Page:(1848) Observations on Church and State- JF Ferrier.pdf/32

32, holding a divine commission, and acting by divine authority, may not be interfered with by the civil power in their management of the church. And if the state admits their doctrine of the apostolical succession, it must and will, upon principle, abstain from invading the supreme spiritual jurisdiction of the priesthood. The state cannot take away an authority which it never gave. It never gave the priests this authority. It admits that in admitting the doctrine of divine ordination. Therefore it cannot take it from them, unless, indeed, the authority be held to be mischievous; but here the state is stopped by its own admission—that it comes from God.

To plead against the Romanists the mere uncertainty of this transmission, is to plead what is very little to the purpose; although a distinguished writer in the Edinburgh Review, whose “contributions” have been lately published in a separate form, has argued, with great force and brilliancy, that there is no evidence that the line of the apostolical succession has come down to the present church of Rome (or England) unimpaired. Be it so: be the historical evidence as defective as it may, we submit that history is not the place in which that evidence must be looked for. It must be looked for in the Bible. If the believer in the Bible is satisfied that it was the clear intention of our Saviour to found an apostolical conveyance, he will also conclude that it has come down to us unbroken; for it is not to be supposed that the declared purposes of God can ever be contravened. This, then, is the question—Was it the Divine intention that an apostolical succession should exist? The unambiguous answer of the church of Rome is, that such was the Divine intention. And, upon the basis of this answer, church and state tower up two separate and independent citadels, ruled by separate and independent governors. The two jurisdictions, and the men who hold them, are parted by the Divine command.

Secondly. We proceed to consider the Protestant theory of church and state.

The equally plain and unambiguous answer of the Protestant church is, that it was not the Divine intention to found and continue an apostolical succession—except in this sense, that all Christian believers are truly the successors of the apostles. The abjuration of the apostolical succession, in the sense in which the