of that than to deprive him of his Baptisme 4. You must not look on Ecclesiastical Canons in how solemn a manner soever made to be such Sacred and immutable things as to put a necessary obligation upon the Church indispensably to observe them through all times after For they are no more than other humane Laws made to obviate the present Grievances and regulate the disorders of the Body for which they are made and in the same manner also as the Circumstances of Time Place and Things alter frequently grow into disuse and become obsolete thereby and that this particularly was the case of that Canon of the Council of Nice which you insist on will plainly appear for it was never designed as a Law to reach the whole Church of Christ through all times and places of its Establishment so as for ever to lay an obligation upon all that are Christians to observe it Neither was it ever in the power of any Council to make any such but as most other Canons so especially this was made upon a particular occasion and that occasion was this During the Maximian Persecution there was one Meletias Bishop of Lycopolis in Egypt who in the heat of that Persecution having sacrificed to Idols to save his Life was for this reason by Peter Bishop of Alexandria his Metropolitan in a Synod of the Bishops of the Province deposed from his Bishoprick but he not acquiesceing in this Sentence became the Head of a Sect and in a Schismatical way in opposition to the Metropolitan not only retained his Bishoprick which he was deposed from but also took upon him to act as Metropolitan himself and ordained Bishops throughout all Egypt which by ancient Custom was the Right of the Bishop of Alexandria only in that Province of which Alexander one of the Successors of Peter in the See of Alexandria complaining at the Council of Nice the 4th and 6th Canons of that Council were framed on purpose for the redress hereof and the prevention of all other such like disorders for the future thereby it was decreed that all Bishops for the future should be ordained in the provincial Synods where all the Bishops of the Province mett together but if this could not be so conveniently done it might be performed by any three of them with the Consent of the rest signified by letters and the allowance and confirmation of the Metropolitan but that if any one should be ordained without the Consent of the Metropolitan he should not be allowed to be a Bishop And that as this was practiced in Rome so should it be also in Alexandria Antioch and other Provinces according to the ancient Custom already receiv'd concerning that matter And so the Nicene Fathers themselves give an account thereof in their Synodical Epistle to the Church of Alexandria written concerning it But as this was ordained upon that particular occasion so also was it with respect to the then present state and circumstances of the Church which at that time stood totally independent of it self alone and was altogether govern'd by its own Rules without the interposition of Princes Constantine the first Christian Emperor being but newly Converted to the Faith But afterwards when whole States became Christian and Bishops were made temporal Barons of Kingdoms and had vast Priviledges and Revenues given them by the Secular Power the Elections were for the most part made according to the Commands of the Prince and instead of that Judicial Approbation which is in this Canon given the Metropolitan nothing afterwards was left him but the Vassallage of necessarily obeying the Mandate of the Prince in Consecrating whomsoever he should appoint to the Benefice For when Bishops became thus great in the State as well as in the Church Princes might well think themselves concerned who the persons should be that should be advanced to those Dignities and therefore seldom suffered any to be invested in them but such as they had first approv'd and this they had a great Right to do as being for the most part the Founders and Patrons of the Benefices Although afterwards the Quarrel about investitures between the Western Princes and the Church of Rome made some alterations in this matter yet the Metropolitan was not at all helped thereby as to the right of Confirmation given him by this Canon at Nice but what was taken from Princes was swallowed by the Pope who by this Canon can claim no Right at all to interpose in this matter but is utterly excluded from it except in his own Province only For from thenceforth his Bulls were always thought requisite to all Consecrations and Confirmations of Bishops which put an absolute force upon the Metropolitan or whom else he should command in this matter which cannot be resisted However Princes found another way to salve themselves after those Investitures were wrested from them that is by not allowing any Election to be made without their License and by sending whensoever they thought fit with the License a Mandate to the Electors to chuse the person they nominated which is at present the General practice of all Popish States So that instead of the Election of the people and the Confirmation of the Metropolitan which by the Nicene Canons and ancient practice of the Church were the only ways of making Bishops now Princes have the Elections and the Pope the Confirmations and the Metropolitan is utterly excluded from all that which by virtue of this Canon was his ancient Right herein And having thus laid matters before you I hope Sir by this time you may see how little reason you have to infer any thing against us as to the Legality of our Ordinations from the Canon you have mention'd it being that which hath so long since grown obsolete and totally out of use even amongst Papists themselves And if any of those Gentlemen whom you converse so much with and whose Learning and Merits you so highly applaud shall tell you that it is otherwise and that all those ancient Canons must be still in their primitive force and every thing be called uncanonical and illegal which is not agreeable to them I desire you would ask them these following Questions First That whereas the 4th Canon of the Council of Nice Decrees that there shall be three Bishops at least at the Ordination of a Bishop whence comes it to pass that now a days in the Church of Rome it is allowed as Bellarmine and Binnius confess to be performed by one only Secondly That whereas the 9th Canon of the said Council of Nice Decrees that none shall be made Presbyter without being examin'd and found worthy And the 10th that those that are rashly admitted shall be again degraded And the 11th Canon of the Council of Neo Caesarea which was ancienter than that of Nice that none shall be ordained a Presbyter till the age of Thirty How comes it to pass that so many in the Church of Rome are made not
