own sense is of it, I have declared many years since to the world in print; and in the same way received thanks, and a public acknowledgment of my moderation from a French divine. And yet more particularly in my reply to the Bishop of Chalcedon, Pres. p. 144. and cap. i. p. 164. Episcopal divines will readily subscribe to the determination of the learned Bishop of Winchester, in his answer to the second epistle of Molineus. "Nevertheless, if our form (of Episcopacy) be of divine right, it doth not follow from thence, that there is no salvation without it, or that a Church cannot consist without it. He is blind who does not see Churches consisting without it: he is hard-hearted who denyeth them salvation. We are none of those hard-hearted persons, we put a great difference between these things. There may be something absent in the exterior regiment, which is of divine right, and yet salvation to be had." This mistake proceedeth from not distinguishing between the true nature and essence of a Church, which we do readily grant them, and the integrity or perfection of a Church, which we cannot grant them, without swerving from the judgment of the Catholic Church.

MEDE, PRESBYTER.-Sermon on Urim and Thummim. Works, Book I.

P. 186.

The Ministers of CHRIST must be Lux Mundi, the light of the world-Vos estis Lux Mundi- -"Ye are the Light of the World: Ye are the World's Urim," saith CHRIST unto His Apostles. "For the lips of the priest should preserve knowledge, and they should learn the law at his mouth." This light of knowledge, this teaching knowledge, is the Urim of every Levite; and therefore CHRIST, when He inspired His Apostles with knowledge of heavenly mysteries, He sent a new Urim from above, even fiery tongues of Urim from heaven. He sent no fiery heads, but fiery tongues; for it is not sufficient for a Levite to have his head full of Urim, unless his tongue be a candle to show it to others. There came,

indeed, no Thummim [integrity or perfection] from heaven, as there came an Urim; for though the Apostles were secured from errors, they were not freed from sin; and yet we who are Levites

must have such a Thummim as may be gotten upon earth; for St. Paul bids Titus in all things to show himself an example of good works, and this is a Thummim of Integrity. But, besides this Thummim, the Ministers of the Gospel have received from GOD more especially another Thummim, like unto that which was proper to the High Priest; namely, the power of binding and loosing, which is, as it were, a power of oracle, to declare unto the people the remission of their sins, by the acceptance of CHRIST'S sacrifice.

MASON, PRESBYTER.-Vindicia Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, i. 2.

Anglican. Our Ministry is agreeable to Divine Scripture, and therefore holy. Nor do we doubt that, when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, they who turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever. However, what is your argument

against our ministry?

Romanist. Can a man be a lawful minister without a lawful call? Anglican. Of course not.

Romanist. If So, I pray tell me how the Anglican Church can defend her ministry. Surely I may address each of you in Harding's words to Jewel: "What say you, my master? You bear yourself as though Bishop of Salisbury; but how will you substantiate your call? What is your warrant for ministering in the Word and Sacraments ?" &c. &c. . . I ask thee, Is your call inward or outward?

Anglican. Both.

Romanist. An outward call, to be lawful, must be either immediately from CHRIST's mouth, as the Apostles were called, or mediately through the Church.

Anglican. Well; we are called by God through the Church; for it is He who gives "Pastors and Doctors for the perfecting of the Saints."

Romanist. They who are called by God through the Church, must derive their warrant and power by lawful succession from CHRIST and the Apostles. If you maintain you have proceeded from this origin, it is your business to prove it clearly to us; to set forth and trace your genealogy..

VOL. III.-74.

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C

Anglican. The Ministers of the Anglican Church derive their imposition of hands in a lawful way from lawful Bishops, possessed of a lawful authority; and therefore their call is ordinary [not extraordinary, by miracles].

Romanist. But whence have these Bishops derived their power? Anglican. From GoD, through the hands of Bishops before them, &c. &c.

SANDERSON, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR.-Divine Right of

Episcopacy.

