Protestant succession

“ The dead are prayed for in the touching and beautiful words which holy church puts into the mouths of her children.
It is needless to say that the doctrine of apostolic succession is most firmly maintained by High-Churchmen. Not only are the Catholic doctrines which have furnished the chief mark for Protestant hostility and the principal subjects of misrepresentation now maintained and inculcated, but others which, without being formally contradicted, have been obscured and neglected are now brought forward with a clearness which leaves little to be desired. ”

“ A limitation of the heirship, within the pale of any particular Protestant community, which may become less and less national as time rolls on, is open to grave objections; but the limitation of descent within Protestant lines of some kind, appears to rest upon a sound basis. ”

“ But every one must surely perceive the difference of our position from that of our Reformers. We assert precisely the same principles, and in their own language. But we have to act towards men who on principle reject the Succession; who are not for certain possessed of any Catholically Ordained Teachers, or so surely Baptized people: and who are perpetuating this awfully doubtful and Schismatical state of things. ”

“ For more than a hundred and fifty years, there had been a deadly struggle between the nobles and the Church: and the issue of that struggle, was the establishment of the Reformation, and the triumph of the aristocracy. [82] They had, at last, carried their point. The hierarchy was overthrown, and replaced by new and untried men. All the old notions of apostolic succession, of the imposition of hands, and of the divine right of ordination, were suddenly discarded. The offices of the Church were performed by heretics, the majority of whom had not even been ordained. ”

“ Hence the new nobles—most of whom had probably first risen into importance by showing some useful abilities—formed, as a whole, the backbone of the Protestant party, and were pledged, by every consideration which ordinarily governs human actions, to oppose the rehabilitation of the old Church to the utmost. ”

“ In that case, being young, as you are, if liberty of conscience and if the Catholic religion be restored to this realm, you would have some hope of the crown. For we can assure you that if God permit that we and our very honored brother the Duke of York die without children, the crown will belong to yourself and parliament cannot legitimately oppose it, unless that the fact of your being a Catholic exclude you; as liberty of conscience is not yet established, and since, at present, only Protestant kings are eligible. ”

“ Protestant Dissenters, save those who denied the Trinity, were no longer forbidden to have places of worship and services of their own, if they would only swear to be loyal to the king, and that his power was as lawful in Church as in State matters. ”

“ But, passing over a remoter period, have we not to regret that the spirit which then prevailed still continues to manifest itself in our own days? And, indeed, were not the heads of the Protestant establishment the most active opponents of Catholic Emancipation? Who were the great promoters of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill? Was not the head of the Establishment, in this city, most anxious, a few years ago, to put convents and monasteries under police control, and to give every annoyance to the holy and pious virgins who devote themselves to the service of God and the poor? ”

“ I am astonished at the madness of the Catholic clergy in not perceiving that Catholic emancipation is Catholic infidelity; that to entangle their people in the intrigues of a Protestant parliament, and a Protestant court, is to ensure the loss of every man of fashion and consequence in their community. The true receipt for preserving their religion, is Mr. ”

“ But what will become of us, if some heretick should have formerly usurped these holy garments, without having passed through all the precedent ceremony and operation? What if he should have happened to have consecrated and ordained a great many others, such as have continued the succession? Then, alas! the whole chain of succession may have been broken, never to be pieced again by human skill; and we can never know who amongst us are regular Christians, or in a regular way of salvation. ”

“ No service in a Protestant church is permitted, and the Protestant must promise that all children born of the union shall be baptised and brought up in the Catholic faith. There is no written contract, and the promise may, of course, be broken, but if the Catholic is a party to it he is guilty of mortal sin. ”

“ But rather the reverse; because it must have been very possible that some one, or more, of the line might have died suddenly, before the ordaining of the Successor; in which case the Succession would be lost, unless some other Church were applied to. It is plain that no particular Church, whether in Constantinople, Canterbury, or Rome, can pretend to possess an exclusive line of Apostolic grace. It is plain that no Church can be strictly said to “derive its orders” from another. ”

“ Has not the same process been repeated in nearly every church calling itself Protestant? As its founders, those who possessed the true spirit of reform, pass away, their descendants come forward and “new-model the cause.” While blindly clinging to the creed of their fathers and refusing to accept any truth in advance of what they saw, the children of the reformers depart widely from their example of humility, self-denial, and renunciation of the world. ”

“ To us Catholics it certainly, at first sight, seems a little singular, that in a church which bases upon an unbroken episcopal succession its whole claim to external unity with the primitive Catholic Church, there should be any doubt whether or not that church herself believes and teaches that such an unbroken succession is essential to the existence of a visible church ”

“ The nobles had overturned the Church; but the principles on which Church authority is based, remained intact. All that was done, was to change the name and the form. A new hierarchy was quickly organized, which succeeded the old one in the affections of the people. Indeed, it did more. For, the Protestant clergy, neglected by the nobles, and unendowed by the state, had only a miserable pittance whereupon to live, and they necessarily threw themselves into the arms of the people, where alone they could find support and sympathy. ”

“ There is no denying the fact. The variations of Protestantism, even during the lives of the reformers, the multiplication of Protestant sects, all appealing alike to the sacred text, and the experience of three hundred and more years, render it indubitable. Hard pressed by their Catholic opponents, Protestants were driven to the sad alternative of either condemning their separation from the Church and returning to her communion, or of giving up dogmatic religion as unessential and falling back on interior feeling or sentiment. ”

