Search -
Vindication of the Episcopal Or Apostolical Succession
Vindication of the Episcopal Or Apostolical Succession Author:John Sinclair Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: canons established from time to time to regulate the appointment, and specify the duties of the three different orders. The most important reference for this pur... more »pose is the book, entitled " Apostolic Canons," which, though not so ancient as the title "Apostolic" would imply, nor as some learned critics have maintained, is nevertheless of great and acknowledged antiquity. That it contains rules of discipline traditionally preserved and gathered from the general practice of the primitive times we are as fully warranted in maintaining, as that the long known declaration of our Faith, called the Apostles' creed, (and which we cannot trace to the Apostles as its authors,) contains a genuine summary of Apostolic doctrine '. CHAPTER III. The evidence advanced in the preceding chapters, both from Scripture and from primitive antiquity, to prove the Apostolic institution of Episcopal Church polity, contains a very small proportion only of the testimonies which might have been brought forward, had this discourse been intended to exhaust the whole subject, and to pursue every topic of inquiry through every possible ramification. But it seems extremely probable that the general reader, already weary of our quotations, or perhaps pronouncing them superabundant, will now be less desirous of further arguments than curious to know by what methods those which we have adduced are replied to, or evaded by our anti-episcopalian brethren. He will now be prepared to ask, what authorities do they appeal to, as of sufficient weight to counterbalance such a host of witnesses ? How can they, without self-condemnation, lift up their voices against the concurrent voice of all antiquity ? or how pretend to understand and explain the constitution of the ancient Church of Christ more cor- t For quotati...« less