Wesley Corpus

But to turn the tables: I said, 'If the Romish bishops do.' For this I absolutely deny. I deny that the Romish bishops came down by uninterrupted succession from the Apostles. I never could see it proved; and I am persuaded I never shall. But unless this is proved, your own pastors on your principles are no pastors at all. But farther: it is a doctrine of your Church that the intention of the administrator is essential to the validity of the sacraments which are administered by him. Now, are you assured of the intention of every priest from whom you have received the Host? If not, you do not know but what you received as the sacrament of the altar was no sacrament at all. Are you assured of the intention of the priest who baptized you? If not, perhaps you are not baptized at all. To come close to the point in hand: if you pass for a priest, are you assured of the intention of the bishop that ordained you? If not, you may happen to be no priest, and so all your ministry is nothing worth: nay, by the same rule he may happen to be no bishop. And who can tell how often this has been the case? But if there has been only one instance in a thousand years, what becomes of your uninterrupted succession? This ad hominem. But I have a word more ad rem. Can a man teach what he does not know? Is it possible a man should teach others what he does not know himself? Certainly it is not. Can a priest, then, teach his hearers the way to heaven marked out in our Lord's Sermon on the Mount if he does not know or understand the way himself? Nothing is more impossible. But how many of your priests know nothing about it! What avails, then, their commission to teach what they cannot teach, because they know it not? Did God, then, send these men on a fool's errand? send them to do what they cannot do? O say not so! And what will be the event of their attempting to teach they know not what? Why, 'if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit.'