OF THE HOLY ORDERS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAINTAINED AND VINDICATED, BOTH THEOLOGICALLY AND BY THE REV. FREDERICK GEORGE LEE, D.C.L., F.S.A., VICAR OF ALL SAINTS', LAMBETH, IN THE DIOCESE OF WINCHESTER TO HIS GRACE THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND MOST REVEREND ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL TAIT, D.D., D.C.L, LL.D., LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND, AND METROPOLITAN, ETC. ETC. ETC. This Treatise IS MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. PREFACE. IT is melancholy to observe how those whose unenviable interest it is to cast doubt on the Validity of our Ordinations do but re-produce arguments which have been again and again refuted at previous periods of our ecclesiastical history. No long time after the changes of the sixteenth century it seems to have been admitted by independent English writers, as it certainly was by competent critics abroad, that Mason's masterly vindication of our position was perfectly conclusive. For, to the more far-sighted Roman Catholics, it appeared highly impolitic, as well as dangerous, to make use of weapons which might on other occasions with deadly effect be turned against those who used them.* On this point, bearing on the subject of this book, a distinguished London clergyman, most ably criticising Mr. Canon Williams' Letters, wrote in the Ecclesiastic as follows:-"We cannot help observing that there are two kinds of negative testimony which are so great as almost to amount to positive evidence for the fact of Barlow's consecration. One of these we have already alluded |