Chapter IX
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND
PRESBYTERIAN ORDERS
THE question, whether the Church of England recognizes the validity of the orders of non-episcopal Churches, is one which concerns it much more than it does them. They are not the worse for nonrecognition. They are not thereby curtailed of any spiritual power or advantage. They enter no claim to be regarded by Romanists or Anglicans, as constituent portions of the Church visible and catholic. They can as well afford to have their Church standing denied, as the United States could bear to have their national existence called in question.
The case is far different with the Church of England itself. To refuse to recognize those as Christians who are Christians; to refuse communion with those in whom Christ dwells by his Spirit; to unchurch the living members of Christ's body; to withhold sympathy, fellowship, and co-operation from those in whom Christ delights, and who are devoted to his service; to take sides in the great conflict, between true and false religion, between the gospel and ritualism, against the truth and against God's people, is a very great sin. It is the sin of schism which all Churchmen profess to regard with special abhorrence. It supposes wrong views of the nature of the Church, of the plan of salvation, and of the nature of religion. We do not wonder, therefore, that the evangelical spiritual members of that Church are anxious not only to free themselves from the imputation
of this sin and heresy, but to prove that the Church to which they belong is not justly chargeable with either.
This, to say the least, is not a work of supererogation. There is much to render plausible the charge in question. Not only is the schismatical principle of making episcopal ordination essential to the ministry, and a valid ministry essential to the being of the Church, to the efficacy of the sacraments, and to union with Christ, the avowed doctrine of a large and controlling portion of the Anglican Church in England and in this country, but that Church, as a Church, stands isolated in the Christian world. It is excommunicated by Rome, and it in its turn refuses official recognition of other Protestants. An Episcopal minister communing in a Presbyterian Church, would, in our days, be almost as rare a sight as a Romish priest communing with the Church of England. The difference between the relation of the Episcopal clergy to those of other Protestant Churches, and of the clergy of those Churches to each other, is palpable. Mutual recognition, in the latter case, is open, cordial, and undoubted; in the other, it is always dubious and hesitating, and often explicitly denied. That Church, therefore, as a Church, stands aloof. It has no practical communion with other Churches. It rebaptizes, in many cases, Presbyterian children, and reordains Presbyterian clergymen. It sends no corresponding members from its Conventions, either state or general, to the Synods or Assemblies of any other Church. It does not invite the ministers of other denominations to minister in its pulpits, or to take part in its religious services. It draws a distinct and broad line of demarcation between itself and all other Protestant bodies. We are speaking of the acknowledged and unquestioned animus and status of the Church as a body. We know there are hundreds of her ministers, and thousands of her people, who have none of this spirit, and to whom the exclusiveness of their ecclesiastical canons is a burden and an offence. We know that many
cases have occurred in which this exclusiveness has been triumphed over, and Episcopal churches lent to Presbyterian ministers. We know, too, that this isolation of the Church of England is inconsistent with the avowed principles of her own standards, and contrary to the spirit and practice of her Reformers and immediate successors for a hundred years. Nevertheless it is a fact. There must therefore be something in her constitution which tends to exclusiveness, and which leads her thus to stand aloof from the great body of Evangelical Christians. This can hardly be merely Episcopacy; because the Moravians, and some Lutheran Churches, are episcopal, and yet are completely identified with other Protestant communions. Neither can it be either the use of a Liturgy, or its peculiar character; because other Protestant Churches have liturgies, and some of them less evangelical than that of the Church of England. The isolation of that Church is no doubt to be referred, in a measure, to the outward course of her history; to her having been framed and fashioned by the king and parliament, established by the law of the land, and made the exclusive recipient of the wealth and honours of the State. But besides these outward circumstances, there must be something in the system itself, some element essentially anti-Protestant and exclusive, to which the effect in question is principally to be referred. This, we doubt not, is in general, the subordination of truth to form; the making what is outward more important than what is inward. The question how a company of Christians is organized; what is their form of government; what their mode of worship; what their ecclesiastical descent, is of far more consequence in determining the question whether they are to be recognized as a Church, and to be communed with, and regarded as Christian brethren, members of the body of Christ, than either their faith or practice. If a body of professing Christians is organized in a certain way, it is a Church, no matter whether it is as heretical and idolatrous as Rome, or as ignorant and superstitious as the Greeks or Abyssinians. If organized
in a different way, it is no Church, it has no ministry, no sacraments, and no part in the covenant of mercy. This is the legitimate consequence of the idea of the Church on which the whole Anglican system is founded. The Church is regarded as an external society, with a definite organization, perpetuated by a regular succession of ordinations. Of course, in searching for the Church, the search is not for truth and holiness, but for organization and succession. Hence, Rome is a Church, because she has prelates and succession; the Free Church of Scotland is no Church, because it has no bishops. The one is indeed heretical, schismatical, and idolatrous, the mystical Babylon; the other, one of the most orthodox, exemplary, and devoted body of Christians in the world. Still, the former is our Latin sister, whose orders and sacraments are valid and efficacious; the other is an apostate communion, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and from the covenant of promise, forming no part of the Church catholic and apostolical. There is not only more of outward recognition, but of inward cordial sympathy and fellowship with prelatical Churches, no matter how corrupt, than with non-episcopal Churches, no matter how pure. The form is made of more importance than the substance. Such is the necessary consequence of making the Church an external society, and prelatical ordination essential to the ministry. This is the element which has been infused into the Episcopal Church of England and America, and which has produced its legitimate fruit in the isolation of that body from other Protestant communions. Though not original in its constitution, it is so congenial with it, that it has ever been adopted by a large portion of its members, and its influence can hardly be resisted even by those who see its unscriptural character, and are shocked by its legitimate effects.
