to be read by all, and which, therefore, as Dr. Randolph says, "may be relied on as containing the final and decided opinion of our Reformers, approved in the general by the Church at large," says (Defence, part ii., Works, p. 202): "Is it so horrible a heresy, as he (Harding) maketh it, to say, that by the Scriptures of God a bishop and a priest are all one?" Having quoted from Chrysostom, Hierome, Augustine, and Ambrose, he proceeds thus: "All these and other more holy Fathers, together with St. Paul the Apostle, for thus saying, by Mr. Harding's advice, must be holden for heretics."

But we need not labour the proof about Jewel, seeing how he has been surrendered, and with how much contumely, by the representative Tractator, Hurrell Froude, Remains : "Jewel was what you (the Oxford Tractmen) in these days call an irreverent Dissenter. His Defence of his Apology disgusted me more than almost any work I ever read. He laughs at the Apostolical Succession both in principle and as a fact; and says that the only succession worth having is the succession of Doctrine."

Hooker, in opposing the exclusive claims for the divine right of Presbyterianism, never once denies the validity of Presbyterian Orders, or sets himself to establish the divine right of Episcopacy. See Books III. V. and VII. for the following quotations and much more to same effect: "The clergy are either presbyters or deacons." "There may be sometimes very just and sufficent reason to allow ordination made without a bishop." "He which affirmeth speech to be necessary amongst all men throughout the world, doth not thereby import that all men must necessarily speak one kind of language; even so the necessity of polity and regiment in all churches may be held, without holding any one certain form to be necessary in them all." "Let them (bishops) continually bear in mind, that it is rather the force of custom, whereby the Church, having so long found it good to continue under the regiment of her virtuous bishops, doth still uphold, maintain, and honour them in that respect, than that any such true and heavenly law can be showed, by the evidence whereof it may of a truth appear, that the Lord Himself hath appointed presbyters for ever to be under the regiment of bishops; adding that". their authority" is "a sword which the Church hath power to take from them."

We call one more witness out of so many to hand, Hadrian Saravia, simply because of his association with Hooker's great name; that Mr. Keble, claiming him in support of "the doctrine of exclusive divine right in bishops," insists that since they two were so closely associated in their works and aims, Hooker may be interpreted by Saravia wherever the former seems ambiguous" (Preface to Hooker, p. lxvii.

Fuller quotation with reference in Goode's The Divine Rule, chap viii.).

"Although all who had assembled there before the King had not the same kind of ordination, and some were ordained by bishops of the Church of Rome, others by the Reformed Churches, none of them ought to have been ashamed of his ordination . . . so that a presbyter clearly may ordain a presbyter. . . . For I do not think that either he [Beza] or Nicholas Gelasius, or any other that may have been there present, not ordained by Romish bishops, took upon themselves the ministry of the Word without a legitimate calling received in the Churches of Christ."

...

The reader who would have a brief but clear and full statement of the grounds on which the Reformation divines founded their distinction between priests and bishops-that the superiority of bishops consists "not in the superiority of their Order, yet in the office of their dignity" (Bridges), will find it in a work On the Church, by Dr. Field, a learned divine of the Church of England in the days of Elizabeth and James I. (fol. ed., pp. 155-57 and 704; Thus: "Hence it followeth that many things which in some cases Presbyters may lawfully do, are peculiarly reserved unto bishops, as Hierome noteth, rather for the honour of their ministry than the necessity of any law. And therefore we read that Presbyters, in some places and at some times, did impose hands, and confirm such as were baptized. . . . And who knoweth not that all Presbyters, in cases of necessity, may absolve and reconcile penitents: a thing in ordinary course appropriated unto bishops? and why not, by the same reason, ordain Presbyters and Deacons? . . . There is no reason to be given, but that in case of necessity . . . Presbyters, as they may do all other acts, whatsoever special challenge bishops in ordinary course make unto them, might do this also. then, dare condemn all those worthy ministers of God that were ordained by Presbyters in sundry churches of the world, at such times as bishops, in those parts where they lived, opposed themselves against the truth of God, and persecuted such as professed it?"

Who,

The Reformation divines of England, at all events, did not so condemn them, but to a man seem to have held with Bishop Cooper, one of their leading champions against the Puritans, that these foreign Churches, "and the learned men whom God sent to instruct them" had been directed by the Spirit of God to retain this liberty as regards “external govern. ment and other outward orders" (Admonition to the People of England, 1589).

