THE

PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW.

OCTOBER 1842.

No. LVIII.

ART. I.-The Exclusive Claims of Puseyite Episcopalians to the Christian Ministry Indefensible; with an Inquiry into the Divine Right of Episcopacy and the Apostolical Succession: in a series of Letters to the Rev. Dr Pusey. By JOHN BROWN, D.D., Minister of Langton, Berwickshire. 12mo, pp. 560. Bell and Bradfute, Edinburgh, 1842.

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AN exclusive claim to the Christian ministry, founded upon the divine right of episcopacy and the apostolical succession, was put forward by the Oxford Tract writers, even in their first tract. Thus they express themselves: We, that is, the ministers of the Church of England,- We have been born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. The Lord Jesus Christ gave his Spirit to his apostles; they in turn laid their hands on those who should succeed them; and these again on others; and so the sacred gift has been handed down to our present bishops, who have appointed us (the priests and deacons) as their assistants, and in some sense their representatives.** P. 2.

Had these gentlemen contented themselves with glorying in

This is not the place to animadvert upon the gross travesty which these writers have here given of the sublime passage, (John i. 13), in which our blessed Saviour describes the privilege of all the children of God-not confined to ministers, but extended to all believers, and ascribed, in the very passage from which they quote, (ver. 12), not to ordination, as its producing instrument, but to faith. It certainly afforded sufficient ground of appprehension as to the orthodoxy of these writers, to find them commence their labours so very inauspiciously; and they have amply realized our fears.

VOL. XV. NO. III.

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their fancied privileges, and magnifying their office to the very utmost pitch of hierarchical pomposity, however much we might pity their weakness, we do not know that we should feel imperatively called upon to show that they had no grounds for such vain confidence in boasting. But not satisfied with exalting themselves, like most other vain-glorious folks, nothing will content them but the degradation of others. In the tract from which we have quoted, the very first of the series, they say,—a little after the passage we have given above: We (the ministers) have confessed before God, (at their ordination they mean), our belief, that through the bishops who ordained us, we received the Holy Ghost-the power to bind and to loose-to administer the sacraments and to preach.' And a little after they say, And for the same reason we must necessarily consider none to be really ordained who have not thus been ordained.' P. 3. That is, no man is really a minister of Christ Jesus, or entitled to act as such, who has not been ordained, as they were, by the laying on of the hands of a prelate.

We have often thought, that the whole system commonly called Puseyism* might be very logically arranged under three categories: viz. the Priest, the Church, the Sacraments; and these might easily be reduced under one head, viz. the PRIEST. It is the priests that constitute the church; it is only the priests that can administer the sacraments; it is the priests, in short, that constitute the foundation, the corner-stone, the main pillar, the copestone, the all-in-all of the whole edifice.

In perfect harmony with this view, the predominant idea throughout the tracts, is the honour, prerogatives, and power of the priesthood. When the people are at all alluded to, it is, that as their 'subjects,' they may exalt the honour of the priests. When the sacraments are lauded, it is only to magnify the power of the priests. When the church is exalted, it is only, that as its constituent members, it may glorify the priests. Nay, and we say it with all reverence, when the Saviour himself is named, it is only to enhance the glory of his vicegerents, representatives, and plenipotentiaries, the priests.

As an example (he that would see the full evidence, must read the tracts themselves; but as an example) of what we say, take the following passage from Tract IV. :- Why should we, asks this

Although Dr Pusey has given a name to the heresy, he was by no means the founder of the sect. When they formed their conspiracy,' as they have so appropriately called it themselves, Dr Pusey was a rationalist. The reason why his name became the patronymic of the sect was, that his tract on baptism, the 67th of the series, was the first that attracted general notice, by the wild and antichristian dogmas it advocated. Mr Keble, we believe, is acknowledged by themselves to be the patriarch of the sect; but Mr Newman is assuredly its leader.

tractarian, remonstrating with some of his brethren, who, although anxious enough to exalt their order, do not in his estimation take the proper method for securing success,- Why should we (the priests) not seriously endeavour to impress our people (our people, not Christ's) with this plain truth, that by separating themselves from our communion, (the priests again), they separate not only from a decent, orderly, useful society, but from the only church, (the priests once more!) THE ONLY CHURCH IN THIS REALM WHICH HAS A RIGHT TO BE QUITE SURE THAT SHE HAS THE LORD'S BODY TO GIVE TO HIS PEOPLE. p. 5. And to supply by typography what may be lacking in logic, they give us this very important information, as, following so good an example, we have done above, in capitals. And who will dare to doubt after that?