There are certain radical points bearing on this whole subject, incorporated in all Protestant confessions, the denial of which is a
denial of Protestantism, and the ignoring of which, on the part of any Church, necessarily leads that Church into an unnatural and antiProtestant position. One of these, as just intimated, relates to the idea of the Church. All Protestant Churches rejected the Popish doctrine, that the Church is, in its essential nature, an external society, and especially that it is such a society organized in any one definite form. Every confession framed at the time of the Reformation defined the Church as the body of Christ, to be the company of believers, the coetus sanctorum, the company of faithful men; or, as the doctrine is expressed in the Westminster Confession, "The Catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered in one, under Christ, the head thereof, and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of Him who filleth all in all." By this is meant that the body to which belong the attributes, prerogatives, and promises pertaining to the Church, consists of true believers. And this is only saying that the characteristics, prerogatives, and promises, which, according to the Scriptures, belong to Christians, pertain not to the nominal, but to the real disciples of Christ; and whatever of absurdity and evil is consequent on confounding the distinction between nominal and real Christians, is inseparable from making the external Church, a body of professed believers, the possessor of the attributes and prerogatives of the true Church. The great corruption, apostasy, assumption, and tyranny of Rome consisted in appropriating to herself, as an external society, the attributes and powers of the body of Christ; and the leading Protest of those who rejected her authority was directed against that all-comprehending assumption, and consisted in the affirmation that the true Church was composed of true believers, and that every man united to Christ by a living faith was a member of his body and an heir of his salvation, no matter what his external ecclesiastical relations might be, and despite of all that pope, prelate, or presbyter, might say or do.
This is one fundamental principle of Protestantism. A second, scarcely less important, is, that the visible Church catholic consists of all those throughout the world, that profess the true religion, together with their children, and that particular Churches consist of any number of such professing Christians, together with their children, united together for the maintenance and protection of the truth, and mutual watch and care. A particular Church may be one worshipping assembly, or any number of such congregations collectively considered as united under some one tribunal.* The obvious meaning of this definition of the visible Church is, that as true believers constitute the true Church, so professed believers constitute the apparent or visible Church; and consequently, the question, whether any external organized body, or particular Church, is to be recognized and treated as a constituent member of the visible Church catholic, depends on the question, not whether they are organized in this or that particular way, nor whether they are derived by regular descent from the apostles, but simply and solely whether they profess the true religion. The second great question, therefore, between Protestants and Romanists, in reference to this whole subject, relates to the criteria or marks by which we are to determine whether any particular Church is really a constituent portion of the visible catholic Church. The Protestant confessions, without exception, declare the word and sacraments, or simply the word, i.e., the profession of the true religion, to be that criterion.* As among nations there may be good and bad governments, that is, political institutions more or less in accordance with the principles of right and with the revealed will of God, yet every independent state, no matter what its political organization may be, whether a pure despotism or a pure democracy, is entitled to be received into the family of nations; so every organized body professing the true religion and associated for the maintenance of the truth, and for the worship of God, is entitled to be recognized as a part of the true
visible Church. Protestants have ever acted on this principle, and they must do so, or forfeit their character and their spiritual life. The Churches of Switzerland, of France, of the Palatinate, of Saxony, of Holland, of Sweden, of England, of Scotland, had each their own peculiar mode of organization or form of government; yet each recognized all the rest. If a body professed the true religion, it was received into the sisterhood of Churches, whether it was Erastian, Prelatical, Presbyterian, or Congregational. The only Church which has stammered and faltered in this matter, is the Church of England, which has always acted as though it was at least an act of condescension or concession, to recognize non-Episcopal denominations as true Churches. The subjective reason for this faltering has been the dread of detracting from the importance of the Episcopate. If admitted less than essential, the fear was, it might be utterly disregarded. The objective reason, as before stated, is to be found in the doctrine so congenial to her system, that external organization enters into the essence of the Church.
The Protestant doctrine which makes the profession of the true religion the only essential criterion of the Church, is neither arbitrary nor optional. It is necessary and obligatory. We must hold it, and must act upon it, or set ourselves in direct opposition to the word of God. It arises necessarily out of the undeniable scriptural principle, that nothing can be essential to the Church but what is essential to salvation. This principle is held alike by Romanists and Protestants. It is because the former regard baptism and submission to the pope as necessary to salvation, that they make them necessary to the Church; and it is because Anglicans hold there can be no salvation without communion with bishops, that they hold there can be no Church without a bishop. So long, therefore, as Protestants hold that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the only indispensable condition of salvation, they must hold that faith is the only essential condition of
the being of the Church. To make anything else essential is to alter the conditions of salvation; and to alter the conditions of salvation is the greatest act of presumption, folly, and wickedness of which sinful worms can well be guilty.
It follows necessarily from what has been said, that by "the profession of the true religion" as the criterion of the Church, is meant the profession of the fundamental doctrines of the gospel. Unless the Bible teaches that the knowledge and belief of all the doctrines contained in the word of God, are essential to salvation, it cannot be assumed to teach that the profession of all those doctrines is essential to the existence of the Church. No man believes the former of these propositions, and therefore no man can consistently believe the latter. We are bound to recognize as a Christian any man who gives satisfactory evidence of piety, and who professes his faith in the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, even though he be ignorant or erroneous as to non-essential points. In like manner, the question whether any body of Christians is to be recognized as a Church, does not depend upon its being free from error, but upon its professing the doctrines essential to salvation.*
It need hardly be said that in making the true religion the only essential condition of the Church, and in limiting the demand to fundamental doctrines, Protestants do not intend that other things are unrevealed or unimportant. They readily admit that much is revealed and enjoined in Scripture, which, though not essential to salvation, is necessary to the perfection of Christian character, and to the well being and purity of the Church. But as perfection is not necessary in the individual to substantiate his claim to be regarded as a Christian, so neither is a perfectly scriptural creed or form of government necessary to the being of the Church, or to the existence of an obligation on our part to recognize it as such.
