Many and earnest were the debates on this point, at Trent, in the year 1562: the Papal Legates labouring, on the one hand, to enforce a declaration that Episcopal authority was not of divine right immediately, but mediately through the See of Rome, the Bishops of Spain more especially, insisting on the contrary tenet. The matter was quieted by a kind of compromise through the intervention of the French Bishops, and is accordingly left undecided in the decrees of that Council. The debates, however, remain on record, a remarkable proof that the spirit of Popery, as of all Anti-Christian corruptions, shrinks back, as it were instinctively, from the presence of Apostolical principles of order.
If any one ask, "Why should all this be so? What has the Episcopal succession to do with doctrines, with the doctrine of our Lord's Incarnation more especially, the answer has been partly given in the course of this brief sketch, especially in what related to Geneva, But, in general, the following considerations would appear to suffice.
First, as matter of direct argument, when once men have learned to think slightly of the testimony borne by the ancients to the primitive discipline, they will naturally lose some part of their respect for the testimony borne by the same ancients to the primitive interpretation of Scripture. Now the questions between us and Unitarians are, in a great measure, questions of Scripture interpretation. Is it not clear, then, in how great additional jeopardy we place the irreverent and the wavering, when, from whatever cause, we shake their confidence in the express testimony of the early Fathers?
Secondly, Looking at the whole subject as matter not of argument, but of feeling and temper: boldness and self-sufficiency in dealing with those who came next to the Apostles will prepare the mind to lay aside some portion of that deference with which we should approach the holy Apostles themselves. They and their writings will be treated more and more with a sort of hasty familiarity: inspiration will be less and less thought of; and then, should either heresy become fashionable, or the man be
