of the Son and of the Holy Ghost And for a Bishop Take the Holy Ghost and remember that thou stir up the Grace of God which is in thee by imposition of hands For God hath not given thee the Spirit of Fear but of Power and Love and Soberness And they so continued till the review of our Liturgy Anno 1662. and then to obviate the above-mentioned cavil of the Presbyterians those explanatory words were inserted whereby the distinction between a Bishop and a Priest is more clearly and unexceptionably expressed So that now the words of Ordination for a Priest are Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God now committed to thee by imposition of our hands Whose sins thou dost forgive c. And for a Bishop Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Bishop now committed to thee by the imposition of our hands in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and remember that thou c. But 4. Having thus stated the Case and laid before you the differences between the new Ordinal and the Old Now to come to the main of the objection I assert that had the old Ordinal been continued without any such Addition although it might not so clearly have obviated the cavils of Adversaries yet the Orders conferred by it would have been altogether as valid And as to the Objection made by the Gentlemen of the Church of Rome that the words of our old Ordinal do not sufficiently express the Office conferred thereby this must be understood either in reference to the Priestly Ordination or the Episcopal or both And 1. As to the Priestly Ordination there seems not to be the least ground for it because the Form in the old Ordinal doth as fully expresse the Office Power and Authority of a Priest as need be required in these words Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven and whose sins thou dost retain they are retained And be thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of God and of his Sacraments Wherein the whole of the Priestly Office is expressed But 2. As to the Episcopal Ordination the whole pinch of the Argument seems to lye there because in the old Form of the words spoken at the imposition of hands the Office and Authority of a Bishop they say is not so particularly specifyed To this I answer first That I think this sufficiently done in the words of the Form Remember that thou stir up the Grace of God which is in thee by imposition of hands for God hath not given us the Spirit of Fear but of Power and Love and Soberness For they are the very words of St. Paul to Timothy Bishop of Ephesus Epist 2. c. 1. ver 6 7. Whereby he exhorts and stirs him up to the Execution of his Episcopal office and they have alvvays been understood to refer thereto and therefore I think they may be also allovved sufficient to express the same Episcopal office when spoken to any other and fully determine to what Office the Holy Ghost is given by imposition of hands in the Form mentioned and properer for this purpose than any other because of the greater Authority which they must have in that they are taken out of the Holy Scripture But if men vvill cavil on and still object that the Name of Bishop is not expressed in the Form or the duties and povver of that Office vvith sufficient clearness specified in the vvords mentioned the objection lies much more against the Roman Ordinal than ours as being much more defective herein For the vvhole Form used therein at the Consecration of a Bishop is no more than this Receive the Holy Ghost that being all that is said at the imposition of hands and asserted by them to be the vvhole Form of Episcopal Ordination And therefore Vasques a Learned Jesuit and most Eminent School-man makes the same objection against the Roman Ordinal that the Romanists do against ours For in Tertiam Thomae Disp 240. c. 5. N. 57. His words are Illa verba accipe Spiritum Sanctum quae a tribus Episcopis simul cum impositione manuum dicuntur super Ordinandum usque adeo generalia videntur ut proprium munus aut gradum Episcopi non exprimant quod tamen necessarium videbatur pro formâ i. e. These words Receive the Holy Ghost which are spoken by three Bishops together with imposition of hands over the person to be Ordained seem to be so general that they do not express the proper office and degree of a Bishop which yet did seem necessary for the Form of his Ordination But to this he himself gives a solution N. 60. of the same chapter in these following words Neque obstat id quod supra dicebamus verba illa accipe Spiritum Sanctum admodum generalia esse nam quamvis in illis secundum se consideratis non denotetur munus aut gradus peculiaris Episcopi pro quocunque alio ordine dici possent tamen prout proferuntur adhibitâ a tribus Episcopis in unum Congregatis manuum impositione pro materia recte quidem denotant gradum Episcopi ad quem electus ordinatur Sic enim simul imponentes per verba illa denotant se eum in suum consortium admittere ad hoc Spiritum sanctum tribuere ac proinde in eodem ordine Episcopali secum ipsum constituere Cum tamen manuum impositio ab uno tantum Episcopo adhibita eadem verba accipe Spiritum Sanctum paucis aliis additis ab eodem in ordinatione Diaconi prolata neque secundum se neque prout ab ipso Episcopo dicta huic materiae applicata peculiare munus aut gradum Diaconi denotent neque enim prout dicta a uno Episcopo cum tali materia denotare possunt ordinatum admitti ad consortium Episcopi in hoc potius ordine quam in alio cum unus Episcopus tam sit minister ordinis Sacerdotii Subdiaconatus quam Diaconatus e contrario vero tres Episcopi solius ordinis Episcopalis ministri sint ideo autem existimo Christum voluisse ut Ecclesia illius tantum verbis quae secundum se Generalia sunt in hac ordinatione uteretur ut denotaret abundantiam gratiae Spiritus Sancti quae Episcopis in Ordinatione confertur Plus enim videtur esse dari Spiritum Sanctum absolutè quam dari ad hunc vel illum effectum peculiarem i. e. Neither doth that hinder which I have said before that these words Receive the Holy Ghost were too general For although by these words considered in themselves the Office or peculiar degree of a Bishop cannot be denoted and they may be also said for any other Order but as they are pronounced the imposition of hands of three Bishops joyned together being also had therewith for the matter of Ordination they do truly denote the degree of a Bishop to
form of words whatever unless it hath a Divine Institution whereto to refer and bears with it an exact conformity thereto can ever arrive to the true nature and essence of a Sacrament and therefore supposing Orders to be a Sacrament of the new Law as our Adversaries would have and that there was a Divine Institution not only for the outward sign but also for the form of words made use of in the conferring of them yet it can never be said that the form of words only without any further respect can give that determinate essence to the Sacrament as actually and ultimately to constitute it to be a Sacrament which is the nature of every essential form to do in respect of the thing to which it belongs and consequently can never be the essential form thereof And from hence you may plainly see that all which our Adversaries say of the essential form of Orders and on which from them you so much insist on hath neither Scripture Antiquity or Reason for its support but is totally grounded on no other foundation then the Philosophy of Aristotle and the mistakes and dotages of the Schoolmen built thereon As to what you say concerning the essential form being contained in the Prayers of the Roman Ordinal and that therefore before the imperative forms were added Imposition of Hands and Prayers were sufficient with them for the conferring of Orders but cannot be with us because in none of the Prayers of our Ordinal this essential Form is contained I Answer If by the essential Form you mean those very same words spoken by the Bishop at the administring of the outward Rite or Matter as they call it which the generality of the Romish Church call the form of Orders I deny that they are contained in any of their Prayers and if you think they are you should have told me in which But Secondly If by the essential Form you mean no more than words in the Prayers signifying the Office conferr'd which I suppose must be all that you mean thereby if you mean any thing that is sense then I answer that the prayers in our Ordinal do as fully contain that which you call the essential Form of Orders as any in the Roman Ordinal can be said to do And although you will not allow this of the Prayer immediately before imposition of hands or of that which follows immediately after in the Ordination of a Priest yet you cannot deny it of the Collect for the occasion where it is most proper to be looked for for that is as followeth Almighty God Giver of all good things who by thy Holy Spirit hast appointed divers Orders of Ministers in the Church mercifully behold these thy Servants now called to the Office of Priesthood and replenish them so with the truth of thy Doctrine and adorn them with innocency of Life that both by word and good Example they may faithfully serve thee in this Office to the glory of thy Name and the Edification of thy Church through the merits of Jesus Christ And if you look over all the prayers of the Roman Ordinal I think you cannot find in any of them the Office of a Priest more expresly mention'd than in this And therefore I hold still to my Inference that if the Prayers with imposition of hands may be sufficient for the conferring of the order of Priesthood in the Roman ordinal this must be also sufficient in ours And I cannot possibly see what farther you can object against this unless it be that the Prayer I have mention'd goeth before the Rite of imposition of Hands in our Ordinal whereas you may perchance think that it ought to come after rightly to answer the end for