If it be asked, what is involved in this recognition? the answer is easy. To recognize a man as a Christian, is to admit his right to be so regarded and treated; it is to feel and act towards him as a Christian, and to acknowledge that he has all the rights and privileges of a Christian. In like manner, to recognize a body of men as a Church, is, 1. To admit their right to be so regarded and treated. 2. It is to feel and act towards them as a constituent part of the visible Church catholic; and 3. It is to acknowledge that they have all the rights and privileges which belong to a Church of Jesus Christ. That is, that they have a right to receive members into the communion of the Church, or to exclude them from it; to administer the sacraments, to ordain and depose ministers, and, in short, to do everything which Christ has commissioned his Church to do.
If it be asked further, whether all other Churches are bound to recognize and give effect to the acts of every body which they recognize as a sister Church, that is a very different question. It is the confusion of these two things, although so distinct, which alarms some conservative minds, and leads them to renounce the simplest principles of Protestantism. They fear that if they recognize a certain body as a Church, they must receive all their members, give effect to all their acts of discipline, recognize their ministers as their own, &c. This is a great mistake. We may recognize Austria as a nation, and yet not regard her sentence of banishment on one of her citizens for holding republican principles as binding on us. We may regard the Seceders as a Church, and yet not be bound to refuse communion with those whom they may excommunicate or depose for singing our hymns, or uniting in our worship. It is one thing to recognize the possession of certain rights by a particular body, and another to endorse the wisdom or the propriety of the exercise of those rightful powers in any given case. As we are not arguing, but simply stating what are the first principles of Protestantism on this whole subject,
we cannot enter further into details, or attempt to specify the cases when one Church is bound to recognize the acts of another as though they were its own. This would require a treatise; our present object is far more limited. We wish merely to state those principles which have in fact led all evangelical Churches to recognize each other as constituent members of the Church universal, and the neglect or denial of which has led to the isolation of the Church of England from other Protestant communions.
It is easy to see the intimate connection between the principles above stated, and the whole system of evangelical religion and doctrine. If any one form of external organization or mode of ordination be essential to the Church, it must be essential to religion; and if necessary to religion, it must be the exclusive channel of grace and salvation. This is the essential feature of Ritualism. These two things are historically as well as logically related. To whatever extent any body make prelacy and episcopal orders essential to the being or well being of the Church, to the same extent have they also made them essential to piety, and regarded them as the channels of grace. It is not, therefore, anything merely adventitious to Protestantism, but something which arises out of its very nature, when it teaches that the profession of the true religion, or sound doctrine, is the only necessary condition of the being of the Church; and, therefore, that we are bound to regard as Christian Churches all those bodies which profess the true religion, no matter what their external organization may be.
A third distinctive principle of Protestantism relates to the ministry. On this subject all the Protestant Confessions teach,
1. That there is no such distinction between the clergy and laity as the Romish Church affirms. The former do not constitute a distinct class,
separated by internal and indelible peculiarities of eminence from their fellow Christians, and exalted over them, not merely in office but by inward grace.
2. Those Confessions teach the universal priesthood of believers; that through Christ all have liberty of access by the Spirit unto the Father; and consequently that Christian ministers are not priests intervening between the people and God, as though through them and their ministrations alone we can become partakers of the benefits of redemption. The people do not come to God through the clergy as their mediators, nor are they dependent on them for grace and salvation; and therefore it is not the vital question with them, whether their clergy have the true succession and the grace of orders. "Hinc patet," says the venerable Turrettin, "ecclesiam non esse propter ministerium, sed ministerium propter ecclesiam, et ecclesiam non pendere a ministerio; sed ministerium ab ecclesia." Vol. iii., p. 253.
3. Protestants unite in teaching that all Church power vests radically not in the clergy as a class, but in the Church as a whole. In other words, that the great commission by which the Church was constituted, by which its powers were defined and conveyed, and its duties as well as its prerogatives determined, was addressed and given not to the clergy as a class, but to the whole Church. The power of the keys, therefore, vests ultimately or primarily in the people; of which power they can never rightfully divest themselves. In the articles of Smalcald, Luther, expressing the common doctrine of Protestants, says: "Necesse est fateri, quod claves non ad personam unius hominis, sed ad Ecclesiam pertineant. Nam Christus de clavibus dicens, Matt. 18:19, addit: Ubicunque duo vel tres consenserint etc. Tribuit igitur principaliter claves Ecclesiœ, et immediate." In the same document, he says: "Ubicunque est
Ecclesia, ibi est jus administrandi evangelii. Quare necesse est, Ecclesiam retinere jus vocandi, eligendi et ordinandi ministros."
Turrettin, in speaking of the right to call men to the ministry, says: "Nostra sententia est, jus vocationis ad ecclesiam ORIGINALITER ET RADICALITER pertinere, apud quam illam deposuit Christus." This he proves first, "A TRADITIONE CLAVIUM; quia ecclesiis data est potestas clavium, quœ in se complectitur jus vocationis. Patet ex Matt. 16:19, ubi claves regni cœlorum promittuntur Petro, et in ejus persona toti ecclesiœ, et Matt. 18:18, Christus dat ecclesiœ potestatem ligandi et solvendi: Vol. iii. 251. Licet corpus ecclesiœ exercitium juris vocandi pastores commiserit Presbyterio ad vitandam confusionem; non ideo se absolute et simpliciter eo jure spoliavit, ut dicatur eo carere nec possit amplius in ullo casu eo uti. Quia ita commisit juris illius exercitium Rectoribus, qui nomine suo illud administrant, ut illud tamen originaliter tanquam sibi proprium et peculiare reservarit. Nec exemplum societatis civilis huc pertinet, ubi populus ita resignat jus suum Principi, quem eligit, ut eo absolute et simpliciter exuatur. Quia longe hac in parte differt societas politica et sacra. In illa populus potest resignare absolute jus suum principi, illi se subjiciendo, ut Domino. Sed ecclesia jus suum non transfert pastoribus quoad proprietatem tanquam dominis, sed tantum quoad usum et exercitium tanquam ministris, qui illud administrent, non proprio nomine, sed nomine ecclesiœ. Ratio discriminis est, quod in societate civili, ubi agitur tantum de bonis temporalibus, nihil obstat quominus populus possit resignare absolute jus suum, imo expedit aliquando ad vitandam confusionem et anarchiam. Sed in ecclesia ubi agitur de salute, fideles non possunt sine crimine absolute se exuere jure illo, quod habent in media, quœ illi dantur ad promovendam salutem suam, quale est ministerium. Licet enim fides et pietas ipsorum non absolute pendeat a pastoribus, tamen exercitium ministerii, quod purum est et integrum, magno est ad
pietatem adjumento, et contra fidei conservatio difficillima est in corrupto ministerio." Vol. iii. p. 260.
