s. It is enough to say, that the movement originated in
minds highly prejudiced beforehand, and under the immediate influence of
passion and fear; that its doctrines, as a whole, resemble the teaching
of no set of writers entitled to respect, either in the early church, or
in our own; that they tend, not to Christ's glory, or to the advancement
of holiness, but simply to the exaltation of the clergy; and that they
are totally unsupported by the authority of Scripture. They are a plant,
therefore, which our heavenly Father has not planted; a speaking in the
name of the Lord what the Lord has not commanded; hay and stubble,
built upon the foundation of Christ, which are good for nothing but to
be burned.

I have spoken quite confidently of the total absence of all support in
Scripture for Mr. Newman's favourite doctrine of "the necessity of
apostolical succession, in order to ensure the effect of the
sacraments." This doctrine is very different from that of the Divine
appointment of episcopacy as a form of government, or even from that of
the exclusive lawfulness of that episcopacy which has come down by
succession from the apostles. Much less is it to be confounded with any
notions, however exalted, of the efficacy of the sacraments, even though
carried to such a length as we read of in the early church, when living
men had themselves baptized as proxies for the dead, and when a portion
of the wine of the communion was placed by the side of a corpse in the
grave. Such notions may be superstitious and unscriptural, as indeed
they are, but they are quite distinct from a belief in the necessity of
a human priest to give the sacraments their virtue. And, without going
to such lengths as this, men may overestimate the efficacy of the
sacraments, to the disparagement of prayer, and preaching, and reading
the Scriptures, and yet may be perfectly clear from the opinion which
makes this efficacy depend immediately on a human administrator. And so
again, men may hold episcopacy to be divine, and the episcopacy of
apostolical succession to be the only true episcopacy, but yet they may
utterly reject the notion of its being essential to the efficacy of the
sacraments. It is of this last doctrine only that I assert, in the
strongest terms, that it is wholly without support in Scripture, direct
or indirect, and that it does not minister to godliness.

In truth, Mr. Newman and his friends are well aware that the Scripture
will not sup