there are but two Forms of Imperative words in the Roman Ordinal before this Receive Power to offer Sacrifice c. and both spoken by the Bishop at the Vesting of the person to be Ordained with the Priestly Vestments For in the putting on the first sort of those Vestments he says Receive thou the yoke of the Lord for his yoke is sweet and his burden light and then immediately after at the putting on of another sort of Vestment he says Receive thou the Priestly Garment by which Charity is understood for God is able to encrease unto thee Charity and every perfect Work But by neither of these any thing of Priestly Power is given or do any of that Communion ever say so and therefore according to your own concession it must follow and it is that which the Learnedest of the Roman Communion say that the last imperative words in the Roman Ordinal which are spoken at the last imposition of hands Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven and whose sins thou dost retain they are retained are the alone essential Form whereby the Orders of Priesthood are conferred in that Church and this Form we had in our first Ordinal as well as they in theirs and much more fully because therein are also subjoyned these words And be thou a faithful dispencer of the Word of God and of his Sacraments in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost which are wanting in the Roman Ordinal which are not any such notorious and idle Tautologies as you are pleased to call them For although they express nothing more then what is comprehended in the foregoing words Whose sins thou dost forgive c. yet they are explanator of them and do more explicitly tell us what is contained in them For a Priest doth no otherwise remit our sins in the Church of Christ then as he administers to us the means in order thereto in the Word and Sacraments and the concomitant Offices belonging thereto Fourthly I further observe in your Paper that you quote Mr. Fox to prove that those who were ordained by King Edwards Ordinal were ordained again in Queen Maries Reign I must confess Mr. Foxes Book is too large for any one so throughly to know every particular of it as positively to deny what you say to be contained in it But when you convince me of this and show me in Mr. Fox where any such thing is said then will I believe that Dr. Burnet hath dealt falsly with us by telling us the contrary in his History of the Reformation Part II. Page 289. But be it so or be it not so the cause doth not at all depend hereupon Fifthly You infer the nullity of our Orders because in the conferring of them no power is given to Consecrate the Eucharist To this I answer that the words of our Ordinal giving power to Administer the Sacraments give power also to Consecrate the Elements in the Holy Eucharist and in all such Forms the more general the words are it is always the better provided they are such as include all the particulars as it is certain the words of our Form in the Ordination of a Priest include all the particulars that belong to that Office. But if you urge that it is not only necessary to express the power of Administring the Sacraments in general but that it must also be done in particular I must then ask the question why the Sacrament of Baptism ought not also in particular to be mentioned in the Form as well as the Sacrament of the Eucharist and why may we not from the omission of this in the Roman Ordinal infer the nullity of their Orders as well as they the nullity of ours from the omission of the other and that especially since the Sacrament of Baptism may be justly esteemed the nobler of the two as being that which first gives us Life in Christ whereas the other only adds Strength and Nourishment thereto But here you will object to what I have said that our Ordinal gives power only to dispence the Sacraments and not to consecrate the Eucharist To this I answer that by the word dispence the Church means the whole of what belongs both to the Consecration and Administration of that Sacred Rite and words are alwaies to be understood according to the meaning and receiv'd interpretation of them that use them and not as they shall be limited or forced by the impertinent cavils of every contentious Adversary and you may always take this for a certain Rule that when in the management of Controversie men come to cavil about words it is an evident sign that they are run on ground as to all things else· But to this point you further say that those that have Authority only thus to dispence the Elements have not power to make present the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist without which you hold this Sacrament cannot be administred To this I answer that if by making present the Body and Blood of Christ you mean a Corporeal presence by the transmutation of the Elements as the Church of Rome holds it is a monstrous opinion which we can never receive and I hope you are not gone so far as to swallow with them so absurd an opinion Sixthly You say Christ made his Apostles Priests when he said unto them Do this in remembrance of me and that you take this clearly to be the sense of the Church If you mean by the Church the Church of Rome I acknowledge what you say to be true they having so defined it in the Council of Trent but that