This doctrine, that Church power vests not in the clergy as a class, but ultimately in the people, does not imply that the ministry is not an office, as the Quakers teach; nor that it is not an office of divine appointment. Neither does it imply that any man may of his own motion assume the office, and undertake the exercise of its functions, any more than the doctrine that all power in the State vests ultimately in the people, implies that any man may assume the office of a magistrate of his own will. Neither does the doctrine in question at all favour the theory of the Independents. That theory rests mainly on two principles, both of which we regard as manifestly unscriptural. The one is that which the name implies, viz., that each congregation or organized worshipping assembly is independent of all other churches; and the other is, that the ministerial office may be conveyed and withdrawn by the vote and at the option of the people. The function of the people is not to confer the office, but to join in the exercise of a judgment whether a given person is called of God to be a minister, and to decide whether he shall exercise his office over them, as their spiritual guide.
But while the doctrine in question teaches neither Quakerism nor Independency, it is none the less one of the radical principles of Protestantism. The Reformers protested not less against the Romish doctrine of the ministry, than they did against the Romish doctrine of the Church; the two being inseparably connected. They protested against the doctrine that Christ gave the Holy Spirit to the apostles as a permanent class of officers in the Church, to be by them transmitted by the imposition of their hands to their successors, and through them conveyed in ordination to presbyters, imparting to them grace and supernatural power. According to this theory, the
grace and power which constitute a man a minister, and which authorize and enable him to execute ministerial functions efficaciously to the salvation of men, are derived solely from the hands of the ordaining bishop. Without such ordination, therefore, no man can be a minister. He can have neither the authority nor the power to discharge its functions. A failure in succession is of necessity a failure in the ministry, and a failure in the ministry is a failure in the Church. In opposition to all this, the Reformers taught that while the Holy Ghost is the fountain of all Church power, the Spirit is not given to the bishops as a class, but to the Church as a whole. He dwells in all believers, and thereby unites them in one as the body of Christ. To them he divides, to each severally as he wills; giving to one the gift of wisdom, to another the gift of knowledge, to another that of teaching, to another that of ruling. Every office in the Church presupposes a gift, and is but the organ through which that gift is legitimately exercised for edification. It is, therefore, this inward call of the Holy Ghost which constitutes, in a manner, a minister; that is, which gives him the authority and ability to exercise its functions for the conversion of sinners and the edification of believers. The fact that a man has this inward call, must be duly authenticated. This authentication may be either extraordinary or ordinary. The extraordinary authentication may be given either in the form of miracles, or in such a measure of the gifts of the ministry and such a degree of success as places the fact of a divine call beyond all reasonable doubt. No Protestant questions the call of Calvin and Farel to the work of the ministry, and no Protestant cares to ask for any authentication of that call beyond the approbation God so abundantly manifested. But in all ordinary cases the authentication of the inward divine call is by the judgment of the Church. There is a right and a wrong, a regular and an irregular way of expressing this judgment; but the main thing is the judgment itself. The orderly scriptural method of expressing the judgment of the Church, is
through its official organ, that is, the Presbytery. Ordination is the public, solemn attestation of the judgment of the Church that the candidate is called of God to the ministry of reconciliation; which attestation authorizes his entrance on the public discharge of his duties.
It is on these principles the Reformers answered the objections by which they were constantly assailed. When the Romanists objected that the Reformers had no valid call to the ministry, they answered, ad hominem, that many of them had been regularly ordained in the Romish Church; and, as to others, that they had the call of God duly authenticated both by the extraordinary manifestations of his approbation and by the judgment of the Church.
When it was further objected, that any man might claim to have the call of God, and thus the door would be open to all manner of confusion and fanaticism, as among the Anabaptists, they made two answers; first, that a great distinction must be made between an orderly and settled state of the Church, and times of general corruption and confusion. As in a State, in ordinary times, there is a regular and prescribed method for the appointment of magistrates, which it would be a sin and evil to disregard, but when the magistrates turn tyrants or traitors, the people resume their rights and appoint their magistrates in their own way; so in the ordinary condition of the Church all are bound to abide by the regular and appointed methods of action; but if the rulers of the Church become heretical and oppressive, the people have the right to renounce their authority, and to follow those who they see are called of God to the ministry.
