nothing of the Priestly power can confer nothing of the Priestly power in Ordination but the first Form expresseth nothing of the Priestly power for all that it expresseth is only an imaginary power of their own invention the power of offering their Sacrifice of the Mass and applying the merits of it to the living and the dead a power which Christ never instituted or can be warranted by any ancient practice but is contrary to the whole tenor of the Epistle to the Hebrews and is in as plain Terms as can be expressed by several passages therein directly contradicted But to this perchance you will reply that the first Form doth not only give power to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass but also to Celebrate Mass for the Living and the Dead and that by this last expression is implyed the performance of the whole Office and consequently that the whole power of Consecrating and Administring the Eucharist is included therein But against that there is this Objection these words for the Living and the Dead seem to limit the expression to so much only of the Mass as is Celebrated for the living and the dead that is the applying of the merits of the Sacrifice which they pretend to offer at their Mass to the living and the dead which is a power as totally fictitious as the former And their Council of Florence which declared this Form to be an Essential Form of Priestly Ordination seems plainly to understand it in this sense For it expresseth not the whole Form as it is in the Roman Ordinal but the sum of it in these words Accipe potestatem offerendi Sacrificium in Ecclesiâ pro vivis defunctis i. e. Receive power to offer Sacrifice in the Church for the living and the dead Which plainly interprets the latter Expression in their Ordinal of Celebrating Mass for the Living and the Dead to belong to the former and to extend no farther than the offering their pretended Sacrifice for them which can by no means include the Consecrating of the Eucharist because most of them hold the Act of Consecrating to be different from the Act of Sacrificing and therefore it cannot be included in it for they will have the Act of Consecrating to be precedent to that of Sacrificing because say they the Body and Bloud of Christ cannot be offered up in Sacrifice till by the words of Consecration the Bread and Wine is converted thereinto But notwithstanding if they will needs have the power of Consecrating contained in these words I shall not lay such stress upon this matter as to make any great contest about it Only this which hath already been said may be sufficient to let you see that if the power of Consecrating the Sacrament of the Eucharist cannot be contain'd under the words of our Form which give power to dispense the Sacraments as our Church intends it is much more difficult to reconcile it how this power can be contain'd in those words of their Form whereby they intend to give it their 's being much further from making any express mention of this power of Consecrating the Eucharist than possibly it can be said of ours But be it as to this how you will have it still your Objection remains as strong against their Forms as against ours For say you our Form is not sufficient validly to confer the Order of Priesthood because it doth not expresly give the whole Priestly power But by which of theirs I beseech you is it all expresly given Not by the first Form for therein they pretend not to express any more than the Celebrating the Mass not by the second for in that they violently contend against us nothing else can be expressed but the power of Absolving penitents So then if this be all their Forms express as they themselves acknowledge where do they give the power of Administring the Sacrament of Baptism where the power of Preaching the Word and if Marriage and extream Unction be Sacraments as they will have them to be Administred by the Priest where do they give the power of Administring them no where at all they being neither express'd in particular nor comprehended in general in any of the words of the said Forms And therefore if the not expressing the whole Priestly power in the Forms of Ordination must null and invalidate the Orders conferr'd thereby let any of them answer how their Orders of Priesthood can be good and valid which are Administred by Forms so defective herein How we come off of this Objection I have already shown and hope have sufficiently convinced you that it cannot lye against us but how they can clear themselves of it that make it I can see only two ways possible 1. That they say the whole Priestly power is given by those principal Branches of it express'd in their Forms with which their Priests being in express word Invested at their Ordinations they do therewith receive all the rest as inseparably annex'd thereto by the Institution of our Saviour in the same manner as when in taking Livery of Seisin of an Estate the giving any part thereof invests with the whole Fee. Or else 2. That they come over also to the true Interpretation of the second Form and acknowledge with us that in that alone the whole Priestly power is comprehended in the same manner as I have above explain'd unto you If they say the first this Objection is very impertinently rais'd against us since they cannot but acknowledge some branches of the Priestly power are also express'd in our Form according to their own interpretation of it which may serve for this purpose as well as those express'd in theirs If they say the second then they must give the whole Priestly power by the same Form that we do and therefore whatever is said against our manner of Ordaining Priests from the insufficiency of the Form of that Ordination if it conduceth any thing to the nulling and invalidating of the Orders conferr'd among us it must as much conduce to null and invalidate theirs also And now Sir I hope I have said sufficient to give you full satisfaction that our Form of Priestly Ordination can have no such defect therein as you charge it with or our Orders be liable to the least suspition of nullity on this account I have not spared my pains to make this out as clear to you as I can and all now that I desire of you is impartially to consider what hath been said and where you find reason to hearken to it and if you do so I doubt not you may find sufficient to convince you in these Papers I send you But if you are so obstinately set upon this point that nothing shall have any force with you which is said on this subject as from what I am told of your daily Discourse concerning it I have abundant reason to fear but that right or wrong you are resolved to condemn all the Orders of our
