Extracts from "Sikes on Parochial Communion" relating to Episcopacy, and the sin of Schism — A Closer Reading

her had sent the Son with power to send others: so, therefore, did our Lord send His Apostles, and promised to be with them to the end of the world, that is with His Church, which they should erect and continue by a regular succession: this promise itself necessarily including the notion of a Church. Vain, then, is the objection of those who pretend that the Apostles’ authority ended with their natural lives, and that Christians since their days are left to model the form of Church government as they please.

But the succession, it is said, has been interrupted, what then becomes of the validity of the bishop’s authority, and consequently of the authority of all his acts and ordinations?

To this it may be replied, that the instances which have been adduced for this purpose are no evidence of an interrupted _succession_, but, at most, are either interruptions in the _evidence_ of the succession (which is quite a different thing), or mere cases of competition between persons contending for and alternately possessing the same dignity, equally qualified, as far as their spiritual descent is concerned, to transmit the legitimate episcopal character.

Now to allege a mere interruption of this sort, is only to allege that you know nothing of the succession during a certain period of time, which you call an interruption; and such an interruption of _historical evidence_ cannot invalidate the succession. But since the succession is found to recur at certain dates, and to be carried on without any proof, nay, without any surmise, of a spurious descent during that time when we are not able to name the persons, it may be legitimately assumed that all was regular and right; for if there had been any important defect, enemies enough would have been found to triumph in the discovery, and those public records (the ornament and security of the Church) would, long ere this, have been made the sport of infidels and schismatics.

Separatists may possibly urge an argument from their numbers with success in an age unaccountably regardless of the advice of Job, “Enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers: for we are but of yesterday, and know nothing.”

But turn to the Sacred Scriptures, to the fathers, to the early historians, even to those of modern date, and you find that the anti-episcopalian cause comes not recommended either by numbers or antiquity. The first appointed Church with regular episcopacy was that at Jerusalem, of which place St. James was constituted bishop. This is plainly and unanimously testified by the ancient fathers and historians of the Church; the sacred history in a great measure, though not directly, proves the same.

St. Paul, three years after his conversion, went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, “but other Apostles saw he none,” says he, “but James the brother of our Lord.” St. Jerome says this was James the first Bishop of Jerusalem. This is mentioned for the notice of those who may have taken up an opinion that bishops were appointed only when schisms began to shew the necessity of the order, and degrade it almost to a human invention; and if any further demonstration be required, we must have recourse to the testimony of the primitive fathers, those eminent men who immediately succeeded the Apostles; but in the writings of these holy men we find such abundant proof for the Divine authority of bishops, that it is difficult to know how to select, or where to end. From the Apostles thus descending to their successors, some of whom conversed with them and were their disciples, we find that the succession of bishops and the government of the Church by them still prevailed wherever the Gospel was planted.