"

he means more especially the power of imparting the gifts of the Spirit is altogether probable, the mere working of miracles not being by any means an exclusively Apostolical prerogative. On the whole, the conclusion to which Scripture leads us on this difficult and obscure point is, that while the Apostles could, by the imposition of their hands, communicate to others certain spiritual gifts-for such gifts as "wisdom," "knowledge," and a faculty for 'governing," we never read of their imparting, they could not transmit to others a similar power; whence we may conclude that the prerogative ceased with these its first possessors, and that, although there is every reason to believe that extraordinary gifts continued for a time after the Apostolic age to manifest themselves in the Church, they were not imparted, as they had been by the Apostles, by the imposition of hands. To the foregoing considerations we may add, in the third place, that the gifts of the Spirit appear to have been bestowed indiscriminately upon all baptized believers; there being no ground for the supposition of Bilson and others that the privilege was confined to those whom the Apostles desired, by the impartation of special endowments, to qualify for the office of the ministry. So far from this being the case, it seems to have been the practice of the Apostles to lay hands upon all those who had been recently baptized; and wherever the recipients of the rite were worthy, "the Holy Ghost fell upon them," and the gift of tongues, or prophecy, followed as a matter of course. It is, indeed, reasonable to suppose, that from among persons thus gifted the formal ministry was chosen; but, though the supposition is not itself improbable, there is no satisfactory evidence that the Apostles in imparting the gifts had that special object in view. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the doctrine of the imposition of hands is mentioned as one of the elementary principles of the Gospel.

But whether it be the fact or not that others besides the Apostles possessed the power of imparting the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, and that such powers were actually handed down by their

Hence the groundlessness of the assumption that our rite of confirmation is identical with the apostolic imposition of hands. There is hardly any thing between them in common, save the outward sign. The Apostles, as Apostles, had no successors; and the signs which accompanied the apostolic rite, and which constituted its specific difference, have long ceased; there only remains the imposition of hands which they practised, and we practise now. The fact is, that the ceremony was continued in the church, as a salutary and scriptural one, when the effects that once followed it were withdrawn; and as a useful and scriptural custom of the church it can only now be regarded. In another point of view, however,-viz. as the supplement of infant baptism,-confirmation, or some equivalent ceremony, seems necessary in every church which practises infant baptism.

possessors to others, and continued to manifest themselves in the church for some time after the Apostolic age, is to the present argument comparatively immaterial. Even if we suppose that the Apostles frequently, if not exclusively, exercised the power inherent in them in order to qualify persons for the ministry, and that such ministerial persons as had themselves received extraor dinary gifts from an Apostle-a Timothy, for example-could transmit them to his successors as long as such gifts existed in the church; the question still remains, of what nature were the gifts so transmitted? This is one of the essential points to be considered. Without a single exception the ministerial gifts mentioned in Scripture, whether given directly from Christ, or mediately through the Apostles, were of a moral or an intellectual nature; that is, they were intended to qualify men, either for the ministry of the Word or for the government of the Church. The gifts of "wisdom," of "knowledge," of "faith," of "prophecy," of "discerning of spirits," of "tongues," of "the interpretation of tongues; " or those described as "helps, and governments;" to what department of the religious life do they belong? Obviously, not to the sacramental and mystical (save in so far as the ministry of the Word is itself of a sacramental character), but to the moral, to the class of divine influences which operate upon the heart through the medium of the understanding. No such gift as a mystical grace of priesthood, a gift to render the administration of Gospel ordinances-e. g. the Sacraments-valid, and which, from its nature, must exist independently of the moral or intellectual qualifications of the possessor, is recorded to have been communicated to believers by the Apostles. It will be shewn in a subsequent section that no such gift was needed in the Church, inasmuch as no law, confining the administration of Baptism and the Lord's Supper to a priestly caste, represented in the Apostles, is found to have emanated either from Christ or the inspired Twelve; what we have now to observe is, that a spiritual gift of this mystical nature finds no place in the enumeration of the manifold manifestations of the Spirit which distinguished the Apostolic age; all of which, as has been observed, were moral in their nature, and found their sphere of exercise in the work either of teaching or of governing. Consequently, if it be so, that 2 Tim. i. 6. refers to Timothy's ordination by St. Paul, and not to the bestowing upon him of extraordinary gifts irrespectively of his ministerial vocation, we are still quite sure that the gift imparted to him by the Apostle, and which he was commanded to "stir

up," was not a spiritual power of "consecrating and offering the body and blood of Christ," or of remitting and retaining sins, but a moral gift of whatever kind, a gift which could be "stirred up," or made more active in its exercise, by reading, meditation, and prayer; a property which we know does not belong to the mystical grace of priesthood, the latter being incapable of increase or diminution by any moral efforts on the part of its possessor. And we are equally sure that when extraordinary gifts were withdrawn from the church, that which succeeded to them was of a moral, and not of a mystical, nature;—that is, that their place was occupied by natural or acquired endowments of mind or body, sanctified to the uses of the Church: and that when the prayer that the candidate for the office of a Presbyter or a Bishop may "receive the Holy Ghost" for the due performance thereof is granted, what is vouchsafed is, not a priestly virtue apart from which the sacraments have no validity, but increase of enlightening and sanctifying grace, grace to apply natural endowments to the edifying of Christ's body;-"the spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind;" a gift of the same nature with that which Timothy and others received by the imposition of St. Paul's hands.

