Apostolical [Apostolic] Succession

The doctrine that a series of ordinations transmitted in a visible succession from the apostles, is necessary to constitute a valid ministry of the church, if strictly followed out to its legitimate conclusion, would lead any one of us, either to become a seeker and wait for a new apostleship, or else, to unit with the Church of Rome. While Roger Williams, acting on this principle, came to the one conclusion, we have known those who were led by it to the other. The sentiment we have here stated, was in effect most strongly asserted by the Archbishop of York, in the British Parliament, during the debates of the year 1558. The bill before the House, was for attaching the supremacy of the Church to the Queen of England. The Archbishop said, that if the Church of England withdraw from the Church of Rome, she would, by that act, directly forsake and fly from all general councils; and he proceeded to prove that the first four councils of Nice, Constantinople Ephesus, and Chalcedon, had acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. He, then presented to their view this alternative for consideration. Either the Church of Rome is a true or false one. If she be a true Church then we will be guilty of schism in leaving her, will be excommunicated by her, and the Church of England will be, of course, a false Church. If the Church of Rome be a false Church, then she can not be a pure source of apostolical [apostolic] succession; and the Church of England must be false, because she derived her ordination and sacraments from that of Rome.

The question we know was decided in favor of separation from Rome, but the speech of the Archbishop presents to the successionist, the horns o a dilemma, between which it would seem difficult to choose.

We have said that the principle of lineal descent from the apostles would lead one directly to the Church of Rome, because we suppose that if the line of succession can be traced to any one of the apostles, it can be traced to Peter. Yet, who can bring forth the register to show an unbroken chain of ordinations from him? In the days of Ezra, those who would be acknowledged as priests, were required to prove their right by the genalogical [genealogical] register. On the principle of apostolical [apostolic] succession, we make the same requisition now. And in answering such a demand for historical proof, we hear Bishop Stillingfleet saying "we find bishops discontinued for along time in the greatest Churches. Where was the Church of Rome, when, from the martyrdom of Flabia and the banishment of Lucius, the Church was governed by the clergy?"

The Learned Cardinal Bellarmine says "For above eighty years, the Church for want of a lawful Pope, had no other head, than what was in heaven."

That celebrated cardinal and historian Baronius who had well nigh filled the papal chair himself, says, "How deformed the Roman Church, when harlots, no less powerful than vile, ruled away at Rome., and at their pleasure changed sees, appointed bishops, and what is horrible to mention, did thrust into Peter's chair, their own gallants, false Popes! What kind of cardinals can we think were chosen by these monsters?" 'Come here,' says Stillingfleet, 'to Rome, and here the succession is as muddy as the Tiber itself." The Church of England, in the Homily for Whit-sunday, declares that "the popes and prelates of Rome, for the most part, are worthily accounted among the number of false prophets and false Christs, which deceived the world for a long while," and prays that the gospel may be spread abroad, to "the beating down of sin, death, the pope, the devil, and all the kingdoms of anti-Christs.'

Various historical chasms might be pointed out, but we have only room to quote these admissions of successionists themselves, which are weighty on account of the source from which they come.

Godwin in his history of the bishops, has shewn [shown] that among the English bishops, many kirks are wanting which can not be supplied. He has shown, too, at what enormous prices the English bishops bought their ordinations in the eleventh century, when simony prevailed in Italy and England. They committed crime

in view of which Peter pronounced Simon Magus to be in the gall of bitterness, and to have no part or lot in the kingdom of Christ. Then there are decrees of councils pronouncing null and void all those ordinances, wherein any simonical contract existed. The facts which the providence of God has developed, indicate that it is not his design that his Church should be made dependent for his ministry on an outward and visible succession. Was not this plainly shown, when between Leo IV Benedict III, a wicked Woman filled St Peter,s [Peter's] chair?

We have given publicity to the above, that our readers may see the situation of the protestant world with respect to the priesthood,

We have read of two eminent Philosophers, one of which laughed, and the other wept over the follies of mankind. Now, we do not pretend to much philosophy, but when we take into consideration the authority of the different sects of the day, their ignorance of the fundamental principles of the gospel, particularly on the subject of the priesthood, feeling similar to those of the laughing philosopher for a moment pervade our mind, but soon give place to those of commiseration [commiseration] and sorrow.

This generation not being able to trace a direct succession from the Apostles, nor believing in any new revelation to restore the priesthood, take it for granted, that the church of Christ does not need any, and thus content themselves, and continue to sing the siren song of peace and prosperity.

If they would for a moment consider that their iniquities have separated them from the association of heavenly intelligences; that having transgressed the laws changed the ordinances and broken the everlasting covenant, the spirit of God is withdrawn, the channel of communication has been stopt [stopped], and consequently men stumble, in the dark; "and if the blind lead the blind they both fall into the ditch."

To any unprejudiced mind, it is apparent that confusion exists in the churches of the day. Is God the author of confusion? Do the clashing of creeds, the different administraton [administration], and the discordant proceedings of the popular churches of the day comport with the plan, the arrangement and authority of the church of Jesus Christ? Verily, no.