which I urge it But if you please to consider those passages of Scripture which tell us of the manner of ordaining practiced by the Holy Apostles as it is alwayes expressed in them to be done by Prayer and Imposition of hands so also shall you find that Prayer was first and Imposition of hands after So Acts 6. v. 6. in their Ordaining of the seven Deacons it is said that when they had prayed they laid their hands on them and so Acts 13. v. 3 of the Ordination of Paul and Barnabas to be the Apostles of the Gentiles When they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands upon them they sent them away which passages plainly evidence unto us that their method of Ordaining was first by Prayer in the name of the Church to Consecrate the person unto God for the Office to which he was set apart and then as in Gods stead according to the authority they had received from him in order hereunto by Imposition of hands to receive him to this Office and confer the power thereof upon him and that this was the completion of the whole administration made use of in this matter And although Acts 14. v. 23. it is said of Paul and Barnabas when they had Ordained them Elders or Presbyters in every City and had prayed with fasting yet we are to understand what is here last placed to have been first done it being a thing very usual with the Sacred as well as other Writers while they relate matters of fact not always to observe the exact order in which they were done as from many instances in Scripture may be made appear unto you and that this place is so to be understood we have the Rhemists themselves on our side who in their notes on this place plainly tell us that the Fasting and Prayers here mentioned were preparatives to Holy Orders In the next place you quarrel with me for misreciting your words which I confess is a great fault if I am guilty of it and would be contrary to that exact sincerity with which I ever desire to deal with all men especially in matters of Religion But having carefully reviewed both mine own and your Papers I can see no reason for this charge upon me In my Answer to your first Paper I observed that the grand defect which our Adversaries charge our Orders with is for omitting this Form in the Priestly Ordination Receive thou Authority to offer Sacrifice unto God and to Celebrate Mass both for the Living and the Dead which I told you could not be an essential defect because this Form it self was a novel addition and not used in the Church of Rome it self for near a thousand years after Christ To this you Answer in your second Paper in these words Although they have added that to theirs of offering Sacrifice for the Living and the Dead yet in regard they do before in their Ordinal expresly give all Priestly power which we did not the other is but an instruction to let them know what power they had received and for what they were to make use of it by vertue of that all Priestly power expresly given them before From which words in Answer to what you charge me with I have these things to say
only Presbyters but also Bishops and Cardinals not only before Thirty but also before they have been of an age capable of any of those Qualifications which Examination is appointed to enquire about For Ferdinando de Medices was made Cardinal by Sextus quintus before he was thirteen years old and John de Medices before him who was afterwards Pope by the name of Leo the 10th was made Bishop at the 8th and Cardinal at the 13th year of his age and Cosmus Bishop of Fano who died by an act of Sodomy committed upon him by one of the Bastards of Paul the third the Pope who call'd the Council of Trent was not then above eighteen years old and Odell Chatillion and Alphonso of Portugal were both Bishops and Cardinals the former at the 11th and the later at the 7th year of his age And Glaber Rodolphus tells us also that Benedict the 9th was but twelve years old when he was created Pope and he could not be well mistaken herein since he lived in his time Thirdly You may ask them further That whereas the 18th Canon of the Council of Nice doth Ordain that no Deacon shall sit among the Presbyters but that a Presbyter shall be always above a Deacon and a Bishop above a Presbyters how comes it now to be lawful for Deacons when made Cardinals to take place not only of Presbyters but also of Bishops Archbishops and Patriarchs too whereas they being no more than the Pope's Deacons can according to the ancient Orders of the Church claim no higher place thereby than the Deacons of any other Bishop And Fourthly I desire it may be also asked them that since the 6th Canon of the Council of Calcedon so severely prohibits all absolute Ordinations that is such as are made without a Title as utterly to exclude all from the Office to which they are so Ordain'd How comes it to pass that it is so Common a practice of the Church of Rome to ordain Bishops without Bishopricks such as the Bishop of Calcedon the Bishop of Adramytium and the Bishop of Amasia and abundance of those nulla tenentes men And if the Titles they bear be urged to excuse them from the breach of this Canon it is a mockage which will not serve their turn For the Title is only an empty name which they assume without any intent of ever being in reality Bishops of those places from whence they take them or of at all executing any pastoral charge in them And if it were otherwise without this mockage in the thing yet since this very 6th Canon of the Council of Nice which you insist on saith that all Bishops are to be ordained by their own Metropolitan what hath the Pope to do to Ordain Bishops for those places where he hath no Jurisdiction at all either as Metropolitan or Patriarch as it is certain he hath not in any of those Bishopricks from whence those Titles are usually assum'd For they take them almost always from the Bishopricks of the Eastern Empire which never acknowledged the Jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome but had always Patriarchs of their own at Constantinople Antioch and Alexandria whose Jurisdiction continues even to this day And under them those very Bishopricks being always provided of Bishops of their own Legally Ordained and Legally Invested with them I ask further how comes it to pass that contrary to the 8th Canon of the Council of Nice the Pope makes Bishops of those places where there are Bishops already And therefore if the Breach of ancient Canons must void Ordinations certainly these can be no Bishops To go over all the rest of the Ancient Canons of the Church and shew how in the most wholsom things they ordained the Church of Rome hath now totally deviated from them would be too long a Task what I have already said is sufficient to let you see that they have no regard to them themselves and therefore nothing can be more unreasonable then to exact the observance of them from others especially in such things as the alteration of Circumstances and the necessity of the times have made unpracticable as it is plain what you require from us in the point of Ordaining at our Reformation then totally was For Fifthly To have the Popes consent to the Ordination of those Bishops that were made at the Reformation was a thing impossible to be had and in that case all Laws as well Ecclesiasticall as civil necessarily lose their force For the Lawes of the Land had made it Treason to ask it of him and if they had not to be sure the Pope would never grant it to those who would not conform with him to all the Erroneous Doctrins and corrupt practices of his Church Must we therefore have no Bishops and no Ministers because he would not give his consent we should or must we still have retained all those corruptions and errours which he would impose upon us to obtain it If the latter be said and I suppose this is what our adversary would have it would put a necessity upon us to receive even the Alcoran or the Talmud with all the impieties and absurdities of them for necessary Doctrines of Faith and manners whensoever the Pope should please and we durst not trust his Infallibility to secure us from this since we know the time when a Pope of Rome was in Conspiracy with the Mendicant Fryers to have imposed a new Gospel on the World in opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ which if received would have made us worse than Turks or Jews Now put the case the plot had taken and this Gospel by his Authority had been received in the same manner as Transubstantiation the Sacrifice of the Mass half Communion Purgatory praying to Saints Image Worship and other like Impostures of that Church now are by the same Authority only for Infallible Truth must we have received it too to gain his consent to our Ordinations or else must we have had no Orders at all because he would not give it unto us unless we renounce our Christianity to obtain it from him I thank God our Condition is not such for the Laws of Christ give every Bishop equal Authority to Ordain and although some restrictions and limitations as to the Exercise of this power may have been put by the Laws of the Church for the better Order and more regular Government of it yet all those Laws according to the Doctrine of the Romanists themselves must alwayes give place whenever the necessity of times or things require it And therefore though the Consent of the Pope to our Ordinations had been required by the firmest Laws which the whole Universal Church could have established yet when such a necessity is put upon us as that we cannot have his Consent without submitting to those Errors and Corruptions as would make all our Orders an abomination in the presence of him for whose Service they were Ordained as was the