the Church of England ever held this I utterly deny for it is a Doctrine peculiar to the Church of Rome and but of late date among them being first invented by some of the Schoolmen to serve a turn For about Six Hundred Years since and not sooner the Church of Rome taking up that most Sacrilegious practice of denying the Cup to the Laiety and being afterwards pressed with the institution of our Saviour who commanded the Administration to be in both Kinds to evade this they framed this subtle invention of saying that Christ in the institution of this Holy Sacrament made his Apostles Priests by saying unto them Do this in remembrance of me and that therefore the Commandement given them of Communicating in both Kinds belongs to them only as Priests and that the Laiety from this Commandment can claim no right thereto But this is a fetch which some of the wisest and ablest Men among them are ashamed of and it is particularly disowned by Estius Suarez and Christophorus a Castro as being neither agreeable to the Antients nor of any solidity in it self Seventhly You allow our Form of Episcopal Ordination to be sufficiently perfect which if granted will infer the Ordination of Arch-Bishop Parker and all the other Bishops in the beginning of Queen Elizabeths Reign to be good and
For saith he Si nolumus negare Sacramentum Ordinis in Ecclesiâ Latinâ necesse est pro materiâ hujus Sacramenti solam impositionem manuum assignare hanc enim solam Apostoli Concilia Antiqui Patres commemorant i. e. If we will not deny the Sacrament of Orders in the Latin Church it is necessary that we assign only Imposition of Hands for the matter of this Sacrament for that only the Apostles and Councils and ancient Fathers make mention of And therefore he saith in another place that not only the power of Jurisdiction but also the power of Order is conferr'd by Imposition of Hands that is not only the power of Absolving Penitents but also the power of Consecrating and Administring the Eucharist and he saith that the Councils and Fathers whensoever they speak of the Order of Priesthood to be given by Imposition of Hands mean all this power to be conferr'd thereby and for proof hereof he quotes a certain Comment that goes under the name of St. Ambrose which on the 4th Chapter of the first Epistle to Timothy hath these words Manuum Impositionis verba sunt Mystica quibus confirmatur ad opus Electus accipiens autoritatem teste Conscientiâ ut audeat vice Domini Sacrificia Deo offerre i.e. The words of Imposition of Hands are Mystical by which the Elected is confirmed to the work of the Ministry receiving Authority his Conscience bearing him witness that he may make bold in the stead of our Lord to offer Sacrifice unto God. And from thence he remarkes quod manuum Impositio inserviat potestati accipiendae in verum corpus Christi i. e. That Imposition of Hands doth serve to the receiving of power over the true Body of Christ that is to Consecrate and administer the Eucharist where they will have the true body of Christ to be present And therefore if the Authority of this Doctor of the Romish Church signifies any thing with you who was a person of that eminent note among them for his learning that he was designed to have been a Cardinal by Gregory the 15th Had that Pope lived to have made another promotion this last matter of Imposition of hands with the form of words annex'd must give not only the power to absolve penitents but also the power of consecrating the Eucharist and if they give this to them since they are both still retain'd in our Ordinal they must give it us also and consequently your whole Objection against our Orders as if this power were not conferr'd on us at our Ordinations be totally remov'd But here then you will perchance ask the Question if the later Matter and Form in the Roman Ordinal give the whole Priestly power to what end then serves the former Matter and Form which they make use of To this I Answer to the same purpose that some other Matters and Forms do in their Ordinal which they allow only to be accidental that is for the more solemnity of the Administration and not at all to confer the Sacerdotal power and as such no doubt at this time their first Matter and Form which they call essential would only have been reputed by all learned men among them but that it had unwarily been declared otherwise in the Council of Florence and therefore they being obliged to abide by that determination have been forced to frame the Scheme of their Divinity so in this particular as the practice of their own Church for near a thousand years together the practice of all other Churches in the World down to this time the Writings of the Ancients many of their own Doctrines and all Reason too which some of them cannot conceal do manifestly contradict 2. The first Form cannot be an essential Form according to their own positions because according to them that only can be an Essential Form of any of their Sacraments which conduceth to conferre the Sacramental grace But the Sacramental grace of the Sacrament of Orders as they call it cannot be confer'd by the first form and therefore that can by no meanes according to their own positions be an Essential Form. For the Sacramental grace even according to their own Divinity can only be