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by all true Christians, for the very same reasons which led them to reverence those who appointed them?
J.—They would so, no doubt. As long as a direct line was continued from the Apostles themselves onwards, all consistent Christians must have paid them reverence. And such a succession might have gone on for a long while,—an hundred years or more.
Dr.—What if it have now gone on for eighteen hundred years? What if, by the good providence of God, the line which began with the Apostles Peter and Paul should have continued even to this very day? so that there are men who stand in the place of the holy Saints and Martyrs of Scripture up to this very hour, under the great and eternal Head of the Church? You look surprised, but such is the fact; and if such persons do really exist, and if we find one community of Christians acknowledging, and obeying, and ruled by them, while every other body of professing Christians in our island disclaims and rejects them, you will see that this test will enable the most simple-minded and unlearned person to discriminate between the true Church of Christ and the unauthorized sects which call themselves Christ's followers now, almost as clearly as he could, had He lived in the days of the Apostles themselves.
J.—Yes; the body of Christians, which reverences and is guided by the successors of the Apostles must be the true Church of Christ. But who are these successors of the Apostles in our country? though, to be sure, I think I know that answer you will give me.
Dr.—The Bishops of the Church of England are they. There is not one of them who cannot trace his right to guide and govern Christ's Church, and to ordain its Ministers, through a long line of predecessors, up to the favoured persons who were consecrated by the laying on of the holy hands of St. Peter and of St. Paul. This is a fact which dissenters from the Church of England do not, and cannot, deny: nor do they profess that the authority of those, whom they call their ministers, to teach and to administer the Sacraments, rests at all on such grounds as these.
J.—l understand you. Sir; but I have one remark to make, if you will please to hear it. Bishops do not work miracles, as the Apostles did; nor can you mean that we are to look upon their