to be sought for say no such thing but for any thing which appeares there to the contrary Titus and Timothy were at their first Ordination made Bishops without ever being admitted into the Inferiour Orders at all but receiv'd all the power of them included in that of Episcopacy And in all probability many such Ordinations were at first made For in the Beginning things could not be so settled in the Church that the Regular method of calling men always from the inferiour Offices to the higher should then be observ'd but without all doubt in that state of the first planting of the Gospel either as the extraordinary Gifts of the Holy Ghost then given to some men recommended them or the necessities of the Church required there were frequent reasons of conferring the Episcopal Office at first where no other had been received in order thereto And if you will have any regard to the opinion of Petavius one of the Learnedest Men which the Society of the Jesuites ever had he tells us that in the first times of the Church there were none or very few simple Presbyters at all but that all or the most part of those that then Officiated in Churches were Ordained Bishops His words are Primis illis Ecclesia temporibus existimo Presbyteros vel omnes vel eorum plerosque sic ordinatos esse ut Episcopi pariter ac Presbyteri gradum obtinerent i. e. In those first times of the Church I am of opinion that Presbyters either all or the most part of them were so Ordain'd that they obtain'd both the degree of a Bishop and Presbyter together But whatsoever was done at first afterward I allow when Churches increased and in each of them there was the subordination of many Presbyters and Deacons assisting under the Bishop for the performance of the Divine Offices and the Discipline and outward Policy of the Church was brought to a settled order Then that which is the usual practice of most other bodies became also to be the Rule of Christians in constituting the Ministers and Officers of the Church that is to advance them by degrees from one Order to another and not to place men in the highest Order till they had approv'd themselves worthy by the well discharge of their Duty in those inferiour thereto and accordingly thenceforth on Vacancies Bishops were made out of the Presbyters and the Presbyters out of the Deacons and although this method might be introduced even in the times of the Apostles themselves yet it was not by any Divine Institution so as to make it absolutely necessary a man be a Deacon before he can be a Presbyter or a Presbyter before he can be a Bishop but only by Ecclesiastical appointment for the well regulating the Order of the Church and the better providing for the benefit of it those in all reason being presumed to be the most fitting for the Superiour Orders that had been prepared for them by long exercising themselves in and faithfully discharging the duties of the Inferiour But however this Rule was not always observed but often when the benefit of the Church required and the extraordinary qualifications of men recommended them Bishops were made not only out of Deacons but also out of Lay-men too and that by one Ordination the giving of the Superiour Order being alwayes then understood to include therein all the power of the inferiour Thus several of the first Ages of the Church were made Bishops from Laymen and those Histories which tell us of it acquaint us but with one Ordination whereby they were advanced thereto And Pontius the Writer of the Life of St. Cyprian tells us of him that he was made a Presbyter without ever being a Deacon and so was also Paulinus of Nola as he himself tells us in his Epistles And from Optatus it is manifest that Caecilianus Bishop of Carthage was made so from a Deacon without ever being Ordain'd a Presbyter in order thereto For there arising a disturbance in the Church of Carthage about Caecilianus's being made Bishop there and the main objection lying against his Ordination because Ordain'd Bishop by Faelix Bishop of Aptungitum whom they looked on as a Traditor and one that had deserted the Faith in time of Persecution Optatus tells us Iterum à Caeciliano mandatum est ut si Faelix in se sicut illi arbitrabantur nihil contulisset ipsi tanquam adhuc Diaconum ordinarent Caecilianum i. e. Caecilianus again commanded that if Faelix conferr'd nothing on him as they imagin'd then let them speaking to the Bishops of the adverse party then met together again ordain Caecilanus as if he were as yet only a Deacon Which plainly inferrs that before Faelix ordain'd him Bishop he was no more than a Deacon And Photius the learned Patriarch of Constantinople in his Epistle to Pope Nicolas acknowledgeth that even in his time some Ordained Bishops from Deacons without ever making them Presbyters and that with several it was then looked on as the same thing to make a Bishop from a Deacon as from a Presbyter without at all admitting to the intermediate Order And a while after the same thing is also objected to the Latines by the Greeks and although their heats then ran very high about the aforesaid Photius yet on both sides this is only mention'd as a breach of the Ecclesiastical Canons and that those were to be condemn'd that did the thing not that the Ordination was void which was thus administred Regularly I do acknowledge it ought to be otherwise and that none be made Presbyters before they have been Deacons or Bishops before they have been Presbyters and that it is always best for the Church to observe this Order And so also must it be acknowledged that in all formed bodies of men regularly none ought to be advanc'd to the highest Office but those that have first gone through the inferiour as is manifest in all Corporations and that it is ever best for the publick good of those Societies and the well governing of them that this Order should be alwayes observ'd But however if at first dash one should be plac'd in the highest Office without going through the inferiour this doth not vacate his Commission receiv'd from a lawful Authority but he is to all intents and purposes as fully invested with the whole Power and Authority of that Office as if he had regularly ascended thereto by the usual degrees through all the subordinate Offices and in the power of this one Office only hath the powers of all the others conferr'd on him because it eminently includes them all And the same is to be said as to those that are Ordained Bishops without going through the inferiour Orders Although this be done contrary to the Rule of the Church yet this doth not vacate their Commission which they have receiv'd by a lawful Authority at their Ordinations but by vertue thereof they are made true Bishops of
the Church of Christ and have receiv'd full power to all the Duties incumbent on them as such not only that which is peculiar to the Order of a Bishop but also the powers of all other inferiour Offices included therein For the Orders of the Church do so include one the other that the same Act of Ordination which gives the power of the higher Order doth therein also give the powers of all other Orders inferiour thereto as for Example when a man is made a Presbyter or Priest though he had never been a Deacon yet he hath full power to all the Acts and Duties of a Deacon as being included in his Priesthood and so when a man is made a Bishop though he had never been either Priest or Deacon yet he hath full power to all the Acts and Duties of both these Offices as being included in that of his Episcopacy And this is no more than may be made good by Instances from all the subordinations of power in the World in which this is alwayes most certain that the higher degree of power ever includes all the other Degrees inferiour thereto and that Act which gives that one superiour degree gives all the others therewith as included in it And all the Argument which the Romanists bring against this to prove it must be otherwise as to those several degrees of power in the Church which make the Offices of Bishop Priest and Deacon therein is drawn from a similitude they make between them and the three sorts of Souls which distinguish between the three several sorts of living Creatures in this World that is the Vegetative Soul the Sensitive and the Rational For as the Vegetative is necessarily presuppos'd to the Sensitive and the Sensitive to the Rational in such manner as nothing can be a Rational Creature which is not a Sensitive or a Sensitive which is not a Vegetative so say they the order of a Deacon is necessarily presuppos'd to the order of Priesthood and the order of Priesthood to that of Episcopacy and no one can be a Bishop which is not first a Presbyter or a Presbyter which is not first a Deacon But this Argument if it makes any thing to the purpose must infer a very ridiculous thing that is that God cannot make a Man unless by giving him first the Vegetative Soul he makes him a Tree or a plant and then secondly by giving him the Sensitive Soul he makes him a Brute and then thirdly and lastly by giving him the Rational Soul he makes him a Man whereas nothing is more certain than that by that one Act whereby he gives the Rational Soul he gives all the powers of the other two included therein And therefore if this similitude were to decide the Controversie between us instead of making out any thing for them it will most manifestly give the whole on my side it being one of the fullest and clearest that can be thought on most plainly to illustrate unto you the whole state of what I have said in this particular For although the Vegetative Soul as in Vegetables is distinct from the Sensitive and the Sensitive as in Brutes is distinct from the Rational yet the Sensitive doth so include the Vegetative and the Rational the Sensitive that the very same act which gives the Sensitive Soul gives also the Vegetative and the very same act which gives the Rational gives both Sensitive and Vegetative also included therein And just so is it of the three Orders of Deacon Priest and Bishop in the Church of Christ For although the Order of a Deacon in a simple