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
conferred by him for no other reason but for the hatred which they bore each other according as they were of different parties for or against the proceedings of Formosus that was Pope before them And if the truth be fully examined into no other reason will appear for their like proceedings with us We are not of their party but after having long submitted to their unreasonable usurpations and unwarrantable impositions will now bear them no longer but having cast off this heavy yoke from our necks have thereby cut them short of a great part of their Empire and deprived them of vast incomes which they annually received out of those Kingdoms in larger sums then from any other nation under their bondage and therefore looking on us as the Egyptians did on the Israelites when they withdrew themselves from their bondage although it were to serve the living God pursue after us with the same malice and when out of the bitterness of it they have deprived so many of us of our Lives no wonder they will not allow us our orders But how bad soever either our orders our Liturgy or any other part of the Reformation establisht among us may at present be esteemed yet we have heard of the time when if his Holiness might but have had his Supremacy and his Peter-pence again all might have been allowed to be good and valid Pope Paul the 4th and after him Pope Pius the 4th having several times offered it Queen Elizabeth to confirm all that was done in the Reformation of this Church and allow both our orders and our Liturgy too provided she would again restore them to that Authority and Revenue which their Predecessors formerly had in this Land. And as long as there was any hope for the succeeding of this project Papists were permitted both to frequent our Churches and joyn with us in our Prayers and it was the General practice of that whole party for the first ten years of her Reign so to do But afterwards when the Court of Rome found that the Queen was immoveably fixed against what they proposed and all likelihood taken from them of again recovering their power in this Land by any Concession from her then first began they in the 11th year of her Reign to command their Votaries to make a total separation from us and to proceed in the most rigorous manner possible by Excommunications Sentences of Deposition underhand Treasons and open violences against the Queen and all that adhere to her to condemn our Church of Apostacy from the Faith and to denounce all her establishments which afore of their own accord they had offered to confirm and allow to be Heretical False Diabolical and what other like name they were pleased to affix thereto and all this for no other reason but because we would not again admit them to that Tyrannical supremacy over us which had on so just grounds been cast out of our Land by which it appears that Empire is the only thing in reality which those men look after and all things else are to be allowed or denyed as they may comport therewith I am Sir Your affectionate Friend Humphrey Prideaux The same Messenger that carryed this Paper to Mr. Norris brought from him this following in Answer to the first Paper I sent him it being on Fryday Night November the 25 th SIR THE ensuing are my promised thoughts upon your Paper which neither Mr. Acton nor any of those Gentlemen had the least hand in The exception amongst others which our Adversaries take against our Orders is that in the Ordinal of Edward the Sixth's days the power given by that Form of making Priests did not express for what office which our Church judged so necessary that it should that in the review of it in Charles the Second's Time that defect was supplyed by the addition of the word Priest which the Bishop is now to express in the Form when he lays his hands upon the person to be ordained unto that office In your paper you vindicate the former Ordinal by these several ways First That the addition did not suppose any defect in it before but was put in only to avoid the cavils of the Presbyterians who at that time were assembled by Commission with our Church-men upon review of our Liturgy Secondly For that it was before agreeable to Christs own practice Thirdly To the Practice of the Romish Church who also owned our Priesthood to be good by the Concessions of Cardinal Pool It being nothing but the truth which I look at have therefore fairly and candidly summed up and recited the utmost strength of your Paper To your first I say That for the word Priest and Bishop to be added to the new Form for avoiding all cavils from the Presbyterians who so much hated the name of both I will appeal almost to all the World whether that could be thought to be the true Reason Besides our selves do grant that even to those very men it was thought defective for the very same reason the Romanists did and therefore must necessarily conclude it to be very deficient being so apparent unto them as well as unto the others But the true reason of that addition I take to be from two books which came out not above a year before called Erastus Senior and Erastus Junior which did make appear that the power given at our Ordination of Priests was not expressed in the Form of that office by which they were no more Priests then any Lay-man confirmed by the Bishop If our Church had not thought it essentially necessary to have made that addition she never would so have exposed our Ordinal to the just censures of our adversaries in so high a concern for a meer circumstantial matter which alteration was not in the preliminary part of it or in the prayers before or after but in the very essential part of it and therefore by such an addition she could not but think it very defective before To your second I say That although our Saviour who also was God could conferre the whole office of Priest without any Form expressing the power given or could make any Form sufficient for that end yet doth it not therefore follow that we can do it but in the ordinary way But when our Saviour said Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins you remit c. They were not by those very words alone made compleat and intire Priests they were thereby so far as to remit sins but not to Consecrate or Make present the body and blood of Christ which power he gave them when he instituted the Eucharist and said this do in Remembrance of me Now though the word Priest was not expressed in our Saviours Form yet was it by equivalency by expresly giving them all the power that belonged to that office If our Saviour had only said be thou a Priest it had been as sufficient for all the offices of it as when he expresly gave them power
