of the schoolmen do; who, for reasons of their own, distinguish between order and jurisdic tion, and make bishops and presbyters to be one and the same order, only differing in power and jurisdiction. This distinction was unknown to the ancients; among whom, the words order, degree, office, power, and jurisdiction, when they speak of the superiority of bishops above presbyters, mean but one and the same thing-viz., the power of the supreme governors of the church, conferred upon them in their ordination, over presbyters, who are to do nothing but in subordination to them. St. Jerome, who will be allowed to speak the sense of the ancients, makes no difference in these words,-ordo, gradus, officium,-but uses them promiscuously, to signify the power and jurisdiction of bishops above presbyters and the whole church; which is, properly speaking, the very essence of their order. Therefore, sometimes he calls them different orders, as in his book against Jovian, where he says, 'that both in the Old and New Testament, the high priests are one order, the priests another, and the Levites another.' So, in his Epistles to Rusticus and Fabiola, where he joins ordo and gradus together. In other places he uses the word gradus only as, in his Epistle to Eustochium, he calls presbyters, priests of the inferior degree; and in his Epistle to Heliodore, deacons the third degree; and, in his Comment upon Micah, bishops, priests, and deacons, the degrees in the church. At other times, he expresses his meaning by the word offices; as where he says, that bishop, presbyter, and deacon, are not names of men's merits, but of their offices. So that it is all one, according to St. Jerome, whether we say the order, or the degree, or the office, or the power and jurisdiction of a bishop; for all these are intended to express the same thing-viz., the authority of bishops over their presbyters and the whole church. And in this sense I use the word order in this discourse, to express the opinion of the anciests concerning the different powers of bishops and presbyters in the church."** In the tenth chapter of the same book (sect. 5-7), Bingham proves, that so far from bishops being a degree of the presbyterate, there are instances of men ordained bishops who had never been priests, such as deacons, subdeacons, readers, and even laymen. I shall use no severity of language. I do not choose to allow the question to be perplexed by the worn-out art of diverting the reader's attention from the subject to the writer. I deliberately assert, that no one in the least degree acquainted with the opinions of Bingham, Potter, Hooker, Taylor, Hall, Hammond, Beveridge, Durell, Bilson, or Pearson, can by possibility be ignorant that the foundation of all their arguments is this, that scripture and antiquity concur in proving that the apostolical order was instituted by Christ; that it is utterly distinct from the order of presbyters; that bishops are successors of the apostles in this distinction of order from the order of presbyters; and that the distinction consists, not only in jurisdiction, which may be delegated, but chiefly in the power of ordaining, which at no period of the church was ever permitted to presbyters, except by the papists and by those sects which, as I have shewn elsewhere, were introduced into the church by the intrigues and artifices of the Roman court.† But Mr. Faber conceives that he has discovered in our form of ordaining priests a proof that presbyters have ordaining power. His words are: "In our own church the concurrence of presbyters with the presiding bishop, in laying hands upon those who are themselves about to be ordained presbyters, is familiar and notorious. Now, here again, the very same reasoning palpably applies. Presbyters either have or have not a power of transmitting the presbyterate. If they have, then the point is conceded. If they have not, then their joint imposition of hands is an unmeaning and nugatory ceremonial, The whole transaction is rendered still more striking by the circumstance, that in the ordination of deacons there is no concurrence of the presbyters. Whence the inference seems * Vol. i. p. 40. + See the Appendix to the Sermon on the Christian Ministry, where also the arguments of several of our great writers are extracted. to be, that, in the judgment of the Anglican church, a single bishop, without the concurrence of presbyters, cannot legitimately transmit the higher order of presbyterate; but that no such concurrence is necessary in conferring the very inferior order of deacon." Now to this I reply, that if by the word "legitimately" Mr. Faber means canonically, or according to law, his reasoning is nothing to the purpose. If he means "validly," which is the only sense that touches the argument, it is not true. A bishop, in a church where this rule obtains, would of course act irregularly, who should, without great and urgent necessity, ordain a priest without the presence and concurrence of priests. But if he should do so, still his sole ordination would confer priesthood on the ordained person. All through Mr. Faber seems to confound these two essentially different questions-what constitutes a canonical ordination, and what a valid ordination. Nor has the Anglican church exercised any "judgment" (in his sense of the word judgment) in the matter. It has merely continued to be governed in this matter by the third canon of the fourth Council of Carthage, which had been received by this and the rest of the western churches many ages before the Reformation. No man ever understood the sense of antiquity, or of our own church, on such matters better than our greatly learned Bishop Beveridge. In his ordination sermon on Acts, i. 26, having observed, by a comparison of 1 Tim. iv. 14, with 2 Tim. i. 6,† that although some of the elders of the church may have joined with St. Paul in ordaining