The papists have hitherto insisted on the necessity of successive right ordination; but Voetius _de desperata Causa Papatus_ hath in this so handled them, and confuted Jansenius, as hath indeed showed the desperateness of that cause: and they perceive that the papacy itself cannot be upheld by that way; and therefore Johnson, alias Terret, in his rejoinder against me, now concludeth, that it is not for want of a successive consecration that they condemn the church of England, but for want of true jurisdiction, because other bishops had title to the places whilst they were put in; and that successive consecration (which we take to include ordination) is not necessary to the being of ministry or church. And it is most certain to any man acquainted in church history, that their popes have had a succession of neither. Their way of election hath been frequently changed, sometimes being by the people, sometimes by the clergy, sometimes by the emperors, and lastly by the cardinals alone. Ordination they have sometimes wanted, and a layman been chosen; and oft the ordination hath been by such as had no power according to their own laws. And frequent intercisions have been made, sometimes by many years' vacancy, when they had no church (and so there was none on earth, if the pope be the constitutive head) for want of a pope: sometimes by long schisms, when of two or three popes, no one could be known to have more right than another, nor did they otherwise carry it, than by power at last: sometimes by the utter incapacity of the possessors, some being laymen, some heretics and infidels, so judged by councils at Rome, Constance, Basil; and Eugenius the fourth continued after he was so censured, and condemned, and deposed by the general council. I have proved all this at large elsewhere.