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Article  XX

Of the Authority of the Church.

      The Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith; and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture that it be repugnant to another.  Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ; yet, as it ought not to decree anything against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salvation.

De Ecclesiae Authoritate.

      Habet Ecclesia ritus sive caeremoniae statuendi jus, et in fidei controversiis authoritatem; quamvis Ecclesiae non licet quicquam instituere, quod verbo Dei scripto adversetur, nee unum scripturae locum sic exponere potest, ut alteri contradicat.  Quare licet Ecclesia sit divinorum librorum testis et conservatrix, attamen ut adversus eos nihil decernere, ita praeter illos nihil credendum de necessitate salutis debet obtrudere.

Section  I – History

      The history of this Article is famous, owing to the dispute concerning the first clause of it: “The Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith.”  The Article of 1552 (then the XXIst Article) had not the clause.  Moreover, the first draught of the Articles in Elizabeth’s reign (A. D. 1562) had it not.  In this form the Articles were signed by both houses of convocation; and the original document so signed is now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.  Yet this document had never synodical authority, for it never received the ratification of the crown.  Before the royal assent was given, some alterations were made: namely, the addition of this clause and the omission of Article XXIX.  The clause itself was taken from the Lutheran Confession of Wurtemberg, from which source Archbishop Parker derived most of the additions which were made in Queen Elizabeth’s reign to the Articles drawn up by Crammer in the reign of Edward VI. {In the Wurtemberg confession are the words: “Credimus et confitemur quod .... haec ecclesia habeat jus judicandi de omnibus doctrinis ... quod haec ecclesia habeat jus interpretandae Scripturae.” – Laurence, Bamp. Lect. p. 236.}  It is supposed that the Queen’s wish induced the council to make this alteration.  And when it had been made, the Latin edition of R. Wolfe was published in 1563, printed by the Queen’s command, and with a declaration of her royal approval.  This copy, therefore, is considered as possessed of full synodical authority.  The fine English edition, printed by Jugge and Cawood in 1563, has not the clause, {Though it had not this clause inserted at the Queen’s desire, yet it omitted Art. XXIX, expunged by the Queen’s desire.  The Articles were therefore as so passed by Parliament only thirty-eight in number.  They are given by Dr. Cardwell, Synodalia, I. p. 53.} and this is very probably the copy of the Articles submitted to Parliament, which passed an Act (13 Eliz. Cap. 12) giving the authority of statute law to what had already received the authority of the Queen and convocation.

      After this, the printed copies varied, some omitting, but most retaining the clause.  It does not appear that any English copy received the authority of convocation till 1571; and then, no doubt, the copy corresponded with one of those printed by Jugge and Cawood, with the date 1571.  Dr. Cardwell gives an accurate reprint of one of these, containing the disputed clause. {Synodal. I. p. 98.}  Yet there were other editions, put forth by the same printers, with the same date 1571, some retaining, others omitting the clause.  From that time the greater number of editions have the clause.  Dr. Cardwell enumerates editions of 1563, 1571, as omitting it; and as retaining it, editions of 1563, 1571, 1581, 1586, 1593, 1612, 1624, 1628, and all subsequent editions. {See Cardwell’s Synodalia, I. pp. 34, 53, 73, 90, &c.; and the authorities referred to by him.}  All subscriptions, therefore, and acts of Parliament after this period had reference to the Article with the first clause as forming part of it; and not to the form in which it was first passed by convocation before the Queen’s sanction was obtained.

      Important as the question concerning this clause has been thought, it is truly observed that that portion of it concerning rites and ceremonies is fully expressed in Article XXXIV; and that that portion which concerns controversies of faith is virtually contained in the latter part of this Article itself.

      It is not necessary to spend much time in proving that the primitive Church claimed a certain authority, both in matters of ceremony and in controversies of faith.  This is self-apparent from the fact that, when any disputes arose, whether of doctrine or of discipline, synods and councils continually met to decide upon them and declare the judgment of the Church.  Where a judgment is pronounced, authority must be claimed.  The first general council of Nice was assembled for the express purpose of giving the judgment of the Church, represented by the fathers of that council, on a most important point of doctrine, namely, the Deity of the Son of God, and on a matter of ceremony, namely, the time of keeping Easter.  The Epistle of Constantine to the Churches, written as it were from the council, urges all Christians to receive the decrees of the bishops so assembled as the will of God. {Euseb.  De Vita Constantin. III. 20.}

      The fathers certainly taught that the authority of the Church was to be obeyed and received with deep respect.  Irenaeus says, “Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God ... but the Spirit is truth.” {“Ubi enim ecclesia, ibi et Spiritus Dei; et ubi Spiritus Dei, illic ecclesia et omnis gratia.  Spiritus autem veritas.” – Lib. III. cap. 40.}  Tertullian, “Every doctrine is to be judged as false which is opposed to the truth taught by the Churches, the Apostles, Christ, and God.” {Omnem vero doctrinam de mendacio praejudicandam quae sapiat contra vetitatem Ecclesiarum et Apostolorum et Christi et Dei.” – De Prescript. Haeret. C. 21.}  St. Cyril says, “The Church is called Catholic, because it teaches universally, and without omission, all doctrines needful to be known.” {δια το διδάσκειν καθολικως και ανελλειπως άπαντα τα εις γνωσιν ανθρώπων ελθειν οφείλοντα δόγματα. — Cateches. XVIII. 11.  See Palmer, On the Church, II. pt. IV. ch. IV.}  Passages to the same purport might be abundantly multiplied, if evidences of so well-known a fact could be required.

      When controversies arose, whether about doctrine, or about rules and ceremonies and Church ordinances, such as the keeping of Easter, the rebaptizing of heretics, or the enforcing of discipline on the lapsed, it could hardly be but that the Church should exercise some discretion, and pronounce some judgment.  Most of the canons of the early councils will be found to be on matters of discipline; and as Scripture generally left them undecided, it was necessary for the representatives of the Church to use the best judgment they could upon them.  To this end they strove, looking for the guidance of the Spirit, following Scripture where it gave them light, and on those points on which Scripture was silent, following that rule unanimously adopted at Nice, “Let the ancient customs prevail,” τα αρχαια έθη κρατείτω. {The principle of observing traditionary ceremonies, where Scripture is silent, is laid down by Tertullian, De Corona, C. 3, 4, 5.  See Palmer, II. pt. IV. ch. IV.}

      Yet, that the fathers held the authority of Scripture to be primary and paramount, and considered that the Church had no power to enact new articles of faith, nor to decree anything which was contrary to the Scriptures, has already been shown sufficiently, and the proof needs not to be repeated here. {See above, Article VI. Sect. I. III.}  The power of the Church they held, not as an authority superior or equal to the Scriptures, but as declaratory of them when doubtful, and decretory on matters of discipline.

      The reformers in general did not deny such authority to the Church, to interpret Scripture in case of disputes upon doctrine, nor to adopt or retain ceremonies of ancient custom or human institution not contrary to the teaching of Scripture.  Thus the Confession of Augsburg says, “We do not despise the consent of the Catholic Church ... nor are we willing to patronize impious opinions, which the Church Catholic has condemned.” {“Non enim aspernamur consensum catholicae Ecclesiae ... nec patrocinari impiis aut seditiosis opinionibus volumus, quas ecclesia Catholica damnavit.” – Confess. August. 1540. Art. 21; Sylloge, p. 189.}  It declares that there are indifferent ceremonies, which ought to be observed for the good order of the Church. {Pars I. Art. XV.  1531;  Sylloge, p. 127; 1540, p. 174.}  But on the other hand, it pronounces that “the bishops have no power to decree anything contrary to the Gospel.” { Sylloge, p. 154.}

      Calvin, denying that the Church has any power to introduce new doctrines, yet gladly admits that when a discussion concerning doctrine arises, no more fit mode of settling it can be devised than a meeting of bishops to discuss it.  And he mentions with approbation the Councils of Nice, Constantinople, and Ephesus. {Instit. IV. ix. 13.}

      The language of the English reformers is still plainer.  The Preface to the Book of Common Prayer gives reasons why the Church abolished some and retained other ceremonies; and though it speaks of ceremonies as but small things in themselves, it yet declares that the willful transgression “and breaking of a common rule and discipline is no small offence before God.”

      Cranmer appealed to a general council, protesting, “I intend to speak nothing against one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, or the authority thereof; the which authority I have in great reverence, and to whom my mind is in all things to obey”: {Appeal at his Degradation, Works, IV. p. 121.} and declaring, “I may err, but heretic I cannot be; forasmuch as I am ready in all things to follow the judgment of the most sacred word of God, and of the holy Catholic Church.” {Ibid. p. 127.}  He declares his agreement with Vincentius Lirinensis, who taught that “the Bible is perfect and sufficient of itself for the truth of the Catholic faith, and that the whole Church cannot make one article of faith; although it may be taken as a necessary witness of the same, with these three conditions, that the thing which we would establish thereby hath been believed in all places, ever, and of all men.” {Answer to Smythe’s Preface, III. p.28.}  In short, his judgment appears to have been clearly, that “every exposition of Scripture in which the whole Church agreed” was to be received; but that the Church had no power to decree Articles of faith without the Scripture, though rites indifferent she might decree. {See especially IV. p. 229, quoted above under Article VI.  See also Works, III. pp. 509, 517; IV. pp.77, 126, 173, 223, 225, &c.}

      The origin of the dispute about the first clause in this Article was the repugnance of the Puritan divines to the use of the surplice and other Church ordinances.  This feeling arose in the reign of Edward VI, and the controversies gendered by it continued to rage fiercely in Elizabeth’s.  The Puritans contended not only that the Church could not enact new articles of faith, but that no rites nor ceremonies were admissible but those for which there was plain warrant in the new Testament.  It is probable that Elizabeth and her councillors wished to have a definite assertion of the power of the Church to legislate on such points; and therefore insisted on the distinct enunciation of the principle by the clause in question, notwithstanding that it was virtually included in other statements or formularies.  The controversy reached its height in the reign of Charles I; and one of the charges against Archbishop Laud was that he had introduced this clause into the Articles, it not having been previously to be found there. {That this charge is unfounded has already appeared.}  On the subject itself the great work of Hooker was composed; one main and principal object of that work being to prove the right which the Church Catholic and particular national Churches have to legislate on matters indifferent, and to enact such rites and ceremonies as are not repugnant to the teaching of Holy Writ.

Section  II – Scriptural Proof

      There are contained in this Article three positive or affirmative, and two negative or restraining assertions.