II. Article XXIII. seems the only place in which the Church of England touches on

Ordination in the abstract, and seems specially worded so as not to exclude from "lawful calling" the ministers of the foreign Protestant Churches; and, as a matter of fact, requires nothing more as necessary for such "lawful calling" than what is required in several of those

non-Episcopal Churches themselves, namely, that it be "by men who have public authority given unto them in the congregation." Thus, Thomas Rogers, chaplain to Archbishop Bancroft, in his Exposition of the Articles, published 1604, quotes "the Churches Protestant" as "by their confessions " approving each of the six propositions which he deduces from this Article: referring thus to the Helvetic, Belgic, Bohemic, French, and other Reformed bodies. This book is of special authority as having been approved by so high a Churchman as Archbishop Bancroft; also on its title-page proclaimed to have been “perused 1 and by the lawful authority of the Church of England allowed to be public;" and which every parish in his province was ordered by the archbishop to supply itself with. Bishop Burnet also comments thus on this Article: "Not only those who penned the Articles, but the body of this Church for above half an age after, did, notwithstanding those irregularities, acknowledge the foreign Churches, so constituted, to be true Churches as to all the essentials of a Church, though they had been at first irregularly formed, and continued still to be in an imperfect state. And therefore the general words in which this part of the Article is framed, seem to have been designed on purpose not to exclude them."

But what about the Preface to the Ordinal and the Act of Uniformity? Do they not require every minister of the Church of England to be episcopally ordained or consecrated? Yes; but these say nothing against the validity of non-Episcopal Orders-neither deny nor affirm-in other Churches; and neither of them touches the question of the Reformers' relationship with the foreign Churches, as both documents date only from the year 1662. In any case, they simply and solely require, and very properly require, that an Episcopal Church shall have an episcopally ordained ministry; whilst the Bidding Prayer at the commencement of the Sermon, ordered by Canon 55, and requiring all the clergy to pray for "the Church of Scotland" (which was Presbyterian when this canon was passed, even as it is to-day), plainly recognises a valid ministry without episcopal ordination.

III. In his Preface to Hooker, p. lxxvi., Mr. Keble confesses that "nearly up to the time when Hooker wrote, numbers had been admitted to the ministry of the Church of England with no better than Presbyterian Orders;

and it appears by Travers' Supplication to the Council that such was the construction not uncommonly put upon the Statute of the 13th of Elizabeth," &c. By this Act, and also the 12th Car., cap. 17 (see for both Powell On Apostolical Succession, sect. vii.) it was, that "numbers"- Mr. Keble might have said "hundreds"-of ministers who had only Presbyterian Orders held their livings as true ministers of the Church of England. Bishop Cosin writes to Mr. Cordel, February 7, 1650: "Therefore, if at any time a minister so ordained in these French Churches came to incorporate himself in ours, and to receive a public charge and cure of souls among us in the Church of England (as I have known some of them to have done so of late, and can instance in many other before my time), our bishops did not re-ordain him before they admitted him to his charge, as they must have done, if his former ordination here in France had been void. Nor did our laws require more of him than to declare his public consent to the religion received amongst us, and to subscribe the Articles established." [Note the words "done so of late"]; whilst Bishop Burnet reports of Scotland still later (Vindication, pp. 84, 85, published 1696): "No bishop in Scotland, during my stay in that kingdom, ever did so much as desire any of the Presbyterians to be re-ordained."

Two names are specially prominent as of persons so allowed to minister in the Church of England-Morison, who was given a licence by Archbishop Grindal "approving and ratifying the form of ordination" by a Scotch Presbytery; and giving him commission "throughout the whole diocese of Canterbury to celebrate divine offices, to minister sacraments," &c.; and Whittingham, Dean of Durham, 1563-79, who had no other Orders than those received from Calvin in Geneva, as Knox's successor in the ministry of the English Church there. Yet to him was offered choice of the Bishopric of Durham or the Archbishopric of York (both void at one time). See J. G. Lorimer's John Knox and the Church of England, chap. vi. and App. 1875.