When it was still further urged that this was to do away with the ministry as a divine institution, and to make it a mere creation of the
Church, and supposed the people to have the power to make and depose ministers at their pleasure, it was answered, that the Protestant doctrine and practice were indeed inconsistent with the Romish theory of the ministry, which supposed that orders are a sacrament, that the Holy Ghost, conveying both authority and supernatural power, is communicated by the imposition of the hands of the bishop, and can be communicated in no other way. This rendered the Church entirely dependent on the ministry, by making grace and salvation dependent on an uninterrupted succession of valid ordinations. But this view of the nature of the ministry was declared to be unscriptural and destructive. On the other hand, it was denied that the Protestant doctrine conflicted with any thing taught in the word of God on the subject, or with the practice and faith of the Church in its purest ages. It was admitted that the ministry was a divine institution; that ministers receive their authority from Christ, and act in his name and as his representatives; that the people do not confer the office, but simply judge whether a candidate is called by God to be a minister; that in the expression of this judgment, those already in the ministry must, in ordinary cases, concur; and that to them, as in all other matters connected with the word and sacraments, belongs as the organs or executive officers of the Church, the right to carry the judgment of the Church into effect, i.e., to them belongs the right to ordain. At the same time, however, they maintained two important principles, perfectly consistent with this view of the ministry as a divine institution, the appropriate organ of the Church for the examination and ordination of candidates for the sacred office. The one was that already referred to as so clearly expressed by Luther when he said, "Ubicunque est ecclesia, ibi est jus administrandi evangelii;" and therefore, if we acknowledge any body of men as a Church, we must admit their right to take their own course in the election and ordination of ministers. We may believe, as the great body of Christians do believe, that there
is a right and a wrong, a regular and an irregular, a scriptural and an unscriptural method of proceeding in this matter. But as no Protestant believes that any thing connected with such externals is essential to salvation or to the being of the Church, he cannot, on the ground of any such irregularity, refuse to acknowledge an organized body of the professors of the true religion as a true Church or their ministers as true ministers. Hence, although in the great Protestant body one class believed that bishops were the only appropriate organs of the Church in ordination; another considered the Presbytery was, according to the Scriptures, the appointed organ; and others, and they perhaps the majority, held that the jus vocandi ad ministerium vested jointly in the clergy, the magistrate, and the people; yet as all agreed in the principle above stated, viz., that wherever the Church is, there is the right of administering the gospel, they universally acknowledged the validity of each other's orders.
The second principle, which secured unity and mutual recognition in the midst of diversity both of opinion and practice, is nearly allied to the one just mentioned. The Reformers distinguished between what is essential and what is circumstantial in a call to the ministry. The essentials are, the call of God, the consent of the candidate, and the consent of the Church. The circumstantials are, the mode in which the consent of the Church is expressed, and the ceremonies by which that assent is publicly manifested.* However important these circumstantials may be, they are still matters about which Churches may differ, and yet remain Churches.
While the principle was thus clearly inculcated that every Church could decide for itself as to the mode of electing and ordaining ministers, it was no less strenuously held that every Church had a right to judge for itself of the qualifications of its own ministers. Hence, the fact that a man was recognized as a minister in one
denominational Church, was not regarded as proving that he had the right to act as a minister in the churches of another denomination. We may admit a Baptist or Independent minister to be a minister, and yet, if he wishes to act as such in our Church, we have a perfect right, first, to be satisfied as to his personal fitness; and, secondly, that his call to the ministry should be ascertained and authenticated in the way which we believe to be enjoined in Scripture.
It is easy to see how the denial, or oversight, by the Church of England of the three great Protestant principles, to which we have referred, has led to her present isolated and anti-Protestant position. Regarding the Church as essentially an external organization with a definite form of government, she is slow to recognize as Churches any societies not organized according to that model. The profession of the true religion is not sufficient to sustain the claim of any communion to be regarded as a Christian Church. As no man can be a Christian if not subject to a bishop, so no society can be a Church, unless episcopally organized. The ministry is an office continued in the Church by a regular succession of prelatical ordinations, and therefore cannot exist when such ordination is wanting. It is the object of Mr. Goode's book to prove that such is not the original and genuine doctrine of the Church of England; that these antiProtestant principles are foreign from her original constitution, and that her present anti-Protestant position is due to the perverting influence of the Romanizing party within her pale.
The occasion for the publication of the treatise before us, was the printing of a private letter of the Archbishop of Canterbury, obtained under false pretences, by a convert to Romanism. In that letter the Archbishop said, in reference to "the validity of the orders of the foreign Protestant non-episcopal churches," "I hardly imagine there are two bishops on the bench, or one clergyman in fifty throughout
our Church, who would deny the validity of the order of those pastors, solely on account of their wanting the imposition of episcopal hands." This avowal caused a great outcry. The Tractarians were shocked to hear the Primate of all England deny their fundamental doctrine of apostolic succession and grace of orders. A cloud of publications issued from the press, assailing the Archbishop in terms such as those only could use who regarded him as a fallen archangel. The higher the reverence due to him if faithful, the greater the execration justified by his apostasy. Mr. Goode, so extensively and so favourably known by his able and learned work on the "Rule of Faith," here undertakes to vindicate the Archbishop, and to prove that it is not "a doctrine of the Church of England, that episcopal ordination is a sine qua non to constitute a valid Christian ministry." His first argument is drawn from the fact, that under Henry VIII. the bishops and clergy put forth a document containing the very doctrine on which the validity of Presbyterian ordinations has been chiefly rested, namely, the parity of bishops and presbyters, with respect to the ministerial powers essentially and by right belonging to them. In the Institution of a Christian Man, put forth by the bishops and clergy, in 1537, we read as follows:
" 'As touching the sacrament of holy orders, we think it convenient that all bishops and preachers shall instruct and teach the people committed unto their spiritual charge, first, how that Christ and his apostles did institute and ordain, in the New Testament, that besides the civil powers and governance of kings and princes, (which is called potestas gladii, the power of the sword,) there should also be continually in the Church militant certain other ministers or officers, which should have special power, authority and commission, under Christ, to preach and teach the word of God unto his people; to dispense and administer the sacraments of God unto them, &c., &c.'
" 'That this office, this power and authority, was committed and given by Christ and his apostles unto certain persons only, that is to say, unto priests or bishops, whom they did elect, call, and admit thereunto, by their prayer and imposition of their hands.'
"And, speaking of 'the sacrament of orders' to be administered by the bishop, it observes, when noticing the various orders in the Church of Rome: 'The truth is, that in the New Testament there is no mention made of any degrees or distinctions in orders, but only of deacons or ministers, and of priests or bishops.' And throughout, when speaking of the jurisdiction and other privileges belonging to the ministry, it speaks of them as belonging to 'priests or bishops.'