      I.  The affirmative are: –

      1.  The Church is a witness and keeper of Holy Writ.

      2.  The Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies.

      3.  The Church hath authority in controversies of faith.

      II.  The restraining assertions are: –

      1.  It is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything contrary to God’s word written.

      2.  Besides the written word, she ought not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salvation.

      I.  1.  The Church is a witness and keeper of Holy Writ, forasmuch as that unto it, as unto the Jews of old, “are committed the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2).  As the Jews had the Old Testament Scriptures “read in the synagogues every Sabbath-day” (Acts XV. 21); so the Christian Church has the Scriptures of both Testaments read continually in her assemblies.  In no way can she more truly fulfill her office of “pillar and ground of the truth” than by preserving and maintaining those Scriptures in which the truth is to be found.  The Scriptures are a sacred deposit left to the Church to guard and to teach.  The manner in which the ancient Churches collected and preserved the sacred writings, and handed them down to us, and the abundant evidence which we have that they have been received by us in their integrity, were considered at length under Art. VI. {See Art. VI. Sect II.}

      We, the children of the Church, must, in the first instance at least, receive the word of God from her.  She, by our parents and her ministers, puts the Bible into our hands, even before we could seek it for ourselves.  To her care her Lord has entrusted it.  She keeps it, and testifies to us that it is the word of God, and teaches us the truths contained in it.  Her ministers are enjoined “to hold fast the form of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13); “to preach the word instant in season and out of season” (2 Tim. 4:2).  And so she leads us by preaching, and catechizing, and other modes of instruction to take the Bible in our hands and read it for ourselves.

      In these and many similar modes the Church is a witness as well as a keeper of Holy Writ.  We can hardly conceive a state of things in which it could be otherwise.  If the Church had not carefully guarded the Scriptures at first, they would have been scattered and lost, and spurious writings would have partially taken the place of the true.  If she did not, by her teaching and her ministry, witness to us that the Scriptures were from above, and so lead us to read and reverence them, we should be obliged to wait till the full maturity or reason and manhood before we could learn what was the word of truth, and should then have patiently to go through for ourselves all the evidence which might be necessary to convince us that the Bible, and not the Koran or the Veda, was that which contained “the lively oracles of God”.

      2.  The Church has power to decree rites and ceremonies.

      In the term “rites and ceremonies” of course we do not include things of the same nature as Sacraments, or other ordinances of the Gospel.  Two Sacraments were ordained of Christ, and the Church cannot make others like them.  Ordination is from Christ’s authority, and we learn from Scripture that it is to be performed by imposition of hands.  The Church cannot alter this, either by dispensing with it, or putting something different in its room.  By “rites and ceremonies,” therefore, are meant things comparatively indifferent in themselves, – the adjuncts and accidents, not the essence and substance of holy things.

      Certain rules are specially prescribed to us in Holy Scripture for regulating public worship and for ministering the ordinances of God.  But these rules are mostly general, and the carrying out of them must be regulated by some authority or other.  The rules given are such as the following: “Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:26, 40).  Yet how to arrange all things so that they should be done decently and in order, we are not always told.  Occasionally, indeed, the Apostles gave something like specific directions; as, for instance, St. James’s command not to allow the poor to sit in a low place, and the rich in a good place (James 2:1, 10); St. Paul’s directions about the seemly administration of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:17–33); and again, St. Paul’s command that men should be uncovered and women veiled (1 Cor. 11:4–16), and that women should keep silence in the churches (1 Cor. 14:34).  Yet, though in these few points there may be something like fixed rules laid down, the Church is generally left to arrange so that in her public worship all things should be done “decently, in order, and to edifying,” without specific directions for every particular.  Nay!  St. Paul, when so strongly insisting on men being uncovered and women covered, concludes by arguing that if any people are disposed to be contentious on this head, they ought to yield their own judgment to the customs of the Church.  “If any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the Churches of God” (1 Cor. 11:16).  Thus, therefore, the very principle laid down in Scripture seems to be that the Church should order and arrange the details of public worship, so as may be most calculated to honour God and edify the people; just as St. Paul left Titus at Crete “that he might set in order the things which were wanting” in the Church of that land  (Tit. 1:5).  Indeed, unless by authority some rules for public worship were made, decency and order could never exist.  Thus, whether prayer should be of set form or extempore – whether the minister should wear a peculiar dress – whether baptism should be by immersion or by pouring – whether at the Eucharist we should kneel or sit, and numerous other like questions, have all reference to rites and ceremonies.  If the public authority of the Church could not enjoin anything concerning them, what utter confusion might exist in our assemblies!  At one time prayer might be extempore, and at another from a prayer–book.  One minister might wear a surplice, another an academic gown, a third his common walking dress, and a fourth a cope, or some fantastic device of his own.  One person might kneel, another stand, and another sit at receiving the Communion.  Would anyone coming in to such an assembly “report that God was in us of a truth”?  And with the variety of opinion and feeling among Christians, much worse than this might easily occur, if the Church had no power to decree its rites and ceremonies.  Yet we are taught concerning this very matter of decent solemnity that “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints” (1 Cor. 14:33).

      Thus then the injunctions of the Apostles and the absolute necessity of the case lead to the conclusion that the Church must have “power to decree rites and ceremonies”.  And we may add that all bodies of Christians, however opposed to ceremonial, have yet exercised the power of decreeing rites for their own bodies.  However bare and free from ornament their public worship may be, yet in some way or other it is ordered and regulated, if it be public worship at all.  Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ministered with some degree of regularity; preaching and praying are arranged after some kind of order; and how simple soever that order may be, it is an order derived from the authority of their own body, and not expressly prescribed in Scripture.  Scripture teaches all things essential for salvation; but all minutiae of ceremonial it neither teaches nor professes to teach.  Such therefore must be left, in some degree, to the authority and wisdom of the Church. {See on this subject more especially Hooker, Eccl. Pol. Bk. III.}

      3.  The Church has, moreover, authority in controversies of faith.

      This statement of the Article as necessarily follows from the nature of the case as the two already considered.  It is only necessary to keep in mind the qualifications which the latter part of the Article suggests.

      Our Lord gave authority to His Church to bind and to loose, and to excommunicate those who would not hear the church.  The Apostles enjoined that heretics, persons that teach false doctrine or deny the truth, should be shunned, excommunicated, and put out of the Church. {Matt. 18:17, 18.  Acts 20:30.  2 Thess. 3:6.  1 Tim. 1:3, 6:3.  Tit. 1:11, 3:10.  See Art XIX, Sect. II. 5.}  Now, if the Church has no power to determine what is true and what is false, such authority would be a dead letter, and the Apostles’ injunctions would be vain.  All heretics claim Scripture as on their side.  If the Church is not allowed to exercise authority in controversies of faith, she could never reject heretics unless indeed they went so far as to deny the truth of Scripture altogether.  In order therefore to exercise that discipline and power of the Keys which Christ committed to her, the Church must have authority to decide on what is truth, and what is falsehood.

      The Church is a society founded by God for the very purpose of preserving, maintaining, and propagating the truth.  If she had no power to discern truth from error, how would this be possible?  Her ministers are enjoined to teach and to preach the truth of the Gospel; not simply to put the Bible into the hands of the people and leave them to read it.  Their commission is, “Go and teach all nations ... teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19, 20).  They are “by sound doctrine to convince the gainsayers” (Tit. 1:9).  They are “to feed the Church of God” (Acts 20:28): to give “the household of God their portion of meat in due season” (Luke 12:42).  The chief pastors of the Church are to “commit to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also,” that truth which they have themselves received (2 Tim. 2:2).  And they are enjoined to “rebuke men sharply, that they may be sound in the faith” (Tit. 1:13).

      All this implies authority – authority to declare truth, to maintain truth, to discern truth from error, to judge when controversies arise, whether one party is heretical or not, and to reject from communion such as are in grievous falsehood and error.

      There are promises to the Church and titles of the Church which confirm these arguments.  The Church is called “an holy temple in the Lord ... a habitation of God through the Spirit” (Eph. 2:21, 22).  Individual Christians believe that they shall be guided into truth by the indwelling Spirit of God; how much more therefore that Church which is not only composed of the various individual Christians, who are partakers of the Spirit, but is also itself built up for God’s Spirit to dwell in it?  Our blessed Lord promises to His Church that “the gates of hell shall never prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18); and that He will be with its pastors “always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20).  Such a promise implies the constant presence, assistance, and guidance of Him who is the Church’s Head, and His assurance that the power of evil shall never be able to destroy the faith of the Church, or take away God’s truth from it; for, if once the faith of the Church should fail, the Church itself must fail with it.  Hence the Church, having always the presence and guidance of Christ, the indwelling of His Spirit, and the assurance that the gates of hell shall never prevail against her; we must conclude that the Church will be guarded against anything like universal or fundamental error.  And so we may say that she not only is authorized to give judgments in matters of faith, but also has a promise of direction in judging.

      This further appears from the Church being called “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).  Bishop Burnet contends that this is a metaphor, and that we must not argue too much on metaphor.  But, if we never try to understand the figures of Scripture, we must neglect a very large and most important portion of Scripture.  Indeed, almost all that is taught us about God and the world of spirits is taught us in figurative language, because it is above our common comprehension, and therefore conveyed to us by parables and metaphors.  And the figure here is a very obvious one.  It may mean a little more, or a little less, but its general meaning is plain enough.  And that meaning surely is that God has appointed His Church in the world, that it may hold fast, support, and maintain the truth: and not only is it ordained for this end, but as all God’s ordinances are surely fitted for their purpose, so the Church is qualified also to uphold the truth which is committed to it.

      Therefore we conclude, that by God’s appointment, and according to plain language of Scripture, “the Church hath authority in controversies of faith.”

      II.  But the authority of the Church is not a supreme and independent authority.  In matters of faith, it is the authority of a judge, not the authority of a legislator.  Truth comes from God, not from the Church.  The written word of God is the record of God’s truth; and no other record exists.  He alone is the Legislator, and the Scriptures contain the code of laws which He has ordained.  To maintain those laws and the truth connected with them, and, so far as possible, to enforce them, is the duty of the Church.  But she has no authority either to alter or to add to them.

      She may judge therefore, but it must be according to the laws which have been made for her.  She has authority, but it is an authority limited by the Scriptures of truth.

      Such is the nature of all judicial power.  We say the judges of the land have authority to pronounce judgments; but they must pronounce their judgments according to the law.  They have no power to alter it, no power to go beyond it.  The only power which they have, is to enforce and administer; and where it is obscure or doubtful to do their best to interpret it. {In the early councils it was customary to place the Gospels on a throne or raised platform in the midst of the assembly to indicate that in them were contained the rules by which the decisions of the council must be framed.}

      This is exactly the limitation which we find that the Article truly assigns to the authority of the Church.  She has power to decree rites and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith; but in thus doing:–

      1.  She must not ordain anything contrary to God’s word written, nor explain one place of Scripture so as to contradict another.

      2.  Besides the written word, she ought not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salvation.

      The first limitation is self-apparent, if we admit the word of God to be the word of God.  For whatever authority be assigned to the Church, it would be fearful impiety to give it authority superior to God Himself.  It is probable that this limitation is more particularly intended to apply to the power of ordaining ceremonies, as the second applies to articles of faith.  If so, it means that the Church may ordain ceremonies in themselves indifferent, but she may not ordain any which would be repugnant to the written word.  Thus for example, it would mean, that forms of prayer, clerical vestments, and the like, are within the province of the Church to decide upon; but image-worship, or the adoration of the host, being contrary to the commandments of God, are beyond her power to sanction or permit.

