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of your links, and compel every reasonable mind to doubt as to the reality of your succession. Even a doubt on such a point is fatal to all the claims of your Church."
Yet you, Sir, can have no "doubt upon this point;" and still you are raising a doubt in the minds of the ignorant and unwary; and countenancing the only pretext of the Church of Rome to deny us the character of a true Church. Your jest again imposed hard laws upon you.
Again; a lay writer in the tracts had said,
"Ordination, or, as it is called in the case of bishops, consecration, though it does not precisely come within our definition of a sacrament, is nevertheless a rite partaking, in a high degree, of the sacramental character, and it is by reference to the proper sacraments that its nature can be most satisfactorily illustrated."
Now this statement is made, not to exalt the priesthood, (although, if we duly "magnified our office," it were to be hoped, that it would be exercised more earnestly,) but to meet the common-place objection to the transmission of orders by a regular unbroken succession from the Apostles, viz., that some of the bishops, through whom they were transmitted, may have been imholy men. Now the case of the "proper sacraments" does illustrate this; for since we hold that "the effect of Christ's ordinance is not taken away by the wickedness of evil men," even though they "have chief authority in the ministration of the word and sacraments," forasmuch as "the sacraments be effectual, because of Christ's institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men," (Art. xxvi.), we cannot consistently object, à priori, to the grace of ordination being conveyed down, by virtue of our Lord's institution, even through the hands of evil men. In the words of the layman, (shortly following your extract,) p. 10.
