbyters had power to ordain I desire him to try how he will reconcile this with Dr. Hammond that says these Presbyters were all Bishops or indeed with Scripture it self that says even Timothy received the gift by the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery 1 Tim. 4.14 But as to this delicate Notion of Apostolical Succession he is pleased further to inform us that for the propagation thereof Linus by Apostolical Consecration Succeeded the Apostles in the See of Rome here 's a double blunder again Linus Succeeded whilst the Apostles were alive for how else could he have Apostolical Consecration and Linus a single person Succeeds the Apostles in the plural As before the Apostolical power of one Apostle was divided betwixt two Bishops Timothy and Titus so here the power of two or more Apostles is exhausted by one Bishop who is their Lineal Successor and they still living in full enjoyment of their power ask him not how can these things be they must be so for Dissenters must be Schismaticks and this is the way to prove them so and therefore must be rational and solid whatever absurdities our Sceptical Heads discover in it I need not here take notice how positively he asserts the immediate Succession of Linus when all the Learned Men in the World acknowledge great Difficulties and uncertainty whether Linus or Cletus were first Bishop or whether both at once one as Bishop of the Circumcision the other of the Gentiles As Grotius thinks but Ignorance is the rarest thing in the World to make a man bold and venture at any thing Nothing but this Faculty of Ignorance would have emboldened him to say as p. 3. That this Line of Apostolick Succession of Bishops hath continued in all Ages to this present time an Assertion without the least shadow of proof yea contrary to the Acknowledgments of all Church-Historians The very Papists themselves whose Interest it is to make men believe it was so confess there are insuperable difficulties about the Succession of Popes in the Roman See and if the Succession be so perplexed there it must be much more so in other Churches whose obscurity in former Ages makes it less feasible to trace this Line of Succession And though Irenaeus might be able to name all the Successors of the Apostolick Churches in his day yet that will hardly prove that there has been no interruption since Irenaeus is said to have been the Scholar of Polycarp who was the Disciple of Sr. John and he is said to have died in the year of Christ 182. It is therefore very probable he might remember the names of all that had been Bishops of Rome Jerusalem and Alexandria since he had not much above the space of an hundred years to burthen his memory with a less man than he can tell who have been Bishops of Chester for a hundred years but does it follow that an uninterrupted Succession for above 1600 years is equally certain I might here enquire how it came to pass that this Apostolical Succession was propagated in so few Churches as the Patriarchal were methinks there should have been as many as the Apostles were For this man to be so very positive in these difficult and perplexed points shews a very great Effrontery and what may we not expect from the man that will talk at this rate And to say whoever exercises any Ministerial Office out of this Line of Apostolick Succession can be no other than a Lay-Impostor is to expose Christianity it self and to leave the Consciences of all men in the World at an utter uncertainty whether they have a true Ministry and Ordinances or no. Wretched men that to support the beloved Cause of Persecution will advance a notion destructive to our common Christianity and the Peace and Comfort of the Christian World and rather than the Dissenters in England should not be Schismaticks will shake the foundation not only of all the Reformed but of all the Christian Churches in the World Certainly T. W. ought to have been well advised before he had given it under his hand That if there be not an uninterrupted Succession betwixt all the Bishops in England and Apostles they are Lay-Impostors and Schismaticks and that he and the rest of his Friends have no
better evidence that the Church of England is a true Church than they have of such a continued Succession that they can as soon demonstrate such an unbroken Line as that their Ministry and Sacraments are true and that they have no better proof that Dissenters are Schismaticks than they have of this nor any better defence of all the Severities they have used against them than this and if it should happen that in almost 1700 years there has been the least breach made upon this Line all that they have said and done against Dissenters becomes due to themselves Would any man in the World that was not hired to betray the Churches Cause have put it to such an Issue I am sure no wise man would venture his Estate upon it And yet this man has chosen to fix his Church and Faith and Salvation upon no better a Foot than this For in how many cases may this Line be broken and all that Apostolick Power conveyed there be spilt and lost if there should happen a vacancy in any of those things he calls Apostolical Churches and Sees for some years and the succeeding As the Northumbrian Bishops by the Abbot of Hy. Incumbent be a person ordained by an Abbot who was no Bishop as is allowed in the Roman Church through which this Authority must be conveyed to us does not this make an Intercision in