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
was not used in their Ordinals yet he doth not say it 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 Sir I told you ours did not and that it did not give power to Consecrate and make present the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament not by way of Transubstantiation I meant but only in the sence and words of our own Church that is verily and indeed which is more than to be present only by a meer Figure or to be only Commemorative And although he further tell us that the whole Rite was performed by Prayers and imposition of hands This doth no way exclude the other which I said before for when St. Paul minded Timothy to stir up the gift given him by imposition of hands he named nothing else but imposition of hands yet can any think there was not also Prayers and a form of words used at the laying of hands upon him And whereas Sir you say the Council of Carthage which is the Antientest hath directed concerning this matter prescribes herein nothing but imposition of hands and prayers only You should Sir have given me the very words of that Councel whereby I might have seen whether any such thing could have been inferred from them and since you were not pleased to recite them I will take upon me to do them for you which words are these When a Priest is Ordained the Bishop blessing him and laying his hands upon his head all the Priests that are present shall likewise lay their hands upon his head about the Bishops hand Doth this Canon prove any thing more than that it is a command only for the Priests then present to lay their hands also upon the head of the person Ordained about the Bishops hand at the same time he bless him and lay his hand upon him This doth no way shew us what the Ordinal of the Church was in those dayes This Canon had been proper to have been offered in case any had denyed imposition of hands which being required doth it therefore follow nothing else was essential because the rest of the Priests present were required also to do it with the Bishop If a learned Papist should have offered me such an Argument or Authority as this I might then have concluded Sir with your self that I thought him about to impose upon me I will also tell you the words of Dionisius whom you quote but not recite That the Priest who was to be Ordained kneeled before the Bishop who laid his hand on his head and did Consecrate him with an Holy Prayer and then marked him with the sign of the Cross and the Bishop and the rest of the Clergy then present gave him the Kiss of Peace Although he mentions all these yet where doth he say that these were the only things as you were pleased to say he said they were Can any one rationally conclude from this that there was no form of words used when the Bishop laid his hand upon the Ordained or that he should then say nothing it must be thought at the least that at that very time he used such a Prayer in which might be contained the very essential Form for any thing that Dionisius hath to the contrary And now Sir give me leave to mind you of this distinction for the better understanding my meaning in what I have formerly said and shall have occasion hereafter to mention That where the essential Form or any part of it be contained in the Prayers Prayers and Imposition of hands is all that is necessary but the Prayers of the Roman Ordinal have the essential Form contained in them which in ours is not therefore with us Prayers and Imposition of hands are not sufficient though they may be with them And this is my Answer to what else you quote from Morinus de Ordinationibus and also to that of the seven Deacons and Disciples which you say were made such only by imposition of hands upon them which you tell me there was nothing said or any words used which if there were not but only hands imposed you must give me leave to tell you that it look'd then but like a dumb sign and do not see how it could be more operative than if the same person had stroaked a good Boy on the head and said nothing but if there were words used at the imposition of hands then was it not done by imposition of hands only as you affirm and if words were used as it is not to be doubted then must they certainly be such as be pertinent unto that Ceremony which must express the power thereby given Sir you tell me that I have conquered the Objection and brought the Controversie to an end by granting That the offering Sacrifice to God and celebrating Mass for the Living and Dead was a novel thing and therefore not essential to Orders But I deny that I ever granted any such thing although I did that for the celebrating Mass for the Living and Dead to be within these Five Hundred Years expressed in the Roman Ordinal but not for offering Sacrifice unto God which I said no such thing but am assured that it was ever in their Ordinal and also their celebrating Mass for the Living and Dead was all along before the practice of that Church and therefore the Objection remains still in as much force as ever and the Controversie as far distant from an end as ever it was before Might I take leave to add to a Proposition and make it run contrary to the true intent and meaning it were an easie matter soon to salve any Questions but that way would never give the Proposer any satisfaction at all You also tell me That whereas I say all Priestly power is given in the Roman Ordinal in the words before speaking this Receive power to offer Sacrifice will appear by examining the Ordinal it self to be altogether a mistake because if it be good it must be in the prayers of the office or in the imperative words spoken by the Bishop to the Ordained in the prayers you will not say for then the prayers of our Ordinal might be allowed to be as valid for this purpose in which the Priestly Office is fully expressed both by Name and Description as in theirs To which I Answer That in examining the Roman Ordinal I say it will not appear to be a mistake which lay on your part to prove that it is in their prayers This I deny for I say that it is and that therefore the prayers of our Ordinal must be as valid this also I deny because they do not give such power and also that the Priestly Office is as fully expressed both in name and description to as good purposes as in theirs for our prayers before doth only give God thanks for calling them to the Office and Ministry appointed for the Salvation of Mankind it doth
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
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