Timothy, yet it was St. Paul alone by the imposition of whose hands the Holy Ghost was transmitted, the bishop goes on to observe : "As it is in our church at this time, and so hath been in the Latin for many ages, in the ordination of a priest, the priests there present join with the bishop in their laying their hands upon him, and yet he is ordained only by the bishop's laying on his hands. For how many priests soever lay their hands upon an other's head, they can never make him a real priest unless there be a bishop with them; but a bishop, by the imposition of his hands, can make a priest, although there be never another priest with him. Neither doth the law require that any priests should be present at such ordination, but only that the bishop, with the priests present (if there happen to be any), shall lay their hands upon him that is to be ordained; the imposition of the priests' hands being only to signify their consent, that such a person should be received into their order, and so take off the blame from the bishop, in case he should prove to have been unworthy of it. But still, it is only by the imposition of the bishop's hands that he is made a priest; as St. Paul saith, that Timothy received the Spirit, by laying on of his hands, notwithstanding the presbytery joined with him in it." ‡ Again, in his ordination sermon on 2 Cor. iv. 1, he comments on the words of ordination in these words: "Where there are several things worthy to be observed: as first, that although the whole power of ordination be in the bishop alone, and the imposition of his hands for that purpose is sufficient to the making of a priest, yet the church hath thought good to order, that the priests which are present shall lay on their hands too, in conformity, I suppose, to the ancient custom that hath obtained in the Latin church. I say the Latin, because it was never heard of in the Greek, or any of the Eastern churches, that any but bishops should lay hands upon persons to be ordained. But in the Latin, there is an ancient canon for it, or decree of a council held at Carthage, Anno Dom. 398, which saith, Presbyter cum ordinatur episcopo eum benedicente, et manum super caput ejus tenente, etiam omnes presbyteri, qui præsentes sunt, manus suas juxta manus episcopi super caput illius teneant.' When a priest is ordained, the bishop blessing him, and laying the hand upon his head, let all the priests also * The Vallenses and Albigenses, pp. 555-6. Note. + The reader will find the argument from this passage fully discussed in Archbishop Potter's Discourse on Church Government. Works, vol. ii. pp. 121-2. Horne's Edition. that are present hold their hands upon his head, by the hands of the bishop.' And from hence, I suppose, it was that our rubric was taken, that it agrees so exactly with it in every particular. And the reason of it seems to be the same with that of the fourth canon of the Council of Nice, that three bishops shall be always present at the ordination of a bishop. Not but that the ordination is valid, and was always reputed so, although performed only by one bishop; but this was done to prevent clandestine ordination, to make the work more public and solemn, and to signalize it by the concurrent testimony and consent of several persons joining together in it."* Bishop Taylor, from the canon of the Council of Hispalis, in 657, shews that even then the canon of the Council of Carthage had not been received in the western church; "but for almost three hundred years after, ordinations were made by bishops alone." + The rubric of our church was not designed to pronounce ordination of a priest by a bishop alone to be absolutely irregular; for we do not refuse the orders of the eastern church. Nor would the irregularity of an English bishop, should he ordain alone, fall on the ordained, but on the ordainer; the orders being still valid, and the priest capable of being ordained bishop the next day, if of the legal age. The rubric merely receives a provincial canon of the African church, which our church rightly judges to be useful in guarding against several inconveniences. I repeat that I studiously avoid severity of language. But I have no words to express my opinion of a writer possessing so very little information as Mr. Faber regarding the constitution of the church (for I should be sorry to put a harsher construction on his argument) rashly and peremptorily deciding on the rubric of the church, that, if presbyters have not the power of transmitting the presbyterate, "then their joint imposition of hands is an unmeaning and nugatory ceremonial." After this was I not fully warranted in asking, whether Mr. Faber meant to join the presbyterians? Not that I had any apprehension of his giving up his preferment and his episcopalian orders. I contemplated what I conceive the far more mischievous conjuncture of a clergyman, whose name may possibly, in some quarters, carry some weight as an author, adopting arguments which the enemies of our church have a thousand times brought forward, and which our illustrious champions have a thousand times refuted. Mr. Faber may quote Bishop Hall; but does he know, that the reason that the bishop spoke of the orders of the foreign churches at all was, because he had already proved presbyterian orders to be invalid; and was, for that reason, taunted, as our church always is, (for this argument, also, Mr. Faber has borrowed from our enemies,) with the case of the foreign churches? Does Mr. Faber know that Bishop Hall (whatever necessity he may have talked of in the passage quoted by Mr. Faber) had already stated his deliberate sentence, that ordination and confirmation "have been ever held so intrinsical to episcopacy that I would fain see where it can be shewed that any extremity of necessity was, by the catholic church of Christ, ever yet acknowledged for a warrant sufficient to diffuse them into other hands"? Were not the * Ibid. pp. 137, 138. See also Hooker, book vii. chap. vi. 5. arguments of Hall, and of all our writers, expressly intended to overturn the foundations on which the presbyterians of Scotland and England supported the validity of their orders? The church of England has long since simply denied their validity; for if a priest of the Roman, Greek, or Oriental church, join our communion, he needs and can receive no new ordination; whereas, a presbyter of the Scotch church must receive deacon's orders from a bishop before he can officiate amongst us. And therefore, the opinions of private and particular persons do not affect the question one way or other. But Mr. Faber is "disinclined, without evidence, to unchurch the presbyterial church of Scotland."