Deacon is distinct from the Order of Priesthood and the Priesthood as in a simple Priest distinct from the Order of Episcopacy yet the Order of Priesthood doth so include the Order of a Deacon and the Order of Episcopacy both that of Priest and Deacon that the very same act of Ordination which gives a man the Order of Priesthood gives him also that of a Deacon and that very same act which gives him the Order of Episcopacy gives him also both that of Deacon and Priest included in it and consequently that it is no more necessary a man should be a Deacon before he can be a Priest or a Priest before he can be a Bishop than that he must be made a Vegetable before he can be an Animal and an Animal before he can be a Rational Creature than which nothing is more absurd And thus far having shown you that the inferiour Orders of the Church are not so essentially necessary to qualifie for the superiour as you imagine but that a man may validly be ordain'd a Bishop though he was afore neither Priest nor Deacon it will infer that although that should be true which you object against us that our first form of Ordination of Priests till the Addition inserted in the year 1662. was defective and that by reason of this defect all the Priestly Ordinations conferr'd by it were null and void yet our Episcopal Ordination may be still good as being administred by no such defective Form but by one which includes all that and in the very same words which the Romanists themselves say is the alone essential Form of their Episcopal Ordination as is afore taken notice of and therefore though we had no true Priests all the while this defective Form was used yet we still had true Bishops fully invested with the power of Ordaining others and consequently now at least since the Form whereby they Ordain is mended according to your mind we must have true Priests also and therefore whatsoever defect according to your opinion might be formerly in our Priestly Ordination by reason of our Forms yet now this defect is fully mended and supplied you have no reason on this account to forsake our Communion But Thirdly That there was never any such defect in our Forms the main mistake which you go upon is that which in the last place I am to convince you of For although before the addition inserted in the Form of our Priestly Ordination it might not be so well fenced against all the unreasonable Cavils of Adversaries as now it is yet it was altogether as full in the expression of what was done and totally sufficient for the end design'd which I doubt not I shall fully and evidently make appear unto you by these following Reasons I. Because these words Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven and whose sins thou dost retain they are retained are as full and comprehensive an expression of the whole Priestly power as possibly can be devised For what are Priests but the Ministers of Jesus Christ to lead men to that Reconciliation with God and that Forgiveness of Transgression from him which he hath purchased for us And what are the appointed means whereby they do this but the Administring the Sacraments the preaching of the Word the declaring Gods Promises and Threats the exhorting to Repentance
THE VALIDITY OF THE ORDERS OF THE Church of England Made out against the Objections of the Papists in several Letters to a Gentleman of Norwich that desired Satisfaction therein By Humphrey Prideaux D. D. Prebendary of Norwich LONDON Printed by John Richardson for Brabazon Aylmer at the three Pidgeons in Cornhil over-against the Royal Exchange 1688. Imprimatur Hic Liber cui Titulis Certain Papers c. June 8. 1688. Jo. Battely TO THE READER THese Letters when first Written were never designed for the Publick but only to endeavour the satisfaction of one particular Person who applyed to me for it one Mr. Anthony Norris late a Justice of Peace for the County of Norfolk The Occasion hereof was the Conference an Account of which as given me by the Person chiefly concern'd begins this Book at which Mr. Norris being present and pretending not to be satisfied with what was then said in the behalf of our Orders writes to me the second Paper hereafter Published concerning it and that produced all the Letters that after follow The last I confess was never sent unto him for on my finishing of it being assured by such accounts as I had received that he was already gone over and firmly fix'd on the other side as afterwards appeared to be true at his Death which happened about the beginning of April following I thought it too late to make any further Application to him and therefore threw my Papers by in my Study as now totally useless for the end designed But after his Death great offence being taken against me on several Occasions by our Adversaries instead of other things to object I was challenged for not answering a Letter wrote by Mr. Acton a Jesuite of this Place which I supposing could be none other but the last I received from Mr. Norris I again gathered my Papers together to let them see that called upon me for an Answer that I was ready to give it And although it was afterwards denied that this Letter was at all intended thereby but one sent to another Person which I never knew any thing of yet having on this occasion put my Papers together and looked them over I was perswaded by those to whom I communicated them that it might be of great use here to have them publish'd For the Romish Emissaries that haunt this place seeming to have studied no other part of the Controversie but that of our Orders in their rounds where they go to and fro among us seeking whom they may delude inculcate all the Arguments they can against the Validity of them and making this the constant subject of what they have to say against us to such of our people as they would Seduce tell them that we have no Ministry and consequently no Church no Sacraments and that therefore they must come over to them without examining any further into the Controversie between us By which silly Snare having catched some few stumbled others and filled the place in a manner with this Controversie I think an Antidote may be very proper where the Poison is so much spread and therefore most what they have to say being put into the Letters sent me by this Gentleman I hope my Answers to them may very well serve for this purpose That which perswades me they may is especially the plainness with which they are wrote for the Gentleman to whom they are directed having never had the advantage of any Scholastick Education I endeavoured to lay all things as plain and easie before him as I could whereby what I say in them being adapted to the meanest Capacity I hope none that reads them but may go along with them and receive satisfaction thereby as to the whole which our Adversaries in the points discussed object against us And that they may thus far be serviceable in our present Case to undeceive such as are deluded among us and prevent others from being so is the sole end and design of my publishing of them Although the Conference which occasioned those Letters was that I was no way concern'd in or knew any thing of it till I had received Mr. Norris's Paper yet since his account is drawn so much to the disadvantage of the Gentlemen concerned on our side to publish that account alone would be to send abroad a Libel against them And therefore that I might not be injurious to them in this particular was the reason that I desired of them their Account also to publish therewith and that is it which here next immediately follows H. Prideaux THE ORDERS OF THE Church of England DEFENDED The True Account of a Conference between Mr. Earbury and Mr. Acton a Jesuit concerning the Validity of the Ordination of the Church of England THE Company being set Mr. Earbury began to speak concerning the occasion of their being met there Viz. That Mr. Thompson had departed from our Church and had been at a Popish Meeting and that being demanded his Reason he had given this viz. That he thought that the Ministers of the Church of England were not in Orders and that he had Friends who would prove it to our faces and that therefore we were now come to Answer all Objections Mr. Acton here Replyed That it was our duty to prove our selves in Orders and cited a part of Mr. Earbury's Letter for it though any one may see that that Paragraph was not designed for that purpose The words of the Letter are these I shall most gladly meet you there not out of a principle of ostentation or discontent but meerly out of a sense of that duty that I owe that Church of which I am a member and as I hope to prove my self a Lawful Pastor in it Mr. Earbury told him that he did not think himself obliged to it but yet he would begin with the proving part and proceeded thus There are four things which your own Authors do think necessary to a due conveyance of Orders First Authority of the person Consecrating Secondly The Form. Thirdly That which they call the Matter Fourthly Quality of the persons receiving Ordination Mr. Acton excepted against the Form of Ordination made in Edward the Sixth's Time and bid Mr. Earbury prove Syllogistically that that was sufficient to convey the character of a Priest which Mr. Earbury immediately did by this Argument If our Saviours Form of Ordination was compleat viz. Receive the Holy Ghost then the Form used in Edward the Sixth's time being the very same must be compleat also but our Saviours was compleat therefore ours was To this Mr. Acton answered That our Saviour had a supream Authority and might use what Form he pleased though never defective but we had no Authority to use a defective Form. Mr. Earbury told him that though we had not the same Authority to impose a Form yet we had liberty to use that Form which our Saviour used especially when the Form was expressive of the power given and so offered to prove that the Form