From these remarks the points in which the Romish theory of the origin and perpetuation of the ministry diverges from the view presented in Scripture will be evident. Instead of the ministry being, in the first instance, a positive institution, coming to the Church from without, and, as it were, placed over it, it is a function of the Church itself, springs up from within the sacred enclosure, and, in its primary form, or before it is anything else, is a spiritual power flowing directly from Christ. The ministry does not, as Rome teaches, sustain the Church, but the Church sustains the ministry. The Church is supposed to be in existence, as a congregation of believers, sanctified by the Spirit of God: within the Church Christ, its divine Head, raises up, by the outpouring of spiritual gifts, its natural ministry, which then passes into a formal one; raises up, that is, men divinely qualified to teach, exhort, govern, and in other ways edify their brethren. Whether these men as yet bear formal offices in the Church or not is comparatively immaterial; the possession of the gift is their true warrant for exercising it. The formal ministry, which was itself natural before it was formal, must not suppress the existing natural one:-"quench not the Spirit, despise not prophesyings." The single exception to this divinely appointed order, that of the Apostles themselves, who, no doubt, were given to the Church

from without, is an additional proof, if any were needed, that their office was but a temporary one, instituted for the purpose of organizing the visible Church, but not intended to form a permanent part of its organization: it would not have been suitable that an order of ministers, whose special office it was to mould the polity of the Church into its appointed shape, should spring from the bosom of the Church itself. The Apostolate, therefore, and it alone of the ecclesiastical offices mentioned in the New Testament, was instituted before the Church came into existence, and stood related to the Church as an external authority. Moreover, they whom Christ thus endows with gifts for the ministry are supposed to be partakers of the common life of the Church; and extraordinary spiritual endowments always appear grafted upon the stock of a living faith. For divine wisdom, knowledge, or illumination are possessed only by the sanctified in heart, and the teachers of the Church must be themselves taught of God. "Apostles prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers" are members, as well as ministers, of the body of Christ: they are of the Church before they become its instructors and rulers. Hence, as might be expected, no such notion is found in the New Testament as that of grace to qualify for sacerdotal functions, distinct from, and independent of, the grace common to all Christians; or that the divine vocation to the ministry is a thing morally indifferent, possessed, if only the legitimate outward call be present, equally by the evil and the good. The inward call of the Spirit to the ministry presupposes sanctification by the same Spirit. Nor does this militate against the doctrine, asserted by the Reformers as well as by their opponents, that the unworthiness of the minister does not hinder the effect of his ministrations, whether in the Word or the Sacraments; for the question relates not to the external commission, but to the inward endowment. The Church, having by the exercise of discipline deposed from their ministry those whose lives are openly vicious, has done what in her lies towards making the natural and the positive ministry one and the same; but the entrance of carnally minded persons, or even secret unbelievers, into the sacred office cannot altogether be prevented, any more than their entrance into the Church itself. Such pastors are not indeed sent by Christ; nor have we any more reason to believe that the imposition of hands has a spiritual effect upon them than we have to suppose that baptism impresses a spiritual character upon an adult hypocrite: nevertheless, as long as the external commission remains unrevoked, the means of grace may be efficacious in their

hands, for their efficacy depends not upon the moral condition of the administrator, but upon the faith of the receiver. The Word and the Sacraments of Christ, as Augustin against the Donatists well argues, are still His Word and his Sacraments to whose custody soever they may be committed.

From the foregoing remarks it may be gathered that the significancy of the rite by which the Apostles were accustomed to set apart persons to the office of the ministry, and which has since been continued in the Church for that purpose, assumes in the eyes of the Protestant an aspect different from that which it bears in the Romish system. While the Romanist attaches a sacramental character to this rite,- that is, regards it as the special means through which the grace of ordination is conveyed to the ordained,- the Protestant formularies consider it rather as a recognition of the existence of ministerial gifts and the conveyance of authority to make them available to the edifying of the Church. Hooker rightly remarks:-"Out of men thus endued with the gifts of the Spirit upon their conversion to the Christian faith the Church had her ministers chosen, unto whom was given ecclesiastical power by ordination:" the "ecclesiastical power," or commission, not a specific grace, being the effect of the imposition of hands. Those whom the Apostles endowed, or found to be endowed, with gifts for the work of the ministry they laid hands upon, transferring a familiar Jewish rite to this among other Christian purposes, but not as a sacramental channel of grace, not as being specially appropriated to this particular use. In truth, we find, in the New Testament, no specific rite of ordination, no ceremony, that is, specially appointed for the consecration of Christian priests, analogous to that by which the Jewish priests were admitted to their office: for not only was the imposition of hands used on a variety of occasions besides that of setting apart ministers, such as communicating the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, or the miraculous healing of the sick, —but even in the case of ministers it was, not unfrequently, more than once administered to the same individual. Thus when Saul and Barnabas, who had been long engaged in preaching the Gospel, had a new and special field of labour assigned them by the Spirit, the "prophets and teachers" at Antioch laid their hands upon them with fasting and prayer, and so sent them forth to their destination. † In like manner Timothy appears to have

E. P. Book 5. c. 78. s. 9.

† Acts, xiii. 1-3.