annexed to such Sacramental signs as Christ himself the author and institutor of all Sacraments hath appointed now if it can no way be made out that Christ ever appointed the Rite of delivering the Chalice and Patten to be a Sacramental sign in the Ordination of the Ministers of his Church then certainly no grace can ever be annex'd thereto or the Form of words the first form above mention'd made use of at the administring this Rite in Ordinations ever conferre any The Consequence I suppose no one will ever deny because no signe with any Form of words whatever can in the least conduce to the conferring of Grace but what the Institution of our Saviour hath made Sacramentall And therefore the whole stress of the Argument lyes upon this only that our Saviour never instituted this signe or Rite of delivering the Chalice and Patten in Ordinations or ever commanded his Holy Apostles either by himself while here on Earth or by the Dictates of his Holy Spirit afterwards to make use thereof And there are but two ways possible whereby our Adversaryes can ever pretend to make it out that he did The First is by Scripture and the other by Tradition For they will have the Institutions of our Saviour to be transmitted down unto us not only by the written word the Holy Scriptures but also by the unwritten as they call it the Traditions of the Church both which they will have of equal Authority for the making out of what they will have to be of divine Institution But neither of these will serve their turn in this particular Not Tradition First because no other Church bears record with them herein and Secondly because it appears by undeniable authority and by the concession of abundance of their own Doctors as I have above mention'd that for near a thousand years together after Christ there was not even in their own Church any Tradition at all of this matter or the thing ever heard of among them till instituted by themselves about 700 years since And as to the Scripture they themselves there give up the Cause plainly acknowledging that no proof at all of this matter can be had from thence And therefore Bellarmine and Hallier and several others of them say that if Imposition of Hands be not the Essential Matter of Orders they can have no Argument at all out of Scripture to prove against the Hereticks as they call us of the Protestant Religion that it is a Sacrament And the words of Habertus are Scripturae Ordinatio aut nihil est aut manuum Impositio i. e. The Ordination of Scripture is either nothing or imposition of Hands Becanus the Jesuit goes further and say's Nec in Scripturis nec in antiquis
Case of our first Reformers it would become absolutely necessary to Ordain without it But Sixthly Allowing the Nicene Canon you insist on still to retain the utmost force you can give it yet there is nothing in it which requires what you would have in reference to us For all that is there said is that in all Provinces the Bishops should be Ordained by the consent of the Metropolitan which was very well provided for the preservance of peace and good Order in the Church But the Bishop of Rome is not our Metropolitan and in truth in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign the time to which your Objection refers we had no Metropolitan at all in this Province Cardinal Pool the last Metropolitan being then newly dead and the Metropolitical see of Canterbury vacant thereby and into his place it was that Archbishop Parker was Ordained But here you will say that as the provincial Bishops were to be Ordained by the Metropolitan so the Metropolitans were to be Ordained by the Patriarch and the Bishop of Rome being our Patriarch for this Reason Arch-bishop Parker ought not to have been Ordain'd without his Consent and that his Ordination was illegal for want thereof But to this I say 1. That this is not at all said in the Canon you insist on that extending no farther than to Metropolitans in respect of their Com-provincials as it is also plainly expressed in the Fourth Canon of that Council For in truth Patriarchs were not then in being neither could be that Division of the Empire into Diocesses consisting each of many Provinces which gave occasion for the first constituting of Patriarchs being but just then made and therefore it must be some time after before there could be any Birth given to that Institution and in the Council of Chalcedon which was held 126 years after that of Nice is the first time we find any mention of it no ancient Records of the Church before that time in the least giving us any account thereof 2. Supposing Patriarchs should have been then meant yet Brittain was never of the Patriarchate of the Bishop of Rome which is sufficiently made out not only by our Learned Dean of Pauls in his Origines Brittanicae cap. 3. but also by several of the Roman Communion also and especially by Father Barns a Benedictine Monk who wrote a Book particularly to that purpose 3. I deny that it was the ancient practice of the Church for Metropolitans to be Ordained by the approbation of the Patriarch or that his consent was at all thought requisite hereto For the Custom was when a new Metropolitan was chosen that he should be Ordained by his own Comprovincials And so was Arch-bishop Parker he having been Consecrated by