"Again in the revision of this work set forth by the king in 1543, entitled, A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man, in the chapter on 'the Sacrament of Orders,' priests and bishops are spoken of as of the same order."
Again, "In the autumn of 1540 certain questions were proposed by the king to the chief bishops and divines of the day, of which the tenth was this: 'Whether bishops or priests were first? and if the priests were first, then the priest made the bishop.' With the wording of this question we have nothing to do, and should certainly be sorry to be made answerable for it; but our object is to see what views were elicited in the answers. Now to this question the Archbishop of Canterbury (Cranmer) replied: 'The bishops and priests were at one time, and were not two things, but both one office, in the beginning of Christ's religion.' The Archbishop of York (Lee) says: 'The name of a bishop is not properly a name of order, but a name of office, signifying an overseer. And although the inferior shepherds have also care to oversee their flock, yet, forsomuch as the bishop's charge is also to oversee the shepherds, the name of overseer is given to the
bishops, and not to the other; and as they be in degree higher, so in their consecration we find difference even from the primitive Church.' The Bishop of London (Bonner) says: 'I think the bishops were first, and yet I think it is not of importance, whether the priest then made the bishop, or else the bishop the priest; considering (after the sentence of St. Jerome) that in the beginning of the Church there was none (or, if it were, very small) difference between a bishop and a priest, especially touching the signification.' The Bishop of St. David's, (Barlow,) and the Bishop elect of Westminster, (Thirlby,) held that bishops and priests 'at the beginning were all one.' Dr. Robertson, in his answer, says: 'Nec opinor absurdum esse, ut sacerdos episcopum consecret si episcopus haberi non potest.' Dr. Cox (afterwards Bishop of Ely) says: 'Although by Scripture (as St. Hierome saith) priests and bishops be one, and therefore the one not before the other, yet bishops, as they be now, were after priests, and therefore made of priests.' Dr. Redmayn, the learned master of Trinity College, Cambridge, says: 'They be of like beginning, and at the beginning were both one, as St. Hierome and other old authors show by the Scripture, whereof one made another indifferently.' Dr. Edgeworth says: 'That the priests in the primitive Church made bishops, I think no inconvenience, (as Jerome saith, in an Epist. ad Evagrium.) Even like as soldiers should choose one among themselves to be their captain; so did priests choose one of themselves to be their bishop, for consideration of his learning, gravity, and good living, &c., and also for to avoid schisms among themselves by them, that some might not draw people one way, and others another way, if they lacked one Head among them.' "
In turning to the divines of Queen Elizabeth's reign, when the formularies of the Church of England were finally constituted and established, our author quotes in the first instance the learned
bishop of Exeter, Dr. Alley, who in his Prelections on 1 Peter read publicly in St. Paul's, in 1560, says:
" 'What difference is between a bishop and a priest, St. Hierome, writing ad Titum, doth declare, whose words be these: "Idem est ergo presbyter, qui episcopus," &c.; a priest, therefore, is the same that a bishop is, &c.'
"And having given Jerome's words in full, he adds:
'These words are alleged, that it may appear priests among the elders to have been even the same that bishops were. But it grew by little and little that the whole charge and cure should be appointed to one bishop within his precinct, that the seeds of dissension might utterly be rooted out.' (Alley's Poor Man's Library, 2d ed. 5571, tom. i. fol. 95, 96.)
"It could hardly be doubted, then, by one who held this, that if the circumstances of the Church required it, Presbyterian ordination would be valid.
"About the same period, namely, in 1563, we have a much stronger testimony from Dr. Pilkington, then Bishop of Durham:
'Yet remains one doubt unanswered in these few words, when he says, "that the government of the Church was committed to bishops," as though they had received a larger and higher commission from God of doctrine and discipline than other lower priests or ministers have, and thereby might challenge a greater prerogative. But this is to be understood, that the privileges and superiorities, which bishops have above other ministers, are rather granted by men for maintaining of better order and quietness in commonwealths than commanded by God in his word. Ministers have better knowledge
and utterance some than other, but their ministry is of equal dignity. God's commission and commandment is like and indifferent to all priest, bishop, archbishop, prelate, by what name soever he be called.… St. Paul calls the elders of Ephesus together and says, "the Holy Ghost made them bishops to rule the Church of God." (Acts 20) He writes also to the bishops of Philippos, meaning the ministers.… St. Jerome, in his commentary on the first chapter Ad. Tit., says, "that a bishop and priest is all one.".… A bishop is the name of an office, labour, and pains.' (Confut. of an Addition. Works, ed. Park Soc. pp. 493, 494.)
"Both these were among the bishops who settled our Articles, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth.
"Our next witness shall be Bishop Jewell, of whose standing in our Church it is unnecessary to add a word. On the parity of order in priests and bishops, he says:
'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? or knoweth he how far, and unto whom, he reacheth the name of an heretic? Verily Chrysostom saith: "Between a bishop and a priest in a manner there is no difference." (In 1 Tim. hom. 11.) S. Hierome saith … "The apostle plainly teacheth us, that priests and bishops be all one." (ad Evagr.) S. Augustine saith: "What is a bishop but the first priest; that is to say, the highest priest?" (In Quœst. N. et V. Test. q. 101.) So saith S. Ambrose: "There is but one consecration (ordinatio) of priest and bishop; for both of them are priests, but the bishop is the first." (In Tim. c. 3.) All these, and other more holy Fathers, together with St. Paul the apostle, for thus saying, by M. Harding's advice, must be holden for heretics.' (Def. of Apol. Pt. ii. c. 9. div. i. Works, p. 202. See also Pt. ii. c. iii. div. i. p. 85.)
