Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/229

Rh and Teachers..... For the three first, some part of their function was temporary and extraordinary; in what was ordinary and perpetual, Bishops succeeded.

We proceed, in the next place, to the constant visibility and succession of Pastors in our Church ..... And here I make him this fair proposal: let him, or any one of his party, produce any one solid argument to demonstrate such a succession of Pastors in the Church of Rome, and I will undertake by the very same argument, to prove a like succession in our Church. Indeed, ..... the Author of the Letter is concerned, no less than we are, to acknowledge such a succession of lawful pastors in our Church, till the time of the Reformation; and if we cannot derive our succession since, it is a hard case. But our records, faithfully kept and preserved, do evidence to all the world an uninterrupted succession of Bishops in our Church, canonically ordained, derived from such persons in whom a lawful power of ordination was seated by the confession of the Papists themselves. For the story of the Nag's Head Ordination is so putid a fable, so often and so clearly refuted by the writers of our Church, that the more learned and ingenuous Papists are now ashamed to make use of it.

.... Unthinking people ... are carried away with mere noise and pretences, and hope these will secure them most against the fears of Popery, who talk with most passion, and with least understanding, against it; whereas no persons do really give them greater advantages than these do. For, where they meet only with intemperate railings, and gross misunderstandings of the state of the controversies between them and us (which commonly go together), the most subtle priests let such alone to spend their rage and fury; and when the heat is over, they will calmly endeavour to let them see how grossly they have been deceived