four Bishops of his own Province and that this was a practice not only introduced by ancient usage but also establish'd by many Decrees and Canons of the Church not only Petrus de Marca Arch-bishop of Paris but also Hallier another eminent Doctor of the French Church do give us a large Account And it is but of late date that the Bishops of Rome interposed herein as is told you in a Pamphlet just now come from France concerning the proceedings of the Parliament of Paris upon the Popes Bull for therein the Kings Advocate tells that Parliament that for the four first Ages of that Monarchy there was no such thing as suing to Rome for Benefices And Petrus de Marca tells you the same thing And having said thus much I know not any thing which can be further urged for the support of your last Objection requiring the Popes consent to our Ordinations unless you fly to that Paramount Supremacy challenged to him by so many which makes him the only Supream Pastor of the Church under Christ and all other Bishops as his Delegates which act only by his Auâ—hority and have no other but what is derived from him And if you say this all the Answer I shall give you thereto is that this is a pretension so extravagant and so totally void of all manner of ground for its support that not only the Protestants but also the better part of his own Communion utterly deny it unto him And now having gone through your Paper all that remains for me further to do in order to your full satisfaction is that I perform my promise in making good unto you that supposing an Imperative Form of words in Ordination to be so essentially necessary as you would have it yet the Forms made use of in our Ordinal for the Ordination of a Priest were before the additions made to them by the Convocation in the year 1662 altogether sufficient in order thereto For as there is Matter and Form as they call them in all Ordinations administred by the Church of Rome so also is there in ours that is an outward visible sign at the performance of the administration and a Form of words expressing the thing intended thereby the former of which they call the Matter and the latter the Form of Ordination And as there is a double Matter and Form in their Ordinal for the Ordaining of a Priest so is there also in ours and that all things may appear the more clearly to you what I have hereafter to say concerning them in order to the satisfying you in the point proposed First I shall lay them down both together that is the Matters and Forms of their Ordinal as well as the Matters and Forms of our Ordinal as they were before the additions made to the Forms that are afore-mentioned that having that in your view which is the subject of the whole Dispute you may the better understand what shall be urg'd concerning it Secondly I shall from both of them observe some few particulars unto 〈…〉 leading to the same end And then Thirdly Having stated your Objection as fairly and to the best advantage of your Cause that I can I shall in the last place proceed to Answer it with such Arguments as I hope will give you full satisfaction First As to the Matter and Forms for the Ordination of a Priest both of the Romish Ordinal as well as those of ours as they were before the additions made to the Forms in the year 1662. They are as followeth In the Romish Ordinal In the Ordinal of the Church of England The first Matter is the delivery of the Chalice with Wine and Water in it and the Paten on the top of it with the Host thereon To the person to be Ordained to the Priesthood The first Matter is the Imposition of the Hands of the Bishop and Presbytery assisting with him at the Ordination on the Head of the Person Ordained The first Form is these words spoken by the Bishop at the delivery of the said Chalice and Paten Receive Power to offer Sacrifice unto God and to Celebrate Masses both for the Living and the Dead in the name of the Lord. Amen The first Form is these
him by reason of any imperfection or insufficiency to be found therein as your Answerer plainly doth is no less than the highest Blasphemy against him 2. I desire you to consider that by the same words whereby Christ Ordained his Apostles to be his Ministers in his Church he Ordained also the very Office it self For then he first instituted the Office when he first appointed them to it and therefore those words by which our Saviour first Ordain'd his Apostles for the Office of his Ministry are so far from being defective in the Expression of the Power thereof that it is impossible it can have any power at all but what is expressed by them For they are the Original Charter of its Institution and from whence alone the limits and extent of its Authority are to be known And therefore we may very well judge of the extent of the Office from its Correspondency with the Words but not of the sufficiency of the Words from their Correspondency with what we think the extent of the Office because the Office it self being first instituted by these Words can have nothing in it but what is expressed by them And therefore if it be the same Office of Priesthood we receive at our Ordinations which Christ Ordain'd his Apostles to certainly the same words which he then made use of must always be the perfectest form whereby to make expression