to perform all the offices of it without expresly giving the Title But our Ordinal did not express the whole power given either by name or equivalency For it did not give power to Consecrate the Eucharist though it did to be dispencers and faithful Ministers of it which amounts to no more than distributers which every Deacon is as capable of as a Priest And if dispensing should import to be Stewards of the Mysterys of God that also imports no more then to be Conservators or Trustees of what should be committed to them not that they are thereby the makers of it That because I am intrusted or made Steward it should therefore necessarily follow that I have power to make that with which I am intrusted I hope our case depends not upon such a forced and unnatural a consequence If it should be objected that our Saviour did not then give the power to Consecrate the Eucharist when he said to his Apostles Do this in remembrance of me but was only a command to continue the Rite and Custom of it in the Church and therefore were compleat Priests from those words only by which he gave them power to remit sins To this I answer That if our Church had thought any sufficiently impowred to Consecrate the Eucharist by virtue only of those words to remit sins we then must make her highly guilty of notorious idle Tautology in her Form of Ordination when after she hath given power to remit sins should also at the same time distinctly give power to dispence the Sacraments But by her giving such distinct power to dispence the Sacraments after she had given power to remit sins she could not think that to be the sense of our Saviours words but the other that by bidding them do this in Remembrance of him that he did then give them power to Consecrate the Eucharist which I take clearly to be the sense of the Church whose Authority I shall preferre before any single persons whatsoever Besides that our Saviour should then command them to do that which they had power for to do is more like to a cruel Tyrant than a most Merciful and Compassionate Master To your Third and last I say That the Romanists making alteration in their Ordinals signifie nothing unless you can shew me where they have done it in such an essential part of it as we have Although they have added that to theirs of offering sacrifice for the living and the dead yet in regard they do before in their Ordinal expresly give all Priestly power which we did not the other is but an instruction to let them know what power they had received and for what they were to make use of it by virtue of that all Priestly power expresly given them before as appears by the words in their Ordinal which in ours was neither given in general nor in particular to Consecrate or make present Christs body and blood in the Holy Eucharist as was observed before If we had then as now but said be thou a Priest I grant it had been sufficient for all the offices of it although none of them had been particularly expressed in our Ordinal As to what Morinus hath said about the Greek and Roman Ordinals not giving distinct power expresly to Consecrate makes nothing at all so long as they gave them all Priestly power Unless you can prove any of their Ordinals do not expresly give them Priesthood the exceptions out of him of not giving power to Consecrate is nothing at all to the true state of the Question between us Sir As to what you say from Vasquez relates only to a Bishop who doth not thereby receive any new character then what he had afore as a Priest and is only the same power and character further extended which was before virtually in him from his Priesthood and therefore those words Receive the Holy Ghost and stir up the grace c. may be sufficient alone for that though not for a Priest who doth receive a new power and character Besides the same Author in the same Tome which you quote doth expresly say that by the words Receive the Holy Ghost and whose sins you remit c. doth not alone make an intire Priest and that he hath not power to Consecrate by virtue of them and you know Sir the point between us now is only that of Priesthood As to that Sir vvhich you say That they vvould not degrade Bishop Ridley of his Episcopal office vvas not upon account that they thought him no Bishop but for the benefit of the Leases to his Successor Bonner But why then did they at the same time degrade Latimer of his Episcopal office who was made such by the Roman Ordinal which Ridley was not by which Sir you may plainly see what the true reason was of both which I take not at all to be what Sir you were pleased for to surmise Finally whereas you were pleased to say our Priests were owned for good by the Romanists themselves when you shall be pleased Sir to make proof thereof I shall think it then time and not before to take it into my consideration in the mean time Sir if you please to look into Mr. Fox and do believe what he says you shall find what complaints he makes of the Roman Clergy against the Protestant Clergy in Queen Mary days what havock they made with the latter in that they would force them all to be Re-Ordained again Sir I am still in the same Communion which if I should ever change it can be imputed to nothing more then from some of our own Clergy-men of whom I do expresly exempt your self SIR I am your most humble Servant A. N. Three days after I had also this following paper sent me by the same Gentleman in answer to the last I sent him SIR I Could not conveniently before yesterday read over your second Paper supplemental to your first As to Bishop Ridley you may find by Mr. Mason's Vindication of him by the reasons he urg'd that he did account him to be Consecrated not by the Old but by the New Ordinal and the Popes Commissioners refusing to degrade him as to that Office and yet did Bishop Latimer in both is a clear Testimony that they would not do it to the one because they thought him consecrated by the New Ordinal Besides Dr. Burnet hath expresly declared that Ridley was made Bishop by the New Ordinal in King Edward's time Besides other Bishops they did not degrade As to their coming to our Churches until the 10th of Queen Elizabeth so to my knowledge did most of the Prebendarys of your Cathedral with the rest of the Episcopal party constantly frequent the Presbyterian Churches all along in the late times and yet they did not think those mens Orders to be good who officiated that took them not from the Bishop As to the Persecutions and Cruelties of our Adversaries they were much to blame for them but as it
the Church of Rome ever made any such alterations in them as we have done in answer hereto I lay down these following particulars 1. That those words are no more essential to Ordination then any other part of the Ordinal Had those words indeed been injoyned by Christ and commanded by him to be always used in Ordination then I must confess the altering of them would have been a very criminal deviation from our Saviours institution and might inferre a nullity in the whole Administration But the Church of Rome doth not pretend to any such divine Authority for any of their Forms but it is at present their most generally received Doctrine that the very Form of Ordination as well as the preliminary and concomitant prayers which you allow alterable are in the power of the Church to alter add and new word them as they shall judge most convenient and if the Church of Rome hath this liberty I know not why the Church of England may not be allowed to have it also 2. Those imperative words in which you place the essence of Ordination are so far from being thus essential thereto that for above a thousand years the Church of Rome it self never had any such in any of their Ordinals as may appear from the Collection Morinus hath made of them in his Book de Ordinationibus But the whole Rite of Ordination for all that time was performed by imposition of hands and prayer only without any such imperative words at all spoken by the Ordainer to the person Ordained to denote his receiving the office conferred on him as is now made use of both in ours as well as in the Roman Ordinal And the Council of Carthage which is the ancientest we find to have directed concerning this matter prescribes nothing herein but imposition of hands and prayer only And in the Book of Ecclesiastical Hierarchy ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite and believed by many of the Romish Communion to be genuine and by all to be very ancient mention is made of imposition of hands and prayer as the only things made use of in Ordination And if you will go to the Scriptures you will find the Holy Apostles made use of nothing else in the Ordination of the seven Deacons and when Paul and Barnabas were set a part by the Commandment of the Holy Ghost to go preach the Gospel to the Gentiles we find mention of nothing else done in their designation to that Ministry And therefore Morinus a Priest of the Church of Rome lays down this Doctrine that nothing is absolutely necessary to Ordination but imposition of hands with a convenient prayer for this only he saith the Scripture hath delivered and the universal practice of the Church hath confirm'd But I having promised you a fuller Examination of this point shall at present no longer detain you only thus much I could not but observe unto you at present to let you see how miserably you are imposed on by such as would make those things essential to Ordination which if granted will inferre a nullity not only in our Orders but also in all the Orders of all that have been Ordained in the Church of Christ for above a thousand years after his first establishing of it here on Earth and consequently also make their own Orders null and void which have been derived from them Thirdly You grant that these words in the Roman Ordinal Receive power to offer sacrifice to God and to celebrate Mass both for the Living and the Dead are