derness of quibbles and qualifications, some
simple points emerge. What he was doing was to deprive the priesthood of
claims to supernatural authority that he might vindicate for civil
government the right to preserve itself not less against persons in
ecclesiastical office than against civil assailants. To do so he is
forced to deny that the miraculous powers of Christ and the Apostles
descended to their successors. For if that assumption is made we grant
to fallible men privileges which confessedly belong to persons outside
the category of fallibility. And, exactly in the fashion of Leslie in
the _Regale_ he goes on to show that if a Church is a supernatural
institution, it cannot surrender one jot or tittle of its prerogative.
It is, in fact, an _imperium in imperio_ and its conflict with the state
is inevitable. But if the Church is not a supernatural institution, what
is its nature? Hoadly here attacks the doctrine which lies at the basis
of all ecclesiastical debate. The Church, he claims, is not a visible
society, presided over by men who have authority directly transmitted by
Christ. There are not within it "viceregents who can be said properly to
supply his place; no interpreters upon whom his subjects are absolutely
to depend; no judges over the conscience or religion of his people. For
if this were so that any such absolute viceregent authority, either for
the making of new laws, or interpreting old ones, or judging his
subjects, in religious matters, were lodged in any men upon earth, the
consequence would be that what still retains the name of the Church of
Christ would not be the kingdom of Christ, but the kingdom of those men
invested with such authority. For whoever hath such an authority of
making laws is so far a king, and whoever can add new laws to those of
Christ, equally obligatory, is as truly a king as Christ himself. Nay,
whosoever hath an absolute authority to interpret any written or spoken
laws, it is he who is truly the lawgiver to all intents and purposes,
and not the person who first wrote and spoke them."

The meaning is clear enough. What Hoadly is attacking is the theory of a
visible Church of Christ on earth, with the immense superstructure of
miracle and infallibility erected thereon. The true Church of Christ is
in heaven; and the members of the earthly society can but try in a
human, blundering way, to act with decency and justice. Apostolic
succession, the power of excommunication,