the Line of Episcopal Ordination be so indispensable it must do so I desire to know of this man or any other that encourage him to write little Books whether this Line of Succession may be continued in a Schismatical Church and the Apostolical Power conveyed thereby if by Schism Men and Societies are cut off from the Universal Church as this Man frequently affirms in his Book then such Schismatical Churches are no Churches nor parts of the Universal Church and so cannot be the Subjects of this Apostolical power and if this power cannot be derived through a Schismatical Church then he must grant either that the Church of England has not this power or that the Papal Churches through which this Line and Power runs are not Schismatical and if they be not his own Church must be so for separating from them for he allows Separation utterly unlawful unless from a Schismatical Church But after all though by this continued Line of Apostolical Episcopal Succession he would Exclude all the Reformed Churches beyond Sea that have not those Governours he will allow to be Scripture Bishops Supposing this same Line he makes such a splutter about were certain or necessary which it is not yet till this Man has proved the English Prelacy to be nearer a-kin to the Scripture Episcopacy than the Pastoral Office which is the Episcopacy we contend for we stand as fair for any advantage this Notion may afford as his Party does for we reverence and maintain Ministerial Ordination and so are in the Line still if such a Line there be which yet we are no way concerned to prove because we look upon Ordination to be no more but a publick Approbation of Ministerial Abilities by competent Judges and we doubt not but the Ministers that have such Qualifications themselves are the most competent Judges thereof in others but if there should happen a case wherein such Persons could not be had As if a company of Christians should be cast upon a remote Island or if all the Pastors in a Countrey should be put to Death or all turn Hereticks we doubt not but it would be lawful for a Man of the best Qualifications being chosen by the rest and approved and set apart by the most competent Judges amongst them to Administer in Holy Ordinances to them and that he would be a true Minister of Jesus Christ sufficiently Authorized to the Work and a Lay-person no longer but if we assent to the Whimsey of a constant Succession as if power were conveyed like Water in a Conduit after a Physical manner by contact passing through the Finger ends of the Prelate into the Noddle of the Person Ordained then can no necessity make the practice aforesaid warrantable and so the Substance must fail and perish for want of the Ceremony which is contrary to Reason and the Notions Men have of the Goodness of God This conceit of an entire Apostolical Line was forg'd upon the same Anvil with that of an uninterrupted Succession of English Monarchs from the Eldest Son of Noah whereby a Patriarchal Right descends inseparable from the Person Sacred and Irresistible which has tortured the Ears of all Men of Sence and Sobriety in these late Times The Leud and Extravagant Caresses that have happen'd between Ambitious Princes and Aspiring Church-men have produc'd such Twins as these that lately threatned the Kingdom with a dismal Fate No less pretences than those of Patriarchal and Apostolical Powers were sufficient for the Usurping an Absolute Empire over the Civil and Religious Rights of Men but as we have seen the One deserted exposed to just contempt and renounced by the very Authors thereof not in words only but in actions famous and publick throughout the World so we doubt not they will to deal with the other it being of the same extract and calculated to serve the very same interest and design His fourth page is taken up with proving that to love as Christians in Scripture Sence is to love as Members of Christ and obliges us to preserve the Body from Rents and Schisms which we never deny but wonder at some Men who notwithstanding all their talk for Peace and Unity have so little real Love for it as to Excommunicate and Damn all those that cannot comply with those Ceremonies which themselves acknowledge have no Moral goodness in them and therefore can be but idle incumbrances upon the Worship of God which as one says of Friendship and Heraldry is noblest when plainest bravest when alone Certainly such unreasonable Stiffness cannot have much in it of that love which is the Characteristick of Christs Disciples but these Gentlemen think to excuse their aversation to us by saying we are not Christians we are out of the Catholick Church this is to make one gross act of Uncharitableness to excuse for another but we thank God they are not to be our final Judges For our further Conviction we are told The Communion of Saints is one External visible Communion of the Christian Church which is so far from explaining the thing that it makes it much darker We hold Communion in Essentials with every Church of Christ upon Earth and in Integrals with all sound Churches and we know few Churches that hold Communion in all accidentals nor was such a Communion ever pretended to be necessary This word Communion not rightly understood nor the sence of it carefully distinguisht has strangely misled some Men and is at the bottom of all those clamours that have fill'd the Ears of our Rulers and the whole Nation against us and this Man seems as little