to the Pope which no Bishop took at his Ordination after the Supremacy of the Church was vested in the Crown And therefore Ridley and Farrer being made Bishops before that Act must necessarily be ordained by no other but the Roman Ordinal And therefore although in the beginning of King Edward's Reign before the Liturgy was establish'd some zealous Protestants taking encouragement from the favour they receiv'd from the Government might of their own heads in those Churches as were in their power make such alterations in the publick Worship and the Administration of the two Sacraments of Baptisme and the Lords Supper and other holy Rites as you call new ways of their own Invention yet as to your Question Why might they not also as well Consecrate and Ordain according to their own Inventions I hope what I have said is a full answer that there could be no such thing At best you propose it only as a Conjecture which you inferr'd without any Reason or Argument in the least to enforce it And what I have said I hope may be sufficient to assure you that there can be none for it As to Mr. Acton's Paper to which you refer me I know nothing of it having never seen it or any thing else which came from him to the Gentleman you mention and therefore can give you no answer thereto In the last place you seem so taken with those Conceptions of yours which you have vented in the paper you sent me that you would perswade me not to attempt any further Answer but that tamely yielding this Question I should proceed to another which you propose concerning the consistency of the validity of our Orders with the sixth Canon of the Council of Nice But I must beg your pardon for not observing the first part of your Command in tamely yielding the Cause to those weak suggestions which you sent me I hope whatsoever your opinion might be of them before I have by this time shown you that there is nothing unanswerable in them and if I have transgressed in doing so I will endeavour to make amends for it in giving you full satisfaction to what is the second part of your Command in reference to the sixth Canon of the Council of Nice The Question which you propose concerning it is this Whether any Bishop or Arch-bishop can validly be made such without the Consent of his Superior or by faculty from him for his Consecration In order to the giving you full satisfaction as to this I will first set down the words of the Canon it self and then endeavour to Answer your Question concerning it And First The words of the sixth Canon of the Council of Nice are as followeth Let ancient Customs still take place those that are in Egypt Libya and Pentapolis that the Bishop of Alexandria have power over all these because such also is the Custom of the Bishop of Rome And accordingly in Antioch and other Provinces let the Priviledges be preserved to the Churches This also is altogether evident that if any man be made a Bishop without the consent of the Metropolitan this great Synod Decrees such an one to be no Bishop And if two or three out of a contentious humour shall oppose the Common Election duely and regularly made according to the Canon of the Church let the Majority of voices in this Case prevail Thus far the words of the Canon and the Argument which you deduce from hence is I suppose because Archbishop Parker was consecrated without the Popes Bulls therefore his Consecration must be void and null and he being for this reason no Bishop consequently could make none else so And therefore all the Bishops that have been since in the English Church deriving their Orders from him are in truth and reality no Bishops or invested with any power to ordain others and consequently that all Ordinations administred since in the Church of England being through this defect null and void we have no such thing as true Orders among us And thus far having urged your Argument for you with all the strength that the thing can bear in Answer thereto I shall lay down these following particulars 1. That you could not have lighted on any Canon of the Church more unluckily for the Cause of Rome which you are so zealous for than this you have mention'd it being that which directly overthrows the Supremacy of the Pope and puts him upon the level with all other Metropolitans of the Christian Church 2. That allowing this Canon to have all the force you will give it yet if Orders be an Institution of Jesus Christ they cannot be annull'd by any breach thereof for Ecclesiastical Canons are only the Ordinances of Men and therefore cannot annul or invalidate that which hath a Divine appointment for the original of its Institution and therefore in this case the saying of Becanus the Jesuit falls in very pat to answer your Objection Prohibitio Ecclesiae solum facit ut Ordinatio sit illicita non autem ut sit irrita The prohibition of the Church only makes that an Ordination may be illegal not that it can be null For the power which is given by God cannot be taken away by the prohibition of the Church But since a Bishop hath received power to ordain others according to Divine Institution although he lye under all the Canonical Impediments that possibly he can be liable unto to hinder him from the Execution of his Office yet if he will notwithstanding proceed therein to the conferring of Orders the Character is as fully given by him as he himself received it And in this case the old Rule I have afore mention'd must again take place quod fieri non debet factum valet although the thing ought not to be done yet is valid when done And therefore allowing what you say to be true that the Bishops who ordained Arch-bishop Parker without the Popes Bull as well as he himself that was thus ordained by them were guilty of the breach of this Canon yet at the most it can only be an uncanonical not an invalid Ordination 3. Therefore as to the words of the Canon this great Synod decrees such an one to be no Bishop can respect only his Benefice not his Office and Character that is that such an one as should be thus Ordained a Bishop of any place without the Consent of his Metropolitan should not be allowed to be Bishop of that place so as there to execute the Office or any where enjoy the Honour and Priviledges belonging thereto not that his Ordination should be looked on as invalid as to the Character and Office of a Bishop conferred on him thereby Because if that be given according to Christs Institution it cannot be taken away again by any Institutions of men whatever but according to the Doctrine of the Church of Rome the Character being indelebly imprinted on him it is no more in the power of the Church to deprive him
