On the whole, then, the movement in the church, excited by Mr. Newman and his friends, appears to be made in a false direction, and to be incapable of satisfying the feeling which prompted it.  I have not noticed other presumptions against it, arising from the consequences to which the original doctrines of the party have since led, or from certain moral and intellectual faults which have marked the writings of its supporters.  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.