Beginning with the theory that the _one_ church of God can be divided, which is a contradiction in terms, they claim to be a _branch_ of something that confessedly can have no branches. Then, they are not simply a branch, but a _branch of a branch_. And the branch of which they form part renounces them, and casts them out, but they will not be cast out. Their mother, the Church of England, does not know herself as these her children do. Then, there is one thing they can hang on to the last, even if everything else fails. They were admitted to apostolical ordination by _Barlow_, whom they will have a bishop, though there is no proof whatever that he was one, and while he himself denied the necessity or the virtue of the sacrament of order. “If schism,” as Dr. Newman says, “depends on the mere retention of the Episcopal order, there never was and there never will be a schism,” for bishops are as likely to be corrupted as priests. But the truth is, nobody ever pretended to any apostolical succession in the English Church until the Dissenters became so strong that, out of opposition to them, “a few Anglican prelates began to talk of pretensions which, during several generations, they had treated as a jest and a fable.” “According to Barlow, an English bishop could dispense with orders; and, according to Cranmer, with grace.” There was no pretence of any doctrine of priesthood on the part of the _founders_ of the Church of England, and surely these intelligent men ought to have known what they intended to do. Hooker is one of their greatest defenders, and he expressly denies the necessity of Episcopal ordination. “Being about to appear before God, he sent—not for an Anglican minister—but for his friend Saravia, and accepted from his unconsecrated hands those quasi-sacramental rites which, according to Ritualistic views, he had no power to dispense.” These divines were the faithful interpreters of the mind of their church.