this outward Rite or Sign of Imposition of Hands and this Form of words annex'd thereto was the whole manner appointed by our first Reformers for the conferring of the Office of Priesthood on those that were Ordained to it and so it continued till in the first Convocation after the late King's Restauration Anno 1662. after Receive the Holy Ghost these additional words for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God now committed to thee by the Imposition of our Hands were for the reasons which I have aforementioned unto you also inserted in that Form. 4. Therefore you are to understand that the second Matter and Form of our Ordinal abovementioned were not at all intended to conferr the Order or any part thereof but only to assign the place for the execution of the Office already received For by the first Matter and Form Imposition of Hands and the Form of words annexed the person Ordained thereby is fully and wholly made a Priest or Presbyter of the Church of Christ and all that is done by the second Matter and Form is to admit him thus Ordain'd to be a Priest or Presbyter of that Congregation that is of that Diocess the whole Diocess being as one Congregation or Parish in respect of the Bishop Ordaining to execute the Duties of his Office express'd by Preaching of the Word and Administering the Holy Sacraments in the place where he shall be appointed thereto and this was so order'd conform to the Ancient Canons of the Church which very severely forbid all absolute Ordinations that is all such Ordinations whereby Orders are given at large without intitling the Person Ordained to any particular Church for the executing the Duties of the Office received For it was the Ancient Custom that every Bishop should Ordain his own Presbyters and none other and that when he Ordained them he should admit them to be Presbyters of his Church either to officiate in the Mother Church it self where the Bishop had his Chair or else in some of the other inferiour Churches of the Diocess which all belonged thereto and whether they did the one or the other they were all reckoned as Presbyters of that one Church the Diocess anciently being looked on as one Parish and all the Christians of it as one Congregation united together under their Bishop and conformable hereto is it that the Bishop saith in the Ordinal above-mention'd Take thou Authority to Preach the Word of God and to minister the Holy Sacraments in the Congregation where thou shalt be so appointed i.e. Take thou Authority to execute the Office of a Priest in this Diocess in that particular Church or Parish thereof where thou shalt be appointed so to do But since the Ancient Canons which forbad Presbyters ever to forsake that Church or Diocess whereof they were first admitted Presbyters to go into another Diocess is now through the whole Christian World grown quite obsolete and would be of much more prejudice than benefit now to be observ'd At the aforesaid review of our Ordinal in the Year 1662. this Form also hath received an Alteration and what was afore in this Congregation where thou shalt be so appointed is now in the Congregation where thou shalt be lawfully appointed thereto and thereby that Faculty or License to Preach the Word and Administer the Sacraments which was afore given as to the Diocess only where the Person was Ordained is now made General as to the whole National Church in any part thereof whereof the Person thus Ordain'd to the Priesthood shall be lawfully called to execute the Duties thereof And having premised these things unto you concerning the Matters and Forms made use of in the Ordinals of both Churches for your clearer understanding of what is on either side intended by them I now come to your Objection which according to the best advantage that it can be stated I apprehend to be thus You looking on a Form of Words fully expressing the whole Priestly power to be indispensably necessary and absolutely essential to all Ordinations of Priests think our Orders of Priesthood invalidly administred as failing in an essential because we have no such Form expressing the whole Priestly power at our Ordinations of Priests For the Form which we use you say is not such as by no means expressing the whole Priestly power because it makes no mention of Consecrating the Sacrament of the Eucharist and making present the Body and Blood of our Saviour as you term it which you look on as the chiefest and main power of the Priestly Office but only impowers to forgive Sins And although you allow our Form at present since the insertion of those words for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God to be sufficiently perfect because in the word Priest you think may be included all that belongs to him yet still judge our Orders to be invalid by reason of the former defect because say you if the Presbyters of the Church of England were not validly Ordain'd by the first Form till the addition above-mentioned was inserted in the Year 1662 then through this defect those who were chosen out of them to be Bishops could not validly be ordained such because they were not afore Presbyters or Priests none being capable in your opinion to be Bishops who have not been first made Priests and consequently could not have Authority to Ordain others by any Form of Words how perfect soever afterwards devised And this being your Objection urged in its utmost strength for the Cause you argue for I am now to tell you in Answer thereto that the whole of it goes upon three very great Mistakes The First is That any such a Form of Words is Essential to Orders Secondly That the Order of Priesthood is absolutely necessary to qualify a man for the Order of Episcopacy And Thirdly That our Form of Priestly Ordination doth not include the whole Priestly power As to the First Although we allow such Formes very useful to make a more clear declaration of the intent and meaning of that act whereby the Office is conferr'd and therefore do our selves retain them in our Church yet that any such should be essential to the Administration so as to null and make void the Orders that are conferr'd without them is that which wants all manner of Evidence either from Scripture Ancient Practice the nature of the thing it self or any other reason whatever which I have already made sufficiently clear unto you And therefore without repeating what I have before said I shall pass on to the other two particulars in which you are equally mistaken For Secondly That the Order of Priesthood is absolutely necessary to quallify a man for the Order of Episcopacy so that none can be made a Bishop unless he were first a Priest is that you can have no ground for The Holy Scriptures from whence alone the essential requisites of Christ's Institutions are