      The second limitation applies to doctrine, and is almost a repetition of a portion of Article VI already considered. {“Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby is not to be required of any man, or be thought required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” – Art. VI.}  It denies to the Church the power to initiate in matters of faith.  She may not enforce upon her children new articles for which there is no authority in the Bible; but may interpret Scripture, and enforce the articles of faith to be deduced from thence.

      Hence we may see that the Article determines that there is but one supreme primary authority, that is to say, the written tradition of the will of God, the holy Scriptures, His lively oracles.  The authority of the Church is ministerial and declaratory, not absolute and supreme.  And the decisions of the Church must always be guided by, and dependent on, the statements and injunctions of the written word of God.*

            {Neither the right nor the duty of Private Judgment, if properly understood, is interfered with by the statements of this Article.  It is the duty of every Christian to search the Scriptures in order to learn God’s will from them.  Yet this neither supersedes the propriety of individuals paying deference to the judgment of the whole Church, nor does it preclude the Church from forming a judgment.  It is the right and the wisdom of every citizen to acquaint himself with the laws of his country, and to endeavour to render them an intelligent obedience.  Yet this does not take away from a competent authority or tribunal the right of pronouncing according to them.  The following words of an eminent English divine seem to put the whole question in its true light, and in the light in which our Church has constantly viewed it: “Far am I, by what I have now said, from endeavouring to weaken or undermine the rights of ecclesiastical authority.  We do readily acknowledge that every Christian Church in the world has a right and authority to decide controversies in religion that do arise among its members, and consequently to declare the sense of Scripture concerning those controversies.  And though we say that every private Christian hath a liberty left him of examining and judging for himself, and which cannot, which ought not to be taken from him; yet every member of a Church ought to submit to the Church’s decisions and declarations so as not to oppose them, not to break the communion or the peace of the Church upon account of them, unless in such cases where obedience and compliance is apparently sinful and against God’s laws.” – Archbishop Sharp, Works, V. p. 63. Oxf. 1829.}

            [One great difficulty concerning the authority of the Church in matters of faith arises from the fact that many people seem to expect to hear the Church speaking with definite precise statements in answer to every doubt that may arise, or every question we may choose to put to her; or else they imagine that to be what is or ought to be claimed by the believers in an authoritative Church.  But observe: –

            1. The only Church that claims to possess that kind of authority has contradicted herself, repeatedly.  (See Janus, “The Pope and the Council”, cap. III. sect. 3.)

            2. That kind of power was never promised to the Church. (St. Matt. 16:18, 28:20.)

            3. The promises referred to justify us in expecting a general indefectibility, not a special and particular infallibility.

            4. This is all that is possible without a second Incarnation; for which, accordingly, Dr. Manning (The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost) against all facts, contends.

            5. This authority is not a vague thing of no practical consequence, but covers all the essentials of Doctrine and Discipline.

            6. The voice of the Church is not gathered from a single utterance, but from general consent or from a single utterance ratified by general consent according to the rule of S. Vincent of Lerins.  Common. caps. II. III. – J. W.]

Article  XXI

Of the Authority of General Councils.

      General Councils may not be gathered together without the commandment and will of Princes.  And when they be gathered together (forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God), they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God.  Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to Salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scriptures.

De Authoritate Concilorum generalium.

      Generalia concilia sine jussu et voluntate Principum congregari non possunt; et ubi convenerint, quia ex hominibus constant, qui non omnes Spiritu et Verbo Dei reguntur, et errare possunt, et interdum errarunt etiam in his quae ad Deum pertinent; ideoque quae ab illis constituuntur, ut ad salutem necessaria, neque robur habent, neque authoritatem, nisi ostendi possint e sacris literis esse desumpta.

      [This Article is omitted in the American Revision, “because it is partly of a local and civil nature, and is provided for, as to the remaining parts of it, in other Articles.”  Not a very sufficient reason for an unfortunate omission.

      As some persons have argued from the omission, in 1562 and 1571, of Articles XLI and XLII of 1552, that the Church of England intended to allow Millenarianism and Universalism, so others have urged, that, by omitting this Article, the American Church, if it did not assert, at least allowed the infallibility of a General Council.  The one line of argument is worth as much as the other, both being worthless. – J. W.]

      We saw, in considering the last Article, that our Lord Jesus Christ had given a certain promise of guidance and indefectibility to His Church, by which we may conclude that the whole Church shall never utterly fail or be absorbed in one gulf of error.  We saw too that the Church had a right to judge in controversies of faith, so as to expel from her communion those whom she determined to be fundamentally wrong.

      If these premises be true, the voice and judgment of the Church universal must be of great value and importance, not as superseding but as interpreting Scripture.  And this voice of the Church has been considered to be audible in the general consent of Christians of all and more especially of early times.  Those doctrines which the Church of Christ at all times, everywhere, and universally, has received, have been esteemed the judgment of the Catholic Church.  This is the universality, antiquity, and agreement, the “semper, ubique et ab omnibus” of Vincentius Lirinensis. {Vincentius Lirinens.  Commonit. c. 2.}  It is true, no doctrine of the faith has been received so universally that it never has been spoken or written against.  But a large number of doctrines (all, in fact, clearly enunciated in the Creeds) have been upheld by the vast majority of Christians from the beginning to the present day.  There never was a time, not even the short-lived but fearful reign of Arianism, in which the Church in general did not hold all these doctrines; and those who dissented from them formed a comparatively small, if not always an insignificant, minority.  And as regards these fundamental truths, there would never be any difficulty in following the rule which Vincentius gives in explanation of his own canon, namely, “If a small part of the Church holds a private error, we should adhere to the whole.  If the whole be for the time infected by some novel opinion, we should cleave to antiquity.  If in antiquity itself there be found partial error, we should then prefer universal decisions before private judgments.”*  This rule will embrace all the Articles of the Creeds of the Church.  But new errors may arise, and men’s minds may be sadly perplexed by them, and difficulties of various kinds may spring up, in which the voice of the Christian Church may never have plainly spoken; and the question may almost of necessity occur, Shall the abettors of such or such an opinion be esteemed heretics or not, be continued in, or rejected from, the communion of Christians?  In such cases, which may be cases of great emergency, the only way in which the Church can speak is by a council of representatives.

            {*“Quid igitur faciet Christianus Catholicus, si se aliqua ecclesiae particula ab universalis fidei communione praeciderit?  Quid utique nisi ut pestifero corruptoque membro sanitatem universi corporis anteponat?  Quid si novella aliqua contagio non jam portiunculam tantum, sed totam pariter ecclesiam commaculare conetur?  Tunc etiam providebit, ut antiquitati inhaereat, quae prorsus jam non potest ab ulla novitatis fraude seduci.  Quid si in ipsa vetustate, duorum aut trium hominum, vel certe civitatis unius aut etiam provinciae alicujus error deprehendatur?  Tunc omnino curabit ut paucorum temeritati vel inscitiae si qua sunt universaliter antiquitus universalis Concilii decreta praeponat,” &c. – Commonit. c. 3.}

      Among the Jews questions of importance and difficulty were referred to the Sanhedrim, a council of seventy-one elders, which sat at Jerusalem.  In the Christian Church the first example of such an assembly is what has by some been called the first general council, held by the Apostles and elders and brethren at Jerusalem, concerning the question of circumcising the Gentile converts (Acts 15).

      Afterwards we hear of no council for some considerable period.  But during the third century several provincial synods sat for the determining of matters either of doctrine or discipline.  Thus Victor held a council at Rome, A. D. 196, concerning the keeping of Easter; in which year other councils were held in other places on the same subject.  St. Cyprian held several councils at Carthage on the subject of the lapsed, and the rebaptizing of heretics (A. D. 253, 254, 255).  Councils were held at Antioch, A. D. 264, 265, to condemn and excommunicate Paul of Samosata.  And many others for similar purposes were convened in their respective provinces during the third and early part of the fourth century.  Yet hitherto they were but partial and provincial, not general councils of the whole Church.  At last, during the disturbances which were created by the propagation of the Arian heresy, Constantine the Great, having been converted to Christianity, and giving the countenance of the imperial government to the hitherto persecuted Church of Christ, summoned a general council of all the bishops of Christendom to pronounce the judgment of the Church Catholic concerning the Divinity of the Son of God.  The council met A. D. 325.  The number of bishops that assembled at this great synod is generally stated to have been 318, besides priests and deacons.  The council decided by an immense majority for the doctrine of the ομοούσιον, drew up the Nicene Creed, and published twenty canons on matters of discipline.

      1.  This was the first general or oecumenical council.  Following this were five others, also generally received as oecumenical.  2. The council of Constantinople, summoned by the Emperor Theodosius, A. D. 381, which condemned Macedonius, and added the latter part to the creed of Nice.  3. The council of Ephesus, called by the younger Theodosius, A. D. 431, which condemned Nestorius.  4. The council of Chalcedon, called by Marcianus, A. D. 451, which condemned Eutyches.  5. The second of Constantinople, summoned by the Emperor Justinian, A. D. 553, confirmatory of the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon.  6. The third of Constantinople, convened by the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, A. D. 680, which condemned the Monothelites.

      These six are the only councils which have been acknowledged by the Universal Church.  There are two or three others, called oecumenical by the Greek Church, and many called oecumenical by the Latin Church, which, however, have never received universal approval. {The Greeks number eight general councils, adding to the above six the second council of Nice under Irene and her son Constantine, A. D. 787, and the fourth of Constantinople, A. D. 869, under the Emperor Basil.}  Even the fifth and sixth have not been quite so universally esteemed as the first four.  The fifth, though generally acknowledged in the East, was for a time doubted by several of the Western bishops.  Gregory the Great said he reverenced the first four synods as he did the four Evangelists; evidently considering those four as far more important than those which followed them. {Gregor.  Epist. ad Joann. Constantinop. Episc. Epistol.  Lib. I. C. 24}.  And the reformers, both foreign and Anglican, and probably the divines of the English Church in general, have more unhesitatingly received the first four than the fifth and sixth councils; though it has been thought that the reason for this may be that the fifth and sixth were considered as merely supplementary to the preceding two, and therefore as virtually included in them.

      1.  These few well-known and unquestioned facts are of themselves sufficient to give us an insight into the nature, constitution, and authority of general councils.  In the first three centuries no general council was ever held.  The reason of this may be manifold.  In the first century Apostles were yet alive, whose inspired authority could have been subject to no appeal.  Indeed the meeting of Apostles and elders at Jerusalem may be called a council; but its force is derived not merely from Christ’s promise of guidance to His Church, but also from His assurance of inspiration to His apostles.  Then, too, the Church was small; Jerusalem was the visible centre of unity; the Apostles gathered together there could readily, by common consent, meet and unite in expression of their decisions.  But a century later, and the Church was spread from India in the east to Gaul and Lusitania in the west; from Ethiopia southward to the remotest northern Isles of Britain.  There was singular difficulty in all its bishops meeting in one spot.  A general gathering of all the spiritual heads of Christendom would have been, like enough, a signal for general persecution.  There was no one power which could summon all together, and which all would be bound to obey. {I must assume that the Bishop of Rome had not that supremacy which the Pope has since claimed and exercised; though this is not the place to prove the assumption.}  And therefore it would have been morally and perhaps physically impossible to gather a council from all portions of the Church.  But when not only was the Roman empire subject to one man, but that one man became the patron and protector of the Church, his power enabled him to enjoin all bishops who were his subjects to meet him, or to send deputies to a general synod; and his safe-conduct assured against the violence, at least of heathen persecutors.  Hence, by the very nature of the case, general councils were at first never summoned, and when summoned, it was by “the commandment and will of princes”.