"But there is a passage in his writings still more strongly bearing on the point in question. Harding had charged our Church with deriving its orders from apostate bishops, &c. Jewell replies:
'Therefore we neither have bishops without Church, nor Church without bishops. Neither doth the Church of England this day depend of them whom you often call apostates, as if our Church were no Church without them.… If there were not one, neither of them nor of us left alive, yet would not therefore the whole Church of England flee to Lovaine. Tertullian saith:—"And we being laymen, are we not priests? It is written, Christ hath made us both a kingdom and priests unto God his Father. The authority of the Church, and the honour by the assembly, or council of order sanctified of God, hath made a difference between the lay and the clergy. Where as there is no assembly of ecclesiastical order, the priest being there alone (without the company of other priests) doth both minister the oblation and also baptize. Yea, and be there but three together, and though they be laymen, yet is there a Church. For every man liveth of his own faith." ' (Def. of Apol. Pt. ii. c. v. div. i. p. 129.)
"It is needless to point out how much this passage implies.
"We proceed to Archbishop Whitgift.
"And first, as to the parity of order in bishops and priests, he speaks thus:
'Every bishop is a priest, but every priest hath not the name and title of a bishop, in that meaning that Jerome in this place [Ad Evagr.] taketh the name of a bishop.… Neither shall you find this word episcopus commonly used but for that priest that is in degree over and above the rest, notwithstanding episcopus be oftentimes called
presbyter, because presbyter is the more general name.' (Def. of Answ. to Adm. 1574, fol. p. 383.)
'Although Hierome confess, that by Scripture presbyter and episcopus is all one (AS IN DEED THEY BE quoad ministerium), yet doth he acknowledge a superiority of the bishop before the minister.… Therefore no doubt this is Jerome's mind, that a bishop in degree and dignity is above the minister, though he be one and the self-same with him in the office of ministering the word and sacraments.' (Ib. pp. 384, 385.)
"Secondly, as to the form of government to be followed in the Church. His adversary, Cartwright, like the great body of the Puritans, contended for the exclusive admissibility of the platform of Church government he advocated; and, like Archdeacon Denison, maintained that 'matters of discipline and kind of government are matters necessary to salvation and of faith.' And this is Whitgift's reply:—
'I confess that in a Church collected together in one place, and at liberty, government is necessary in the second kind of necessity; but that any one kind of government is so necessary that without it the Church cannot be saved, or that it may not be altered into some other kind thought to be more expedient, I utterly deny, and the reasons that move me so to do be these. The first is, because I find no one certain and perfect kind of government prescribed or commanded in the Scriptures to the Church of Christ, which no doubt should have been done, if it had been a matter necessary unto the salvation of the Church. Secondly, because the essential notes of the Church be these only; the true preaching of the word of God, and the right administration of the sacraments: for (as Master Calvin saith, in his book against the Anabaptists): "This honour is meet to be given to
the word of God, and to his sacraments, that wheresoever we see the word of God truly preached, and God according to the same truly worshipped, and the sacraments without superstition administered, there we may without all controversy conclude the Church of God to be:" and a little after: "So much we must esteem the word of God and his sacraments, that wheresoever we find them to be, there we may certainly know the Church of God to be, although in the common life of men many faults and errors be found." The same is the opinion of other godly and learned writers, and the judgment of the Reformed Churches, as appeareth by their Confessions. So that notwithstanding government, or some kind of government, may be a part of the Church, touching the outward form and perfection of it, yet is it not such a part of the essence and being, but that it may be the Church of Christ without this or that kind of government, and therefore the kind of government of the Church is not necessary unto salvation.' (Ib. p. 81.)
'I deny that the Scriptures do.… set down any one certain form and kind of government of the Church to be perpetual for all times, persons, and places, without alteration.' " (Ib. p. 84.)
The next testimony is that of Hooker, who says: " 'There may be sometimes very just and sufficient reasons to allow ordination made without a bishop. The whole Church visible being the true original subject of all power, it hath not ordinarily allowed any other than bishops alone to ordain; howbeit as the ordinary cause is ordinarily in all things to be observed, so it may be in some cases not unnecessary that we decline from the ordinary ways. Men may be extraordinarily, yet allowably, two ways admitted unto spiritual functions in the Church. One is, when God himself doth of himself raise up any.… Another.… when the exigence of necessity doth
constrain to leave the usual ways of the Church, which otherwise we would willingly keep.'—Ecclesiastical Polity, vii. 14. See also iii. 11.
"In a former passage of the same book," says our author, Hooker "distinctly admits the power of the Church at large to take away the episcopal form of government from the Church, and says:
'Let them [the bishops] continually bear in mind that it is rather the force of custom, whereby the Church, having so long found it good to continue the regiment of her virtuous bishops, doth still uphold, maintain, and honour them, in that respect, than that any 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.' " Ib. vii. 5. See also i. 14, and iii. 10.
When we remember that Hooker is the greatest authority on ecclesiastical polity in the English Church, these extracts have special interest. They contain the clear assertion of the principle, which is, after all, the turning point between Protestants and Romanists, that all Church power vests ultimately in the whole Church, and not in the clergy, much less in the bishops. If the reverse were true, then the Church depends on the episcopate; derives its spiritual life through that channel as the only bond of connection with Christ. A corrupt bishop or presbyter could never be deposed or changed unless by others, who might be themselves corrupt. God, according to this theory, has not only left his sheep in the power of those who, as the apostle says, may be grievous wolves, but he has, if we may reverently so speak, debarred himself from giving the gifts of the Spirit in any other way than through the line of apostolical succession. There was a time when a similar theory was held in
reference to the state, and when men believed that the kingly office was instituted by divine command; that subjects could not depose their sovereign, nor change the succession, but were shut up to passive submission. But men have since discovered that the doctrine that civil power vests ultimately in the people, is perfectly consistent with the doctrine, that "the powers that be are ordained of God, and that whoso resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God." This was a lesson which princes and people were slow to learn, and it is well for statesmen, who sometimes forget their obligations and speak with small respect of the clergy, to remember that this great emancipating truth was first effectually taught to the world by the Protestant ministry. It was not until they had avowed and acted on the principle, that although the ministry was a divine institution, and obedience to ministers, within their appropriate sphere, is a matter of divine command, yet as all Church power vests ultimately in the people, they have the right to reject any minister, even though an apostle, who preached another gospel, that the nations awoke to the consciousness of a like power with regard to their civil rulers.