him by reason of any imperfection or insufficiency to be found therein as your Answerer plainly doth is no less than the highest Blasphemy against him 2. I desire you to consider that by the same words whereby Christ Ordained his Apostles to be his Ministers in his Church he Ordained also the very Office it self For then he first instituted the Office when he first appointed them to it and therefore those words by which our Saviour first Ordain'd his Apostles for the Office of his Ministry are so far from being defective in the Expression of the Power thereof that it is impossible it can have any power at all but what is expressed by them For they are the Original Charter of its Institution and from whence alone the limits and extent of its Authority are to be known And therefore we may very well judge of the extent of the Office from its Correspondency with the Words but not of the sufficiency of the Words from their Correspondency with what we think the extent of the Office because the Office it self being first instituted by these Words can have nothing in it but what is expressed by them And therefore if it be the same Office of Priesthood we receive at our Ordinations which Christ Ordain'd his Apostles to certainly the same words which he then made use of must always be the perfectest form whereby to make expression thereof Had the Office been afore instituted and afterwards express'd by halfes we could then have recourse to the first institution to make clear eviction hereof and from thence the deficiency would plainly be made out But that the words of its first institution from whence it received its whole being and establishment should be imperfect or deficient is that which cannot be said unless you will accuse the Institutor Christ our Lord of being deficient in the Institution it self and not making and appointing the Office as well and as perfectly as he ought a Consequence which I suppose your Answerer will by no means be willing to own 3. This Answer is not that which the Romanists ever use to give in this Case or will the Gentleman you had it from I suppose abide by it however it came to drop from him For when the perfection of this Form is urged from this that it was the same by which our Saviour ordained his Apostles their usual answer is That there are two powers in the Priestly Office the power of Order and the power of Jurisdiction as I have afore explained the former of which they say was given the Apostles by our Saviour before his Crucifiction at his last Supper when he said unto them This do in remembrance of me and that it was the later only which was given after his Resurrection by these words Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins c. for the conferring of which they allow this Form to be most full and sufficient and for that purpose use it in their own Ordinal but deny it to comprehend any other branch of the priestly Office or that our Saviour intended to confer any other thereby And this you your self seem well enough to understand you having expressed as much in one of your Letters But this also goes upon two very great mistakes 1. That Christ Ordain'd his Apostles priests of the New Covenant when he said unto them at his last Supper This do in remembrance of me 2. That Christ Ordain'd any at all to be Ministers of his Church before he had actually purchas'd it by the shedding of his bloud And 1. It is a great mistake that our Saviour Ordained his Apostles Priests of the New Covenant by those words at his last Supper This do in remembrance of me For this is not a command particular to them to Consecrate and Administer that Sacrament which Christ then Instituted but to all the Faithful also to be partakers of it which the words plainly infer for what else can the Command This do refer to but to the whole Sacramental Action before mention'd the receiving and eating which belong also to the Laity as well as the Blessing and Consecrating which is the Duty of the Priest only And if the words be not so understood there will be no Command of our Saviour obliging the Laity to be partakers of this Sacrament at all but the Priests may be always left to Consecrate it and eat it themselves as contrary to all primitive practice and many Canons of the Church they now-a-days for the most part do Nay further they will be under no obligation to partake of it but only to Bless and Consecrate it and so if this Interpretation takes place the whole Institution may become frusâ—rate thereby and the Law of our Saviour be absolutely made of none effect for the sake of the Traditions and Inventions of Men. And therefore Estius an eminent Doctor of the Romish Church 〈…〉 plainly acknowledgeth that this Command of our Saviour This do in remembrance of me must extend to all the people His words are Paulus 1 Cor. 11. illud facere etiam ad plebem refert edentem bibentem de hoc Sacramento quando ait hoc facite i.e. Paul in the Eleventh Chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians plainly refers that of doing to the People eating and drinking of this Sacrament when he saith in the words of our Saviour ver 25. This do c. And to say otherwise would be to run Counter to all the ancient Doctors of the Church there being none of them for many hundred years after Christ that ever understood those words of our Saviour in that sence which now the Church of Rome will have but always looked on them as a general precept belonging to all Christians of observing that Holy Rite in Remembrance of his Death and Passion in the same manner as was then instituted by him But when the practice of the half Communion became to be generally receiv'd in the Church of Rome then the Schoolmen being put to their shifts to reconcile it with the Institution of our Saviour who himself Celebrated it and also commanded the Celebration of it in both kinds at last lighted on this fetch of making the Apostles Priests by these words of our Saviour This do in remembrance of me spoken by him after his giving them the Bread and therefore say that the Cup which was Administred afterwards was given them only as Priests and that the Laity are not at all to be admitted thereto by vertue of that Command But here it is to be observ'd that our Saviour spake these words This do in remembrance of me twice in that Institution first after the distributing of the Bread and then again after the giving of the Cup And therefore if Christ made them Priests by those words it will follow That either he made them Priests twice a Doctrine which the Church of Rome will by no means allow Orders being a Sacrament as they say never without the guilt