      Formidable heresies had risen before, but at first they were sufficiently met by the zeal and energy of catholic bishops; then local synods condemned and suppressed them.  But the rise of Arianism required a more stringent remedy, and a more distinct declaration of the voice of the Church.  The evils of Arianism were not confined to Arius and his followers.  Macedonians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Monothelites, all sprang out of the same grievous controversies; and the six general synods were successively summoned for the end of pruning off these various offshoots of the one noxious plant.

      So then general synods were the result of peculiar exigencies, and were summoned by the only power which could constrain general obedience, – obedience that is of meeting to deliberate, not, it is to be hoped, of deciding according to the imperial standard of truth.  This constituted them, so far as they were so, general and oecumenical.  When the Bishop of Rome had attained to the full height of his sacerdotal and imperial authority, claiming an universal dominion over the Church of Christ, by virtue of succession to the primacy of St. Peter, he began to exercise the power, for many centuries enjoyed only by the emperors, of calling together general councils of the Church, himself presiding in them.  The question of presidency we may lay aside, as we have to deal only with the right to summon.  Now, it is quite true that there was no inherent and inalienable right in the Roman emperor, nor in any other secular prince, to summon ecclesiastical synods.  Therefore the bare fact of their being summoned by the emperor gave them no special authority.  But the imperial was the only power which could command general obedience.  Hence, when the emperor summoned, all portions of Christendom obeyed; and so a council, as nearly as possible oecumenical, was gathered together.  But when the Pope claimed the same authority, the result was not the same.  The bishops of the Roman obedience felt bound to attend, when the chief pontiff summoned them; but the eastern prelates felt no such obligation, and the bishops belonging to the ancient patriarchates of Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria refused to attend to a command issuing from the Patriarch of Rome.  The ground, therefore, on which this Article asserts that princes only have a right to summon general councils is that such only have power to compel attendance at them.  Neither the Greek nor the reformed Churches admit the authority claimed by the Pope, and therefore their bishops would not assemble at his command.  There is no single individual governor, nor any ten or twelve ecclesiastical governors, who, if they agree together, could with authority summon a council.  All bishops are de jure equal and independent, and might refuse to obey citations from other bishops; and their refusals would invalidate the authority of the council called.

      At the time of the Reformation there was a great effort to call a free general council.  Luther appealed to such.  So did our own Cranmer.  But it was to a real and free council.  The pope summoned the Council of Trent; but the reformers refused to acknowledge his authority to call it, or to admit that, so called, it was a real council of the whole Church.  Soon after the Church of England had thrown off the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, declarations to the above effect were made by English bishops and by convocation.  The words of the latter are, “We think that neither the Bishop of Rome, nor any one prince of what estate, degree, or preeminence soever he be, may, by his own authority, call, indict, or summon any general council, without the express consent, assent, and agreement of the residue of Christian princes.” {“The judgment of Convocation concerning general Councils.”  It is signed by “Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cantuariensis, Johannes London, with thirteen bishops; and of abbots, priors, archdeacons, deans, proctors, clerks, and other ministers, forty-nine.”  See Appendix to Cranmer’s Works, IV. p. 258; also Burnet, Reform. I. App. B. iii. No. 5; Collier, Eccl. Hist.. II. App. 2037.}  Their argument is, that when the Roman emperor had absolute and universal control, his commandment alone was sufficient to insure the attendance of bishops from all quarters of the world.  But now there is no such supreme authority.  The pope claims it, but it is an usurpation.  The only conceivable mode of insuring universality now would be that all Christian princes in all parts of Christendom should agree together to send bishops to represent their respective Churches; and such an agreement would correspond with the ancient mode of convoking councils, as nearly as in the present state of things is possible.  {See also “The Opinion of certain of the Bishops and clergy of this realm, subscribed with their hands touching the general Council,” probably A. D. 1537.  It is signed by Cranmer as archbishop, eight other bishops, the Abbot of Westminster, and three others. – Jenkyns’s Cranmer, xv. p. 266.}  A supreme spiritual authority, such as is claimed by the pope, we do not acknowledge; but as all bishops are subject to their respective sovereigns, the joint will of all Christian princes might produce an oecumenical synod; but no other plan of proceeding seems likely to do so.

      2.  But when councils are gathered together, from whence do they derive their authority?  There is no distinct promise of infallibility to councils in Scripture.  Nay! there is probably no distinct allusion to councils at all.  To the bishops and rulers of the Church indeed there is a promise of Christ’s guidance and presence, and Christians are enjoined to “obey” and “follow the faith” “of those who have the rule over them.” {Heb. 13:7, 17.  Compare Acts 20:28–31, Tit. 1:13, 3:10, &c.}  Hence the judgment of our own spiritual guides is much to be attended to; and when our spiritual rulers meet together and agree on matters either of doctrine or discipline, there is no question but that their decisions are worthy of all consideration and respect.  Yet infallibility is certainly not promised to any one bishop or pastor, and though they are assured of Christ’s presence and guidance, yet promises of this kind are all more or less conditional; and it is only to the universal Church that the assurance belongs, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”  Individual bishops, we know, may err.  Hence assemblies of individual bishops may err; because, though they have the grace of ordination, yet all may not be pious men, “governed with the Spirit and word of God.” {See the sentiments of Bishop Ridley to this effect, corresponding to the wording of the Article. – Ridley’s Works, p. 130, Parker Society edition, Cambridge, 1841.}

      If indeed all the chief pastors of the Church could meet together and all agree, we might perhaps be justified in considering their decision as the voice of the universal Church; and the promises of Christ to His Church are such as might lead us to believe that that Church could not universally be heretical, and therefore that its universal judgment must be sound.  But no synod ever had, nor perhaps ever can have, such conditions as these.  Those hitherto held have consisted of a minority of the bishops of the whole Church; and most important portions of the Church have been but very slenderly represented.  Though, therefore, one bishop may be supposed to represent many others; yet even in political matters we often feel an assembly of deputies to speak but imperfectly the voice of a people, and in ecclesiastical and spiritual things this must be much more probable.  We cannot say then that the whole Church speaks by the voices of a minority of her bishops, even when they are quite agreed.

      Again, it is not quite certain that our Lord’s promises to His Church render it impossible that the major part of that Church should for a time be corrupted by error.  God gave many and great promises to Israel; and yet at one time there were but seven thousand knees that had not bowed to Baal.  The promises indeed assure us that the Church shall not become totally corrupt nor continue so finally.  But we have seen that Vincentius himself supposes the possibility of the Church for a time being largely, and indeed in the greater part of it, led astray by some novelty of doctrine.  Now a council composed of a minority of bishops of the Church might in a corrupt age consist of those very bishops who had embraced the novelties from which the great body of the Church was not then exempt.  What would then be the value of the decisions of such a council?  We may perhaps reasonably hope, that the gracious and superintending Providence of Christ would never allow the Church, which is His Body, and of which He is the present and animating Head, to be so represented, or misrepresented.  But there is nothing in the nature of councils to assure us against such an evil.  Councils have hitherto always consisted of a minority.  Even that minority has not always been unanimous; and it might be that the same minority might represent the worse instead of the sounder part of the Church in a corrupt and ignorant age.

      We hear enough of councils, even in the best ages, to know that the proceedings at them have not always been the wisest or the most charitable; that some of those who attended them were not the most highly to be respected; and that other motives besides zeal for the truth have had too much influence in them.  The words of Gregory Nazianzen are famous: “If I must write the truth,” he says, “I am disposed to avoid every assembly of bishops; for of no synod have I seen a profitable end; rather an addition to, than a diminution of, evils; for the love of strife and the thirst for superiority are beyond the power of words to express.” {έχω μεν ούτως.  ει δει ταληθες γράφειν, ώστε πάντα σύλλογον φεύγειν επίσκοπων, ότι μηδεμιας συνόδου τέλος ειδον χρηστον·  μηδε λύσιν κακων μάλλον εσχηκυίας, η προσθήκην.  Αι γαρ φιλονεικίαι και φιλαρχίαι·  αλλ όπως μηδε φορτικον υπολάβης ούτω γράφοντα·  και λόγου κρείττονες, κ. τ. λ. – Epist. 55, Procopio. Tom. I. p. 814, Colon. 1690.}  Every reader of Church history must feel that there is too much truthfulness in this picture.

      The question then arises, of what use are universal synods? and what authority are we to assign them?  The answer is that so far as they speak the language of the universal Church and are accredited by the Church, so far they have the authority, which we saw under the last Article to be inherent in the Church, of deciding in controversies of faith.  Now we can only know that they speak the language of the Church when their decrees meet with universal acceptance, and are admitted by the whole body of Christians to be certainly true.  Every general council which has received this stamp to its decisions may be esteemed to speak the language of the universal Church; and as in some cases the judgment of the universal Church could not otherwise have been elicited, therefore we must admit their importance and necessity.  Now the first six, or at least the first four, general councils have received this sanction of universal consent to their decisions.  Their decrees were sent round throughout the Christian world; they were received and approved of by all the different national Churches of Europe, Asia, and Africa; the errors condemned by them were then, and ever have been, counted heresies; and the creeds set forth by them have been acknowledged, reverenced, and constantly repeated in the Liturgy, by every orthodox Church from that time to this. {Not only episcopal churches have so admitted the decrees of the general councils, but that the reformers and reformed bodies of Christians in Germany, Switzerland, &c. have admitted them may appear both from their confessions and the writings of their divines – e.g. see Confess. August. Art. XXI; Sylloge, p. 189; Calvin, Institut. IV. ix. 8, 13.}

      Thus then the true general synods have received an authority which they had not in themselves.  “It is,” as the Lutheran Confession expresses it, “the legitimate way of healing dissension in the Church to refer ecclesiastical controversies to synods.” {“Haec est usitata et legitima via in ecclesia dirimendi dissensiones, videlicet ad synodos referre controversias ecclesiasticas.” – Conf. August. ubi supra.}  But those synods have universal authority only when they receive catholic consent.  When the Church at large has universally received their decrees, then are they truly general councils, and their authority equal to the authority of the Church itself.

