Note 812 — APPENDIX.

Wesley was in good company among Churchmen in his denunciation of the “fable” of the succession. Chillingworth said, “I am fully persuaded there hath been no such succession.” Bishop Stillingfleet declares that “this succession is as muddy as the Tiber itself.” Bishop Hoadley asserts, “It hath not pleased God, in his providence, to keep up any proof of the least probability, or moral possibility, of a regular uninterrupted succession; but there is a great appearance, and, humanly speaking, a certainty to the contrary, that the succession hath often been interrupted.” Archbishop Whately says “there is not a minister in all Christendom who is able to trace up, with approach to certainty, his spiritual pedigree.”