his Holy Apostles for the Ministry to which he had chosen them And therefore those words that follow Whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them and whose soever sins ye retain they are retained must be they whereby the whole power and Authority of that their Ministry was given unto them and not a part of it only as the Romanists say and consequently these words must be the perfectest and most authentic form whereby to Ordain others also to the same Ministry III. But our Church in the first establishing of this Form for Preistly Ordination did not only appoint these words of our Saviour whereby he Ordained his Apostles but also out of their abundant caution as if they foresaw the Cavils our Adversaries now make by way of Explication subjoyned these other words also And be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God and of his Sacraments by them explicitly expressing all the Priestly power in particular which we understand in general to be implicitly contain'd in the other that go before as I have already made out unto you that they are And although this should not be the true Explication of them as our Adversaries contend yet since the words are part of the Form they must give all that they express and therefore since they express the whole Priestly power though the other should not they must give it also to all those that are Ordain'd thereby and consequently the Form must be fully sufficient even in all that which you your self require to make it so But to this you object that those later words give power only to Dispense the Sacraments and not to Consecrate and therefore cannot give power to Consecrate the Sacrament of the Eucharist and make present the Body and Blood of our Saviour as you term it which you look on as the main of the Priestly power but only to Dispense it that is to distribute the Elements when Consecrated which a Deacon only can do To this I Answer 1. That the word Dispense is here made use of as a general Term which reacheth both Word and Sacraments and therefore cannot be limited to that particular sense of distributing the Elements only in the Sacrament of the Eucharist as you will have it but must comprehend whatsoever the Ministers of Christ who as his Stewards are intrusted with his Word and Sacraments are commanded by him to do in order to the giving out and dispensing of both for the Salvation of those to whom they are sent 2. The whole Objection being concerning the signification of the word Dispense you must not go for that to the Cavils of Adversaries but to the intent and meaning of our Church in the use of it For words have no otherwise their signification than according to the appointment and acceptation of those that use them and must always express that sense which by common consent and usage is intended by them And therefore since you plainly acknowledge as doth also your Erastus Senior whom you follow herein that the Church of England means and intends Consecration as well as Distribution by the word Dispense it necessarily follows that that must be the signification of it in this Form. For certainly a whole National Church intending such a sense by such a word for an hundred and fifty years together it is enough to make it signifie so though that were never the sense of it before because words not being necessary but only Arbitrary signs of things must always so signifie as is intended by the common consent of them that use them But 3. To come to the main solution of the matter the case is plainly thus Our Reformers making Scripture the Principal Rule of all their Establishments did in the appointing of this Form take the very words of it from thence as near as they could and therefore as they had the former part thereof out of the 20th Chapter of the Gospel of St. John Verse 22 23. so had they the latter from the 4th Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians Verse the first only with this difference that whereas the former are the very words of Scripture the latter instead of the very words Dispensers of the Mysteries of God to make the thing more plain and clear is express'd by other words equivalent thereto Dispensers of the Word of God and of his Holy Sacraments the Word of God and his holy Sacraments being on all hands acknowledged to be the whole of what is there intended by the Mysteries of God. And although the Original word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is better rendred Stewards as in our Translation than Dispensers yet the Gentlemen of Rome can have no reason to find fault with us in this particular since herein we follow their own Bible the vulgar Latin which their Council of Trent hath decreed to be the only Authentic Scripture For at the first Reformation of our Church the Original Languages of the Holy Scriptures being but little known the Vulgar Latin Version was that which was then generally used among us and therefore the expression is put in our Form according as it was found in that Version for there it is Dispensatores Mysteriorum Dei and accordingly the Rhemists translate it The Dispensers of the Misteries of God and therefore the whole Controversie between us must be brought to this point only whether Dispensers of the Mysteries of God in that place doth signifie Priests or no and if it doth it must necessarily follow that it signifies the same also in our Form of Ordination where it is used And I doubt not if you will be pleased to look upon that Text of Scripture even as translated by our Adversaries themselves it will not be possible for you to perswade your self that when the Holy Apostle St. Paul there says of himself and the other Apostles So let a man esteem us as the Ministers of Christ and the Dispensers of the Mysteries of God he means it only as Deacons No certainly both those phrases Ministers of Christ and Dispensers of the Mysteries of God are equivalent Expressions denoting them as invested with the whole Ministry of the Gospel committed to them And if you will commit the decision of this Cause to Estius an Eminent and Learned Doctor of the Church of Rome he will plainly tell you so for on that Text of Scripture he so explains those phrases And on the 7th verse of the first of Titus he interprets Dispensatorem Dei i. e. the Dispenser of God to be Dei Vicarium ac Ministrum in Dispensatione Evangelii Sacramentorum i. e. Gods Vicar and Minister in the Dispensing of his Gospel and Sacraments and then immediately after he repeats the forementioned Text 1 Cor. 4.1 denoting Dispensers of the Mysteries of God in that place and Dispenser of God here to be both understood in the same sense And therefore according to him who was as Eminent a Doctor of their Church as any