“ It is simply impossible for any thinking man at the present day to take any living interest, for example, in the ancient controversies. The "drum ecclesiastic" of the seventeenth century would sound a mere lullaby to us. Here and there a priest or a belated dissenting minister may amuse himself by threshing out once more the old chaff of dead and buried dogmas. There are people who can argue gravely about baptismal regeneration or apostolical succession. ”

“ Thus the reformation of the sixteenth century, while it recovered from the debris of apostasy the doctrine of justification by faith, became the occasion for Protestant sects, human-ruled institutions, and these were succeeded by other sects. Some of these have been as intolerant, inflexible, and as unlike primitive Christianity as the Roman Catholic Church itself.
Church government, as humanized in the sects, has taken forms other than the hierarchic. We have the episcopal, or rule by bishops; the presbyterian, or rule by presbyters ”

“ To grant better laws to a small minority, ought to have given little umbrage. But behind the Protestant community were the (Roman) Catholics, with a discontented clergy, secretly hostile, and hating the organic articles even more than the consistories. If anything were granted to the former, nothing could be refused to the latter; and expediency forbade the aggravation of the troubles of the State by those of the Church. ”

“ These were the law which punished the celebration of Catholic worship as felony in a foreigner, as high treason in a native, and the laws by which the estates of Popish heirs educated abroad passed to the next Protestant heir, by which a Protestant heir could take possession of his father's or other relative's estate during the lifetime of the real proprietor, and by which Papists could acquire property only by descent. ”

“ Sixthly, They are also differenced in respect of the subjects. The politic power is committed sometimes to one, sometimes to more, sometime by right of election, sometime by right of succession; but the ecclesiastical power is competent to none under the New Testament by the right of succession, but he who hath it must be called by God and the church to it; neither was it given by Christ to one, either pastor or elder, much less to a prelate, but to the church, that is, to the consistory of presbyters. ”

“ They have unbounded confidence in their parson, that he is in the regular line of succession—firmly believe in the fact of their regeneration in baptism, as they have seen the public record of its performance—and calculate that when death comes, a despatch will bring the duly qualified official to give them absolution and the sacrament, and then the debt of nature may be paid without reluctance, as their peace with God is settled, on the authority of the unalterable laws of the church, of which they are bona fide members and devoted advocates. ”

“ If unbroken succession be the absolute condition of ecclesiastical authority, then the English establishment must either admit the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome, or acknowledge itself guilty of rebellion, and confess that it is wanting in one of the prime essentials of a Christian Church. ”

“ They recognized the visible church, the apostolic succession, the hierarchical order, the sacrifice and sacraments instituted by Christ, and continued the outward show and appearance of conformity to established Catholic usage, and even to the language of the Fathers respecting the mysteries of faith. They were intruded into the possession of the titles, churches, and other temporalities of many of the most important episcopal sees, and sustained in their usurpation by the civil power. ”

“ Like the work of redemption, so also would the church become superfluous, and the state, to which liberalism gives the preference over everything else, would then enter upon its inheritance, and, as in the days of the pagan Cæsars, assert its ascendency even over the spirit. ”

“ The position which all the advocates on this side of the question fail to touch is, shortly, this—that for almost two generations after the separation from Rome, neither the practice nor the theory of the Church of England even suggested a belief in the modern doctrine of Apostolical succession, while many instances occur, as I have already shown, in which it was both neglected in practice and repudiated in theory. ”

“ In ecclesiastical affairs, we see the integrality of the church destroyed under the influence of the Protestant principle of private judgment, one of the first fruits of individuality. We perceive sects gradually subdividing into sects, until, instead of a unity of religious sentiment and a sympathy of religious action under the impulse of a common creed, an innumerable variety of religious denominations came into existence, each embodying different beliefs in diverse articles of faith, and refusing Christian fellowship with the others. ”

“ WHY BRIGGS SECEDED.
In this alleged revelation we have this man teaching lineal Priesthood or the right of succession from father to son. We also have him teaching the literal gathering to Zion of the honest in heart. We will now see what his reasons were for withdrawing from the "Reorganized" Church. ”

“ What gave a wider importance to these measures was their bearing on the general politics of Christendom. The adhesion of England to the Protestant cause came at a moment when Protestantism seemed on the verge of ruin. The confidence of the Lutheran princes in their ability to resist the Emperor had been seen in their refusal of succour from Henry the Eighth. ”

“ Lastly, Irenæus links together the Apostolic Succession and the supernatural guarantee of the Holy Ghost. “Wherefore we ought to obey those presbyters who are in the Church, those who have a succession from the Apostles, as we have shown; who, with the succession of the episcopate, have received according to the good will of the Father the sure gift of truth; but the rest who depart from the principal succession, and assemble in any place whatever, we ought to hold suspected either as heretics and of an evil opinion, or as schismatics and proud, and as men pleasing themselves ”

“ In seeing this exact episcopal succession, this unaltered symbol, this inviolable discipline, these sacraments which Rome herself recognizes, we ask if an error, respecting so long and so well the limits which it traced when it first arose, does not seem like those rocks which an irruption has thrown from their foundations and which remain immovable under the eye and the action of ages? Whilst in the West, Protestantism is unable to create either dogmas or discipline or hierarchy, and floats as a wandering cloud from mind to mind, the East, on the contrary, sees produced the fixity of error. ”

“ Not a single Protestant prince but would be deprived, by this revocation of the religious foundations, of a part of his lands; for where these revenues had not actually been diverted to secular purposes they had been made over to the Protestant church. ”