      Supposing then a synod to assemble, and to draw up articles of doctrine, or rules of discipline, even though it have been legally assembled by an authority qualified to convene it, and to ensure attendance at it, still we hold it possible that it should err, not only in its mode of reasoning, or in matters indifferent, but “even in things pertaining to God.”  Hence, when its decrees came forth, especially if they concerned things “necessary to salvation,” we should not esteem them to have strength nor authority “until they were compared with Holy Scripture and could be declared to be taken out” of it.  The council itself would be bound to decide on the grounds of Scripture, no power having the right to prescribe anything as “requisite or necessary to salvation, which is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby.”  The Church would be bound to examine the decisions of the council itself, on the grounds of Scripture, and would not be justified in receiving those decisions unless it found that they were “taken out of Holy Scripture.”  But when the Church had fully received, and stamped with its approval the acts of the council, then would they assume the form of judgments of the Church concerning the doctrines of Scripture.*  This was the case with the great Councils of Nice Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon.  They put forth their decisions as their interpretations of the word of God.  They enjoined nothing “as necessary to salvation,” but what they “declared to have been taken out of Holy Scripture.”  All Christendom received their interpretations as sound and true: and from that day to this they have been admitted by the Catholic Church as true articles of faith.  This has stamped them with an authority of Scriptural truth and Catholic consent of which the constitution of the Councils themselves could not give us full certainty and assurance. {On the subject of the authority of general synods, see Palmer, On the Church, Part IV. ch. 8; whose view is the same as that taken in the text.}

            {*Calvin, as above referred to, says: “Sic priscas illas synodos, ut Nicaenam, Constantinopolitanam, Ephesinam primam, Chalcedonensem, ac similes, quae confutandis erroribus habit sunt, libenter amplectimur, reveremurque ut sacrosanctas, quantum attinet ad fidei dogmata: nihil enim continent quam puram et nativam Scripturae interpretationem quam sancti patres, spirituali prudentia, ad frangendos religionis hostes, qui tunc emerserant, accommodarunt.” – Institut. IV. ix. 8.  Compare Confess. Helvet. Art. XI; Sylloge, pp. 41, 42.}

      3.  Concerning the assertion of the Article that “some general councils have erred,” Bishop Burnet justly observes that it “must be understood of councils that pass for such.”  The later councils summoned by the Pope, and acknowledged only by the Western Churches and those in obedience to Rome, were commonly called General Councils at the time of the Reformation, as they still are in the Roman Church, though never acknowledged by the Churches of the East. {According to the Roman Church the First Council of Lateran summoned by Pope Calixtus II, A. D. 1123, was the 9th general Council.  The other general councils allowed by the Latin Church are, Second Lateran, A. D. 1139.  Third Lateran, 1179.  Fourth Lateran, 1215.  Lyons, 1245.  Lyons, 1274.  Vienne, 1311.  Constance, 1414.  Basle, 1431.  Florence, 1439.  Fifth Lateran, 1512.  Trent, 1516.}

      Of these, the fourth Council of Lateran, under Innocent III, A. D. 1215, asserted the doctrine of Transubstantiation. {Conc. Lateran, IV. Can. I.}  The Council of Constance, A. D. 1414, forbade the cup to the laity. {Sess. XIII.}  The Council of Florence, A. D. 1439, decreed the doctrine of Purgatory. {Concil. Florent.  De Purgat.}  The Council of Trent added to the Nicene Creed a confession of belief in seven sacraments, Transubstantiation, Purgatory, Invocation of Saints, Image-worship, &c. &c.

      The decrees of these councils, though called general, have never received the assent of the Eastern Churches and cannot therefore be of universal authority.  None of the above-mentioned doctrines, which they sanctioned, can be found in Scripture but may all be proved to be contrary to Scripture.  They are all denied in those Articles of our own Church which we have next to consider, and which we shall have to justify from Holy Writ.  Hence, we can have no difficulty in concluding, that some (so-called) General Councils have erred, even in things pertaining to God.

      [NOTE.  The statement that General Councils may not be gathered “without the commandment and will of Princes,” probably caused the omission of this Article in the American revision.

      It should be remembered, however, that it is aimed against the Papal usurpation, and interference with the Civil power.  The Pope – as in the famous dispute of Boniface VIII and Philip le Bel – claimed the right of calling the clergy out of the several countries in which they lived, without the consent of the civil power, and the words above quoted were intended to meet this claim.  So Bishop Burnet, Dr. Hey, Mr. Hardwicke, and even Mr. Newman in Tract XC explain them.

      The student should specially bear in mind (a) the proper work of a General Council, and (b) its proper authentication.

      The first is not to invent new Articles of faith, but to testify to, to set forth more carefully, and to guard antecedent truth.  So that while it is not an infallible judge, it may be a faithful witness.  The second is found, not in the confirmation of the Pope or any other person, but in the acceptance of the Council by the entire Church.  As to the rules laid down by some Romish writers that a General Council must be called by the Pope, that he must preside, &c. they are all confuted by a simple reference to the four great General Councils.  If those rules are sound, they were not General Councils; if they were General Councils, those rules are unfounded. – J. W.]

Article  XXII

Of Purgatory.

      The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardons, worshipping and adoration, as well of images, as of reliques, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.

De Purgatorio.

      Doctrina Romanensium de purgatorio, de indulgentiis, de veneratione, tum imaginum, tum reliquiarum, necnon de invocatione sanctorum, res est futilis, inaniter conficta, et nullis Scripturarurn teatimoniis innititur; immo verbo Dei contradicit.

SECTION  I – HISTORY

      The three preceding Articles concerned the Church visible.  This treats of the Church invisible.

      The only difference between the wording of this Article and the XXIIId of Edward VI is that whereas this has “The Romish doctrine,” that had “The doctrine of the school-authors.”

      The Article is so comprehensive that many volumes might be written upon it.  It will be necessary therefore to study brevity.  It evidently treats of two principal points.  I. Purgatory, and the pardons or indulgences connected with the doctrine concerning it.  II. The Worship of images and relics, and the Invocation of Saints.

      I.  1.  Purgatory.

      Under the IIId Article we saw that the Jews and the early Christians uniformly believed in an intermediate state between death and judgment.  But their language and expectations, at least those of the earliest fathers, are inconsistent with a belief that any of the pious were in a state of suffering, or that the sufferings of the wicked were but for a time only.

      Clemens Romanus says, that “Those who have finished their course in charity, according to the grace of Christ, possess the region of the godly, who shall be manifested in the visitation of the Kingdom of Christ.” {έχουσιν χώραν ευσεβων. – Clem.  Ad Cor. I. 50.}  Justin Martyr says, “The souls of the godly remain in a certain better place, the unjust and wicked in a worse, awaiting the day of judgment.” {τας μεν των ευσεβων ψυχας εν κρείττονί ποι χώρω μένειν, κ. τ. λ. – Dial. p. 223; Conf. Quaest. et Respons. ad Orthodox. Justino Imputat. qu. 5}  Irenaeus argues from the parable of Dives and Lazarus, that “each sort of men receive, even before the judgment, their due place of abode.” {“Dignam habitationem unamquamque gentem percipere etiam ante judicium.” – Lib. II. 63.  Compare Lib. V. 31, quoted above, Art. III. Sect. I.}  Tertullian speaks of Paradise “as a place of divine pleasantness, destined to receive the spirits of the just.” {“Locum divinae amoenitatis recipiendis sanctorum spiritibus destinatum.” – Apol. I. 47.}  So Cyprian, “it is for him to fear death who is unwilling to go to Christ.” {“Ejus est mortem timere qui ad Christum nolit ire.” – Cyp. De Mortalitate, p. 157, Oxon. 1682.}  “Do not suppose death the same thing to the just and the unjust.  The just are called to a refreshing, the unjust are hurried away to torment; speedily safety is given to the faithful, to the unfaithful punishment.” {“Non est quod putetis bonis et malis interitum esse communem.  Ad refrigerium justi vocantur, ad supplicium rapiuntur injusti: datur velocius tutela fidentibus, perfidis poena.” – Ibid. p. 161.}  This, he shows, is not peculiar to martyrs or eminent saints.  “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, did not suffer martyrdom, yet were honoured first among the patriarchs; and to their company every one is gathered, who is believing and righteous and praiseworthy.” {“Ad quorum convivium congregatur quisquis fidelis et justus et laudabilis invenitur.” – Ibid. p. 163.  The reasoning of the whole treatise De Mortalitate is of the same kind, and quite inconsistent with a belief that good men going out of this life have a penal state to undergo before attaining to rest and happiness.}

      We may, however, early trace a belief that as death itself was a part of the curse, so every one was to look forward, not for the rest of the intermediate state, but for the joys of the resurrection; a delay of the resurrection, and a continuance of the death of the body, being esteemed in itself penal and the result of sin.  Indeed, St. Paul (2 Cor. 5:2, 4, 6) taught, that to be unclothed was an evil; though it would be better to be “absent from the body,” since thereby we might be “present with the Lord.”  Hence, Irenaeus speaks of the time between death and judgment as “a period of condemnation, resulting from man’s disobedience.” {“Ut quemadmodum caput resurrexit a mortuis, sic et reliquum corpus omnis hominis qui invenitur in vita, impleto tempore condemnationis ejus, quae erat propter inobedientiam, resurgat.” – Iren. III. 21.}  And Tertullian says, that “sin, though small in amount, may be to be punished by delay of the resurrection”: {“Modicum quoque de_ictum mora resurrectionis illic luendun” – De Anima, C. 58.         } of which passage more hereafter.

      This leads to the consideration of Prayer for the Dead.  There can be no question that this custom very early prevailed among Christians.  It is first mentioned by Tertullian who speaks of the common practice of the Church to make oblations for the dead on the anniversary of the day of their death, which they called their birthday; who says also that widows prayed for the souls of their husbands that they might have refreshment and a part in the first resurrection. {“Oblationes pro defunctis, pro natalitiis annua die facimus.” – De Corona Milit. C. 3.  “Pro anima ejus orat, et refrigerium interim adpostulat ei, et in prima resurrectione consortium, et offert annuis diebus dormitionis ejus.” – De Monogamia, C. 10.}  The like is mentioned by Origen, {Lib. IX. In Rom. xii.} Cyprian, {Epist. 34, Edit. Fell, 39, p. 77.} Cyril of Jerusalem, {Catech. Myst. v. 6, 7.} Gregory Nazianzen, {Orat. in Caesar. jurta fin.} Ambrose, {Epist. II. 8, Ad Faustinum.} Chrysostom, {Hom. 41, in 1 ad Corinth.} and others of the earliest fathers; and prayers and thanksgivings for the dead occur in all the ancient Liturgies, as in that to be found in the Apostolical Constitutions, in the Liturgies of St. James, St. Mark, St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, &c.

      On this early practice, dating unquestionably from the second century, the school authors and the Romanist divines ground one of their strongest arguments to prove that a belief in Purgatory was primitive and apostolic.  For why, say they, were prayers offered for the dead, unless they could profit them? and how could they profit them except by delivering from the pains of Purgatory or shortening their duration?

