* At this period there was a vacancy in the See of Canterbury during a period of four years: the Succession, however, was not broken, because Theodore was regularly consecrated by other Apostolical Bishops. If, on the dimise of the present Archbishop the vacancy should not be filled up for forty years; yet, if at the end of that time an Archbishop were regularly consecrated by other bishops it is quite evident that the succession would still be unbroken. This remark applies to the other cases noted here. We have no more reason to doubt the correctness of the above succession of Bishops from the Apostles to the present Archbishop of Canterbury than we have to question the genuineness of the accepted list of the sovereigns of England, from William the Conqueror to the present Queen. on the 17th December 1559, by Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgskins. It is well known that the Roman Catholics endeavour to break through our Apostolical Succession, by casting a slur on Archbishop Parker's consecration, and they wish to make others believe that we had a bishop consecrated by priests or presbyters; a matter notoriously untrue; albeit some other kinds of dissenters may even now league with the Papists, in the hope of obtaining partial relief for the falsehood. Archbishop Bramhall, in that noble work "A Just Vindication of the Church of England," expressly notices this dissenting calumny in these words "The second accusation, of priests consecrating bishops, is grounded upon a senseless, fabulous fiction, made by a man of a leaden heart and a brazen forehead, of I know not what assembly of some of our reformers at the sign of the Nag's Head in Cheapside, or rather devised by their malicious enemies at the sign of the Whetstone in Pope's-head Alley. Against which lying, groundless, drowsy dream, we produce, on the very point, the authentic records of our Church; of things not acted in a corner, but publicly and solmnly recorded by public notaries, preserved in public registers, whither every one that desired to see them might have access, and published to the world in print, whilst there were thousands of eye-witnesses living that could have contradicted them if they had been feigned. There is no more certainty of the coronation of Henry the Eighth, or Edward the Sixth, than there is of that ordination, which alone they have been pleased to question, done not by one (as Austin consecrated the first Saxon prelates), but by four consecrated bishops. Let them name the person, or persons, and if they were bishops of the Church of England, we will show them the day, the place, the persons, when and where, and by whom, and before what public notaries, or sworn officers, they were ordained; and this not by uncertain rumours, but by the acts and instruments themselves. Let the reader choose whether he will give credit to a sworn officer or a professed adversary, to eye-witnesses or to malicious reporters upon hearsay; to that which is done publicly in the face of the Church or to that which is said to be done privately in the corner of a tavern. "These authentic evidences being upon occasion produced out of our ecclesiastical courts, and deliberately perused and viewed by father Oldcorn the Jesuit: he both professed himself clearly convinced of that whereof he had so long doubted (that was, the legitimate succession of bishops and priests in our Church), and wished heartily towards the reparation of the breach of Christendom, that all the world were so abundantly satisfied as he himself was; blaming us as partly guilty of the gross mistake of many, for not having publicly and timely made known to the world the notorious falsehood of that empty but far-spread aspersion against our succession. "As for our parts," concludes the Archbishop, 66 we believe Episcopacy to be at least an Apostolical institution, approved by Christ himself in the Revelation, ordained in the infancy of Christianity as a remedy against schism: and we bless God that we have a clear succession of it." Bramhall's Works, vol. i. pp. 270, 271, a prime edition published by the committee of the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology. Bramhall saw in his day as we may see clearly in ours, what a helping hand the Dissenters were extending to the Roman Catholics. He writes, addressing M. De La Milletiere, a Roman Catholic controversialist-"You fall heavily in this discourse upon the Presbyterians, Brownists, and Independents. Give me leave, as a by-stander, to wonder why you are so choleric against them, for certainly they have done you more service in England than ever you could have done for yourselves." Vol. i. p. 36. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. London: Printed by S. & J. Bentley, Wilson, and Fley, |