The only one, of any weight, of our early divines, whom Dean Goode can find to have denied the legality of the practice of admitting persons having only Presbyterian Orders to the cure of souls in the Church of England, is Archbishop Whitgift, and he only on account of "the laws of the realm," which all through, in his judgment, "required that such as are allowed as ministers in this Church of England, should be ordered by a bishop." But he held as strongly by the validity of the Presbyterian Orders of the foreign Churches as any quoted above. In speaking of the platform of Church

แ

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was

government contended for by Cartwright (p. 658), he says: Yet would I not have any man think, that I condemn any Churches where this government is lawfully and without danger received; only I have regard to whole king. doms, especially this realm, where it cannot but be dangerous" (see also pp. 81, 84, 383-85). So he admits that Dean Whittingham ordained minister by those who had authority [apparently referring to Article XXIII.] in the Church" in which he was ordained. And Archbishop Sandys, who did question his Orders, did so, not out of disrespect for the foreign Churches. He writes thus to the Lord Treasurer: "The discredit of the Church of Geneva is hotly alleged. Verily, my Lord, that Church is not touched. For he hath not received his ministry in that Church, or by any authority or order from that Church, so far as yet can appear."

The fact is that the very Act which properly requires for an Episcopal Church a ministry Episcopally ordained, recognises (§ 15) those communities as "the foreign Reformed Churches;" that the Article which lays down the conditions of admission to the ministerial office is still the same as when ministers of those Churches were freely permitted to minister in the Church of England; that the great majority of English divines in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and a considerable part of the nineteenth centuries, including such pronounced High Churchmen" as Andrewes, Bramhall, Cosin, Hall, &c., were at one on this question with the illustrious leaders of the English Reformation; in illustration of which we recall the fact that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, of which every English bishop is ex officio a leading governor, for so long sent as ordained missionaries ministers who had received Lutheran Orders only.

That the Reformation bishops, in recognising the validity of Orders given by Presbyters only, did not adjudge them in all respects perfect, or would encourage schism by overreadiness to sanction Presbyterian ordination; and that the post-Restoration bishops, in requiring re-ordination from men with Presbyterian Orders only, did not disown the action and principles of their predecessors, is plainly illustrated by the story of the consecration to Scottish sees in 1609 and subsequently to 1661, as told by Spottiswood, Hist. of Church and State, and Burnet, Hist. of his Own Times: "When the Scots bishops were to be consecrated . . . a question was moved by Dr. Andrewes, Bishop of Ely," who said they "must first be ordained presbyters, as having received no Ordination from a bishop.' Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was by, maintained

that thereof there was no necessity, seeing where bishops could not be had the Ordina tion given by the Presbyters must be esteemed lawful, otherwise that it might be doubted if there were any lawful vocation in most of the Reformed Churches." (Note, in passing, this "High Church" archbishop's jealousy in behalf of the Reformed Churches.) Burnet tells us that the English bishops (besides pleading the Act of Uniformity) “also made this difference between the present time and King James's: for then the Scots were only in an imperfect state, having never had bishops among them since the Reformation; so in such a state of things, in which they had been under a real necessity, it was reasonable to allow of their Orders, how defective soever, but that of late they had been in a state of schism," &c., &c.

That this re-ordination did not necessarily imply denial of the validity of the Orders already given is maintained by Bramhall, Works, vol. i. p. xxxvii.; Leighton, Hist. of his Own Times, vol. i. p. 140; Bingham, Antiquities, vol. ix., ed. 1845, pp. 296, 297, as quoted by Dean Goode in A Reply to the Bishop of Exeter's Second Arraignment, pp. 20–23.

Our English divines in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. and of their immediate successors, had opposed to them the intolerant claims of Popery on the one hand, and of ultraPuritanism on the other; and the moderation (for which they do not always get credit) with which, as a whole, they waged both wars, is well illustrated by their conduct of this particular campaign. They never once meet the claims for the divine right of Presbyterianism with the counter-claim of the exclusive divine right of Episcopacy, or denial of the validity of Presbyterian Orders. "It is enough with them to show that Episcopacy is ancient and allowable" (Keble, as above); in defence of which contention two "High Church divines shall now sum up:—

Archbishop Laud, Conference with Fisher the Jesuit, sect. 39, vii., denies the necessity of "continued visible succession, and can find no promise of its uninterrupted continuance in any Church: "For succession in the general I shall say this; it is a great happiness where it may be had visible and continued, and a great conquest over the mutability of this present world. But I do not find any one of the ancient Fathers that makes local, personal, visible, and continued succession a necessary mark or sign of the true Church in any one place."

Bishop Cosin, while severe in criticism of the foreign Churches' "defect of Episcopacy," says, "I dare not take upon me to condemn or determine a nullity of their own Ordinations against them;" and then proceeds to

say, writing to Mr. Cordel, who scrupled to communicate with the French Protestants: "There have been both learned and eminent men (as well in former ages as in this, and even among the Roman Catholics as well as Protestants) who have held and maintained it for good and passable divinity, that presbyters have the intrinsical power of ordination in actu primo . . . [this power remains in them, though its exercise is restrained 'by the strictness of the canon,' 'for the avoidance of schism,' &c. yet that the same act shall not be simply void in the nature of the thing, in regard that intrinsical power remained when the exercise of it was suspended."]