essentials of Ordination required in Scripture and as to our Form of Ordination he plainly says that if the difference of the words herein from their Form do annul our Ordinations it must annul those of the Greek Church too for the Form of the Greek Church altogether differs as much from the Form of the Roman as doth that of the English And Cudsemius one that writes violently enough against us speaks also to the same purpose which he would never have done but that the manifest certainty of the thing extorted this concession from him For he coming into England in the year 1608. to observe the state of our Church and the Order of our Universities was so far convinced of the validity of our Orders by his inquiry into this particular that in a Book Printed two years after on his return home he hath these words Concerning the state of the Calvinian Sect in England it so standeth that either it may endure long or be changed suddenly or in a trice in regard of the Catholick Order there in a perpetual Line of their Bishops and the Lawful Succession of Pastors received from the Church for the honour whereof we use to call the English Calvinists by a milder term not Hereticks but Schismaticks And in the late times when one Goffe went over unto the Church of Rome a Question arising about the validity of our Orders on his taking upon him at Paris to say Mass by vertue of his Orders received in our Church it was referred to the Sorbon to examine the matter where it being fully discussed they gave in their opinion that our Orders were good and this I have by the Testimony of one now an eminent Papist who some years since told me the whole Story from his own knowledge he being then in Paris when the whole matter was there transacted and although afterwards as he told me the Pope determined otherwise of this matter and ordered the Arch-Bishop of Paris to reordain him yet the Sorbonists still stuck to their opinion that he was a good Priest by his first Ordination And if you will know whence this difference in the determination arose it was that the one proceeded according to the merits of the cause and the other as would best sute with his own interest and the interest of the party he was to support The next thing which you require of me is to give you proof that it is now the received Doctrine of the Romanists that the essential Form of Ordination is in the power of the Church to alter To which I Answer That by the essential Form for the word essential is of your own interposing I suppose you mean that Form of words in the Roman Ordinal which joyned with the matter according to them imprints the Character and makes up the whole essence of Orders and understanding you thus I freely grant that the whole cry of the Romish Schools runs against this assertion their Doctrine being that both the Matter and Form of Orders as well as of their other Sacraments were instituted by Christ himself and that neither of them are in the power of any to alter but that they have been the same from the beginning as we now find them in their Ordinal and therefore cannot admit of any variation without annulling the whole Sacrament as they call it And that they have been thus preserved down unto us by constant Tradition from our Saviours time For they freely grant that they have no proof for them that they were thus instituted by Christ either from Scripture or from any of the Writings of the Antients And to this purpose the words of Estius 〈…〉 are as followeth And here you must know that we have the matter and form of every Sacrament not as much from Scripture as by a continued Tradition received down from the Apostles For the Scripture expresly delivers to us only the matter and form of Baptism and the Eucharist and of extream Vnction the matter only The others are left us only by unwritten Tradition thereby as from hand to hand to be received down unto us And in another place particularly as to the Matter and Form of Orders he tells us That the Antient Fathers of the Church spoke sparingly of them in their Writings And so others of them to the same purpose And for this they gave a Reason forsooth least those things being consigned to Writing might come to be known to unbelievers and so exposed to be scoffed at and ridicul'd by them for it seems they cannot but acknowledge that many of those Rites which they make use of as well in Ordination as in their other Sacraments of their own making are indeed ridiculous But here I must tell you that this is only the Doctrine of the Schoolmen and those which wrote after them But Morinus the Learned Oratorian I have often mentioned unto you taxeth them of great ignorance herein in that being totally unacquainted with the Antient Rituals and the practice of other Churches framed all their Doctrines according to the present Ordinal of their Church But since that Learned person hath Published so large a Collection of Antient Ordinals many of which have none at all of those Forms now in the Roman Ordinal and the practice also of the Greek Church which useth none of them is become better known this Doctrine of the Divine Institution of those Forms and that they cannot be altered or varied from becomes generally exploded and concerning this because you desire me to prove it unto you I will first give you the words of Habertus in his Observations on the Greek Pontifical in whom you have also the sence of the whole Sorbon who Licensed and Authorized his Book For he raising an Objection how it could be possible that the Orders conferred by the Greek Church as well as the Latin could be both right since Administred by different Forms gives this Answer thereto In the Sacraments of whose matter and form there is no express mention in Scripture it is to be supposed that Christ instituted both only in general to His Apostles leaving to the Church a power to design constitute and determine them several ways as it shall seem best unto them so that the chief substance intention and scope of the institution were still retained with some general fitness and analogy for signifying the effect grace and character of the Sacrament which analogy is alike and intire in both Rites as well the Greek as the Roman And the words of Hallier another Sorbonist and whose Book is in the same manner Licensed by that Learned Society of Divines speak the same thing for he laying down this as an evident conclusion from what he had afore said that many things had been added and changed about the Matter and Form of Orders and that through the whole Church as it is diffused over the whole World the same Rite of Ordination and the same Matter and 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