Another most important principle here avowed by Hooker is, that nothing binds the Church but an express law of Christ; that any office the Church has created she may abolish. This he applies to the episcopate, though he labours to prove it was instituted by the Apostles. But as it was instituted by them, according to his doctrine, not as something commanded and necessary, but simply as expedient, he consistently admitted the Church might abolish it. Of course these principles are utterly inconsistent with the doctrine that there can be no Church without a bishop.
Our author proceeds to quote several of the bishops, and other writers of that period, who in their controversy with the nonconformists maintain the ground, that no one form of Church
government is laid down in Scripture as essential or universally obligatory. Thus Dr. Bridges, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, in his " 'Defence of the Government Established in the Church of England,' " 1587, says—if the form of government in the Church " 'be not a matter of necessity, but such as may be varied,' then 'there is no reason why we should break the bond of peace, and make such trouble in the Church of God, to reject the government that is, in the nature thereof, as much indifferent, as the solemnizing this or that day the memorial of the Lord's resurrection.' " p. 319.
In opposition to the same class, Dr. Cooper, Bishop of Lincoln, then of Winchester, says, in his Admonition to the People of England, 1589: " 'Only this I desire, that they will lay down out of the word of God some just proofs, and a direct commandment, that there should be in all ages and states of the Church of Christ one only form of government.' " p. 61–63.
Dr. Casin, Dean of Arches, in 1584, in a work, "published by authority," asks: " 'Are all the Churches of Denmark, Swedeland, Poland, Germany, Rhetia, Vallis Telina, the nine cantons of Switzerland reformed, with their confederates of Geneva, France, of the Low Countries, and of Scotland, in all points, either of substance or of circumstance, disciplinated alike? Nay, they neither are, can be, nor yet need so to be; seeing it cannot be proved, that any set and exact form thereof is recommended unto us by the word of God.' "— Answer to An Abstract of Certain Acts of Parliament, 1584, p. 58.
Of course men who held that no one form of government is essential to the Church, could not maintain, and did not pretend, that episcopal ordination was necessary to a valid ministry.
Our author next appeals to the Articles and other Formularies of the Church of England, which were drawn up by the school of
theologians, whose writings are quoted above.
The 23d Article: "It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preacher, or ministering the sacraments in the congregation, before he be lawfully called and sent to execute the same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have public authority given unto them in the congregation, to call and send ministers into the Lord's vineyard." That this article does not teach the necessity of episcopal ordination, our author argues from the obvious import of the works, from the known opinions and practice of the authors of the 39 Articles, and from contemporary and subsequent expositions from sources of authority.
Again, in the 55th Canon of 1604, all the clergy of the Church of England are required to pray for the Church of Scotland, which was then, as now, Presbyterian.
The third argument of our author is from the practice of the Church. From the Reformation until the Restoration of Charles II., Presbyterian ministers were admitted to the cure of souls in the Church of England without re-ordination. At the Restoration a law was passed, requiring episcopal ordination in the case of all who were admitted to preferment in the English Church, and a clause to the same effect was introduced into the preface to the ordination service. This rule, however, as our author urges, proves nothing more than that in the judgment of those who made it, the ministers of an Episcopal Church should be episcopally ordained. With the same propriety any Presbyterian might insist on Presbyterian ordination for all its own ministers, without thereby unchurching other denominations. Mr. Goode, therefore, insists there was no change of doctrine as to this matter at the time of the Restoration.
As to the previous admission of non-episcopal ministers to office in the Church of England, the evidence is abundant. In 1582 the VicarGeneral of the Archbishop of Canterbury granted a license to John Morrison to the effect—" 'Since you were admitted and ordained to sacred orders and the holy ministry, by the imposition of hands, according to the laudable form and rite of the Reformed Church of Scotland—we, therefore, approving and ratifying the form of your ordination and preferment—grant to you, by express command of the reverend father in Christ, Lord Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, to celebrate divine offices, to minister the sacraments," &c.—Strype's Life of Grindal, Bk. 2. c. 13.
The High Church Bishop Cosin, writing from Paris in 1650, says:—
" '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 or cure of souls among us in the Church of England, (as I have knows some of them to have so done 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."—(Letter to Mr. Cordel, in Basire's "Account of Bishop Cosin," annexed to his "Funeral Sermon;" and also in Bishop Fleetwood's Judgment of the Church of England in the case of Lay Baptism, 2d ed. Lond. 1712, p. 52.)
And the same testimony is borne by Bishop Fleetwood, who says that this was "certainly her practice [i.e., of our Church) during the reigns of King James and King Charles I., and to the year 1661. We had
many ministers from Scotland, from France, and the Low Countries, who were ordained by presbyters only, and not bishops, and they were instituted into benefices with cure … and yet were never reordained, but only subscribed the Articles." (Judgment of Church of England in case of Lay Baptism, 1712, 8vo. pt. ii. Works, p. 552.)
Mr. Goode follows up these proofs with a series of quotations from the leading English theologians of a later date, all going to show that even those who took the ground of the divine right of episcopacy were far from adopting the principles of the Tractarian school, or from making Episcopacy essential to the being of the Church. We think he has succeeded in proving his point, though doubtless many of his authorities might be, as they have in fact been, called into question. We know that Tractarians are famous for their Catena Patrum, quoting, as we think most disingenuously, detached sentences from the writings of men in support of principles which they expressly repudiated. We do not believe that our author is chargeable with any such offence. We, however, give the quotations selected from his pages on his authority, as our only object was to show how the evangelical members of the Church of England vindicate her from the anti-Protestant and schismatical principles of the modern Anglo-Catholic school.