must be performed by the laying on of the hands of a bishop; and that bishop must have derived his office and authority by a regular succession from the apostles. Such an ordination the dissenting ministers have not had they were ordained by presbyters only, who have no right to ordain. Therefore their ordination was not valid: they are no ministers of Christ, but continue mere laymen, and all their ministrations are invalid, and have no effect. So that though the poor unhappy people think they are baptized, and have received the Lord's supper, it is a dangerous mistake: all their ministrations are a mere nullity.'

Such was the strain of reasoning adopted by a considerable portion of the high-church clergy, during the reigns of William and Anne, in numerous discourses from the pulpit, and compositions from the press. How such a fancy should bear sway in the minds of rational and literary men, may justly be the subject of inquiry and in tracing the history of the English church, we may find something by which it will be accounted for. The first reformers, whatever faults they might have, do not seem to have been deeply infected with priest-craft, or to have entertained very high ideas of their own spiritual dignity and authority". Kings seemed to be mightier men in their idea, than

In a select assembly of divines, convened by the authority of Edward the sixth, it was given by archbishop Cranmer as his opinion, in which many concurred, "that bishops and priests were at one time, and were not two things, but both one office in the beginning of Christ's religion. That a bishop may make a priest by the Scripture, and so may kings and governors also, and that by the authority of God committed to them, and the people also by their election. For as we have read, that bishops have done it, so Christian emperors and princes usually have done it. And the people before Christian princes were, commonly did elect their bishops and priests. In the

priests. Episcopacy was not considered as necessary to the existence of a church of Christ and the foreign protestant churches, though many of them had no higher officers than presbyters, were regarded as sisters; their ministers were embraced as brethren, and the ordinances dispensed by them esteemed as valid as their own.

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But while this was the spirit of the leading men, the mass of the clergy, who had changed their profession four times, no doubt, still remained papists in their hearts, and cherished those exalted ideas of priestly power, which they had imbibed in their early education. Their posterity, and those brought up under their influence, would naturally inherit the same dispositions. In the days of James the first, this spirit began to shew itself in open day, and with greater strength in the reign of Charles the first. So widely different were the sentiments of the ruling clergy from those in the reign of queen Elizabeth, that the other reformed churches in Europe were no longer regarded as the legitimate progeny of the same mother. The church of Rome, which in the symbolical writings of the Anglican church is represented as the whore of Babylon, was now considered as a chaste virgin espoused to Christ; her sons were embraced as brethren, and their ministry and services accounted valid, because in their ordination a bishop had laid his hand upon their shaven crowns; while the unbishoped churches of the reformation were disowned as of spurious breed, and their ministers were said to be in "pretended holy orders."

New Testament, he that is appointed to be a bishop or a priest, needeth no consecration by the Scripture; for election or appointing thereto is sufficient." Stillingfleet's Irenicum, p. 392.

The prevalence of this spirit among the clergy may be judged of from this circumstance, that Goodman, bishop of Gloucester, who presided over the protestant clergy of that diocese, professed himself a papist, and died in the year one thousand six hundred and fifty-five, in the communion of the church of Rome*. Ex uno disce alios. Others were suspected, but there was no proof. Laud has no injustice done him, when it is said that he was half a papist, and entertained ideas of priestly authority not much inferior to those of the conclave at Rome. Looks of tenderness and regard were cast towards the Romish church; and if the pope would have laid aside his pretensions to domineer over them, and have permitted the king and the bishops to divide his power between them, there would have commenced an ardent friendship between England and him, and perhaps a cordial union. When heaven sent the civil wars to scourge the enemies of the civil and religious liberties of the English people, these adherents of Rome, the high-flying clergy, fled the country, or entered into private life, or prudently shaped their conduct to the times.

At the restoration, such men, as may naturally be supposed, were the favourites of the court, and rose to the most eminent stations in the church. Their principles, which sufferings, and opposition had more deeply rooted in their hearts, were now proclaimed and inculcated upon others. Into such hands the universities fell; and the youth destined to govern the church imbibed the palatable doctrine. To persuade them that the office, for which they are destined, has a peculiar measure of spiritual authority annexed to it, and that no other religious sect in the country h Complete History of England, vol. III. p. 193.

is entitled to the smallest portion, is so flattering to the pride of the human heart, that it requires no great strength of argument to produce the belief of its truth. These sentiments continued with augmented efficacy during the reigns of Charles and of James: and it may be seen from the famous Oxford decree, in the year one thousand six hundred and eighty-three, what were the favourite maxims of the leading men in the university.

When the divine mercy sent the prince of Orange to deliver the nation from popery and slavery, a considerable number of the clergy had imbibed so much of the essence of both, that they were unable to accommodate themselves to the new order of things. Several of the episcopal bench with the metropolitan at their head, refused to take the oaths to the civil government, and were deposed from their exalted stations: some of the inferior clergy imitated their example and shared their fate. By a far greater number, who held the same opinions, interest was consulted rather than conscience; they kept their comfortable livings, took the oaths, but still retained their former ideas. The proceedings of the lower house of convocation, during the reigus of William and Anne, discover a cast of men, who were something between protestants and papists: they had some feathers of the one, and some plucked from the other, with which they decked themselves. Their pretensions to priestly power were beyond any thing which had appeared since the reformation they had improved even upon Laud, and like those who fancy themselves the peculiar favourites of heaven, they wished to monopolize the benefit to themselves, by excluding every other sect. The conceit was cherished by a branch of study

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which had become exceedingly fashionable, perhaps because it tended to give them high ideas of themselves, namely the reading of the fathers. They were men of lively affections, and said many pious things; but their views both of the doctrines and duties of Christianity, were in general extremely inaccurate; and the idolatrous student of their writings (and that was the character of most of them at this time), was in the greatest danger of being led astray from truth. One thing especially observable in the views of the fathers, and which these men did not fail to observe, and learn, was a most exalted idea of the dignity, power, and privileges of the clergy, accompanied with the bitterest enmity against those who were guilty of schism, which is always represented by them as a damnable sin. Those charged with it were persons who differed from them in sentiments, and would not submit to their dominion, but chose to think and act for themselves.

The effect produced by such a course of study, was both powerful and extensive; and the hearts of the high church clergy, jurors as well as non-jurors, were formed in this mould. The low-church party in the establishment, which consisted of men of the most respectable characters, they scarcely considered as partakers of the Christian priesthood. The dissenters from the church of every kind, except the papists,were looked upon by them as having not the shadow of a claim to be churches of Christ, nor their ministers, ministers of Christ. The non-jurors alone, such as Hickes, Brett, and others, durst bring this charge against their episcopal brethren; but the high party who had taken the oaths, joined with them in denying the validity of the dissenting ministry.