Bishops among them who in the administering of the Sacraments have never intended at all to do thereby what the Church doth but at the same time they have performed the outward Acts have inwardly in their hearts out of malice wickedness or infidelity totally disregarded and contemn'd all that is meant or intended by them For have not many of them according to their own writers been Atheists many of them sorcerers and Magicians and many of such profligate lives and conversations as can never be supposed to have intended any thing at all of Religion in any of the Acts of their function which they have performed but being either by the road of their education or the desire of inriching themselves by Church preferments got into those holy Offices have gone on in the common tract to do as others did for the sake of the gain while at the same time in their minds they scoffed at and derided the whole Ministration And how many even of their Popes according to their own Historians have been such whom they make the fountains from which under Christ all Preistly and Ecclesiastical power is derived and if any impartial man will read their Lives I doubt not to say he will certainly conclude the better half of them to be of this sort And to add one consideration more how many since the Rigor of the Inquisition hath been set up in Portugal Spain and Italy that have been Jews in reality have for fear of the barbarous Tyranny of that Tribunal so far dissembled their Religion as the better to cloke it from discovery have taken upon them not only the outward profession of Christianity but the Orders of the Church also and have become Priests and Bishops therein as it is well known there have been several Instances of it in those Countries And can you think that any of them could either in the giving of Orders or Administring of Baptisme ever have any intention of doing thereby what the Church doth No they ever are the greatest Enemies of our Religion and all the Institutions of it and always Curse and abhor them whenever under this Mask they Minister in any of them And on all these accounts it cannot be possible but that through so long a time as near 1700 years there must be in every chain of Succcession whereby the Orders of that Church are said to be derived down to the present times many failures of this kind whereby totally to cut them off from all that follow after And therefore if this Doctrine of the intention of him that Ministers the Sacraments among them be true as it is held in that Church infallibly to be and to which as an infallible Truth you must give up your Faith whenever you list your self among them it must from hence follow that it cannot be possible that they can at this time have any Orders at all among them But Secondly Supposing their Orders be good yet before you go over to them on this Account I desire you in the next place to consider whether you can at all better your self by so doing For what benefit of their Ministry is it I beseech you that you would go over to them for Is it first for the sake of their Preaching of the Word But do not they in that Church lock this up in a Language which you cannot understand forbid Laymen to look into it that they may the better impose on them their Erroneous Doctrines and lead them whether they please And do they not instead thereof from their Pulpits mostly teach the Traditions of men as their Doctrines of Purgatory Pilgrimages Worshipping of Crosses and the Images and Relicts of Saints Masses for the Dead overplus of Saints Merit Pardons Indulgences and such like and filling their Sermons mostly with these and old Wives Tales which they relate concerning their Saints and the Miracles they Fabulously ascribe unto them to make room for these Fopperies wave the Divine Truths of the Gospel and turn Christ and his Apostles quite out of doors Or is it secondly for the sake of their prayers and publick Worship But how can those prayers do you any good with which you cannot joyn they being all in that Church in Latin a Language which you do not understand Or how can that Worship render you acceptable unto God which by reason of the many Superstitions and erroneous practices with which it is performed must it self be totally unacceptable unto him Or else is it thirdly for the sake of the Sacraments But 1. As to the Sacrament of Baptism the Church of Rome allowing it to be validly administred by Laymen you cannot want that in our Church and whenever you go over to them they will allow you your Baptism which you receiv'd among us to be good and valid without Baptizing you again And 2. As to the Sacrament of the Eucharist allowing their Priests to have full power to Consecrate it yet you can never be sure in that Church that they do As to the intention of doing what the Church doth there required you must ever be at a loss and you can be no better assur'd of the outward Act because the words of Consecration are always whisper'd in secret and I have read of one that was burnt among them for Consecrating the Eucharist in the Name of the Devil and as long as they do it in secret an opportunity so proper for the deeds of Darkness you can never be sure but that this or some other thing like it may be done again whenever you come to receive from them But waving these particulars and supposing the Consecration to be in all things aright performed as you would have it yet since they of late have so miserably defaced this Sacrament as to deny the Cup one of the Essentials of it to the Laity I cannot see how in that Church you that are a Lay-man can ever have the holy Eucharist at all administred to you For in all things the withdrawing of an Essential must necessarily cause a destruction of the whole and therefore since our Saviours institution makes both Elements Equally necessary and Essential to this Sacrament the withdrawing the Cup from the Laity makes it no Sacrament at all to them and consequently none that go over unto them on this account because they think our Priests have not sufficient Authority to Consecrate the Eucharist which is your grand Objection will at all better themselves thereby but from a doubt of an invalidity with us fall into a certain nullity with them and be totally depriv'd of the whole benefit of this Sacrament as long as they continue among them For I make no difficulty at all to assert but do here declare it unto you as my Opinion and let him disprove me that can that since the Church of Rome hath Sacrilegiously taken away the Cup from the Laity they have never Administred to them the Sacrament of the Eucharist at all but the want of this