5. THE SUCCESSIONAL SACERDOTAL EPISCOPATE A ROMAN IDEA. There is still another question of origins that here invites attention: Whence came the idea of the successional prelatic episcopacy? We fail to find it arising out of historic facts; it shows no kinship to Greek ideals; it is foreign to Scripture teaching. But it does bear the water-marks of the governmental genius of Rome, with the Roman faculty of centralization and iron imperialism. As the emperors laid hold upon and concentered in themselves the powers which under the Republic had been exercised by senate, consul, tribune, chief priest, every governmental officer, and asserted, "All these are rightly ours, for the unity and permanence of the empire, and have been ours, through inheritance, from the beginning of the imperial line," so the bishops laid hold upon the powers which had been formerly exercised by people and presbyters-the power to teach, to administer sacraments, to absolve, to rule-and declared, "All these are ours, for the unity and permanence of the Church, through the line of episcopal ordinations, even from the Divine Christ himself."

In neither case was truth conspicuous. In point of fact, Rome as military conqueror and civil ruler did not ask so much, What is true? as, What is effective? She enacted such laws, established such institutions, followed such methods, claimed such authority as seemed best suited to her stupendous purpose. To justify these actions at the bar of exact justice and truth, if seriously attempted at all, was an after-consideration. So likewise with the ecclesiasticism of the third and the following centuries, as affected by the Roman spirit. It instituted such ritual observances, adopted such forms of government, put forth such claims as seemed well suited to strengthen its authority or extend its influence, and sought justification for them in some word of Scripture. Power was held dearer than truth. Might was more faithfully practiced than right.

But the Roman emperor was one, while the monarchical bishops were many. They were a widespread brotherhood of little monarchs, none superior to any other. This meant that the development was as yet incomplete. The logical outcome must be

a single bishop, lord of all the others, ruling alone, if he can, over the whole ecclesiastic empire. Thus, accordingly, with steady and inevitable steps, it came to pass. And whom should all signs betoken as this one imperial and absolute ruler-whom but the bishop of the City of the Cæsars?

So the Church took on the Roman imperial character. Did it convert the Empire? It did so, but at the same time was itself, to a large extent, converted by the Empire. The Medieval Church, with its pope, its bishops under authority and having men under them, its army of priests and monks, and its policy of maintaining unity by unrelenting compulsion, was the new and ecclesiastic form of the Rome of the Emperors. "That which Marius and Cæsar"-so the flatterers of Hildebrand are reported to have said to him-"could not effect with torrents of blood you are effecting with a word."

XII.

'APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION: THE UNREAL AND THE REAL.

THE sacerdotal theory of apostolic succession needs to be supported by the most indubitable evidence. For its demands upon the reason and the spirit are indeed hard to bear. Those who hold it must believe that an absolutely unbroken physical channel of grace extends through all the intervening ages from the Apostles of our Lord to the bishops of to-day. A physical channel of grace that is the doctrine. And if the stream be interrupted anywhere by the failure of the right person's hands to rest upon the right person's head, the Church in that line will cease to exist.

Observe, then, that in order to perpetuate the Church with its channel of sacramental grace, in any particular line, the bishop who ordains another to the episcopate must himself have been ordained in due and proper form. But not only so; he must also have been baptized, either as an infant or as an adult, in due and proper form. Because an unbaptized man's imposition of hands in ordination would, according to the theory, be null and void.

We must assume, therefore, that both these requirements, baptism and ordination, were complied with in the case of every bishop who stands anywhere in any line of episcopal ordinations that has reached unto our own day. Through all the generations of nearly twenty centuries there has not occurred a single

'Not that the bishop in question must needs have been baptized by a priest. Baptism by laymen is regarded as valid-a regenerative rite, just as if a priest had performed it-both by the Roman Catholic Church and the Ritualists. "They [the "sects"]," says the Protestant Episcopal Bishop Grafton in a recent utterance, "have lost sacramental grace, save that of baptism." But why not that also?

failure in either of the two. And such generations as many of them were! Among ignorant and barbarous populations, in semi-paganized Christianity, in times when the bishop's office was shamelessly bought and sold like any article of merchandise in the market, during the Dark Ages, during the tenth century, during the century and a half when Rome was the veriest sink of corruption, it never came to pass that one of these unnumbered bishops got into office who, through negligence, oversight, or other cause, had not been both regularly baptized and regularly ordained. All this must be believed. Otherwise it has to be admitted that the sacerdotal succession may have been broken; and hence that no bishop on earth can tell whether he be a true bishop or a sacrilegious invader of the Lord's house; no Christian minister, whether he be a true minister or an offerer of strange fire on God's altar; no church, whether it be a true church or a mere religious organization without the covenanted grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the case of such a succession calls in vain for evidence. The oft-quoted saying of Archbishop Whately, that "there is not a minister in all Christendom who is able to trace up, with any approach to certainty, his spiritual pedigree," is too obviously true for discussion. Indeed, proof is here clearly out of the question. An a priori assumption is made to take its place. Dogma must serve for history.

I. TRANSMISSION THROUGH IMPURE HANDS.

Even if a sacerdotal line of episcopal ordinations-to take up an impossible conception-were shown beyond all controversy, what can be known of the Christian spirit and character of the

'With similar plainness of speech and no less correctness of inference, Whately goes on to say: "The ultimate consequence must be, that any one who sincerely believes that his claim to the blessings of the gospel covenant depends on his own minister's claim to the supposed sacramental virtue of true ordination, and this again, on perfect apostolic succession as above described, must be involved, in proportion as he reads and inquires and reflects and reasons on the subject, in the most distressing doubt and perplexity." ("The Kingdom of Christ," Essay II., sec. 30.)

vast majority of the bishops through whose action the sacramental grace is supposed to be passed down from soul to soul? Were they in communion with the mind of Christ? As a matter of fact, it is known that many of these ordaining hands were idle, proud, and worldly hands.' It was not a Protestant controvertist but the pope Hildebrand who declared, two years after his elevation to the papal throne: "If I look with the glance of the mind toward the parts of the West, or of the South, or of the North, I find scarcely anywhere bishops who are such by lawful election and mode of life, who rule the Christian people through the love of Christ and not through worldly ambition." Undoubtedly in certain ages of the Church many of them were deepdyed in villainy and uncleanness.

In many cases the succession of Simon the Sorcerer was distinctly recognizable. Money was offered to buy the office through which the grace of the Divine Spirit was supposed to be conveyed: "Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Spirit." And the answer was not that of Simon Peter to Simon Magus. It was not, "Thy silver perish with thee, because thou hast thought to obtain the gift of God with money." On the contrary, the silver and gold were eagerly accepted, the office conferred, and the applicant empowered, according to sacramentarian teaching, to bestow upon whomsoever he chose the Holy Spirit of God.

Through the hands, then, of such men, sitting high in the synagogue of Satan, has the grace of the Holy Spirit which alone can make a man a true minister of Jesus Christ, and perpetuate Christ's Church on earth, been communicated. And this is the way of truth, this the gospel. Such a proposition, by whatever calm and beautiful words commended, suggests a

"A bishop was a dignitary, a peer, a being of exalted state, as much for show as for use, but indispensable to the right constitution of things-in England. The modern idea of the Apostolic Bishop was not thinkable. Such a creature had not been seen for so many centuries that his memory had faded out." (McConnell, "Hist. of American Episcopal Church," pp. 181, 182.) "Acts viii. 20.

Acts viii. 19.