* I suppose, however, that it was not without evidence he had said a little before, that "The apostolical institution of bishops, with the power of governing superintendence over the clergy, is so clear, both from scripture and from ecclesiastical history, that no sane person would ever think of disputing it."+ by From which I apprehend we may fairly infer, either that Mr. Faber believes that "the presbyterial church of Scotland" have never thought of disputing the apostolical institution of episcopacy, or else that he believes it to be composed of insane persons. But, after all, what will Mr. Faber's arguments in favour of presbyterianism advantage "the two churches of history," when Mr. Faber himself acknowledges that he is unable to demonstrate that they derive their orders even 66 the simple imposition of the hands of the presbytery"? The simple question is this, does Mr. Faber mean, that if three presbyters should take it into their heads to consecrate a bishop, whatever irregularity they might have committed, their act would be valid, and the ordained or consecrated person would be really and bona fide a bishop? If Mr. Faber does not mean to say this, I confess I cannot discover what he means. And if he does, such an avowal from such a quarter is most important. At all events, it is not a new idea, as it seems to have been taken up from John Wesley, who being persuaded by Lord King's book that presbyters and bishops are the same, acted on the notion, and consecrated Dr. Coke a bishop.§ Still I do not perceive how this, even if it were true, could be of any service to the two churches of history. The examination of Mr. Faber's authorities I must defer to next month; that is, if you think it worth while to trouble your readers farther on the subject. If the tone of either this or my former letter be such as can give just offence, I am heartily sorry for it. It is my earnest wish that truth should suffer nothing by the language or temper of its advocate. Whether what I had already published would warrant Mr. Faber in adopting such a tone of levity as may seem to some * British Magazine, p. 536. Vallenses and Albigenses, p. 553. + Ibid. p. 532. 4 0 § Southey's Life of Wesley, vol. ii. p. 436. Second Edition. VOL. XIV.-Dec. 1838. persons rather disgusting, in the treatment of sacred subjects, it is not for me to say. I shall certainly not be induced to imitate his example. I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours, Trinity College, Dublin, Nov. 13, 1838. JOHN CLARKE CROSTHWAITE. P.S.-I fear some inaccuracies may have escaped me. I have written with great haste, not having received your November Number till the latter end of last week, and being prevented by my duties from reading Mr. Faber's letter until Saturday. MR. FABER'S POSTSCRIPT ON THE PAULICIANS. SIR,-On reperusing Mr. Dowling's attack last night, I thought it not impossible that he might, in a subsequent number of the British Magazine, allege my preterition of one part of it as a proof of my conscious culpability. Under this impression, and to save both him, and you, and myself to boot, further trouble, I beg the insertion of the following postscript to my former communication. I. I had said in my work: "The unsuspecting reader who happens not to have particularly studied this part of ecclesiastical history, will probably be surprised to learn that the process of reading, with care and attention, the four gospels, in connexion with the fourteen epistles of St. Paul, actually converted Constantine into a Manichèan.” Upon this, Mr. Dowling gravely brings forward, in mood and form, the testimony of both Photius and Peter Siculus, or Petrus Siculus, (which last is the nomenclature preferred, at my expense, by my opponent,) to prove that Constantine was, from the first, a stark Manichean; and that, upon the receipt of the two books of the gospels and St. Paul's epistles from his friend the deacon, he forthwith rejected all the writings of the Manichèans, and admitted (very much like us modern protestants) nothing save the deacon's present, though he applied it to the somewhat unexpected purpose of hammering out of it, not sound Christianity, but veritable Manichèism itself,-which yet, these very writers assure us, he and his disciples rejected and abominated, together with Manes, and Scythianus, and Budda, and the whole race of the more ancient heresiarchs. 1. Now I certainly could never have anticipated that I should encounter an opponent so decidedly what we are wont colloquially to term matter of fuct, as not to perceive (like the gentleman who challenged Sir Walter Scott to demonstrate the existence of the Princess Edith Plantagenet) that, in the foregoing extract from my work, I was merely using the language of banter, to express my total want of reverence for those anile fables which it is the good pleasure of Mr. Dowling to receive as a trustworthy portion of authentic history. 2. In preferring such a complaint against Mr. Dowling, I can only smile; but, as I proceed, I might rather weep, were I, which luckily I am not, much given to the melting mood. |