thereof Had the Office been afore instituted and afterwards express'd by halfes we could then have recourse to the first institution to make clear eviction hereof and from thence the deficiency would plainly be made out But that the words of its first institution from whence it received its whole being and establishment should be imperfect or deficient is that which cannot be said unless you will accuse the Institutor Christ our Lord of being deficient in the Institution it self and not making and appointing the Office as well and as perfectly as he ought a Consequence which I suppose your Answerer will by no means be willing to own 3. This Answer is not that which the Romanists ever use to give in this Case or will the Gentleman you had it from I suppose abide by it however it came to drop from him For when the perfection of this Form is urged from this that it was the same by which our Saviour ordained his Apostles their usual answer is That there are two powers in the Priestly Office the power of Order and the power of Jurisdiction as I have afore explained the former of which they say was given the Apostles by our Saviour before his Crucifiction at his last Supper when he said unto them This do in remembrance of me and that it was the later only which was given after his Resurrection by these words Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins c. for the conferring of which they allow this Form to be most full and sufficient and for that purpose use it in their own Ordinal but deny it to comprehend any other branch of the priestly Office or that our Saviour intended to confer any other thereby And this you your self seem well enough to understand you having expressed as much in one of your Letters But this also goes upon two very great mistakes 1. That Christ Ordain'd his Apostles priests of the New Covenant when he said unto them at his last Supper This do in remembrance of me 2. That Christ Ordain'd any at all to be Ministers of his Church before he had actually purchas'd it by the shedding of his bloud And 1. It is a great mistake that our Saviour Ordained his Apostles Priests of the New Covenant by those words at his last Supper This do in remembrance of me For this is not a command particular to them to Consecrate and Administer that Sacrament which Christ then Instituted but to all the Faithful also to be partakers of it which the words plainly infer for what else can the Command This do refer to but to the whole Sacramental Action before mention'd the receiving and eating which belong also to the Laity as well as the Blessing and Consecrating which is the Duty of the Priest only And if the words be not so understood there will be no Command of our Saviour obliging the Laity to be partakers of this Sacrament at all but the Priests may be always left to Consecrate it and eat it themselves as contrary to all primitive practice and many Canons of the Church they now-a-days for the most part do Nay further they will be under no obligation to partake of it but only to Bless and Consecrate it and so if this Interpretation takes place the whole Institution may become frusâ—rate thereby and the Law of our Saviour be absolutely made of none effect for the sake of the Traditions and Inventions of Men. And therefore Estius an eminent Doctor of the Romish Church 〈…〉 plainly acknowledgeth that this Command of our Saviour This do in remembrance of me must extend to all the people His words are Paulus 1 Cor. 11. illud facere etiam ad plebem refert edentem bibentem de hoc Sacramento quando ait hoc facite i.e. Paul in the Eleventh Chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians plainly refers that of doing to the People eating and drinking of this Sacrament when he saith in the words of our Saviour ver 25. This do c. And to say otherwise would be to run Counter to all the ancient Doctors of the Church there being none of them for many hundred years after Christ that ever understood those words of our Saviour in that sence which now the Church of Rome will have but always looked on them as a general precept belonging to all Christians of observing that Holy Rite in Remembrance of his Death and Passion in the same manner as was then instituted by him But when the practice of the half Communion became to be generally receiv'd in the Church of Rome then the Schoolmen being put to their shifts to reconcile it with the Institution of our Saviour who himself Celebrated it and also commanded the Celebration of it in both kinds at last lighted on this fetch of making the Apostles Priests by these words of our Saviour This do in remembrance of me spoken by him after his giving them the Bread and therefore say that the Cup which was Administred afterwards was given them only as Priests and that the Laity are not at all to be admitted thereto by vertue of that Command But here it is to be observ'd that our Saviour spake these words This do in remembrance of me twice in that Institution first after the distributing of the Bread and then again after the giving of the Cup And therefore if Christ made them Priests by those words it will follow That either he made them Priests twice a Doctrine which the Church of Rome will by no means allow Orders being a Sacrament as they say never without the guilt