we shall have occasion to recur to the problem,1 the Preliminary less need be said here. Suppose, however, an im

answer.

partial investigation to convince us that a ministerial succession was really part of Christ's intention and belongs only to the episcopal Churches in a legitimate sense, it will surely be our duty to maintain it and be faithful to it. Nor, if we are at all familiar with the disappointing side of church history, shall we be greatly surprised that its corruptions have bred revolt. These corruptions are, no doubt, so many apologies for the revolters. It is conceivable that they may reach the point of excusing revolt in particular cases and throwing the blame of it on the representatives of authority. If that were so, or so far as it was so, we shall abstain from condemning individuals or races, but we shall not abandon principles. Men are dealt with according to their opportunities; and as God's love is not limited by His covenant, so He can work through ministrations which are not 'valid 'that is, ministrations which have not the security of the covenant. But though God can do this, we have no right to claim it of Him. If He is not bound to His sacraments, we men, up to the limits of our knowledge, certainly are. However excusable many may be in ignorance of divine institutions, we shall not be excusable if we are faithless to them for fear of hurting other men's feelings or disturbing existing arrangements. Such conduct would be most false charity, most real treachery. Bishop Butler reminds us

1 See below chap. vII. p. 304.

3

2 When we speak of 'essentials' in religion, it is of course important to recall that God is a father and equitable, and that His action is not tied to His covenanted channels. There is a useful distinction drawn by Roman Catholic theologians between things necessary to salvation necessitate medii, i.e. absolutely and in all cases, and things necessary necessitate praecepti, i.e. obligatory upon all who are within the hearing of a divine ordinance. Only the right disposition of will is (we may say) essential in the first sense. This may exist under all conditions of ignorance. All else is necessary in proportion as we come under the responsibilities of nearness to God's revelation of Himself (cf. Newman's Parochial Sermons vol. vi. pp. 182187- Faith the Title for Justification').

* Analogy part II. ch. i.

'how great presumption it is to make light of positive institutions of divine appointment'; and he emphasizes to us 'the moral obligation, in the strictest and most proper sense,' which attaches to any command 'merely positive, admitted to be from God.' And if anything could increase this obligation, it would be the sense that we are living through an age of change. It is when there is a general 'shaking' of existing establishments-of all that has been merely recognised and customary - that religiously-minded men are likely to be driven back upon those institutions which can give the completest guarantee of security and permanence.

not have

maintained

(5) It has been contended by Lord Macaulay- (5) It can and the contention was not a new one-that, how- been ever much the Church may have insisted on apostolic unbroken.' succession, as a matter of fact the chances are overwhelming against its having been preserved. 'Whether a given clergyman be really a successor of the Apostles depends on an immense number of such contingencies as these; whether, under King Ethelwolf, a stupid priest might not, while baptizing several scores of Danish prisoners who had just made their option between the font and the gallows, inadvertently omit to perform the rite on one of these graceless proselytes; whether, in the seventh century, an impostor, who had never received consecration, might not have passed himself off as a bishop on a rude tribe of Scots; whether a lad of twelve did really, by a ceremony huddled over when he was too drunk to know what he was about, convey the episcopal character to a lad of ten.' 1

Essay on Gladstone on Church and State. Chillingworth cannot be quoted in this sense, because in his argument ( Religion of Protestants ch. ii. 67) he is taking into account that 'very dungeon of uncertainty,' the Romanist doctrine of intention.

This objection does not hold ;

responsible

Such an argument has nothing to recommend it except the vigour of Lord Macaulay's style. Indeed, if we take it on its own level, its force is gone when once it is borne in mind that failures of baptism do not enter into the question of the permanent succession, except where the person whose baptism was omitted or irregular subsequently became a bishop; and that invalidating irregularities in episcopal ordinations, when they exist, would not have the effect which the objection supposes, because succession comes of interlacing lines, each bishop having, as a rule, been consecrated by three of his order. The three consecrators were required originally as a guarantee of general provincial recognition. The idea of thereby securing validity (in case one of the bishops was, by some accidental omission of a necessary rite, no real bishop at all) is perhaps too materialistic to have entered into the mind of the early Church. When things were duly done according to Christ's ordinance, they were regarded as certainly having His certificate. But when validity came to be conceived under more materialistic conditions at a later period of theology, it was natural to suppose that each bishop who joined in the act of consecration gaye additional security that it was valid. They were cooperatores and not merely testes.2

and we are But a much better answer to such a suggested for no more difficulty lies in the consideration that, if we have reason to believe that Christ intended to institute a

than obedi. ence.

1 In fact it has been mathematically argued that, even if we make the absurd supposition of one consecrator in twenty at any particular moment in history having been, through some accident, himself not validly consecrated, the chances will be 8000 against all three consecrators in any given case being in a like position, and the chances against a bishop consecrated under such circumstances, who would thus be no bishop, being combined with coadjutors similarly incapacitated to continue the succession, are as 512,000,000,000 are to unity.' Gladstone Church Principles pp. 235, 236.

The point is, however, discussed: see Estcourt Question of Anglican Ordinations pp. 110-114. I do not pursue the question, because I do not lay stress on the argument in the text.

self-perpetuating ministry in His Church, He makes Himself responsible for its possibility, and His power is not limited by such material conditions. Leaving, then, all hidden things to Him to whose sole cognizance they belong, we may securely depend on His goodness and justice, that so long as His sacred appointments are maintained, as far as lies in our power, we shall never suffer through any secret blemish or incapacity of His ministers.' 1

With this much preface, giving (it may be hoped) a clearer idea of what the principle of the ministry and of the apostolic succession may really be said to mean, we turn to the witness of history.

1 Archbp. Potter: quoted by Denton Grace of the Ministry p. 258.

CHAPTER III

THE WITNESS OF CHURCH HISTORY

The ministry THE Conception of the Christian ministry described

in church

history

in spite of variable features

in the last chapter is confessedly no mere ideal. It represents what has been, beyond a doubt, a fact of primary importance in the Christianity of history.

In many respects, indeed, if we were to trace back the genealogy of the ministry in the Church, we should find that it has passed through strange vicissitudes, and from time to time has wonderfully changed its appearance. It may be well to call attention to this at once, so that variations of aspect which are even startling may serve to make more emphatic the principles and facts which have been throughout permanent and unchanging.1

For example, the episcopate of the first period, when, speaking generally, every town church had its independent episcopal organization, and country bishops arose to superintend the scattered flocks of the rural districts, was a very different thing from the episcopate of the mediaeval epoch, when the great dioceses of Teutonic Europe were formed, when bishops became great feudal lords, and the feudal character at times almost superseded the spiritual. Very different again was the organization of the Celtic Church of Ireland (and thence of Scotland), where the presbyter-abbots were the real ecclesiastical rulers and the succession of abbots the important succession, 1 Cf. Dr. Liddon A Father in Christ p. 27 f.