have ever declared my opinion to be, that Episcopus et Presbyter gradu tantum differunt non ordine, and consequently that in places where Bishops cannot be had, the ordination by Presbyters standeth valid; yet, on the other hand, holding as I do that a Bishop hath superiority in degree above a Presbyter, you may easily judge that the Ordination made by such Presbyters as have severed themselves from those Bishops unto whom they had sworn canonical obedience, cannot possibly, by me, be excused from being schismatical. And howsoever I must needs think that the Churches which have no Bishops are thereby become very much defective in their government, and that the Churches in France, who living under a Popish power, can not do what they would, are more excusable in this defect than the Low Countries, that live under a free State, yet, for the testifying my Communion with these Churches (which I do love and honour as true members of the Church Universal) I do profess that, with like affection, I should receive the blessed Sacrament at the hands of the Dutch Ministers, if I were in Holland, as I should do at the hands of the French Ministers if I were in Charentone." (Judgment of the late Archbishop of Armagh, etc. By N. Bernard. Lond., 1657, 8 vo., pp. 125, 127.) If now, we examine

I

In addition to this explicit acknowledgment of the validity of Presbyterian Ordination on the part of this most distinguished scholar and prelate, we call attention to his no less explicit statement that a Bishop differs from a Presbyter merely in Grade or Office-not in Order. In fact, it is because they are one in "Order" that he asserts the ordination by Presbyters is valid, and the Sacraments administered at their hands efficacious.

the works of the more exclusive Churchmen who wrote at the time of, and soon after the Restoration, we find that they, like their predecessors, held the same opinion as to the limits of the Holy Catholic Church, and the validity of non-episcopal ordination. Of all the members of the Committee to whom was entrusted the Revision of 1662, we are informed, by High Churchmen themselves, that none contributed more to the result than Cosin of Durham. Cosin, we are told, was "the most learned ritualist of the day," and was conspicuously the leader of those advocating a more stringent measure concerning submission to Episcopal authority, as Baxter was the leader of the Presbyterian party. It was because "Cosin had brought with him a copy of the Prayer Book as it stood after the Revision of James I., with his own notes, on which he had expended the labour of forty years, as against the proposed Prayer Book of the Presbyterians on which Baxter had expended fourteen days, that the Commission was able to proceed so rapidly with its work. If any one man, therefore, was competent to reflect the attitude of the Episcopal party in this matter, it was Cosin, to whose judgment upon disputed points with the Presbyterians, they were generally ready to defer. Yet, at that time, and to the very end of his life, Cosin recognized the non

1 Hore's Hist. Ch. of England, pp. 367, 368. He also tells us that: "At the Revision of 1662, as many as 600 alterations, mostly verbal, and of no importance from a doctrinal point of view, are said to have been made." (Id., p. 368.) Wherever we look the evidence is the same, no doctrine or essential practice of the Church was touched by the Revisers of 1662.

episcopal bodies as true Churches, admitted the validity of Presbyterian Ordination, and even went so far as to assert that this view was not his private opinion merely, but the official view of the Church of England. "Though we may safely say and maintain it," says he, "that their Ministers are not so duly and rightly ordained as they should be. yet that, by reason of this defect, there is a total nullity in their ordinations, or that they be therefore no Priests or Ministers of the Church at all, because they are ordained by those only who are no more but Priests and Ministers among them; for my part, I would be loath to affirm and determine it against them. And I love not to be herein more wise or harder than our own Church is, which because it hath never publicly condemned and pronounced the ordinations of the other Reformed Churches to be void, as it doth not those of the unreformed Churches, neither among the Papists," etc. I dare not

All

take upon me to condemn or determine a nullity of their own ordinations against them. . Of this opinion and judgment in old time were (here follows a long list of authorities who support his view). which authors are of so great credit with you and me, that though we are not altogether of their mind, yet we would be loath to let the world see that we contradict them all, and condemn their judgment openly; as needs we must, if we hold the contrary, and say that the Ministers of the Reformed French Churches for want of Episcopal Ordination, have no order at all. If the Church and Kingdom of England have acknowledged them (as they did in admitting them

when they fled thither for refuge, and placing them by public authority in divers of the most eminent cities among us without prohibition) why should we, that are but private persons, utterly disclaim their communion in their own country.' (Letter to Cordel, 1650, who is protesting that the French Churches "have no Priests." The whole letter is given by Basire and Bishop Fleetwood, and is cited, in part, by Goode, who adds that "similar statements are expressed by him (Cosin) in a Letter published by Dr. R. Watson (1684) and 'also in his last Will inserted in the Preface to his Regni Angliae Relig. et Gubern. Eccles. Lond. 1729, 4to.'" Now if these words do not furnish conclusive proof of the truth of our position, we hardly think that any evidence would be sufficient to convert our "Catholic" brethren. The truth is we could hardly invent testimony that would be more favourable or that would more completely cover every disputed point. He testifies (a) to his own personal attitude toward the question of the validity of their Orders, (b) to the official attitude of the Church of England herself, both before his day, and in his day, (c) to the fact that these bodies are (not only Churches) but "Reformed Churches" as opposed to the "Un-reformed Churches" of the Papists, (d) to what was the opinion of a long list of eminent authorities in ancient days on the question of the validity of non-episcopal ordination; and all this testimony, adduced in condemnation of the private opinion of Cordel (which was synonymous with the "Catholic" view of to-day) is first published in

1650-shortly before the Restoration, repeated again after the Restoration, and all by a man who was not only one of the Revisers, but, generally regarded as the leader of the Revisers, the brains of the Commission. Again we find that Archbishop Sancroft, another member of the Committee on Revision (1662), whom Macaulay describes as "an honest, pious, narrow-minded man," we find that even he could exhort the Clergy of his Province (1688) to pray for "the universal blessed union of all Reformed Churches both at home and abroad against our common enemies" in order that "all they who do confess the Holy Name of our dear Lord, and do agree in the truth of His Holy Word (that is to say-the whole Catholic Church; vide words of Prayer Book) may also meet in one Holy Communion, and live in perfect unity and godly love." (D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, i., p. 325.) Still more important is the testimony of Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul's, a non-juror like Sancroft, for not only is he still more explicit in voicing his own personal recognition of the nonepiscopal Churches and their Orders, but he tells us in so many words that such was the view of the Church of England at the time he was writing, which was after the Restoration and the amendments of 1662. "I do allow Episcopacy," says he, "to be an Apostolical institution, and the truly ancient and Catholic government of the Church, of which more hereafter; but yet in this very book I prove industriously and at large that, in case of necessity, when Bishops cannot be had, a Church may be a truly Catholic