of Christian truth and privilege. While all who "hold the Head" stand
fast in one spirit, they are not all enrolled as members of one
ecclesiastical body, or subject to the authority of one earthly ruler.
Their citizenship is in heaven; not in Rome or in any city of this
world. The claim asserted by the Bishops of Rome to be infallible
representatives of Christ and exclusive possessors of the keys of the
kingdom of heaven, to whom all men owe allegiance, and whose decrees and
discipline cannot be questioned without sin, has no support in
Scripture, which, while it enjoins unity of spirit, never prescribes
uniformity of organisation.

What the Romanist claims for the Pope is virtually claimed for the
Church by some who reject Papal authority. By the Church they mean one
visible body of Christians under the same ecclesiastical constitution
and government, and they maintain that the right to expound with
authority the will of God is vested in this body, and that private
judgment must be subordinated to its decisions. To constitute the Church
they say there must be bishops at its head, ordained by men whose
ecclesiastical orders have come down from apostolic times in unbroken
succession. Without this apostolical succession, it is affirmed, there
can be no Church, no true ordination, no valid or effectual
administration of sacraments.

Such a definition of the Catholic Church excludes from participation in
the ordinary means of grace the whole body of Presbyterians, nearly all
the Protestant Churches of Europe, and all who refuse to admit direct
transmission of orders from the Apostles as a primary condition of the
Church's existence. Carried to its logical conclusion, it would exclude
even those who maintain it; for all attempts to trace back a continuous
and complete series of ordinations from modern times to the apostolic