no firm conviction of their truth. Of the
third class are those by which we receive the sacred books as genuine,
and which command belief from their universal prevalence, their strong
inherent probability, and perfect consonance with the contents of the
books themselves. It will be easily anticipated from what we have said,
that we reject those traditions which corroborate the claims of the
Roman Catholic Church to a special divine commission; since such
traditions are in opposition to what we recognize as the spirit of the
Gospel, and unsanctioned by the conduct of the Apostles, especially of
Peter. Rejecting these traditions, we hold the opinion suggested by the
record of the Acts of the Apostles, that their special commission
expired with themselves; that apostolical ordination was a temporary
institution; and that the special influence of the Holy Spirit was
designed to be a temporary sanction.

The church of England appears to us to merit the censure and even the
ridicule cast upon her by the Roman Catholic Church for the
inconsistency of her institutions with the principle on which she
professes to act,--the principle of the Reformation,--that the Bible
alone is the religion of Protestants. Catholics and protestants
Dissenter join in challenging her to produce from the Bible the grounds
of the practice, among others, of episcopal ordination; including, as it
does, the declaration of the regular transmission of the office, with
its peculiar gifts of the Spirit, from the times of St Peter till the
present day. Rejecting, as she does, the ecclesiastical traditions on
which the Catholics depend, and unable as she is to adduce authority
from the Scriptures to which Dissenters appeal, she has no alternative
but to own the practice ungrounded, or to adduce some third authority,
hitherto unheard of.

Some of the most objectionable forms of ordination for Christian
pastorship were, notwithstanding, retained by various denominations of
Dissenters long after their separation from the Church of England, and
are still partially held; but Unitarians have altogether relinquished
the conception that the teachers of the Gospel are peculiarly qualified
for their office otherwise than by their voluntary devotion to it, and
by those natural means of study, reflection and prayer which their duty
requires them strenuously to employ.

We conceive that the Church of England has been led into the
inconsistency mentioned above by conce