But through pride and vain glory, they continue to persevere in the path they have marked out for their feet, and will not come to the light, lest their deeds, their doctrines, and their ordinances be manifested and reproved.

Under these circumstances what is to be done? What is the duty of the saints of the Most High? Let them cry aloud and spare not, lift up their voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression and the House of Israel their sins. Let the saints sound the alarm in the holy mount, and preach repentance to this generation, to both priests and people, that they may be left without excuse "when the Lord shall rise to shake terribly the earth" This is no time to sing lullabies to a slumbering world, the events which are transpiring call loudly on the saints to be diligent and faithful, and seek every opportunity of unfolding the scripture, raising the standard of truth, that under its banners numbers may be gathered, who shall be prepared to stand firm and unshaken, "when the elements shall melt with fervant [fervent] heat" an "become kings and priest to our God and his Christ.

The Jews.-The present physical, moral, and social condition of the Jews must be a miracle. We can come to no other conclusion. Had they continued, from the commencement of the Christian era down to the present hour, in some such national state in which we find the Chinese walled off from the rest of the human family, and by their selfishness on a national scale, and repulsion of alien elements, resisting evey [every] assault from without in the shape of hostile invasion,

and from an overpowering national pride forbidding the introduction of new and foreign t, we should not see much mystery interwoven with their existence. But this is not their state-far from it. They are neither a united and independent [independent] nation nor a parasitic province.-They are peeled; scattered; and crumbled into fragments; but like broken globules of quicksilver, instinct with a cohesive power, ever claiming affinity, and ever ready to amalgamate. Geography, arms, genius, politics, and foreign help do not explain their existence; time and climate and customs equally fail to unravel it.-None of these are or can be the springs of their perpetuity. They have been spread over every part of the habitable globe; they have lived under the regime of every dynasty; they have shared the protection of just laws, the proscription of cruel ones, and witnessed the rise and progress of both; they have used every tongue, and have lived in every latitude. The snows of Lapland have chilled, and the suns of Africa have scorched them. They have drunk of the Tiber, the Thames, the Jordan, the Mississippi.-In every century, and every degree of latitude and longitude, we find a Jew. It is not so with any other race. Empires the most illustrious have fallen and buried the men that constructed them; but the Jew has lived among the ruins, a living monument of indistructibility [indestructibility]. Persecution has unsheathed the sword and lighted the fagot. Papal superstition and Moslem barbarism have smote them with unsparing ferocity, penal rescripts and deep prejudice have visited on them most unrighteous chastisement, and not withstanding all, they survive. Robert Montgomery, in his Messiah, thus expresses the relative position of the Jews:

"Empires have sunk and kingdoms past away.

But still, apart, sublime in misery stands

The wreck of Israel. Christ hath come and bled,

And Miracles around the cross

A holy splendour [splendor] of undying truth

Preserve; but yet their pining spirit looks

For that unrisen sun which prophets hail'd.

And when I view him in the garb of wo,

A wandering outcast by the world disowned,

The haggard, lost, and long oppressed Jew,

, [']His blood be on us' through my spirit rolls

In fearful echo from a nation's lips.

Remembered Zion! still for thee awaits

A future teeming with triumphal sounds

And shape of glory."

Like their own bush on Mount Horeb, Israel has continued in the flames, but unconsumed. Thy are the aristocracy of Scripture, reft of their coronets-princes in degradation. A Babylonian, a Theban, a Spartan, an Athenian, a Roman, are names known in History only; their shadows alone haunt the world and flicker on its tablets. A Jew walks every street, dwells in every capital, traverses every exchange, and relieves the monotony of the nations of the earth. The race has inherited the heir-loom of immortality, incapable of extinction or amalgamation, Like streamlets from a common head, and composed of waters of a peculiar nature, they have flowed along every stream, without blending with it, or receiving its color or its flavor, and traversed the surface of the globe, and the lapse of many centuries, peculiar, distinct, alone. The Jewish race, at this day, is perhaps the most striking seal of the truth of the Sacred Oracles. There is no possibility of accounting for their perpetual isolation, their depressed but distinct being, on any grounds save those revealed in the records of truth. their aggregate and individual character is as remarkable as their circumstances. Meanness the most abject, and pride the most overbearing-the degradation of helots, and yet a conscious and a manifest sense of the dignity of a royal priesthood-crouching, cozening, squeezing, grasping, on the exchange in the shop, in the world, with nothing too low for them to do, or too dirty, if profitable, for them to pick up! and, notwithstanding, in the synagogue, looking back along many thousand years to an ancestry, beside which that of our peers and princes is but of yesterday, regarding justly, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as their great progenitors, and pressing forward, on the wings of faith and hope and promise, to a long expected day when they, now kings and princes in disguise, shall become so indeed, by a manifestation the most glorious, and a dispensation the most sublime. The people are a perpetual miracle-a living echo of Heaven's holy tones, prolonged from generation to generation.-Frazer's Magazine.

Watchman! tell us of the night,

What its signs of promise are-

Traveler! o'er yon mountain's height,

See that glory-beaming star!-

Watchman! does its beautious [beauteous] ray

Aught [Ought] of hope or joy foretell?-

Traveler! yes; it brings the day-

Promis'd day of Israel.