      Yet it is to be observed, that many of the very prayers alleged by the Roman Catholic controversialists do of themselves prove that those who composed them could not have believed the persons prayed for to be in purgatory.  The prayers for the dead in the ancient Liturgies are offered for all the greatest saints, for the Virgin Mary, the Apostles and martyrs, whom even the Roman Church has never supposed to be in purgatory.  Thus the Clementine Liturgy, found in the Apostolical Constitutions, {Constitut. Apostol.  Lib. VIII. cap. 12.} has the words, “We offer to Thee (i.e. we pray) for all the saints who have pleased Thee from the beginning of the world; the patriarchs, prophets, righteous men, apostles, martyrs,” &c.  The Liturgy called St. Chrysostom’s prays for all departed in the faith, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, &c.: and “especially for the holy, immaculate, blessed Theotokos, and ever-virgin Mary.” {εξαιρέτως της παναγίας, αχράντου, υπερευλογημένης δεσποίνης ημων Θεοτόκου και αειπαρθένου Μαρίας. – Chrysost. Liturg. Graec.}  This alone is sufficient to prove that prayer for the dead did not presuppose Purgatory, and was in no degree necessarily connected with it.  Indeed, many of the ancients who speak of praying for the dead positively declare their firm belief that those for whom they prayed were in peace, rest, and blessedness, and therefore certainly not in fire and torment; {See this shown in very numerous instances by Archbishop Usher, Answer to a Jesuit, ch. VII, and by Bingham, E. A. Bk. XV. ch. III. § 16.} and it is not too much to affirm, that none of the ancient prayers had anything like an allusion to a Purgatory.  Nay, even in the ancient Roman missals were the words, “Remember, O Lord, Thy servants which have gone before us with the sign of faith, and sleep in the sleep of peace; To them, O Lord, and to all that are in rest in Christ, we beseech Thee to grant a place of refreshment, of light and peace.” {“Memento etiam, Domino, famulorum famularumque tuarum, qui nos praecesserunt cum signo fidei, et dormiunt in somno pacis.  Ipsis, Domine, et omnibus in Christo quiescentibus, locum refrigerii lucis et pacis ut indulgeas deprecamur.” – Bibl. Patr. Gr. Lat.  Tom. II. p. 129, quoted by Usher and Bingham, as above.}

      It has been so common to admit the false premise of the Romanist divines (namely, that prayer for the dead presupposes a Purgatory) that it is to many minds difficult to understand on what principles the early Christians used such prayers.  One of those principles was, doubtless, that all things to us unknown are to us future.  Present and future are but relative ideas.  To God nothing is future; all things are present.  But to man, that is future of which he is ignorant.  As then we know not with absolute certainty the present condition or final doom of those who are departed; their present condition is relatively, and their final doom, absolutely, future to our minds.  Hence, it was thought, we are justified in praying that it may be good, even though the events of their past life may have already decided it.  Again, the Resurrection is yet to come, and therefore the full bliss of the departed is yet future.  Hence the ancients prayed for a hastening of the Resurrection, much in the spirit of our own Burial Service, and of the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come.” {See Bp. Bull, Sermon III.  Works, I. p. 71, Oxf. 1827.}  Thus St. Ambrose prayed for the Emperors Gratian and Valentinian, that God would “raise them up with a speedy resurrection.” {Te quaeso, summe Deus, ut charissimos juvenes matura resurrectione suscites et resuscites.” – Ambros.  De Obit. Valentini, in ipso fine; Usher, as above.}  And the Liturgies constantly ask a speedy and a happy resurrection to those who have died in the Lord. {See numerous examples, quoted by Usher as above.}

      Another portion of these prayers was Eucharistic or thanksgiving; whereby they gave God thanks both for the martyrs and for all that had died in the faith and fear of God;* and these commemorations of the departed were thought most important, as testifying a belief in the doctrine of “the Communion of Saints,” and that the souls of those who are gone hence are still living, still fellow heirs of the same glory, and fellow citizens of the same kingdom with ourselves. {Epiphan. Haeres. LXXV. n. VII.}

            {*“The term of ευχαριστήριος ευχη, ‘a thanksgiving prayer,’ I borrow from the writer of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, (Dionys. Eccles. Hierarch. cap. VII.) who, in the description of the funeral observances used of old in the Church, informeth us, first, that the friends of the dead accounted him to be, as he was, blessed, because that, according to his wish, he had obtained a victorious end, and thereupon sent forth hymns of thanksgiving to the Author of that victory, desiring that they themselves might come unto the like end.” – Usher, as above.}

      These were the chief reasons for prayers for the dead in public Liturgies.  In the more private devotions, the solicitude which had existed for beloved objects whilst on earth was still expressed for their souls when they had gone hence and were in the middle state of the dead.  For, though they held that “what shall be to every one at the day of judgment is determined at the day of his death,” {“Quod enim in die judicii futurum est omnibus, hoc in singulis die mortis impletur.” – Hieronym.  In Joel, cap. 2; Usher, Ibid.} yet they thought it not unreasonable to pray that even those who they hoped were safe might not lose that portion of blessedness which they supposed to be in store for them. {See this exemplified in the prayer of St. Augustine for his mother Monica. – Confess. Lib. IX. cap. 13, quoted by Bingham, Lib. XV. ch. III. § 16.}  There were also some private opinions, – as that the “more abundant damnation” of the damned might be lessened, {“Ut tolerabilior sit damnatio.” – Aug. Enchirid. ad Laurent. cap. CX.  Bingham, Ibid.} – that there was a first resurrection at which some eminent saints rose before the rest, and to this they prayed that their friends might attain, {This was a Millenarian opinion, and was held by Tertullian. – De Monogam. cap. 10; Cont. Marcion.  Lib. III. cap. 25; Bingham, Ibid.} – that all men, even the best and holiest, had at the day of judgment a baptism of fire to go through, which should try their works, even though they should be saved in it: of which baptism more presently.  Such private and particular opinions influenced the prayers of those who adopted them; but they were all unconnected with the doctrine of purgatory. {The student should by all means read Usher’s Answer to a Jesuit, ch. VII.  On Prayer for the Dead; and Bingham, Bk. XV. ch. III. §§ 15, 16.  See also Field, Of the Church. Bk. III. C. 9, 17; Jer. Taylor, Dissuasive from Popery, pt. 1. ch. I. § IV; Bramhall, Answer to M. De la Milletiere, I. p. 59, of the Anglo-Catholic Library; Bull’s Works, I. Serm. III. &c.}

      The prayers for the dead, thus early prevalent, were in process of time in the Roman Church converted into prayers for souls in purgatory.  At the beginning of the Reformation, it was first proposed to eradicate all traces of this doctrine from the Liturgies, but to retain such prayers for the dead as were accordant with primitive practice and belief.  Accordingly, the first Liturgy of Edward VI contained thanksgiving for all those saints “who now do rest in the sleep of peace,” prayer for their “everlasting peace,” and that “at the day of the general resurrection all they which be of the mystical body of the Son, might be set on His right hand.”  But the reformers afterwards, fearing from what had already occurred that such prayers might be abused or misconstrued, removed them from the Communion and Burial services.  Yet still we retain a thanksgiving for saints departed, a prayer that we, with them, may be partakers of everlasting glory, and a request that God would “complete the number of His elect, and hasten His kingdom, that we, with all those who are departed out of this life in His faith and fear, may have our perfect consummation and bliss in His eternal and everlasting glory.”  Such commemorations of the dead sufficiently accord with the spirit of the primitive prayers, without in any degree laying us open to the danger that ill-taught or ill-thinking men might found upon them doctrines of deceit or dangerous delusions.

      We have seen then that the doctrine of the ancients concerning the intermediate state was inconsistent with a belief in purgatory, and that their custom of praying for the dead had no connection with it.  Yet we may trace the rise of the doctrine itself by successive steps from early times.

      In the first two centuries there is a deep silence on the subject.  At the end of the second, Tertullian considered that Paradise was a place of divine pleasantness appointed to receive the souls of the just. {Apol. I. 45, quoted above.}  But early in the third century Tertullian had left the Church and joined the Montanists; and there is a passage in one of his treatises, written after he became a Montanist, which deserves attention.  In that treatise (De Anima) he indeed clearly speaks of all the righteous as detained in inferis, waiting in Abraham’s bosom the comfort of the resurrection; {Tertull.  De Anima, 65.} and says, that doubtless in the intermediate state (penes inferos) are punishments and rewards, as we may learn from the parable of Dives and Lazarus. {Ibid. 58.}  This appears inconsistent with any purgatorial notion; yet some consider that he had an idea of the kind, because he explains twice in this treatise the words, “Thou shalt not come out thence till thou hast paid the very last farthing,” to mean, that even “small offences are expiated by delay of resurrection.”*  He seems, however, to consider that they will be more fully punished at the judgment. {See the concluding words in the last-cited passage.}  And even this interpretation of Scripture, which is evidently very different from the doctrine of purgatory, he says that he derived, not from the teaching of the Church, but from Montanus.**

            {*“Ne ... judex te tradat angelo executionis, et ille te in carcerem mandet inferum, unde non dimittaris, nisi modico quoque delicto mora resurrectionis expenso.” – Ibid. 35.  “In summa carcerem ilium quem evangelium demonstrat inferos intelligimus, et novissimum quadrantem, modicum quoque delictum mora resurrectionis illic iuendum interpretamur; nemo dubitabit animam aliquid pensare penes inferos salva resurrectionis plenitudine per carnem quoque.” – Ibid. 58.}

            {**“Hoc enim Paracletus (h. e. Montanus) frequentissime commendavit, si quis sermones ejus ex agnitione promissorum charismatum admiscuit.” – Ibid.  There is a passage in Cyprian (Epist. 55 ad Antonian. p. 109, Oxf. 1682) from which it is supposed that he adopted this view of Tertullian, whom he called “his Master.”  Rigaltius has shown that the language thus used by Cyprian applies to the penitential discipline of the Church, not to a purgatorial fire after death.  It is true, the wording of this passage looks like Tertullian’s reasoning.  But Cyprian’s language is so constantly opposed to the notion of purgatory that it is scarcely possible that he should have consistently held that doctrine.  See the passages above quoted from his treatise De Mortalitate. the following: “Quod interim morimur, ad immortalitatem morte transgredimur; nec potest vita aeterna succedere, nisi hinc contigerit exire.  Non est exitus iste, sed transitus: et temporali itinere decurso, ad aeterna transgressus.” – De Mortalitate, 12, p. 164.  “Amplectamur diem, qui assignat singules domicilio suo, qui nos istine ereptos, et laqueis saecularibus exsolutos Paradiso restituit et regno.” – Ibid. 14, p. 166.}

