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lical churches of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Cæsarea, Russia, Georgia, as well as the ancient sects of monophysites and Nestorians in Egypt, Syria, Chaldæa, Persia, Armenia, India, Tartary, and China, always rejected these doctrines, as they almost universally do at the present day. The meeting termed the council of Trent did not represent the universal church, being illegitimately summoned, and neither attended nor received by the eastern patriarchs, the metropolitans and bishops of these realms, nor any of the orthodox. Hence it is manifest that the erroneous doctrines taught by Romish pastors have never been those of the catholic church.

These three things being certain; that the bishops and clergy now possessing the churches of these realms have received a valid apostolical ordination; that they and their predecessors from the beginning have been canonically and rightly ordained to and possessed of these churches; and that they teach the doctrines which the apostles delivered to the catholic church; then it follows, that they are the true successors of the apostles, and consequently have divine mission.

But Romanists may object, that mission, or the right of performing ministerial offices, is lost by schism, and therefore that we cannot have mission,

Conference," &c. part ii. ch. 4. p. 366, &c. The profoundly learned Dr. Field, in his book on" the Church," book iii. and Appendix, proves incontestibly that the maintainers of Romish errors were only a faction at the period of the reformation,

and that those errors were never the doctrine of the western church.

j The eastern churches are proved to be true and visible churches by Stillingfleet, in his Vindication of Laud, part i.

because our predecessors and ourselves are involved in schism, and separated from the catholic church.

In reply to this, we have only to deny that we or our predecessors have either been guilty of schism, or separated from the catholic church. How is it that we have committed schism? Was it in continuing to communicate with the Roman patriarch, when, in the ninth century, he separated from the eastern church? This, at least, will hardly be objected to us as a crime by Romanists. Was it in asserting the ancient liberties of our church, and declining the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff, already prohibited by the general councils of Nice and Ephesus? This could not have been schism, because it was strictly according to the canons. And if the Roman patriarch, and his party in the west, excommunicated our predecessors for doing so, that excommunication did not separate us from the catholic church, but its own authors and upholders. There is then no proof that we are in schism, and therefore the mission of our clergy remains unquestionable.

Before I conclude this section, it is necessary to meet another objection, which persons of various tenets will no doubt advance. They will say, "that the bishops and clergy of these churches before the reformation differed in several points from their successors; that we must believe they were heretical in several doctrines; and therefore they could not have been legitimate bishops, nor could they have transmitted to others a mission which they had not themselves."

It is true, that certain Romish errors prevailed amongst many of our predecessors for some time

before the reformation; but that those errors were universally held by them, or that they were viewed as matters of faith, and not of probability, is more than any man can prove certainly, or even probably. Hence it is as impossible to prove, as it is uncharitable and unnatural to maintain, that our predecessors in any age were a heretical body.

Secondly, Admitting that many of the British and Irish bishops were formerly infected with errors in matters of faith, yet this alone does not prove them heretics, for many of the most illustrious fathers and doctors have erred on particular points. Our predecessors are defended from the charge of heresy by the same reasons which Bossuet uses to exculpate the council of Frankfort, and all the bishops of Gaul, Germany, and Britain, for rejecting the worship of imagesk. They were not considered heretical, because they seemed to inquire about those matters with good intentions, and not with stubborn and pertinacious zeal. They erred from want of sufficient information, and accordingly have never been condemned by the church; and hence we have no right to say that those British and Irish bishops who held erroneous doctrines were all heretics.

Thirdly, Even supposing that some of those prelates were pertinaciously erroneous, and actually heretical, yet no one can prove that a bishop, canonically ordained, loses all his mission for good and beneficial acts by heresy ipso facto1; no one can

k Bossuet, Defensio Declarationis Cleri Gallicani, lib. vii.

c. 31.

1 Alphonsus a Castro says, that the church has never decreed (as far as he knows)

that an heretical bishop is deprived of his episcopal office eo ipso. De Just. Hæreticor. Punit. lib. ii. c. 23. Such a bishop may be deposed; but until he is so, he has divine

prove that such an heretical bishop, against whom the church has made no decree of deposition and excommunication, is devoid of mission for the purpose of ordination: and therefore, even supposing the case, that there have been heretics in the line of our ordinations, yet, as those heretics were not publicly known to be such, excommunicated and deposed when they acted, they had the power of conveying mission to their orthodox successors.

SECTION II.

THE ROMAN PATRIARCHS' CONSENT UNNECESSARY TO CANONICAL ORDINATION.

Notwithstanding the satisfactory proofs which establish the divine mission of the orthodox clergy, it is unfortunately true, that Romish authors have deemed themselves bound by necessity to deny it, and to make every possible exertion of ingenuity, learning, and dexterity, to extinguish, or at least obscure it ". Many have denied the validity of our ordinations; but others, who have perceived that this was untenable ground, and even admitted and proved it to be so ", have contented themselves to

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brand us with the charge of heresy, and maintain that our ordinations are uncanonical and schismatical, which, they think, would either destroy or render dubious the mission of our clergy.

I shall not detain the reader in proving the validity of our ordinations, or the orthodoxy of our doctrines. These are points which every one amongst ourselves has considered, and about which Romanists themselves are divided. I have already assumed them in stating the mission of our clergy. But the objections deduced from the charge of uncanonical and schismatical proceedings are perhaps not so familiar to us, and therefore may merit some consideration in this place. They relate chiefly to the period when the usurped jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff was abolished in these realms, and more especially to the transactions which occurred in the beginning of queen Elizabeth's reign°. It is alleged,

and deacons in the protestant church of England to be (at least) valid. And yet I have read all whatever hath been to the contrary objected by the Roman catholic writers, whether against the matter, or form, or want of power in the first consecrators, by reason of their schism or heresy, or of their being deposed formerly from their sees, &c. But I have withal observed nothing of truth alleged by the objectors, which might in the least persuade any man who is acquainted with the known divinity or doctrine of our present schools, (besides what Richardus Armachanus long since writ,) and with the annals of our own Roman church, un

less peradventure he would turn so frantic at the same time as to question even the validity of our own ordination also in the said Roman church.” History of the Irish Remonstrance, p. xlii. printed A. D. 1674. Courayer, canon regular of St. Genevieve, defended the validity of the English ordinations in the most powerful manner in two books. Barnes, the Benedictine, went so far as to write a book (CatholicoRomanus Pacificus) to induce the Roman patriarch to receive the English church into his communion, and to justify us from the charge of schism and heresy.

• These arguments have been used by a multitude of Romish

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