a novel addition and by no means essential to Orders but only words of instruction to let them know that are Ordained what power they had received by that Priestly office which afore they were in express words invested with and for what purpose they were to make use of it In Answer to which I shall lay down these following particulars 1. That in granting this you grant the whole point in controversie between us and the Church of Rome concerning this matter For whatsoever they may tell you about altering the Form in our Ordinal all this is impertinent cavil made use of only to deceive the less wary and insnare the ignorant The only point which they will insist upon when they come to dispute this matter in earnest is that by our Ordinal we do not give our Priests the povver of offering up the sacrifice of the Mass For they say that in the office of a Priest are contained tvvo povvers the povver of Sacrificing and the povver of Absolving from Sin and that this tvvofold povver is conferred by a tvvofold Matter and Form in Ordination That in conferring the first povver the delivering of the Sacred Vessels is the matter and these vvords Receive power to offer Sacrifice to God c. are the Form and in conferring the second povver imposition of hands is the matter and these vvords Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins thou dost forgive c. the Form. And therefore judging both these povvers essentially and indivisibly contained in the office of a Priest and that both these Rites the first by the Authority of the Council of Florence and the second by the Authority of the Council of Trent are essentially necessary to the conferring these Powers do for this reason deny the validity of our Orders because in our Ordinations we only make use of the latter matter and form and totally omit the former and therefore say they we have not the whole power of Priesthood conferred on us but only that of remitting sins as your Paper mentions and on this account the other part of offering Sacrifice which is the main essential as they say being wanting all becomes null and void for lack thereof And this is the plain state of the Controversie between us and therefore if you are convinced by what I wrote you in my first Paper that those words Receive power to offer Sacrifice to God and to Celebrate Mass both for the Living and the Dead are not necessary in Ordination because in so many Ages never used in the Church as can be undeniably prov'd they were not you have conquer'd the whole Objection that is in earnest made against our Orders and the Controversie is at an end between us For Secondly That which you say that all Priestly power and consequently this power of Sacrificing is given in the Roman Ordinal in other words before the speaking of these Receive thou power to offer Sacrifice c will appear by examining the Ordinal it self to be altogether a mistake For if this be given it must be done either in the Prayers of the Office or in the Imperative words spoken by the Bishop to the person Ordained In the Prayers you will not say for then the Prayers in our Ordinal must be allowed to be as valid for this purpose also in which the Priestly Office is as fully expressed both by Name and Description as in theirs And in the Imperative words you cannot say it For
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
not actually confer that Authority upon them and the prayer after is only for a Blessing upon the Ordained which also doth neither confer any Authority upon them But those of the Roman doth actually confer all Priestly power And whereas Sir you say that the Learnedest of the Romanists say that the last imperative words in their Ordinal which are spoken at the last imposition of hands Receive the Holy Ghost c. are the alone essential Form whereby the Orders of Priesthood are conferr'd when I find this can be proved I may further let you know what I can say to it it may be sufficient for some part of the Priesthood but not for all the Offices of it To that which you say that the words of our Ordinal giving power to Administer the Sacraments give power also to Consecrate the Elements This I denyed and gave you my Reasons against it before to which again I refer you I urged no such thing as you would have me of a general and particular and therefore your Answer to those distinctions is besides the business Indeed I Objected as you say that our Ordinal gave power only to dispence the Sacraments and not to Consecrate to which you Answer that by the word dispence the Church meant the whole that belongs both to the Consecration and Administration of them that use them There is no Papist I believe but will grant that the Church meant and intended it but the intention of the Church can never vest any thing with Priestly Authority without it be actually and expresly conferred upon them by Her. For if a Kings intentions be never so great to make a Justice of Peace yet he is not thereby at all invested with that Authority You deny that the Church of England thought any part of Priesthood conferred upon any by vertue of these words Do this in remembrance of me then I say if no Power or Authority was thereby given by vertue of these words how can She give any by bidding them dispence the Sacraments for to Consecrate them And why then so many Arguments used about the extension and limitation of those words of our Church And then as I told you before how shall our Church be acquitted from idle Tautologies which I did not charge Her with as you were pleased to tell me I did but under such suppositions and circumstances which I take that She doth disown You further tell me that I allow our Form of Episcopal Ordination sufficiently perfect but you must give me leave to tell you that I do not whereby all your train of consequences from thence come to nothing What I said of a Bishop having no new Character I said it only in the person of Vasquez to Answer the Objection which you made out of him for the same Vasquez as I told you did say that by the alone words Receive the Holy Ghost c. were not sufficient to make an intire Priest although they were for a Bishop from whence I inferred that in Vasquez's judgment a Bishop received no new Character but my self was ever of opinion that they did As to Bishop Ridley I am fully satisfied that they refused to degrade him as not being made Bishop by the Roman Ordinal and you may find by the Statutes in the First Year of King Edward that then they took upon them to Administer Sacraments in new ways of their own invention for which an Act that year was made prohibiting of them and why might they not also as well Consecrate and Ordain according to their own inventions But of this I shall say no more but refer you to Mr. Actons last Letter sent to Mr. Earbury which though I did before yet never see it since I received your last Paper Sir I suppose you cannot offer any thing now material unto this point than already you have which I believe none could have said more that if you please we will supersede this Question and proceed to another which is of as great disatisfaction to me as any and that is Whether any Bishop or Arch-Bishop can validly be made such against the sixth Canon of the Councel of Nice which says That no Bishop shall be made without the consent of his Superiour or by faculty from him for his Consecration A. N. SIR YOU must pardon me that other business hath hindered that I have not been able to look on your Paper till several days after it came to my hands And although thereby I sufficiently perceive you are resolved against receiving any satisfaction in the point you applyed to me for it yet I will endeavour it this one time more be the effect of it what it will. And first as to your complaint against me for not complying with your proposal as to Mr. Acton I thought in my last I had so far convinced you of the absurdity of it that I should have heard no more of that If you would have him Answer my Papers your intimacy with him of which you so often acquaint me I should think might be sufficient to engage him to it without that challenge from me which you are so importunate for I am sure this gives you a better title to make this proposal to him then to require the other so absurd and unreasonable a thing from me with whom you never exchanged a word in your life unless by these Letters What I wrote you was for your satisfaction and I told you if you had any thing further to Object I was ready to hear it and give you a further Answer and you might take whom you pleased into your Consult as to this matter But for me to challenge Mr. Acton as you proposed would be an act of folly which I desire to be excused from For that possession of right which we are in as to the point controverted between us doth by no means make it proper for me to take this part upon me Besides he is a person I never had any thing to do with or ever received the least provocation from him and for me in this case to challenge him as you would have me is in the whole nature of the thing altogether unreasonable and in respect of that Protection from His Majesty by which he is here may be also dangerous unto me and I must tell you truly I durst not so far confide in you as not to mistrust there may be a snare laid for me hereby As to your huff about the Cautions which you tell me I gave you against being imposed on and the imputation of being ignorant and unwary which from some words in the Paper which you Answer you will needs take home to your self To the first I Answer that since you seem to acknowledge you do not understand Latin by telling me you are no Schollar nor Linguist and yet quote Fathers Councils and Schoolmen I think it possible notwithstanding your grand conceit of your abilities to manage Controversie that you may be very well imposed