Take another instance,-for we have abundance in reserve. One of the tract writers, terrified, it would appear, at some ominous prognostications that the representatives of the apostles' might be spoiled of their sacred possessions,' (and not the less sacred, that they consist of broad acres, fat tithes, and golden guineas') ' and degraded from their civil dignities,' (as justices of the peace and quorum and legislators in the House of Peers, to wit),-that they might be compelled, very much, of course, against their will, no longer to live in larger dwellings,' to appear no more in finer clothing,' and along with their scarlet and fine linen,' to part also with their delicate fare,' on which they fared sumptuously every day—a grievous hardship this, certainly, to such parties; to avert these sad calamities, (for with all their professed ascetism they betray a strong hankering after the flesh-pots of Egypt), or even after they are spoiled of them, to retain their honours, dearer than all, and also to lay a foundation on which to recover all they may lose, our humble-minded successor of the fishermen of Galilee (whose example, of course, is binding in all things), thus apostrophises the good people of England: Then,' says he, that is, when reduced to such sad plight, then you will honour (!) us with a purer honour (!!) than you do now, namely, as those who are entrusted with the keys of heaven and hell, as the heralds of mercy, as the denouncers of woe to wicked men, as entrusted with the awful and mysterious gift of making the bread and wine Christ's body and blood, as far greater than the most powerful and wealthiest of men in our unseen strength and our heavenly riches!!!'-(Tract x. p. 4.) Verily, gentlemen, if you can but make good your boast, you may well dispense with larger dwellings, fine clothing, and sumptuous fare,' and trust to your awful and mysterious gift,' your unseen strength and your heavenly (so-called) riches,' to secure you all the honour which ought to satisfy any ordinarily constituted even hierarchical pride.

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Yea and morcover, gentlemen, for your comfort, we must tell you, although of course you know it well, and had an eye to it too when making the above appeal-if you can but get the good people of England to credit your pretensions, you shall not long want large dwellings, fine clothing, and sumptuous fare;' for it was by precisely the same pretensions that your predecessors, the popish priesthood, contrived to secure to themselves more than regal honours, more than princely wealth. And if you but ply your vocation well, of which we need be under no apprehension, you shall soon find yourselves, even in a monk's cowl, and with a mendicant's wallet, the treasurers, the potentates, the arbiters of the world.*

The vast assumptions of this sect are thus avowedly and altogether based upon their exclusive claims to the apostolical succession. In purposing to discuss that subject, we have hesitated for some time before we could decide whether it were better to treat it on its merits, and by the aid of the word of God, right reason, and even the authority of the fathers, to expose both the vanity of the thing itself, and the unfounded pretensions to its possession, put forth by our Scottish, English, and Romish prelatists, or whether it were not better, since the former has often been done before, to treat the subject historically, and show that it wants the three great properties of ecclesiastical truth exhibited in the celebrated maxim of Vincentius Lirinensis, (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus), that is, to show that the doctrine of the apostolical succession is novel' in its promulgation, 'local' in its profession, and sectarian' in its maintenance: and we have at length decided on adopting the latter course.

The fathers, as must be well known to those who have read no more of their writings than is usually to be found in the passages cited in the works of our modern prelatists, often speak of a succession, and an apostolical succession too, in connection with the Christian ministry. But then, as we shall show in the sequel, they do not attach the same ideas to those terms which are now attempted to be forced upon them at Oxford. We beg to claim the particular attention of our readers to this point; for if we can but make it good, then we have gone far indeed to decide the whole controversy.

With all their propensity to magnify their office and exalt their order, which they all do in those turgid hyperboles which constitute a predominant feature in their style, the fathers, as a body, did not profess those views of the necessity of the priesthood to the very being of a church, and the validity of sacraments, which

• Pride a desire of domination over the laity, and of superiority over non-episcopal ministers-lies at the base of all the pretensions of this sect. This we had intended to prove at some length. But it is unnecessary, being so self-evident.