LAX OPINIONS CONCERNING ORDINATION. 207

most uncertain and unsatisfactory sound. As regards current events, he saw around him

strictly conformable to the rules and doctrines of antiquity, it might have been expected that the defenders of the English hierarchy against the first Puritans should take the highest ground, and challenge for the bishops the same unreserved submission, on the same plea of exclusive apostolical prerogative, which their adversaries feared not to insist on for their elders and deacons. It is notorious, however, that such was not in general the line preferred by Jewell, Whitgift, Bishop Cooper, and others, to whom the management of that controversy was intrusted during the early part of Elizabeth's reign. They do not expressly disavow, but they carefully shun, that unreserved appeal to Christian antiquity, in which one would have thought they must have discerned the very strength of their cause to lie. It is enough with them to show that the government by archbishops and bishops is ancient and allowable; they never venture to urge its exclusive claim, or to connect the succession with the validity of the holy Sacraments; and yet it is obvious that such a course of argument alone (supposing it borne out by facts) could fully meet all the exigencies of the case. It must have occurred to the learned writers above mentioned, since it was the received doctrine of the Church down to their days; and if they had disapproved it, as some theologians of no small renown have since done, it seems unlikely that they should have passed it over without some express avowal of dissent; considering that that always wrote with an eye to the pretensions of Rome also, which popular opinion had in a great degree mixed up with this doctrine of apostolical succession. One obvious reason, and probably the chief one, of their silence, was the relation in which they stood to the foreign Protestant congregations. The question had been mixed up with considerations of personal friendship, first by Cranmer's connection with the Lutherans, and after King Edward's death, by the residence of Jewell, Grindal, and others at Zurich, Strasburgh, and elsewhere, in congregations which had given

bishops who one and all did not believe that episcopal ordination was essential, and who possibly had never themselves received it; deans and prebendaries, like Whittingham and Kinge, Alwood and De Saravia, who had received only so-called "ordination" at the hands of presbyters; and numerous churches, as existing evidence proves, served by ministers not ordained at all.* making his able defence of true principles, therefore, he was bound to consider such grave facts, which he, a mere country pastor, had neither power nor opportunity to alter. Nothing that he

In

up the apostolical succession. Thus feelings arose, which came, insensibly, no doubt, but really and strongly, in aid of the prevailing notion that everything was to be sacrificed to the paramount object of union among Protestants."-Rev. J. Keble's Preface to "Works of Richard Hooker," pp. lix. lx. Oxford: 1845.

*

Nearly up to the time when he [Richard Hooker] wrote, numbers had been admitted to the ministry of the Church of England, with no better than Presbyterian ordination, and it appears by Travers's 'Supplication to the Council,' that such was the construction put upon the statute of the 13th of Elizabeth, permitting those who had received orders in any other form than that of the English service-book, on giving certain securities, to exercise their calling in England. If it were really the intention of [the framers and makers of] that act to authorize other than episcopal ordination, it is but one proof more of the low accommodating notions concerning the Church which then prevailed; and may serve to heighten our sense of the imminent risk which we were in of losing the succession."-p. lxxvi. of the Preface by the Rev. John Keble to his edition of Hooker's "Works."

SARAVIA THE CONFESSOR OF HOOKER. 209

could think, write, or say, could undo the mischief already deliberately done. Hooker, consequently, adapted himself to circumstances, there was obviously no other alternative; and though, if his admitted principles were faithfully applied, the fact that episcopal ordination was essential might be reasonably deduced from their acceptance, he not only nowhere so applied them, but actually regarded Dr. Adrian De Saravia* ordained abroad by presbyters, if at all-as one perfectly capable of receiving his death-bed confession, of giving him absolution, and of administering the Lord's Supper. Here is the record :—

"About one day before his death, Dr. Saravia, who knew the very secrets of his soul (for they were supposed to be confessors to each other), came to him, and after a conference of the benefit, the necessity, and safety of the Church's absolution, it was resolved the Doctor should give him both that and the Sacrament the day following. To which end the Doctor came, and after a

* Adrian de Saravia came from Ghent. His father was a Spaniard; his mother from Artois. As is generally allowed, he was never ordained, though he wrote in defence of episcopacy, held a controversy with Beza, and was made a Prebendary of Canterbury. He wrote three remarkable tracts: (1.) "De diversis ministrorum evangelii gradibus "; (2.) "De Honore præsulibus et presbyteris debito"; and (3.) "De sacrilegis et sacrilegorum pœnis."

short retirement and privacy, they two returned to the company, and then the Doctor gave him, and some of those friends, which were with him, the Blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Jesus. Which being performed, the Doctor thought he saw a reverend gaiety in his face." *

Subsequently, the "Reformed" National Church-which, however, had happily retained a belief in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and in two of the Sacraments-began to throw off the heresies and errors of its first founders, and in due course abandoned some of them. For the influence of Hooker has never been lost. The rise of the Caroline school of theologians, often thoroughly Christian, if not quite Catholic; the improvement deliberately made in the Ordinal in 1662, together with the expulsion of the fanatical and unordained; the beneficial influence of Archbishop Sancroft and the later Non-jurors; and, more especially, the great work of reparation and restoration effected because of the Oxford movement of 1833, are all tokens that the Almighty has not forsaken us, but has yet some important work for the Church of England to do, —whether in a day of sunshine and grace, or after

*"Life of Mr. Richard Hooker," p. 85. Keble's edition of his Works. Oxford: 1845.

CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING QUEEN MARY. 211

a period of storm and losses, none can know,when the time for effecting Corporate Reunion, on the solid basis of Authority and Truth, shall in His merciful providence have at length arrived.

CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THE PROPOSED PRIVATE ASSASSINATION OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.

From the "Letter-Books of Sir Amias Poulet," Keeper of the Queen.

"To Sir Amias Poulet.*

"After our hearty commendations, we find by speech lately uttered by Her Majesty that she doth note in you a lack of that care and zeal of her service that she looketh for at your hands, in that you have not in all this time of yourselves (without other provocation) found out some way to shorten the life of that Queen, considering the great peril she is subject unto hourly, so long as

*Hearne's MS. Diary, vol. lxxxv. p. 89. From Gwyn's transcript.