      Contemporary with Tertullian, though somewhat his junior, was Origen.  If Tertullian derived a notion somewhat resembling purgatory from a heretic, Origen derived a notion also bearing some resemblance to it from a heathen.  His views of the nature of the human soul were borrowed from Plato.  He believed it to be immortal and preexistent, always in a state of progress or decline, and ever receiving the place due to its attainments in holiness, or defection to wickedness.  Hence, he did not believe the purest souls of the redeemed, or the holy angels themselves, incapable of sinning, nor the very devils out of all hope of recovery. { De Principiis, Lib. II. cap. 6, n. 3, Hieronym. In Jonae Proph. C. III; Augustin. De Civit. Dei, Lib. XXI. C. 17, Tom. VII. 637.  See Laud against Fisher, § 38.}  In accordance with this theory, he was obliged to consider that all the pains of the damned were merely purgatorial, and that their sins would be expiated by fire. {Origen, De Principiis, Lib. II. cap. 10. n. 5; Homil. in Levitic. vii. n. 4.}  To this he applied those passages of Scripture which speak of “a fiery trial,” and of the fire as to “try every man’s work of what sort it is” (1 Cor. 3:13–15).  He held that at the day of judgment all men must pass through the fire, even the saints and prophets.  As the Hebrews went through the Red Sea, so all must pass through the fire of the judgment.  As the Egyptians sank in the sea, so wicked men shall sink in the lake of fire: but good men, washed in the blood of the Lamb, even they, like Israel, must pass through the flood of flame; but they shall go through it safe and uninjured. {Homill. III. in Ps. xxxvi. num. 1.}  All must go to the fire.  The Lord sits and purifies the sons of Judah.  He who brings much gold with little lead, shall have the lead purged away, and the gold shall remain uncorrupted.  The more lead there is, the more burning there will be.  But if a man be all leaden, he shall sink down into the abyss, as lead sinks in the water. {Homil. in Exod. vi. num. 4.}

      This theory of Origen is so far from being the same with the Romanist’s purgatory, that, first of all, he places it instead of hell; and secondly, so far from looking for it between death and the resurrection, he taught that it would take place after the resurrection, at the day of judgment.  Yet to this speculation, the offspring of human reason and Platonic philosophy, we may trace the rise of the doctrine on which the Church of Rome has erected so much of her power, and which has been so fatally pregnant with superstition.  The theories of Origen were interesting, his character and learning were captivating; and so his name and opinion’s had much weight with those who followed him.  Accordingly, we find eminent writers both in the East and West embracing his speculations.  Lactantius held all judgment to be deferred till the resurrection; then eternal fire should consume the wicked, but it should try even the just.  Those who had many sins would be scorched by it, but the pure would come off scathless. {Lactant. VII. 21.}  Gregory Nazianzen, with the same idea, speaking of various kinds of baptism, Moses’s baptism, Christ’s baptism, the martyr’s baptism, the baptism of penitence, adds, “and perhaps in the next world men will be baptized with fire, which last baptism will be more grievous and of longer duration, which will devour the material part like hay, and consume the light substance of every kind of sin.” {τυχόν εκει τω πυρι βαπτισθήσονται τω τελευταίω βαπτίσματι τω επιπονωτέρω και μακροτέρω, ο εσθίει τον χόρτον, την ύλην, και δαπανα πάσης κακίας κουφότητα. – Greg. Nazianz.  Oratio XXXIX. juxta finem.}  Ambrose again, using almost the words of Origen, says, “that all must pass through the flames, even St. John and St. Peter.” {Serm. XX. in Psal. 118.}  And elsewhere he adopts Origen’s illustration of the Israelites and Egyptians passing through the Red Sea, comparing it with the passage of all men through the fire of judgment. {In Psal. 36.}  Hilary too speaks of all, even the Virgin Mary, as to undergo the trial of fire at the day of judgment, in which souls must expiate their offences. {“Cum ex omni otioso verbo rationem simus praestituri, diem judicii concupiscemus, in quo subeunda sunt gravia illa expiandae a peccatis animae supplicia,” &c. – Hilar. In Ps. 118, lit. Gimel.}  Gregory Nyssen in like manner speaks of “a purgatorial fire after our departure hence,” and of “the purging fire, which takes away the filth commingled with the soul.” {μετα την ενθένδε μετανάστασιν, δια της του καθαρσίου πυρος χωνείας. – Orat. De. Mortuis, Tom. III. p. 634, Paris, 1638.  του καθαρσίου πυρος τον εμμιχθέντα τη ψυχη ρύπον αποκαθηράντος. – Ibid. p. 635.  See Laud against Fisher, § 38.}

      All these views spring from the same source and tend to the same conclusion.  They arise from Origen’s interpretation of 1 Cor. 3:13–15; and they imply a belief, not in a purgatory between death and resurrection, but in a fiery ordeal through which all must pass at the day of judgment, which will consume the wicked, but purify the just.

      We come now to St. Augustine.  His name is deservedly had in honour, and his opinions have borne peculiar weight.  He too, like Origen and Ambrose, speaks of the fire of judgment, which is to try men’s works. {De Civitate Dei, XVI. 24, XX. 25, Tom. VII. pp. 437, 609.}  But he goes further still.  In commenting on the passage of St. Paul, so often referred to, (1 Cor. 3:11–15,) he says, that if men have the true foundation, even Jesus Christ, though they may not be pure from all carnal affections and infirmities, these shall be purged away from them by the fire of tribulation, by the loss of things we love, by persecution, and in the end of the world by the afflictions which antichrist should bring; in short, by the troubles of this life.  But then he adds; that some have supposed that after death some further purging by fire was awaiting them who were not fully purified here, and he says, “I will not argue against it; for perhaps it is true.”*  He does not set it forth as an article of faith.  He does not speak of it as a doctrine of the Church.  He does not propound it as an acknowledged truth.  He does not lay it down as a settled opinion.  He merely alleges it as a probable conjecture.  He holds it to be uncertain, whether all tribulation is to be borne here, or some hereafter; or whether some hereafter instead of some here.  But he thinks perhaps some such opinion is true.  He says at least it is not incredible **  The very mode in which he sets forth his doubts and queries shows that no certain ground could be taken upon the subject, as deduced from undoubted language of Scripture or primitive teaching of the Church.  In fact, he acknowledges the great difficulty of the passage in St. Paul, simply speaks of the purgatorial view as having been suggested, and thinks it not impossible or improbable.  In this form of it, it was in fact an evident novelty in the days of St. Augustine.***

            {*“Post istius sane corporis mortem, donec ad illum veniatur, qui post resurrectionem corporum futurus est damnationis ultimus dies, si hoc temporis intervallo spiritus defunctorum ejusmodi ignem dicuntur perpeti, quem non sentiant illi qui non habuerunt tales mores et amores in hujus corporis vita, ut eorum iigna, foenum, stipula consumatur; alii vero sentiant qui ejusmodi secum aedificia portaverunt, sive ibi tantum, sive ideo hic ut non ibi, saecularia, quamvis a damnatione venialia concremantem ignem transitoriae tribulationis inveniant, non redarguo, quia forsitan verum est.” — De Civit. Dei, XXI. 26, Tom. VII. p.649.}

            {**“Tale aliquid etiam post hanc vitam fieri, incredibile non est, et utrum ita sit quaeri potest, et aut inveniri aut latere, nonnullos fideles per ignem quendam purgatorium quanto magis minusve bona pereuntia dilexerunt, tanto tardius citiusque salvari.” – Enchiridion ad. Laurent. cap. 69, Tom. VI. p. 222.  See also De Fide ex Operibus, cap. 16, Tom. VI. p. 180.}

            {***We must by no means imagine that the fathers uniformly interpreted this passage of the Corinthians either of a purgatorial fire at judgment, or before the judgment.  For example, St. Chrysostom distinctly expounds it of a probatory, not a purgatory fire; and understands that those who suffer loss are those who are damned eternally, and that their “being saved yet so as by fire” means that they shall be preserved from annihilation, not from suffering by the fire. – See Hom. IX. in 1 Corinth.}

      A century and a half later, Pope Gregory I laid it down distinctly that “there is a purgatorial fire before the judgment for lighter faults.” {“De quibusdam levibus culpis esse ante judicium purgatorius ignis credendus est.” – Gregor.  Dial. Lib. IV. cap, 39.  Also In Psalm. iii. Poenitent. in princip.  Usher, Answer to a Jesuit, ch. VI; Laud against Fisher, § 38.}  From this time a belief in purgatory rapidly gained ground in the Western Church.  Visions and apparitions of the dead were appealed to as witnesses for the existence of a state of purgation for those souls who were detained in prison waiting for the judgment. {See Jer. Taylor, Dissuasive from Popery, pt. I. ch. I. § 4, Vol. X. p. 150, Works.  London, 1822.}  Thomas Aquinas and other schoolmen discussed the subject with their usual ingenuity, and more fully explained the situation of purgatory, its pains, and their intensity.  But the Greek Church, divided from the Latin on other points, was never agreed with it on this.

      In the year 1431 met the synod of Basle, which promised much reformation and effected none.  Thither a deputation had come from the Emperor of Constantinople; and by it a hope was excited that the breach between the two long-divided branches of the Church might now be healed.  Eugenius IV, Bishop of Rome, who at first endeavoured in 1437 to translate the Council of Basle to Ferrara, now strove to remove it to Florence (A. D. 1439).  Only four of the Bishops left Basle at his command, the rest continuing their sitting there till 1443, forming a council acknowledged as oecumenical by great part of Europe, though opposed to the pope.  However, several Italian bishops met at Florence, and were joined by the Greek emperor and some bishops from the East.  In this synod the Greek deputies were induced to acknowledge that the Bishop of Rome was the primate and head of the Church, that the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father and the Son, and that there is a purgatory.  These decrees were signed by about sixty-two Latin bishops, by John Palmologus the emperor, and by eighteen Eastern bishops.  On their return to Constantinople the Greek prelates were received with the greatest indignation by those whom they might be supposed to represent.  The decrees of Florence were utterly and most summarily rejected in the East, the synod was altogether repudiated, and has never since been, recognized.  The patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, who were represented by deputies in the council, joined in the protest against it.  To this day the Eastern Church has never acknowledged it, nor does it accept any of its decrees, whether concerning the Procession, the Pope, or Purgatory. {Concil.  Tom. XIII; Fleury, LIV; Gibbon, ch. LXVI. LSVII; Usher, as above; Palmer, On the Church. pt. IV. ch. XI. § 5.}

      The Council of Trent, A. D. 1563, professing to be “taught by the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures, and tradition of the fathers,” decreed that there is a purgatory, and that souls there detained are aided by the sacrifice of the altar.  It, however, forbade the people to be troubled with any of the more subtle questions on the subject. {Sess. XXV.  Decretum de Purgatorio.}

      The divines of the Church of Rome have not been so careful as the council to avoid entering into minute discussion.  Bellarmine has a whole book on the circumstances of purgatory.  In this he first discusses for whom purgatory is reserved.  Then he argues that souls there detained can neither merit nor sin; then, that they are sure of salvation.  Then he resolves the question, Where is purgatory?  Next he discusses, whether souls pass straight from purgatory to Heaven, or whether there be a Paradise besides.  He discusses how long purgatory lasts, of what nature is its punishment, whether its fire is corporeal, (which he solves in the affirmative), whether demons torment the souls there (which he leaves in doubt).  And lastly, he teaches how prayers aid the souls in purgatory, and what kind of prayers they should be. {Bellarmin.  De Purgatorio, Lib. II.}

      2.  Pardons or Indulgences.

      These, in the sense intended by this Article and taught by the Church of Rome, sprang out of the doctrine of Purgatory.