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Then he illustrates what we may term the Apostolic Succession and catholicity of this doctrine, in the whole Christian Church, furnishing a list of names of great doctors who supported it, from "St. Hierome and his followers," down to his own day; several from 'among the Roman Catholics," and Jewel, Field, Hooker, and Mason from " among the divines of our own Church." [Note Cosin's views as to the sentiments of those four Reformers.] ... "All which authors are of so great credit with you and me, that though we are not altogether of their mind, yet we would be loth to let the world see that we would contradict them all, and condemn their judgment openly; as needs we must, if we hold the contrary, and say, that the ministers of the Reformed French Churches, for want of Episcopal Ordination, have no Order at all."

He then recommends his correspondent, in case of need, to "communicate reverently with them of the French Church," reminding him, "there is no prohibition of our Church against it (as there is against our communicating with the Papists, and that well grounded upon the Scripture and will of God).” 1

1

This article cannot more suitably close than with the following paragraph from Bishop Cosin's last will: Wherever in the whole world Churches, reckoned as Christian Churches, profess the true, ancient, and catholic religion and faith, and with one mouth and mind adore and worship God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; with such, though distance, or the disagreements of mankind, or any other

obstacle, may prevent my actually holding communion (jungi) with them, yet in heart, mind, and affection I shall always be united and form one (conjungor ac coalesco): which I wish specially to be understood of the Protestant and well-Reformed Churches." [T. C. O'C.] ORDINAL.-We take the word "Ordinal" in the sense in which it is now usually applied to the Service Book by which men are admitted into the Holy Orders of the Christian Church. It will thus correspond in part to the Pontificale of the Roman Church. In the Mediæval Church the word was in occasional use, but in another sense.1

The history of the Ordinal in its growth is an interesting and instructive study, as illustrating and evidencing the development of ecclesiastical teachings and traditions by gradual and continuous accretions from thoughts which (it may be, many times, with pious, though mistaken, intent) were making human additions to divine revelation. This history "is sufficient to show how gradually the Apostolic laying on of hands gathered round it, in the course of centuries, the complicated ceremonial of medieval times." (See Prof. Swete's Services before the Reformation, p. 206. See also especially, Morinus, De Sac. Ordin., par. ii. cap. 1, p. 23, Antw. 1685.2) This portion of the subject, however, must necessarily be left outside of the purpose of this article, except so far as it may incidentally find a place in our hasty and imperfect examination of the way in which the Reformation dealt with the Ordinal as it was found in use at the close of the medieval period.

We are concerned especially with the history of the Ordinal in the sixteenth century-not, indeed, with that of the great Western or Eastern Churches, whose Ordinals may be said (speaking generally) to have then had their history closed-but with that of the Protestant Churches, and specially with that of the

1 See Lyndwood and other authorities as quoted by Du Cange, s. v. Ordinale.

2 Referring to the writings of PseudoDionysius, Morinus says: "Gliscunt et in hominum mentes facillime sese insinuant istæ fabellæ. Nam doctrinæ, pietatis, religionis pleræque speciem habent. Quis autem est, qui non ista lubens ambabus manibus amplectatur, atque etiam veneretur ? Malum autem iis insitum conspicere quis potis est? non unus ex mille. . . . Pleræque autem ejusmodi fabellæ ita fortunatæ fuerunt, ut iis seculis exortæ sint, quibus istorum argumentorum versandorum nulla erat peritia: Ideo eas statim omnes amplexi sunt, et deosculati, quamvis in eis nulla esset et rationis, et veritatis intelligentia " (cap. i. §§ 1, 11. See also Exercit. VII. pp. 105 sqq.).

Reformed Church of England. This history is not merely interesting, it is very important, on account of the witness it bears to the position which was taken by the English Church in respect of certain doctrines and practices which have now become matters of controversy by reason of the recent revival of certain mediæval errors in the midst of us.

We are not, indeed, to suppose that we are dependent on our Ordinal for testimony against such erroneous teachings. Our Articles speak (as we are persuaded) plainly enough in their condemnation. But the additional witness of our Ordinal is very valuable, and should in fairness be acknowledged to be very forcible, as showing how far from the mind of our Reformers, and from the intent of our Formularies, are the plausible and popular misinterpretations which would tend to detract from the genuinely Protestant character of our Articles. 1

It concerns us primarily and very specially to give attention to the Service for the Ordination of Priests. And we must confine our view to a few salient points.