same Form is not used that the Eastern Churches perform Ordinations by one Rite and the Western by another without disallowing the Orders of each other he solves the matter by telling us that Christ instituted only in general that there should be Matter and Form in Ordination but left it to the Church to determine the particular that is what particular Matter and what particular Form should be made use of in this Administration And Morinus also speaks to the same purpose for in his third Book de Ordinationibus Exercit. 7. cap. 6. n. 2. he saith That Christ determined no particular Matter and Form in Orders and in another place cap. 3. n. 6. he tells us That it strikes him with astonishment that there should be such an alteration both as to Matter and Form in that Sacrament as by examining the Antient Liturgies he finds there hath been And Cardinal Lugo's words are altogether as express in this matter who in his Book de Sacramentis Disput 2. Sect. 3. plainly saith That Christ left the Church at Liberty both as to the Matter and Form of Orders And so also saith Arcudius a Learned Greek that was designed to have been a Cardinal in his Book de Sacramentis lib. 6. cap. 4. where he lays it down as that which the most Learned hold That the Sacrament of Orders as he calls it is so instituted by Christ that the Ordaining of Ministers should be performed by some words and external signs by which the Ministry to which they were Ordained might be sufficiently signified but that any particular external signs should be made use of rather than others was totally left by him to the arbitriment of the Church And he quotes for proof hereof the third Chapter of the 23th Session of the Council of Trent where it is said only That Ordination is to be performed with words and external signs without assigning what words or what signs these ought to be from whence he infers they may be any And to the same purpose also speaks Tapperus of the Forms of the Sacraments in general and of the Sacrament of Orders in particular whom Vasquez as to both those takes great pains to confute And there is another of the same opinion whose Authority must be certainly infallible with those of that Communion that is Pope Innocent the 4th who saith It is found to be a Rite used by the Apostles that they laid hands on persons to be Ordained and poured out prayers over them but we find not any other observed by them from whence we believe that unless there had been Forms afterwards invented it would have been sufficient for the Ordainer to have said be thou a Priest or any other words of the same importance but in after times the Church Ordained those Forms which are now observed And Father Davenport alias Sancta Clara hath those words Many Doctors do not without probability think that Christ appointed neither the Matter nor Form of Orders but left both to be assigned by the Church And thus far having produced the authorities and proofs which you required I hope I have given you satisfaction herein and that the opinion of the Schoolmen in asserting that the essential Form of Orders as you call it is immutable and not in the power of any Church to alter is altogether wrong And that it is so those that assert the Doctrine which I have laid down in opposition to them have this unanswerable Argument for it that those very essential Forms as they call them of Priestly Ordination which they would have to be instituted by Christ himself and always from the beginning to have continued in the Church immutably the same are both of so late date that the one of them was never used till within these four hundred years and the other not till within these seven hundred years at the farthest as by comparing the Antient Ordinals of the Romish Church doth manifestly appear In the next place you tell me that although Morinus should have observed that for a thousand years the imperative Form be thou a Priest was not used in the Roman Ordinals yet he doth not say they did not expresly give all Priestly power in other words or by equivalency by giving full power to perform all the Offices of it which you deny our Old Ordinal did To this I Answer That I know of no Ordinal that ever had this Form in it be thou a Priest or of any that was ever Ordained by it to the Priestly Office neither do I refer you to Morinus for any thing concerning it In your Papers I observed you were much stumbled at the additional alterations we made in the Forms of our Ordinations as if these additions being in an essential part as you suppose must necessarily infer an essential defect to have been in our Ordinals before and consequently make null and void all the Orders of our Church conferred by them or if otherwise that we could not justifie the alterations we have made To alter the introductory and concomitant prayers you seem willing to allow us a power but not to make any change in so essential a part as the Form it self and challenge me to show you when ever the Church of Rome did so In Answer whereto I told you that those Forms which you think so essential to Orders are so far from being so that the Church of Rome it self for near a thousand years after Christ never used any such Forms at all that is any imperative words at all denoting the conferring of the Office by the person Ordaining but the whole Rite was performed by prayer and imposition of hands only without any imperative words at all spoken to the person Ordained denoting his taking Authority to execute either the whole or any part of the Office conferred on him and for the making out of this I referred you to Morinus his Collection of Antient Ordinals wherein he having published sixteen of the most antient Rituals of Priestly Ordination of the Latin Church that could be found in the ten first of them no such Form doth at all appear to be used but in all of them the whole Rite of Ordination is performed by imposition of hands and prayer only and the eleventh Ordinal in his Collection composed as he judgeth in the tenth Century is the first that used this Form Receive thou power to offer Sacrifice unto God and to celebrate Mass both for the Living and the Dead and the other Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven unto them and whose sins thou dost retain they are retained is not found till in the last of them composed about four hundred years since And this I think to be a plain demonstration of the novel introduction of those Forms into the Roman Ordinals And that they were totally unknown to the Antients I endeavoured further to make appear unto you by showing you that in none of their
have been pleased to call at my Study and the Books should there have been laid before you Your Paper cites the words of the third Canon of the Council of Carthage but all the four first Canons belong to this matter for in them that Council prescribing the manner of Ordaining Bishops Priests and Deacons makes mention only of imposition of hands with the Blessing given by the Ordainer but nothing at all of any of those imperative Forms in which the Church of Rome now a days placeth the essence of Orders And as to the words of the Book of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite I find none such in that Author as are contained in your Paper and therefore I suppose you transcribed them not from the Book it self but only wrote after some person that had given you the summe of them and if I mistake not you have made use of Dr. Burnet in this particular for the passage which I refer to in Dionysius contains several pages in Folio for he having first described the manner of Ordaining Bishops Priests and Deacons afterwards goeth over every single Rite in a very particular and exact manner and according to his way of Writing finds a Mystery in every one of them but amongst all those particulars which he so exactly recites there is none of the least mention made of any imperative Forms spoken at the imposition of hands or at the performance of any other Rite belonging to that matter and this silence of them where there is so particular a mention of every thing else is an undeniable presumption that there was then no such thing in use But to all that I have said in denying the antient use of those Forms you have this Answer that it seems irrational that there should be no words spoken by the Bishop at the laying on of his hand upon the Ordained and that at this rate the laying on of hands would seem only a dumb and insignificant sign and would in your opinion be nothing at all operative to the conferring of the Office on the person Ordained To which I reply First That how insignificant soever you may esteem the outward Ceremony without those words which you call the essential Form in the Consecration of a Christian Priest yet if you please to read the 8th Chapter of Leviticus you will there find that Aaron and his Sons were Consecrated to the Levitical Priesthood by the outward Ceremony only without as much as any one word spoken by Moses the Consecrator signifying the Holy Office to which they were set apart And Maimonides the most Authentick Writer among the Rabbies gives us an account that in after times the Consecration of the High Priest among the Jews was performed only by the Anointing with the Holy Oyl and Vesting with the High Priests Vestments and after the destruction of the first Temple in which the Holy Oyl was lost by Vesting him only For outward signs can by general institution be made as expressive of any thing of this nature as a form of words for words are only sounds appointed by the common consent of those that use them to be the signs of things and when outward actions are appointed to signifie the same things they are altogether as expressive and the King of France by delivering the Sword to the Constable and a Staff to a Marshal of France doth as effectually create those Officers by that outward Ceremony only as if he had done it by a Form of words the most expressive of the Authority and