Validity of Lay-Baptism.

5

nally, that any of the laity might baptize, in case of necessity; and stating in the Rubric for the future, that a lawful minister should be called to administer that sacrament, but without pronouncing any opinion against the validity of laybaptism. On the contrary, the Church of England has always held the doctrine of the ancient fathers and Councils on that point, that a baptism, performed with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is valid, although, with regard to the administration, it may be irregular. Indeed, it is but a few years since this whole question was brought up in England, in the celebrated case of Mastin vs. Escott. A clergyman of the Established Church refused to bury a child who had been baptized by a Methodist minister, on the ground alleged by Milner, that, according to the doctrine of the Prayer-Book, it was not baptized at all. But the Ecclesiastical Court condemned the clergyman to be suspended, and vindicated the true teaching of the Church, in precise accordance with the old and settled law, which your own Church holds as we do.

Passing by the quotations of Dr. Milner from Luther, Wesley, &c., on the question of Episcopacy, with which. we have nothing to do, I come now to your author's pretended doubts as to the consecration of Archbishop Parker in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The opinion of Cranmer to which he refers is quite irrelevant to the point at issue, because it is certain that it had no place in the system of the Church, nor in any of her standard writings. It was expressed in a private answer to a private question, and involved, at most, an abstract notion as to what might be done in case of necessity, and not what ought to be done in the regular course of ecclesiastical order. But the facts which your advocate alleges are important, and amount to an im

peachment of Archbishop Parker's consecration, on the ground that it was an irreverent act, performed at a tavern in Cheapside, called The Nagg's Head, by men who were not Bishops themselves, and by a defective form of consecration! This mean and ridiculous story was first hatched, with a multitude of other lies, by the unprincipled Sanders, and repeated, on his authority, by more respectable men, who made a merit of using any means, however foul, to discredit that Church which was the most formidable enemy of Popery.

Dr. Milner, however, does not venture to endorse the miserable falsehood altogether. He drops the story of the tavern, and contents himself with doubting the Episcopal character of Barlow, one of the four Bishops who officiated, and the sufficiency of the form laid down in the Ordinal of Edward VI. In answer to all such cavils, the following statement will be a sufficient refutation :

First, then, it is absurd to imagine that Queen Elizabeth, a sovereign who particularly observed magnificence and state in all public transactions, would tolerate such a wanton contempt of religious order in the consecration of the highest officer in her kingdom, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Primate of all England. And no less absurd is it to imagine, that the men whom she thought worthy to act on such a solemn occasion could so far descend below the level of common decency, and that, too, at a time when the observant eyes of Rome, and I may add of all Europe, were fixed upon every step which they should take in the work of Reformation. The very extravagance of the story refutes itself. It is a gross and vulgar lie, framed by a gross and vulgar mind, and intended to work upon the vulgar and ignorant mass of the population.

Secondly, two of the consecrating Bishops, Barlow and

Nagg's-Head Fable.

7

Coverdale, were Bishops in the reign of Henry VIII., and were consecrated by the form of the Church of Rome, so that Dr. Milner can find no fault with their authority. This fact is expressly stated by Bishop Burnet in his confutation of Sanders. (Vol. 4, App., p. 471.)

Thirdly, the Ordinal of Edward VI. was sufficient, because the essence of ordination consists in the laying on of hands for the office, and the other rites appended to it by the Church are variable, and in effect have been often changed, the Apostles having left no precept nor example binding their successors beyond the requisites which I have mentioned. The other two Bishops, therefore, had been consecrated with perfect validity. And with respect to Parker himself, it is plain that he was presented, in the words of the record itself, to be consecrated Archbishop, and there is no dispute that he received the imposition of hands. But besides all this, the questions and answers of the Ordinal which determined the office definitively, and the prayers and suffrages, the exhortations, the administration of the holy Eucharist-all are set down, showing the utter emptiness and folly of the objection.

Fourthly, we have the original record of the transaction, in Latin, drawn up with the utmost precision, showing that he was consecrated on the Lord's Day, Dec. 17, 1559, in his chapel at the Archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth, which was richly adorned for the occasion, and setting forth the whole imposing ceremonial, from first to last, with all the care of a practised notary.*

Fifthly, your own Roman historian, who was the continuator of Fleury, though he notices in the margin the book of Le Quien, written against the English ordinations, never

* Bp. Burnet, Collection of Records, App. to History of Reformation, vol. 4, p. 432.

theless accepts the record as worthy of all confidence, and repeats all its details precisely, without the slightest attempt at depreciation.

Sixthly, Father Courayer, a learned and candid priest of your own Church, who resided some time in England, took the pains to investigate the matter, and published a volume which vindicated the truth against the absurd and malignant cavils of some amongst his brethren.

And seventhly, your Roman Catholic historian, Lingard, not only stated the matter rightly in his elaborate work, but afterwards published a separate account of the evidence, to defend his own diligent research, and disabuse his fellowRomanists of the old imposition.

It is humiliating to see Dr. Milner, in the face of such evidence, struggling to make out his objection by saying that "the record of Barlow's consecration has been hunted for in vain during two hundred years;" that "the learned Catholics," fifty years after the consecration of Archbishop Parker, "universally exclaimed that the Register of that transaction was a forgery, unheard of till that date; and that, admitting it to be true, it was of no avail, as the pretended consecrator Barlow, though he had sat in several Sees, had not himself been consecrated for any of them." But the audacity of such falsehoods can impose on no one who is not already predetermined to yield his reason to the calumnies of any Romanist, without the slightest regard to evidence or probability. Who ever heard before of people that had been hunting for a record during two hundred years? And how should they expect to find the record of Barlow's consecration in the time of Henry VIII., after the reign of the bigoted Queen Mary had put it in the power of the Roman Bishops to destroy every trace of those private records which, in their eyes, were only the monuments of heresy?

Idolatry does not void Mission.

9

And when, since the world began, did it happen that a man should be able to occupy several Episcopal Sees, without ever being consecrated for any of them? Or by what rule of proof shall the regularly enrolled record of Parker's consecration be called a forgery, without the slightest attempt to show who could have committed such a crime, why it should have been committed, or how the imposture could have availed to give him his public and acknowledged rank in the face of the whole nation? Truly, it is hard to say whether an assault upon the facts of history like this, is most to be admired for its amazing contempt of common sense, or its audacious effrontery. The only apology which I can imagine for the author is suggested by the fact that he belonged to a class of men who are accustomed to accept, in its broadest signification, the maxim, "I BELIEVE,

The next argument of Dr. Milner is directed against our ministry, on the ground that, even if they possess a valid ordination, yet they cannot have the apostolical succession of mission or authority: first, because our Homily asserts that "for eight hundred years, the laity and clergy, all sects and degrees, were drowned in abominable idolatry ;" and if such was the condition of the Church, she could not retain her divine mission and jurisdiction during all this time, so as to commission her ministry to preach. And secondly, because the Church could not possibly give jurisdiction and authority to the English Reformers to preach against her

self.

This argument is ingenious, but totally unsound, since it confounds the real authority of your Church, in those things which were good and true, with her pretended authority to perpetuate corruption and idolatry. The answer, therefore, is very easy, when the distinction which I have already