[British Critic, Jan. 1840]
In his recent work on the Apostolic Succession and the English Orders, Mr. Perceval has done us a service which was very much needed, and had never been attempted. Many living writers have treated of the Apostolical Succession as well as he; but no one but he has had the opportunity, and been at the pains, of exhibiting to the general reader the evidence of the fact of the Succession in the English Church. We are referring to the elaborate Appendix to his Volume, in which he has brought together a great number of documents and tables illustrative of some of the more important points in the history of the spiritual descent of our existing bishops and clergy from the Apostles. He begins by enumerating the chief objections which the Roman Catholics have urged against our Succession, as passing through Archbishop Parker and his colleagues, and he lays before us some chief portions of the evidence in its favour, presenting us with the records of Parker’s consecration as contained in the registers at Lambeth and in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and with the offices for consecration and ordination, according to the Antenicene, Eastern, Ancient Western, Coptic, and Queen Elizabeth’s Ritual. Next, he has printed a list of between 400 and 500 English consecrations, from Cranmer and his consecrators, inclusive, down to the present time, containing name, see, date of consecration, and names of consecrators in the case of each bishop. After this we have the respective Episcopal descents of Parker and Pole traced back, by way of contrast, for four steps; by which it appears that the proof from existing records of the transmission of the apostolical commission to Pole, is far less complete than what is producible on the side of Parker. Mr. Perceval next traces up the Episcopal descent of the present Archbishop of Canterbury for four antecedent steps, all the consecrations being in this case known, and finds, to use his own words, that “in transmitting the apostolical commission to the present Archbishop of Canterbury there were, in the first step, four bishops concerned; in the second, twelve; in the third, twenty-seven; in the fourth, about fifty; nearly enough to fill all the English dioceses twice over; so that, not a single consecration here and there, but all the consecrations in England for successive generations, must be supposed to have failed, before the objection can be worthy of consideration, that the failure of the due consecration of any one single bishop in a line would destroy the whole theory.”—P. 218.
Other tables are added; among which not the least interesting is one containing the consecrations of the non-jurors, the last bishop of whom died as lately as 1805.
1.
We do trust and believe that the question of English Orders is now settled once for all. If, indeed, members of our Church again forget the great privilege therein involved, as they have forgotten it in no slight measure more than once, then indeed the whole controversy will have to be run through again, as lately, at a miserable waste of time, labour, and peace. The world will become ignorant of the grounds on which we claim the privilege; and will require fresh discussion upon its nature, its probability, its evidence, and its place in the Anglican system. We hope better things of our Church than to anticipate such an event; and at all events the controversy is at an end for the present. And so our opponents seem to consider; for they evince a disposition to concede to us the Succession “for argument’s sake;” or in other words they find that it is not safe or tenable in argument to deny it, since what they call “for argument’s sake” really means “for their own sake.” But though we have gained this point, it does not follow that we have driven the enemy from the field and put an end to the war. There is another important and difficult post which the Roman party have not yet surrendered, and from which we must dislodge them. Mr. Perceval does scarcely more than refer to it, nor does it properly fall in his way. That our Orders are good in themselves is indisputable; but still they may be given and continued in schism; our Church may be a true but a schismatical branch of the Catholic body, though ever so legitimately descended from the Apostles. She may at present have a bar upon her ordinances, Sacraments as well as Orders, which deprives them of grace, as a son may be really a son yet disinherited, or a man in a fainting fit or in derangement is still a man, yet unable to use his functions. This is a ground which Roman writers have very commonly taken up, and with considerable advantage. Our writers, on the other hand, have not discussed it with the exactness and fulness which it requires at the hands of those who profess to defer to the opinions of the Fathers. We are not unmindful of what our learned champions have done long ago; but every age has its own character, its own mode of stating things, its own exigencies; and cannot use, or at least cannot be content with, the controversial efforts of a former time.