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Second Letter to Bishop Hoadly.

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religion. If, as the bishop said, 'to expect the grace of God from any hands but His own was to affront Him,' how could the bishop confirm? When he did so, he ought to warn the candidates that he was only acting according to a custom which had long prevailed against common sense, but that they must not imagine that there was anything in the action more than an useless, empty ceremony. How could he ordain? How could he consecrate the elements in the Lord's Supper? After quoting several texts which speak of grace conferred through the Apostles' hands, Law asks with fine irony, 'Do we not plainly want new Scriptures? Must we not give up the apostles as furious High Church prelates, who aspired to presumptuous claims, and talked of conferring the graces of God by their own hands?' What a superstitious custom it must be to send for a clergyman before death, if there is no difference between sacerdotal prayers and those of a nurse! Eliphaz should have argued that it was a weak and senseless thing, and an affront to God, to think that he could not be blessed without the prayer of Job! Abimelech should have rejected the prayer of Abraham as a mere essay of prophet-craft! It was as absurd for the human hands of Moses or Aaron, or the priests of the sons of Levi, to bless, as for those of the Christian clergy!

After having shown that the clergy were as truly Christ's successors as the apostles were, and that none can despise them but those who despise Him that sent them, Law contends with great energy against the notion that this doctrine ought to terrify the consciences of the laity, or to bring 'the profane scandal of priestcraft upon the clergy.'

'The clergy,' it was said, 'were only men.' Yes, and the prophets were only men, but they insisted upon the authority of their mission. Was it more strange that God should use the weakness of men than that He should use

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Second Letter to Bishop Hoadly.

common bread and wine, and common water, as instruments for conveying His grace? Can God consecrate inanimate things to spiritual purposes, and make them the means of eternal happiness? And is man the only creature that He cannot make subservient to His designs? If it is reasonable to despise the ministry and benedictions of men, because they are men like ourselves, it is surely as reasonable to despise the sprinkling of water, a creature below us, a senseless and inanimate creature. Naaman the Syrian was, on that principle, a wise man when he took the water of Jordan to be only water, as the bishop justly observed that a clergyman was only a man.

Law then shows that the order of the clergy stood on exactly the same footing as the Sacraments and the Scriptures, and that the uncertainty about the succession of the clergy was not greater than about the genuineness of the Scriptures. Both rested upon the same historical evidence. It was said that there is no mention of the apostolical succession in Scripture. But the doctrine upon which it is founded plainly made it unnecessary to mention it. Was it needful for the Scriptures to tell us, that if we take our Bible from any false copy it is not the Word of God? Why, then, need they tell us that if we are ordained by usurping false pretenders to ordination, nor deriving their authority to that end from the apostles, we are no priests?

As a true priest cannot benefit us by administering a false sacrament, so a true sacrament is nothing when it is administered by a false, uncommissioned minister. So, the apostolical benediction pronounced by a priest is not a bare act of charity-one Christian praying for another; but it is the work of a person commissioned by God to bless in His name.

Law then shows that it is no injury to the laity to assert

Second Letter to Bishop Hoadly.

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these claims, 'for,' he says, 'if we are right, they will receive the benefit; if wrong, we shall bear the punishment.' But into what perplexity did the bishop's notions lead the laity! If a layman should pretend to ordain clergymen in the diocese of Bangor, what could its bishop say? He could be answered in his own words; and this was the confusion which the bishop was charged with introducing into the Church.

The bishop's objection that an authoritative absolution must be infallible, might, says Law, be applied with equal force against the administration of the Sacraments, and indeed against the whole Christian religion. As for the clergy claiming such absolving power as to set themselves above God, the bishop might as well have argued against worshipping the sun, for who ever taught that any set of men could absolutely bless or withhold a blessing independent of God? But is the prerogative of God impaired because His own institutions are obeyed? In a word, the clergy are only entrusted with a conditional power, and every means of grace is conditional.

Law then touches upon the crucial text on the Power of the Keys. The bishop had suggested that it might possibly refer only to the power of inflicting and curing diseases. On this principle, replies Law, the text must be explained thus: 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church'-that is, a peculiar society of healthful persons—and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it' —that is, they shall always be in a state of health. 'Whatsoever thou shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven' -that is, on whomsoever thou shall inflict leprosy, for instance, on earth, shall be a leper in heaven; and so forth.

Then follow some strictures upon a passage in which the bishop ran perilously near to denying the Divinity of Christ, and justifying the charge of Socinianism so frequently brought against him. 'Your lordship,' says Law,

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'has rejected all Church authority, and despised the pretended power of the clergy, for this reason: because Christ is the sole King, sole Lawgiver, and Judge in His Kingdom. But, it seems your lordship, notwithstanding, thinks it now time to depose Him.'

Law next makes merry over an objection of Hoadly's against the necessity of Church communion, because it puts the conscientious objector into a dilemma. Does it prove,' he says, 'that Christianity is not necessary because the conscientious Jew may think it is not so? It may as well prove that the moon is no larger than a man's head, because an honest, ignorant countryman may think it no larger. This is a new-invented engine for the destruction of the Church, that if we have but an erroneous conscience the whole Christian dispensation is cancelled.'

The letter ends with a refutation of the old charges of Popery and priestcraft-charges which never failed to tell in those excited times when the Protestant succession was hardly yet secured. But Law was not a man to be frightened by bugbears. If,' he says boldly, 'this doctrine is Popish simply because the Papists hold it as well as us, we own the charge, and are not for being such true Protestants as to give up the Apostles' Creed, or lay aside the sacraments because they are received by the Church of Rome.' And 'if it be a breach upon the layman's liberty, it is only upon such as think the Commandments a burden.' It is difficult to realise now the courage it would require then to utter such matter-of-course sentiments.

To this letter Law added a postscript, answering some objections which the bishop had raised against his first letter, and unfolding at greater length some of the arguments which have already been referred to. The first of these was that the doctrine of an uninterrupted succession is not mentioned in Scripture; neither, replies Law, is it

Third Letter to Bishop Hoadly.

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It is the

expressly stated there that the Scriptures contain all things necessary to salvation, nor that the Sacraments are to be continued in every age of the Church, nor that we are to observe the Lord's Day. But the succession is founded on Scripture, and asserted by the voice of tradition in all ages of the Church. The same Scriptures which made it necessary that Timothy should be sent to Ephesus to ordain priests, because the priests who were there could not ordain, made it equally necessary that Timothy's successors should be the only ordainers. Nor is the Divine Right of Episcopacy founded merely on an apostolical practice which may or may not be binding. nature of the Christian priesthood that it can only be continued in that method which God has appointed for its continuance; and that method is episcopacy. To the objection which has always been the strongest that has been or can be urged against the doctrine, viz., that the uninterrupted succession is so uncertain, that, if it be necessary, no man can say if he be in the Church or not, Law's reply is very powerful. It is, he says, a matter of fact, founded on historical evidence, just like Christianity itself, just like the truths of Scripture. And this very doctrine that none but episcopal succession is valid in every age has been a constant guard upon the succession. It was morally impossible to forge orders or steal a bishopric in any one given age. This is the one reason, and an absolutely sufficient reason, why we believe the Scriptures cannot have been corrupted.

Law's third letter, which is by far the longest of the three, is a reply to the bishop's answer to the representation of the Committee of Convocation. The bishop explained that his description of the Church which had given so much offence applied not to a church but to the invisible Church of Christ.' This explanation called forth some of the most

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