THE OXFORD MOVEMENT [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Archbishop
Laud so constantly denied the fact of the Apostolic Succession as invented by the Council of Trent for the first time since Cyprian's theory was destroyed by the Fathers and now revived by the Oxford Movement, that I ant
surprised at your correspondent disputing my statement.
Laud and the Fathers were Protestant Catholics all along the line. Hence the Prayer Book accepts an appeal to the Fathers as well as the Bible in all its formularies and the Articles, which last were originally drawn up on Melancthon's first
drafts, and he invariably appealed to the consensus quinque- saeeularis. I now quote Laud : " I do not find any one of the ancient Fathers that makes local, personal, visible and continued Succession a necessary sign or mark of the true Church in any one place. And where Vincentius Lirinensis calls' for Antiquity, Universality and Consent as great notes of truth he hath not one word of Succession. . . . Most evident it is that the Succession which the Fathers meant is not tied to place or person but it hi tied to the verity of Doctrine. . . . So that if the Doctrines be no kin to Christ all the Suc- cession become strangers, what nearness Beaver they pretend !" —(Archbishop Laud, Conference with Fisher the Jesuit," Works, Vol. II, pp. 42, 44.) May I commend to your readers Bishop John Wordsworth of Salisbury's Ordination Problems (S.P.C.K., 1910, price Is.), which I defy the S.P.C.K. to reprint this centenary year of the
Oxford Movement See also Bishop Headlam's second
edition of his Bampton Lectures, preface of sixteen pages against Gore ; Bishop Robertson of Exeter's Regnum Dei, quoting even Cardinal Hergenriither ; Archdeacon Hunkin's Episcopal Ordinations (Helier, Cambridge, price 2s.). The Oxford Movement will have no supporters at all if these books get abroad, for the new theory of the Apostolic Succession
was " the first plank " in that Movement's " platform."—I
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