My opinion is, that Episcopal Government is not to be derived merely from Apostolical practice or institution, but that it is originally founded in the Person and Office of the Messias, our blessed LORD JESUS CHRIST; who being sent by our heavenly FATHER to be the Great Apostle (Heb. iii. 1), Bishop, and Pastor (1 Peter ii. 25) of His Church, and anointed to that office immediately after His baptism by John, with power and the HOLY GHOST (Acts x. 37, 38), descending then upon Him in a bodily shape (Luke iii. 22), did afterwards, before His ascension into Heaven, send and empower His holy Apostles, in like manner as His FATHER had before sent Him (John xx. 21), to execute the same Apostolical, Episcopal, and Pastoral Office, for the ordering and governing of His Church, until His coming again; and so the same office to continue in them and their successors unto the end of the world. (Matt. xxviii. 18—20.) This I take to be so clear, from these and other like texts of Scripture, that if they shall be diligently compared together, both between themselves and with the following practice of the Churches of CHRIST, as well in the Apostles' times as in the purest and primitive times nearest thereunto, there will be left little cause why any man should doubt thereof.

HAMMOND, PRESBYTER, DOCTOR, AND CONFESSOR.-On the

Power of the Keys. Preface.

That the prime act of power enstated by CHRIST on his Apostles, as for the governing of the Church, (and exorcising or banishing all devils out of it,) so for the effectual performing that

great act of charity to men's souls, reducing pertinacious sinners to repentance, should be so, either wholly dilapidated, or piteously deformed, as to continue in the Church, only under one of these two notions, either of an empty piece of formality, or of an engine of state and secular contrivance, (the true Christian use of shaming sinners into reformation, being well nigh vanished out of Christendom,) might by an alien, or an heathen, much more by the pondering Christian, be conceived very strange and unreasonable, were it not a little clear that we are fallen into those times of which it was foretold by two Apostles, that in "these last days, there should come scoffers, walking after their own lusts," &c. . . . I shall design to infer no further conclusion, but only this, that they which live ill in the profession of a most holy faith... but especially they that discharge and banish out of the Church those means which might help to make the generality of Christians better, have the spirit of Antichrist working in them, even when they think themselves most zealously busied in beating down his kingdom. What those means are which might most effectually tend to the amending the lives of Christians, I shall need no farther to interpose my judgment, than, 1st, by submitting it to CHRIST, who put the keys into the Apostles' hands, on purpose as a means to exemplify the end of His coming. . . . .2nd, by minding myself and others what the Apostles say of this power, that it was given them πpòs oikodoμǹv, to build up the Church of CHRIST, &c.

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Chapter 3. The only difficulty remaining on the point, will be, who are the Apostles' successors in that power; and when the question is asked of that power, I must be understood of the power of governing the Church peculiarly, (of which the power of the keys was and is a principal branch,) for it must again be remembered that the Apostles are to be considered under a double notion, first, as planters, then as governors of the Church. . . . Which distinction being premised, the question will now more easily be satisfied, being proposed in these terms; who were the Apostles' successors in that power, which concerned the governing their Churches which they planted? and first I answer, that it being a matter of fact, or story, later than that the Scripture

...

can universally reach to, it cannot be fully satisfied or answered from thence... but will in the full latitude, through the universal Church in these times, be made clear, from the recent evidences that we have, viz. from the consent of the Greek and Latin Fathers, who generally resolve that Bishops are those successors.

TAYLOR, BISHOP, CONFESSOR, AND DOCTOR.-On Episcopacy.

now.

Introduction.

Antichrist must come at last, and the great apostasy foretold must be, and this not without means proportionable to the production of so great declensions of Christianity. "When ye hear of wars and rumours of wars, be not afraid," says our blessed SAVIOUR, "the end is not yet." It is not war that will do "this great work of destruction;" for then it might have been done long ere What then will do it? We shall know when we see it. In the mean time, when we shall find a new device, of which, indeed, the platform was laid in Aërius and the Acephali, brought to a good possibility of completing a thing, that whosoever shall hear, his ears shall tingle, "an abomination of desolation standing where it ought not," "in sacris," in holy persons, and places, and offices, it is too probable that this is preparatory for the Antichrist, and grand apostasy.

For if Antichrist shall exalt himself above all that is called GOD, and in Scripture none but kings and priests are such, " dii vocati, dii facti," I think we have great reason to be suspicious, that he that divests both of their power, (and they are, if the king be Christian, in very near conjunction,) does the work of Antichrist for him; especially if the men whom it most concerns will but call to mind, that if the discipline or government which CHRIST hath instituted is that kingdom by which He governs all Christendom, (so themselves have taught us,) when they (to use their own expressions) throw CHRIST out of His kingdom; and then either they leave the Church without a head, or else put Antichrist in substitution.

We all wish that our fears in this and all things else may be vain, that what we fear may not come upon us; but yet that the abolition of episcopacy is the forerunner, and preparatory to the