Contours of Conformity 1662-1832: 'They who regularly succeed the Apostles'

On this Ember Wednesday, an extract from Bishop Beveridge's sermon 'Ministers of the Gospel, Christ's Ambassadors'. Beveridge, one of those identified by Hampton as a leading Reformed divine in the post-1662 Church of England, here articulates a key and consistent characteristic of Conformity in the long 18th century: the conviction that the episcopal constitution of the Church of England was an apostolic order. 

This was not a negative judgment on the circumstances of the continental non-episcopal Reformed churches. In another of his sermons, Beveridge refers to "this or any other reformed Church", phrasing which quite clearly refuses any 'unchurching' of non-episcopal churches. Indeed, we might argue that the very confidence Beveridge demonstrates in the constitution of the Church of England allowed for generosity towards non-episcopal Reformed churches. 

Beveridge's sermon, however, does exemplify how the episcopal succession and the Ordinal's bestowal of episcopal orders underpinned a robust confidence in the apostolic nature of the life, ministry, doctrine, and sacraments of the Church of England:

From whence the Apostles clearly understanding that their office was to continue to the end of the world, they took care to confer it upon others, by laying their hands upon them, and so transferring to them of the same Spirit which they had received from Christ, the same way that Moses had done it by God's own appointment to Joshua. And therefore such upon whom they laid their hands, are said to be sent by the Holy Ghost, particularly Paul and Barnabas. And the same St. Paul tells the elders of Ephesus, upon whom he had laid his hands, that the Holy Ghost had made them Bishops or Overseers, and put Timothy in mind of the gift of God which was in him by the laying on of his hands. Thus the Holy Ghost, which the Apostles received immediately from Christ Himself, hath been handed down from them to others, and so to others successively to this day, and will be to the end of the world. And all such on whom they who regularly succeed the Apostles in their whole office, lay their hands with an intention to confer the Holy Ghost, as in the Ordination of Priests among us; they also receive such a measure of it, whereby they are qualified and commissioned to act in Christ's name and stead, in the administration of the Word and Sacraments, as the Apostles themselves did; and therefore are properly Ambassadors for Christ, as they were: and Christ is as really with them, as He was with His first Apostles, in the execution of their office in all ages, according to the promise He made them, of being "with them alway, even unto the end of the world."