We observe, then, that in the Roman Pontifical we have in the earlier part of the service an admonition addressed by the bishop to the ordinandi, which commences by setting forth the functions of a priest ("Officium sacerdotis quale sit," margin). And these are the words to be spoken: "Sacerdotem etenim oportet offerre: 2 benedicere: præesse: prædicare: et baptizare" (Pontificale Rom., fol. 17 a, Venice, 1572).3

1 See Christian Doctrine of Sacerdotium (Elliot Stock), pp. 101-110. Missarum Sacrificia, pp. 47, seq. Romish Mass and English Church, pp

46 $99.

2 This formula is comparatively modern. Dr. Swainson (in Guardian, Jan. 30, 1878) expressed his belief that it cannot be traced further back than 1300. The older English Ritual had the words: "Presbyterum oportet benedicere, offerre, et bene præesse, prædicare, et baptizare atque communicare" (see Doctrine of Sacerdotium, p. 44). In the Sacerdotale Romanum (Venice, 1585), after the usual derivation of sacerdos, it is added: "Dicitur etiam a sacrificando, quia eorum officium est offerre sacrificium et hostias pro populis" (Prœm, fol. ii.). The Papal Bull Apostolica Cura speaks of the "gratia et potestas " of the Sacerdotium thus: "Quæ præcipue est potestas consecrandi et offerendi verum corpus et sanguinem Domini, eo Sacrificio, quod non est nuda commemoratio sacrificii in Cruce peracti” (p. 40, edit. Burns).

3 This edition was superseded by the revision of Clement VIII. in 1596, which revision was again corrected under Urban VIII. in 1644. But

Then, after silent imposition of hands, the bishop reflectit stolam, saying, "Accipe jugum Domini, jugum enim Ejus suave est, et onus Ejus leve" (fol. 19 b). This is followed by the rubrical direction: "Imponit cuilibet successive casulam usque ad scapulas," the bishop saying, "Accipe vestem sacerdotalem, per quam charitas intelligitur." After this the bishop, rising without his mitre, pronounces a benediction, in which the words occur: "et in obsequium plebis tuæ panem et vinum in corpus et sanguinem Filii tui immaculata benedictione transforment" (fol. 19 b). This benediction is followed by anointing the hands of the ordinandi with oil, accompanied with a prayer. After this, the bishop delivers to each of the ordinandi a chalice with wine and water, et patinam superpositam cum hostia," and says: “Accipe potestatem offerre sacrificium Deo: missasque celebrare: tam pro vivis quam pro defunctis: In nomine Domini” (fol. 20 a). And it should be observed that from this point the recipients are no longer spoken of as ordinandi, but as ordinati.6

5

no material change was made in respect of the particulars with which we are here concerned. The Sarum Celebratio Ordinum may be compared, as given in Maskell's Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiæ Angl., vol. iii. pp. 154 sqq. from a Cambridge MS., on the date of which see Dict. of Christian Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 1499. The first printed

edition of the Roman Pontifical is dated 1485. See Catholic Dictionary, p 725.

4 See Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Eccl. Angl., vol. iii. pp. 207, 208, 209.

5 In the Sarum form we find, "missamque celebrare." See Maskell, vol. iii. p. 214.

• In the margin we read: "In hoc actu imprimitur character hujus ordinis." These marginal notes have since been omitted from the Pontifical. So Durandus teaches that, "In datione patenæ et calicis cum materia imposita imprimitur character sacerdotalis" (in 4 Sent. dist. 24. Qu. 3, § 8). See Notes on Vindication of "Apos., Cura" (E. Stock), p. 4. See also pp. 6, 7, for the teaching of Aquinas. Many of the Scholastics held this view. But of the later Scholastics several held that the Church's determination on this matter has been different for different places-that the matter and form for the West consist partly in the tradition of the instruments with accompanying words, partly in the imposition of hands with accompanying words. See Catholic Dictionary, p. 677; see also Maskell, vol. iii. pp. 220, 221. It may be observed that in the Sarum Pontifical, those receiving ordination are called 'Thy Priests" before the traditio instrumentorum. (See Pullan, Book of Common Prayer, p 264.). They are also called ordinandi afterwards (see Maskell, vol. iii. p. 216) and Morinus, Exercit. VIII.