distinguished by a more or less strong maintenance of the doctrine of apostolical succession. On this subject no one speaks with more authority, no one represents more clearly or more fully the doctrine held by the High Churchmen of his time than Bishop Beveridge—a man as remarkable for the extent of his acquirements as for the sanctity of his life and conversation. He thus lays it down in his published sermon on Christ's presence with His ministers :—

"In the first place," he writes, "I observe how much we are all bound to acknowledge the goodness, to praise, magnify, and adore the name of the Most High God, in that we were born and bred, and still live in a Church wherein the apostolical line hath, through all ages, been preserved entire, there having been a constant succession of such bishops in it as were truly and properly successors to the apostles, by virtue of that apostolic imposition of hands which, being begun by the apostles, hath been continued from one to another ever since their time down to ours. By which means the same Spirit which was breathed by our Lord into his apostles, is together with their office transmitted to their lawful successors, the pastors and governors of our Church at this time."

Closely connected with the doctrine of apostolical succession, and, in fact, a logical deduction from it, as being necessary to give efficiency to it, was the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, which is thus nakedly affirmed by the same high authority in the thirty-fifth sermon of his published works :-

"As baptizing necessarily implies the use of water, so

our being made thereby disciples of Christ as necessarily implies our partaking of His Spirit; for all that are baptized, and so made the disciples of Christ, are thereby made members of His body; and are therefore said to be baptized into Christ (Rom. vi. 5; Gal. iii. 27).

"But they who are in Christ, members of His body, must needs partake of the Spirit that is in Him, their head. Neither doth the Spirit of Christ only follow upon but certainly accompanies the sacrament of baptism when duly administered according to His institution. For as St. Paul saith, 'By one spirit we are all baptized into one body' (1 Cor. xii. 13). So that in the very act of baptism, the Spirit unites us unto Christ, and makes us members of His body; and if of His body then of his Church and kingdom, that being all His body. And therefore all who are rightly baptized with water, being at the same time baptized with the Holy Ghost, and so born of water and the Spirit, they are ipso facto admitted into the kingdom of God established upon earth, and, if it be not their own fault, will as certainly attain to that which is in heaven."

Such was, at the period of which we are treating, and has been at all times, with more or less precision of statement, the doctrine of the High Church or orthodox party, which has probably all along, and especially during the reigns of Charles II. and James II., comprehended the great majority of the clergy of the Church of England, and a very large proportion of her laity.

When pressed to reconcile this position with their

adhesion to the Reformation and his repudiation of the Roman Catholic Church, Beveridge thus replied, and in doing so expressed not his own opinions only, but also the views of his High Church brethren generally :

"When this our English Church, through long communion with the Roman Church, had contracted like stains with her, from which it was necessary that it should be cleansed, they who took the excellent and very necessary work in hand, fearing that they, like others, might rush from one extreme to another, removed indeed those things, as well as doctrines and ceremonies, which the Roman Church had newly and insensibly superinduced, and, as was fit, abrogated them utterly. Yet notwithstanding, whatsoever things had been at all times believed and observed by all churches, in all places those things they most religiously took care not so to abolish with them, for they well know, that all particular churches are to be formed on the model of the Universal Church, according to the general and received rule of ethics, 'every form which agreeth not with its whole is therein base.' Hence, therefore, these first reformers of this particular Church directed the whole line of the Reformation which they undertook, according to the rule of the whole or Universal Church, casting away those things which had been either unheard of or rejected by the Universal Church, but most religiously retaining those which they saw, on the other side, corroborated by the consent of the Universal Church; whence it hath been brought to pass, that although we

have not communion with the Roman nor with certain other particular Churches as at this day constituted, yet have we abiding communion with the Universal and Catholic Church, of which evidently ours, as by the aid of God first constituted, and by his pity still preserved, is the perfect image and representation."

The doctrines thus concisely and distinctly stated we shall meet with frequently in the future course of this history. Though sometimes unpopular and sometimes held back, they have in all times been maintained with more or less distinctness and boldness, not only by High Churchmen, but also by many of those who belong to the Evangelical or Low Church party.*. The answer made to them by the Puritans was in effect this. If the doctrine of apostolical succession be true, it is of all doctrines the most essential to be maintained, and it would not have been allowed to remain in the uncertainty that now rests upon it, but every link in the chain of succession would have been placed altogether beyond the possibility of doubt or dispute by the good providence of God.

It is impossible to imagine a more distinct assertion of the doctrine of apostolical succession than those found in the passages above quoted or referred to; and I believe these doctrines were never repudiated by the members of the Evangelical party either before the publication of these passages or after. The fact is indisputable; and the reader of Stanley's life of Dr. Arnold will doubtless remember that he attributed the rapid

* See quotation from H. Melvill, p. 6.

spread of Tractarianism in a great degree to the support and encouragement which the dogma of apostolical succession received from the Evangelicals. In fact, the Tractarian movement, as any one who studies its history may see, had its origin among men who belonged originally to the Evangelical party, and who were contributors to the Record newspaper, which at that time represented the small remnant of earnestness which was then to be found in the Church. Newman's Apologia pro vita sua clearly shows that so far as a mind so active and independent as his could be brought to deliver itself up to the bondage of party, Newman began by attaching himself to the Evangelical party. And it was only when the publication of the celebrated Oxford Tracts forced their authors and followers to adopt more definite views and statements that a wide gulf was fixed between the Evangelical party, which had then passed its zenith and was hastening to its decline, and the Tractarian party, which was rising above the horizon and making its influence to be felt through the kingdom. In process of time, the contrast between the two parties came to be distinctly accentuated, and, as we shall see, while the Tractarian party pressed the doctrine of apostolical succession more and more recklessly to all its logical consequences, the Evangelical party, in their general recoil from Tractarianism, receded more and more from this its fundamental tenet, and in their dread of Tractarianism renounced doctrines which their leaders had hitherto regarded as essential. And, indeed, this doctrine, though it has been a rallying point