Hoadly denied that the Preface asserted the three orders were of divine appointment, to which Calamy answers: "Mr. Hoadly is disturbed that it should be intimated that an allowance and approbation of the three distinct orders were required, as if they had been of divine appointment. This, says he, you add yourselves, and let any one judge whether without reason; for, if there were three such distinct orders, even from the days of the Apostles, they must be by divine appointment. But, if men will apprehend that we Dissenters are of so peculiar a make as to take pleasure in representing and understanding every thing in the way which to us carries most difficulty along with it, we cannot help it any more than we can that others seek to vindicate their Church with plausible glosses which wont bear being examined. He seems to wonder it should be matter of difficulty that the three orders are spoken of as several offices, which, as far as I can judge, neither was nor is the difficulty, but rather how to prove that there were, from the first, three distinct orders and offices as is asserted." Defence, part ii. page 212.

Again, Calamy says to Hoadly: "Though you tell me that the prayers in the ordination office imply not any thing plainly, but that God hath appointed divers orders of ministers in his Church, yet as long as the Preface tells us that the office was designed for the continuance of those very orders which it declares have been in the Church from the Apostles' time, we cannot mistake the meaning of the divers orders of ministers, which the prayers intimate were appointed; we cannot pretend to foster any other sense than what supposes Bishops, Priests, and Deacons to be directly referred to."Letter to Mr. Hoadly, page 397,

I have put first the testimonies of Dissenters, as being least liable to cavil. From the various authorities of Churchmen, I shall select the following from Bishop Stillingfleet:

"That our Church did believe our Bishops to succeed the Apostles in that part of their office (namely, government, ordination and censures) I shall make appear by these things. First, in the preface before the book of ordination, it is said-It is evi

dent unto all men reading holy Scripture and antient authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been three orders of ministers in Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. What

is the reason they express it thus, from the Apostles' time, rather than in the Apostles' times, but that they believed, while the Apostles lived, thay managed the affairs of government themselves; but as they withdrew, they did in some Churches sooner and in some later, as their own continuance, the condition of the Churches, and the qualification of persons were, commit the care and government of Churches to such persons whom they appointed thereto? of which we have an incontestible evidence in the instances of Timothy and Titus; for the care of government was a distinct thing from the office of an Evangelist, and all their removes do not invalidate this, because, while the Apostles lived, it is probable there were no fixed Bishops, or but few. But as they went off, so they came to be settled in their several Churches; and as this is most agreeable to the sense of our Church, so it is the fairest hypothesis for reconciling the different testimonies of antiquity. For hereby the succession of Bishops is secured from the Apostles' times, for which the testimonies of Irenæus, Tertullian, Saint Cyprian, and others, are so plain; hereby room is left to make good all that Saint Jerome hath said, and what Epiphanius believes concerning the differing settlement of Churches at first. So that we may allow for the community of names between Bishops and Presbyters for a while in the Church, i. e. while the Apostles governed the Church themselves, but afterwards that which was their part of the apostolical office, became the episcopal, which hath continued from that time to this, by a constant succession in the Church." Stillingfleet's Unreasonableness of Separation, Works, vol. ii. pag. 591.

Yet the authority of Stillingfleet is constantly brought forward on the other side; but nothing can be more unfair than to quote the Irenicon, as giving his opinion. That great man, twenty-five years after the Irenicon was written, acknowledges, with remarkable candour, the errors he had committed in that work. In the preface to an ordination sermon, preached in the year 168, he says, "It happened, my lord, that in my

younger days, I thought it necessary to inform myself, as well as I could, on the state of the controversy about Church government, which had been managed with so much heat among us, and was then likely to be revived; and to that end, I applied myself to the reading and considering the authors of greatest esteem on both sides, and by diligent perusal of them, I thought them more happy in overthrowing each other's hypothesis, than in setting up their own. And supposing no better reasons could be produced than I found in them, I from thence concluded that the form of Church government was left at liberty by any law of Christ, and was therefore to be determined as served best to the great ends of peace and order, which were the plain and standing laws of the Christian Church. I do not deny, my lord, that I do now think much more is to be said for the apostolical institution of episcopacy than I at that time apprehended, as will appear in the following sermon. My superiors were so wise as to consider the time when it was written, viz. before the Church was re-established, and with what design it was written, viz. to gain upon the dissenters from our Church; but suppose there were errors and mistakes in it, (as no doubt there were,) they were so wise as to make allowance for the scepticalness and injudiciousness of youth, and for the prejudices of education." Works, vol. i. pages 357, 358.

Page 23.

