But for this what are their authorities? Can they allege the most ancient Fathers in unbroken succession from the Apostles? Nay, they candidly confess that the Fathers thought external and visible unity simply and absolutely necessary, and not those only of the fourth and fifth century, but those of the second and third. Witness Vitringa,[61] who says, "If we consult on this point the doctors of the ancient Christian Church, they seem on all hands to have embraced the view that the communion of believers in holy rites, in the supper of the Lord, and in reciprocal offices of brotherly love, was maintained absolutely, not hypothetically. They supposed, and seem to have persuaded themselves, that all who were joined to the Christian Church by the due rite of baptism after previous preparation, were really regenerated by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and so that the Christian Church was an assembly of men, who in far greater part, saving hypocrites, of whom a few might exist in secret, participated in the renewing and sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, to be joined to the Church was much the same as being joined to the heavenly city. To have one's name on the Church's books, much the same as to have it in God's book of life. On the other hand, to be severed from Church communion, or to use Tertullian's words, "to be deprived of the sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord, and to be debarred from all brotherly communion," was to risk salvation, and incur the danger of eternal death. That is, they supposed that no one was saved out of the external communion of the Church, which they confounded with the mystical and spiritual communion of the Saints. And again, kindred points to these, and resting on the same principle, that bishops represent the office and person of Jesus Christ Himself in the Christian Church; that those who separated themselves from them when rightly and duly elected, separated themselves at the same time from the communion of Christ Himself. That those who were absolved by the bishops after penance publicly performed according to the canons of ecclesiastical discipline, restored to their rank, and honoured with the kiss of peace, were absolved in the heavenly court by God Himself, and Christ the Judge. Lastly, which was the most[62] _audacious_ of all such hypotheses, that it was all over with the salvation of all who separated themselves in schism from the external communion of the Church and its rites, although hitherto they had neither been tainted with heresy, nor involved in crimes destructive of the Christian[63] profession. It would be easy for me to support at length each one of these particulars by the sentiments and the discipline of the doctors of the primitive Church, were they unknown to the more instructed, or did my purpose allow it. I now only appeal to Cyprian's letter to Magnus, in the whole of which He supposes and urges the very hypotheses which I have been