pastors) for the holy ministry by persons in office.' Again, (p. 187) he says, The established and settled order of calling of pastors is by succession of pastor to pastor and elder to elder. * The practice of the apostles is our safe rule, because at all ordinations of church officers the apostles and pastors were actors and ordainers.' In another place (pp. 205–208) he maintains that the ordination of the reformers was in exact accordance with his principles; and concludes this branch of his argument by proving, by an array of historical facts, so extensive and minute as shows him to have been as much at home in the writings of the Fathers as he evidently was in those of the casuists and schoolmen, that there hath been a constant succession of true pastors in the church since the days of the apostles. (Pp. 229-239.) Such, then, was the deliberate and matured judgment of the great Samuel Rutherford, one of the most learned and godly men Scotland has ever produced. The Brownists of that day charged these positions with Popery! Samuel Rutherford, the hyper-Calvinist, the ultra-protestant, the republican, the (in one emphatic term) Presbyterian (as Prelatists call him,) a Papist ! From the charge Rutherford defends himself with his usual acuteness and success. Instead, however, of quoting from his defence, as the two coincide, we shall adduce in support and defence of Rutherford's positions the testimony, not of one man, but the combined testimony of a whole synod of as learned and pious men as ever graced England.

"The Provincial Assembly (or Synod) of London,' in 1654, during the establishment of Presbyterianism in England, published a work, entitled Jus Divinum Ministerii, or the Divine Right of the Gospel Ministry,' from the second part of which we make the following quotations. The Synod of London commences the discussion of the point at present before us by laying down the distinction, that it is one thing to receive the ministry from the apostate Church of Rome as the author of it, another thing to receive a ministry from Jesus Christ, through the Church of Rome,' as merely the channel of transmission. (Pp. 32, 33.) In answering an objection to their ministry, often urged by the mob of sectaries around them, founded upon the character of the channel through which their ministry was transmitted, they say, 'Our ministry is derived to us from Jesus Christ. We are his ministers and ambassadors. It is he that gave pastors and teachers to his church, as well as apostles and evangelists. We say that ordination of ministers by ministers is no Romish institution, but instituted by the Lord Jesus himself, long before antichrist was; that our ministry is derived to us from Christ, through the apostate Church of Rome, not from the apostate Church of Rome.' Again, The ministry, which is an institution of Christ, passing to us through Rome, is not null

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and void, no more than the Scriptures, sacraments, or any other gospel ordinance which we now enjoy, and which do also descend to us from the apostles, through the Romish Church.' They then proceed (as does also Rutherford in the work from which we have quoted above, pp. 337-340) to show that, if we acknowledge baptism to have been preserved in the Church of Rome, we must also of necessity own that orders were preserved in that church, and that, if Caiaphas was recognised by Christ himself as a true high priest, notwithstanding he had derived his orders through a most corrupt succession, on the same principles we cannot deny the validity of orders derived through the corrupt succession of Rome. Further, they say, When the Protestant churches did separate (from Rome), they did not erect a new church, but reformed a corrupt church; and therefore (they add) ours is called the Protestant reformed religion; not a new religion. We take away their heretical superstitions, but still keep the truths which they hold.' (P. 40.) And then comes the passage to which all the preceding are merely preparatory: The receiving of our ordinations (they say) from Christ and his apostles and the primitive churches, and so all along through the apostate Church of Rome, is, so far from nullifying our ministry, or disparaging of it, that it is a great strengthening of it, when it shall appear to all the world that our ministry is derived unto us from Christ and his apostles, by succession of a ministry continued in the church for 1600 years. And that we have (1.) a lineal succession from Christ and his apostles; (2.) not only a lineal succescession, but that which is more, and without which the lineal is of no weight, we have a doctrinal succession also. We succeed them (the apostles) in preaching the same doctrines that they did deliver to the church. The Papists boast much of a lineal succession, but they want the doctrinal. They succeed the apostles as darkness succeeds light, and as Manasseh succeeded Hezekiah. But this is the happiness of the present ministry, that we have both a lineal and a doctrinal succession from Christ and his apostles.' (P. 45.) To all the tenets contained in these extracts, although piously believed and learnedly maintained by all our Presbyterian fathers down to the end of the seventeenth century, we do not certainly wish to be understood to adhere. The subject is encumbered with manifold difficulties, and, what is worse, it seems to lead necessarily to conclusions from which our hearts shrink within us. We adduce these passages solely to prove that were we disposed to meet Papists and Puseyites on their own grounds, we could establish, to say the very least of it, as good claim to the apostolic succession as either of them. In all cases of disputed property or succession both parties have an equal right to establish their descent, and con

sequently a right to any possession that may depend upon it. We have said enough to show that were we disposed to meet our Papist or Prelatic assailants in a suit of spiritual succession, we have no fear of being the losing parties. But we far prefer to rest our claims upon the Word of God, which is altogether on our side. The first of the works that stand at the head of this paper we have already commended in a short critical notice of it. We have since read it through with more care, and find no reason to modify our judgment. We recommend it to all who desire to study a subject which has and must continue to exercise a very powerful influence upon many minds. Men may laugh at the importance of the dogma of the apostolical succession, as maintained by Papists and Prelatists, but it is not by such weapons we can defend ourselves from the assaults of men who deny our orders and ministerial powers simply because, as they contend, we have lost the grace of the apostolical succession.

The second of the works which head this article is also from the pen of Dr Smyth, and, like its predecessor, able, learned, and full of most extensive research. Both volumes taken together furnish us with one of the fullest and completest treatises upon this ecclesiastical controversy that has ever appeared either in former times or in our own. Our only fault to them is that they are too learned and too large for general circulation, and, on this account, less likely to produce that impression, or effect that good, which their intrinsic merits are so well calculated to accomplish.*

ART. II.-Supplement to Ancient Christianity, and the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts for the Times. By the Author of Spiritual Despotism."