Upon this subject the following authorities will, I hope, be sufficient:

"We maintain that an entire profession of saving faith, a right use of the word and sacraments, and an union under lawful parties being taken jointly, do distinguish the Church essentially from all other societies in the world. We have been told heretofore of other notes of the Church, which did not please us so well as antiquity, and universality, and splendour, &c., which may be present or absent, with the Church or without the Church. These three do belong unto the Catholic Church and to all true particular Churches, inseparably, incommunicably, and reciprocally, and are proper to the Church quanto modo, to every true

Church, only to a true Church, and always to a true Church. But yet this essentiality must not be pressed too far, for fear lest we draw out blood in the place of milk. I like Stapleton's distinction well, of the nature and essence of a Church from the integrity and perfection thereof. These three essentials do constitute both the one and the other with the essence and perfection of a Church. Being perfect they consummate the integrity of a Church, being imperfect they do yet constitute a being to a Church. It doth not follow that because faith is essential, therefore every point of true faith is essential; or because discipline is essential, therefore every part of right discipline is essential; or because the sacraments are essential, therefore every lawful rite is essential. Many things may be lawful, many things may be laudable, yea many things may be necessary necessitate præcepti, commanded by God, of divine institution, that are not essential nor necessary necessitate medii. The want of them may be a great defect, it may be a great sin, and yet if it proceed from invincible necessity or invincible ignorance, it doth not absolutely exclude from Heaven. The essences of things are unalterable, and therefore the lowest degree of saving faith, of ecclesiastical discipline, of sacramental communion that ever was in the Catholic Church, is sufficient to preserve the true being of a Church.Much less may we conclude, that the want of true essentials in cases of invincible necessity doth utterly exclude from Heaven, or hinder the extraordinary influence of divine grace; no more than the actual want of circumcision in the wilderness did prejudice the Jews. God acts with means, without means, against means, and where the ordinary means are desired and cannot be had, he supplies that defect by extraordinary grace. So he fed the Israelites in a barren wilderness, where they could neither sow nor plant, with manna from Heaven. True faith is an essential, yet infants want actual faith. Baptism, the laver of regeneration, is an essential, yet there may be the baptism of the spirit or the baptism of blood where there is not the baptism of water. He that desires baptism and cannot have it, doth not therefore want it. So likewise ecclesiastical discipline is an essential of a true Church." Archbishop Bramhall, Works, vol. i. page 144.

"I do acknowledge that episcopacy was comprehended in the Apostolic office, tanquam trigonus in tetragono, and that the distinction was made by the Apostles with the approbation of Christ; that the Angels of the Seven Churches in the Revelations were Seven Bishops; that it is the most silly ridiculous thing in the world to calumniate that for a papal innovation, which was established in the Church before there was a Pope at Rome, which hath been received and approved in all ages since the very cradle of Christianity by all sorts of Christians, Europeans, Africans, Asiatics, Indians, many of which never had any intercourse with Rome, nor scarcely ever heard of the name of Rome. If semper ubique et ab omnibus be not a sufficient plea, I know not what is.

"But because I esteem these Churches not completely formed, do I therefore exclude them from all hope of salvation? or esteem them aliens and strangers from the commonwealth of Israel? or account them formal schismatics? No such thing. First I know there are many learned persons among them who do passionately affect episcopacy, some of which have acknowledged to myself, that their Church would never be rightly settled until it was new moulded. Secondly, there are others, who though they do not

a Dr. Pusey says, it were difficult to point out a difference between this admission of the reformed themselves, and a saying of Mr. Froude's selected for censure as referring to the Reformation every where but in England. "The Reformation was a limb badly set, it must be broken again in order to be righted.”— Remains, vol. i. p. 233, see note p. 164, of Letter to the Bishop of Oxford.

I am surprised that Dr. Pusey does not perceive a great difference between the two expressions. But I have stronger objections to the passage in Froude's Remains. His remark was evidently intended for the Reformation in England. The passage occurs between two sentences, the one relating to the sixth Article of our Church, the other to the proceedings in the reign of King Edward. It is therefore one of these numerous passages in which Mr. Froude deals out his sarcasms against the English Reformation and all its founders. The manner in which he speaks of "men famous in their generations, whose reputation and glory of martyrdom hath made it immodest for the best of men now to compare themselves with them;" is perfectly intolerable. Why do you praise Ridley? Do you know sufficient good about him, to counterbalance the fact, that he was the associate of Cranmer, Peter Martyr, and Bucer."(Froude's remains, vol. i. p. 434.) I really cannot trust my pen to express what