Power given that could be devised because the Laws of the Kingdom and the long received Customs of it have made these Ceremonies alone the well known manner of Constituting those Officers And had the Laws of the Christian Church or the long received usages of it made any outward Ceremony whatever in like manner the well known Rite of Ordaining a Priest it would be altogether as valid for this purpose without any Form of words whatever For Ordination being only a Ministerial act of delegating that Office to another which was received from Christ any thing that is sufficient to express this delegation whether words or signs doth sufficiently do the thing For if Forms be so necessary to Ordination what is it that makes them so It must be either the institution of Christ or the nature of the thing it self any other Reason for it I know not If it be from the institution of Christ let us be but convinced of that and we have done For in this case either to omit the Form or alter in the least from its first institution would make the whole performance culpable But if there be no institution of Christ for any such Form as I have already abundantly demonstrated that there is not all the necessity of such a Form must be from the nature of the thing it self Now if the nature of Ordination doth not necessarily require any such Form but that any of the Offices of the Church may be as well conferred by an outward Ceremony only by publick institution made significant and expressive of the thing done there appears no necessity for the use of any such Forms at all so as to invalidate those Orders that are conferred without them That which makes the Church of Rome so much insist upon the Matter and Form of Ordination is that they have made it a Sacrament and they observing the Sacrament of the Lords Supper and the Sacrament of Baptism which are really Sacraments of Christs own institution to consist each of them as prescribed in Scripture of an outward sign and a form of words annext the former of which they call the matter and the latter the form of the Sacrament from hence they do infer that they are both essentially necessary to all those other Rites which they will have to be Sacraments also and because they find none such instituted in Scripture for them as they themselves acknowledge that they may not be without them introduce Matters and Forms as they call them of their own making And hence it is that they talk so much of the Matter and Form of Orders and will have both so essentially necessary to the conferring of them whereas would they argue aright in this point they ought not so much to have inferred the necessity of what they call Matter and Form for Ordination from that it is a Sacrament as that for this very reason it can be no Sacrament because it hath neither the one nor the other by Divine institution belonging thereto For the nature of a Sacrament according to their own definitions consists in this that it is an outward Ceremony consisting of things and words instituted and enjoyned by Christ himself with a promise of saving Grace annexed to the performance of it And since nothing of this can be made out to us from Scripture it doth from hence follow that although Orders be enrold among the number of the
and newness of Life the correcting by Ecclesiastical Censures such as are notorious Sinners the Absolving them when penitent and the Intercession of Holy Prayer for all This therefore being the end of their Calling and these the Means they are to make use of in order thereunto those words which appoint them unto the End must necessarily appoint them also to all those Means leading thereto For in this Case the Means are always included in the End and whosoever gives a Commission for the accomplishing of any End must necessarily also in that Commission include an Authority to all the Regular Means leading thereto And therefore the End of the Priests Calling being to be the Ministers of Jesus Christ for the Forgiveness of Sins these words in our Ordinal Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven and whose sins thou dost retain they are retained which do most plainly appoint the Persons Ordain'd to this end do necessarily appoint them also to all the means leading thereto the preaching the Word the Consecrating as well as administring the Sacraments and all things else which Christ hath commanded his Ministers to do in order to this End and consequently they do give every branch of the Priestly-power which by the Institutions of our Saviour do belong thereto In answer to this I doubt not those Gentlemen you converse so much with will tell you that those words cannot be so understood as to comprehend all those Ministerial Acts of the Priestly Office. Because in the 20th Chapter of St. John's Gospel from whence we as well as they own to have taken them into our Ordinals and therein to use them in the same sense as there used they have according to them another interpretation not to mean Forgiveness of Sins as by the outward assistance of all the Ministerial Acts of the Priestly Office leading preparing and qualifying men thereto but only as it is given by that one act thereof whereby they take upon them in their Sacrament of Penance as they call it properly directly and absolutely by a judicial Sentence to forgive the sins of those that Confess unto them For such an Authority those Usurpers upon the power of God Almighty claim to themselves and alledging this Text of Scripture as the Charter by which they hold it will not have it to be understood of any thing else and in the Council of Trent thunder out their Anathema against all those that understand it to extend to any other act of the Priestly Office but this only For the words of that Council are Sess 14. Can. 3. If any one shall say that those words of our Saviour Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven and whose sins thou dost retain they are retained are not to be understood of the power of remitting and retaining sins in the Sacrament of Pennance as the Catholick Church ever understood from the beginning but wrest them contrary to the Institution of the Sacrament to the Authority of Preaching the Gospel Let him be accursed In Answer to which I will shew you 1. That there is no such power given to the Priest as is claimed by them from those words And 2. That therefore they can be understood in no other sense than that which comprehends the whole Priestly power as I have already explain'd And 1. The power which they claim from these words is to be Judges on Earth in Christ's stead between God and Man and to have full Authority as such to pass sentence upon all that after Baptism shall fall into Transgression either for Life or Death according as they shall judge fitting and therefore call all such to their Tribunal telling them that Christ hath constituted them Judges upon Earth with such a power that without their Sentence of Absolution none that have fallen into sin after Baptism can be again reconciled unto God. And therefore they make their Sentence of Absolution to be that very Act whereby the Sin is forgiven and take from God that Prerogative which he hath reserved to himself alone For it is he only that blotteth out transgressions and none other is a God like him that pardoneth iniquity and therefore was it that the Jews when our Saviour said thy sins are forgiven thee reasoning among themselves asked the Question Who can forgive sins but God alone and this saith Tertullian They deservedly did as not knowing his Divinity For then it was a thing looked on as most certain amongst all the Scribes and Doctors of the Jewish Church that none but God alone could forgive Sin and so was it also by the Ancient Fathers of the Church of Christ And therefore they make this one of their greatest Arguments whereby they prove the Divinity of our Saviour that he did forgive Sins For saith Irenaeus If none can forgive sins but God alone and our Lord did forgive them it is manifest that he was the Word of God made the Son of Man. And the same Argument is also made use of by St. Hilary St. Athanasius St. Cyril St. Anbrose St. Chrysostom and St. Jerome and in the Ages after by Venerable Bede and several others which sufficiently shows that they never understood any such pardoning power as those men now claim ever to be given to man but to be alwayes reserv'd unto God alone That the Pastors of the Church of Christ have Authority to apply the Promises of God to all his People by declaring Absolution from Sin to all that truly Repent and on the other hand to denounce his Punishments against all that continue in iniquity I freely grant and also that they have power for the better Government of the Church by way of Discipline to exclude all such from Communion who are open and notorious Sinners and restore them again when amended by Repentance But as to that power of the Priest now claim'd in the Church of Rome of remitting Sins properly directly and absolutely by a Judicial Sentence and that none can be reconciled to God unless thus absolved by them or at least supplying the defect by an earnest desire of their Absolution when not readily to be had as in perfect Contrition they will allow is what God never gave unto them or the ancient Fathers of the Church ever challenged For the loosing of men by the Judgment of the Priest which the Ancients speak of cannot be understood of any such extravagant power granted unto them but only of that power of Discipline of which I have spoken whereby they restored such to the peace of the Church and admitted them again to Communion who had afore been excluded from it And their Language concerning this matter is generally such as will admit no other Interpretation For they mostly express it by the Terms of bringing them to Communion of reconciling them to the Communion or with the Communion restoring the Communion to them