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MR TAYLOR has now brought to a close the bold undertaking in which for the last five years he has been occupied. It is one of colossal magnitude, and likely to prove of colossal durability. He has not merely reared a most massive stronghold, from which he has himself, with such signal destructiveness, assailed the enemy, but he has erected a magazine, and amassed stores, which will be of mighty service in the approaching warfare. Every British Protestant is his debtor, and that in no trifling amount.

The

* We again thank Dr Smyth for his many favours, and only wish it were more in our power to do justice to the many admirable publications which he has so kindly transmitted to us.

reformed churches of Europe owe him their warmest thanks for the profound researches he has pursued, the toil he has so patiently undergone, and the task he has so successfully achieved.

It is hard to say whether we admire most the calmness, or the eloquence, or the manly honesty of his pen. Amid the turbulent clamour and reckless misrepresentations of enemies, infuriated at the daring and unexpected storming of their boasted stronghold, he proceeds upon his way with the most imperturbable tranquillity. Amid the huge masses of patristic lumber, shapeless as chaos, yet more unearthly, he moves on with unencumbered, easy footstep, as if at home in each page of their hundred and twenty folios. The labour which these two volumes have cost him must have been enormous. It is not the mere patient plodding through so many profitless volumes that we allude to, though even that occupied fourteen years of Usher's life; but the selecting, arranging, combining, extracting, transcribing, translating, perusing and reperusing, again and again, must have been attended with an amount of fatigue and disgust, which nothing but the most resolute perseverance could have sustained. Yet the toil has not been unrewarded. True, it has not been the digging into the precious mine to gather out its veins of fine gold; it has not been the searching for the precious relics of forgotten antiquity. It has been a process of a very different kind, and for a very opposite purpose. It has been like Ezekiel's digging through the wall, and discovering the chambers of imagery, where apostate Judah bowed the idolatrous knee to all hideous abominations. It has been the laying bare of such a mass of loathsome corruptions, that the very report of it makes one shudder. It has been truly the opening up to view of those whited sepulchres, which Papists and Puseyites admire so fondly, and exhibiting them in the bright blaze of modern day, 'full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.' We had read a little of the Fathers in our more studious days, and knew something of their filthiness as well as their fooleries; but we had certainly no idea of the fearful extent to which they are pervaded with falsehood, absurdity, and abomination. It required some courage to enter these Augean stables; and no less to proclaim to the world. what he had discerned there.* The records of brothels would

• "The monkery of the middle ages better ordered than that of the Nicene.' .' In proportion as the domestic liberty which was at first allowed to the virgins of the church, was curtailed, and as they were compelled, or induced, to immure themselves in convents, and to pass their lives as prisoners, under the immediate control of a superior, those utterly degrading examinations, which had been everywhere submitted to in the earlier times, ceased to be necessary, and would of course be discontinued.

"The fact of such scrutinies, with all the moral humiliations they involve, as the prevalent custom of the church, is incontestibly established by several incidental al

stand comparison with the contents of many a volume of these holy men,' to whom Tractarians appeal as infallible authority, and to whom they would fain turn our eyes, as patterns of sanctity and wisdom. The quantity of skulls, finger-bones, knee-pans, and such like patristic relics, all sainted and miraculous, (not to speak of obscenities, which would defile Presbyterian, however much they adorn Tractarian pages), which have been thus dragged to light from the volumes of the Fathers, may well make us wonder how it has come to pass that these writers ever attained, not the name of saint, but the name of Christian.

In many respects the field was new to us; and even where the field was not new, the facts were. In the days of our more juvenile studentship, we had been accustomed to reverence the Fathers, and had spent many a pleasant hour in their company. True it was sometimes, to practise ourselves in Greek or Latin, that we sought their society; but still we managed to pick up something that was agreeable, perhaps profitable, while conversing with them. Their massive volumes seemed at times still encompassed with the dim radiance of suns long set. Very venerable did they appear to us; and we remember the triumph with which we once bore homeward to our study the nine folios of Jerome, rejoicing over our purchased treasure. These reverential feelings had no doubt died away, and given place to a somewhat cool and distant respect. But certainly, since we began the perusal of Mr Taylor's ancient Christianity, we have made a much more rapid descent in our homage than we had once imagined possible. In some degree this was a shock to us. We struggled-hesitated; but the evidence was overpowering. We were compelled to give way.

We did not feel much in parting with our old friend Jerome. We had occasionally spent a profitable hour in running over his

lusions to it, made by the best-informed of the Fathers. Cyprian, Chrysostom, and Ambrose, compared, on this point, can leave no doubt on the subject. I will not again refer to the places in the former; but will leave with the reader a single passage from Ambrose. Addressing widows, he says

Quanto igitur vos magis convenit intentas esse studio castitatis, ne locum sinistræ relinquatis opinioni, quæ pudicitiæ testimonium in solis habetis moribus? Virgo enim licet in ea quoque sit morum prærogativa quam corporis, calumniam tamen integritate carnis abjurat: vidua quæ probandæ subsidium virginitatis amiserit, von in voce obstetricis, sed in suis moribus habet castitatis examen. De Viduis, cap. iv. 26.

"The same usage, distinctly mentioned in the preceding century by Cyprian, and not so spoken of by him as to indicate its recentness, could never for a moment have consisted with that purity of feeling, or with that dignity of virtue with which apostolic Christianity had adorned and elevated woman. Consist indeed it might with the notions and habits of a seraglio; or with those of places and societies on the same moral level :—it was the resort and the indication of a formal and sensuous religionism." Pp. 135, 136.