I have spoken quite confidently of the total absence of all support in Scripture for Mr. Newman's favourite doctrine of "the necessity of apostolical succession, in order to ensure the effect of the sacraments." This doctrine is very different from that of the Divine appointment of episcopacy as a form of government, or even from that of the exclusive lawfulness of that episcopacy which has come down by succession from the apostles. Much less is it to be confounded with any notions, however exalted, of the efficacy of the sacraments, even though carried to such a length as we read of in the early church, when living men had themselves baptized as proxies for the dead, and when a portion of the wine of the communion was placed by the side of a corpse in the grave. Such notions may be superstitious and unscriptural, as indeed they are, but they are quite distinct from a belief in the necessity of a human priest to give the sacraments their virtue. And, without going to such lengths as this, men may overestimate the efficacy of the sacraments, to the disparagement of prayer, and preaching, and reading the Scriptures, and yet may be perfectly clear from the opinion which makes this efficacy depend immediately on a human administrator. And so again, men may hold episcopacy to be divine, and the episcopacy of apostolical succession to be the only true episcopacy, but yet they may utterly reject the notion of its being essential to the efficacy of the sacraments. It is of this last doctrine only that I assert, in the strongest terms, that it is wholly without support in Scripture, direct or indirect, and that it does not minister to godliness.