      In the Primitive Church when Christians had lapsed in persecution or otherwise incurred the censure of the Church, it was not uncommon for the bishops to relax the penances which had been enjoined on them, either when there was danger of death, or at the intercession of the martyrs or confessors in prison, or from some other worthy cause. {Tertullian Ad Martyres, C. I; Cypr. Ep. 15 ad Martyres; Euseb. H. E. v. 2.}  Very early, the custom of martyrs interceding appears to have been abused ; and the high esteem in which martyrdom was held, led to the precipitate reception of their prayers for offenders, to the interruption of the right discipline of the Church. {See Tertullian, De Pudicit. c. 22.}

      The Council of Ancyra and soon after the Council of Nice gave bishops express authority to restore offenders to communion and to shorten the term of their penitential probation, on consideration of past good conduct or present tokens of true repentance. {Concil Ancyran. Can. V; Concil. Nicaen. I. Can. XII; Marshall’s Penitential Discipline, ch. III. § 2.}  This was reasonable enough.  But all good is liable to abuse.  In process of time liberal almsgiving was accepted in lieu, or at least in mitigation of penance: the beginning of which custom is charged, though probably without justice, on our own Archbishop Theodore. {Theodore became Archbishop of Canterbury, A. D. 670.  The custom of purchasing exemption of penance by almsgiving can be proved to be of greater antiquity than this.  See Marshall, as above.}  Here was a loophole for all evil to creep in.  The subsequent sale of indulgences easily rose out of the permission to substitute charity to the poor or to the Church for mortification and humiliation before God.

      But the obtaining of such exemptions is a wholly different thing from the modern doctrine of the Roman Church concerning indulgences. Indulgences indeed now are said to be exemptions from the temporal punishment of sins. But in the term temporal punishment are included not only Church-censures, but the pains of purgatory ; and it is held, that the Bishop of Rome has a store or treasure of the merits of Christ and of the saints, which, for sufficient reasons, he can dispense, either by himself or his agents, to mitigate or shorten the sufferings of penitents, whether in this world or the world to come;* this power not, of course, extending to the torments of hell, which are not among the temporal punishments of sin.  Some of the Roman Catholic divines acknowledge that no mention of such indulgences is to be found in Scripture or in the fathers.  Many of the schoolmen confess that their use began in the time of Pope Alexander III at the end of the twelfth century.  Indeed, before this time it is hardly possible to discover any traces of them.  The first jubilee, or year of general indulgence, is said to have been kept in the pontificate of Boniface VIII, 1300 years after Christ.  And the famous bull, Unigenitus, was issued by Pope Clement VI fifty years after the first jubilee, A. D. 1350. {Jer. Taylor. Dissuasive from Popery, ch. I. § 3, Vol. X. p. 138; Bellarmin. De Indulgentiis, Lib. I. cap. 2.}  It was not without discussion and opposition that this custom grew and prevailed. {See Bp. Taylor as above, who refers to Franciscus de Mayronis and Durandus as having disputed against it.  See also Bellarmine, as above.}  It reached its greatest height of corruption in the Pontificate of Leo X, when Tetzel, the agent of that pope, openly selling indulgences in Germany, roused the spirit of Luther and so hastened the Reformation.  This led to more formal discussion and consideration of the grounds of it.  The Council of Trent decreed, that “the treasures of the Church should not be made use of for gain, but for godliness.” {Sess. XXI. cap. IX.}  It declared, that “the power of granting indulgences was given by Christ to His Church,” that according to ancient usage “it is to be retained in the Church”; and it anathematizes those “who assert that indulgences are useless, or that the Church cannot grant them.”  Yet it enjoins Moderation in their use, lest “by too great facility in granting them ecclesiastical discipline be enervated”; and forbids all abuses whereby profit has been sought by them, and through which scandal has arisen from heretics. {Sess. XXV.  Decretum de Indulgentiis.  }

            {*“Recte Clemens VI Pont. in Constitutione, Extravagantis, quae incipit Unigenitus ... declaravit, extare in Eccl. thesaurum spiritualem ex passionibus Christi et sanctornm conflatum.” – Bellarmin. De Indulgentiis, Lib. I. cap. 2.  “Restat igitur ut passiones sanctorum, si ullo modo dispensari debeant, extra sacramentum solum, idque per solutionem solius reatus poenae temporalis dispensari debeant.” – Ibid. cap. 2.  See also cap. 10, where Indulgences are shown to apply either to penance in this life or purgatorial pains in the next.}

      II.  1.  “Worshipping and adoration as well of images as of relics.”

      We have strong testimony from the earliest times against anything like image-worship or the use of images or pictures for the exciting of devotion.  Irenaeus speaks of it as one of the errors of some of the Gnostics that they had images and pictures, which they crowned and honoured, as the Gentiles do, professing that the form of Christ as He was in the flesh was made by Pilate. {Iren. Adv. Haer. I. 24, ad finem.  Comp. Epiphan. Haeres. XXVII. n. 6, who charges the Carpocratians with worshipping images of Christ, together with those of the philosophers, as the Gentiles do.  So Augustine (Haeres. VII) accuses them of worshipping images of our Lord, of St. Paul, Homer, and Plato.}  Clement of Alexandria repeatedly speaks of the impropriety of making an image of God, the best image of whom is man created after His likeness. {Strom. Lib. V. 5, Tom. II. p. 662, Lib. VI. 18, Tom. II. p. 825, Lib. VII. 5, Tom. II. p. 845, &c.}  Origen quotes Celsus as saying that Christians could not “bear temples, altars, and images”; and proceeds to justify the forbidding of statues and images, showing that Christians rejected them on a higher principle than the Scythians and nomad tribes of Libya. {Cont. Cels. Lib. VII. 62, seq.}  He contends, that it is folly to make images of God, whose best image are those virtues and graces which the Word forms within us, and by which we imitate Him, the “First-born of every creature,” in whom, of all things, is the highest and noblest image of the Father, {Cont. Cels. Lib. VII. 18.}  So Minucius Felix asks “What should I form as an image of God, when, if you think rightly, man is himself God’s image?” {Minuc. Felic. Octavius, p. 31.  Lugd. Batav. 1672.}  Exactly in like manner argues Lactantius “That is not God’s image which is made with man’s fingers, with stone or brass: but man himself, who thinks and moves and acts”; and he says, “it is superfluous to make images of gods, as if they were absent, when we believe them to be present.” {Instit. II. 2.}  Athanasius as plainly condemns the adoration of images, whether in their use the Supreme Being be to be worshipped, or only angels and inferior intelligences. {Orat. cont. Gentes. Tom. I. p. 22, Col. 1686.}

      The Romanist divines lay great stress on the early mention of the use of the sign of the cross and of emblematical figures.  But how far either of these are from resemblance to the later use of images it is impossible that anyone can be unmindful.  Symbols of the faith were unquestionably very early adopted, perhaps from the very first; and have been retained, not only in the Anglican, but in the Lutheran and other reformed communions.

      Tertullian speaks of the symbol, on a chalice, of the Good Shepherd carrying the lost sheep on his shoulders. {De Pudicit. C. 7.}  This was not even a figure of our Saviour, but merely an emblem of Him; and this is the only instance ever mentioned by writers of the first three centuries.  The sign of the cross, we learn from the same father, was constantly made by the first Christians on their foreheads, at their going out and coming in, at meals, at bathing, at lying down and rising up; and all this, he says, had been handed down by ancient custom and tradition. {De Corona M. C. 3}.  But though they thus used the sign of the Cross, to remind them of Him who was crucified, it was not to worship it.  “We neither worship crosses, nor wish for them,” says Minucius Felix; {Octav. p. 284.} for the heathens had charged upon Christians that they paid respect to that instrument of punishment which they deserved. {Ibid. p. 86; Tertull. Apol. C. 16}.  But the cross was esteemed emblematical of the doctrine of the Cross, and a badge to distinguish Christian from heathen men.  If ever the early Christians were likely to have worshipped the cross, it was when the Empress Helena, mother to Constantine the Great, found or thought she found the true cross on which our Lord was crucified.  But how little was this the case, we learn from the words of St. Ambrose.  He tells us that Helena found the nails with which our Lord was crucified, and placed one in the crown worn by Constantine.  “Wise Helena,” he says, “who exalted the cross on the head of kings, that Christ’s cross might be adored in kings.” {“Sapiens Helena, quae crucem in capite regum levavit, ut crux Christi in regibus adoretur.” – Ambros.  De Obita Theodosii, juxta finem.}  But then he remarks that Helena worshipped that great King who was crucified, “not the wood on which He was crucified; that would be a heathenish error, a vanity of impious men; but she worshipped Him who hung upon the cross.” {“Habeat Helena quae legat (h. e. titulum in crucem a Pilato inscriptum) unde crucem Domini recognoscat.  Invenit ergo titulum, Regem adoravit, non lignum utique, quia hic gentilis est error, et vanitas impiorum, sed adoravit Ilium qui pependit in ligno,” &c. – Ibid.}  In vain therefore is the ancient use of the cross, or even the respect paid to the figure of it, alleged as a proof of the antiquity of image worship.  Indeed, it has not been the cross, but the Crucifix, the figure of the crucified Saviour, which has tempted to an idolatrous worship of it.

      We have seen that it was charged against the Gnostics as an error that they had an image of our Saviour and paid it honour as the heathen do.  Eusebius tells us that the people of Paneas had a statue, said to have been erected by the woman who was healed of an issue of blood, and supposed to be a likeness of our blessed Saviour.  Eusebius remarks on it that it is no great wonder if the heathen who were healed by Our Saviour should have done such things as this, when pictures of St. Peter, and St. Paul, and of Christ Himself, were said to be preserved; all this being after the heathen manner of honouring deliverers. {ως εικος των παλαιων απαραφυλάκτως οια σωτηρας εθνικη συνηθεία παρ εαυτοις τουτον τιμαν ειωθότων τον τρόπον. – H. E. VII. 18.}  It is true, Sozomen tells us, that, when Julian had removed this statue, and the heathen had insulted it and broken it in pieces out of hatred to Christ, the Christians gathered up the fragments and laid them up in the Church. {Sozomen. v. 21.}  But it follows not, because the Christians of his day did not wish to see a statue which was esteemed a likeness of our Saviour treated with contempt, that they therefore intended to adore it.  They did not set it up in the Church to worship, but simply brought in the fragments there, that they might not be insulted.

      It is not improbable that about the beginning of the fourth century, there was some inclination to bring pictures into churches; for at the Council of Eliburis in Spain, A. D. 305, one of the canons ordered, that “no picture should be in the church, lest that which is worshipped or adored be painted on the walls.” {Concil. Eliber. can. 36: “Placuit picturas in ecclesia esse non debere, ne quod colitur aut adoratur, in parietibus depingatur.” – See Jer. Taylor, Dissuasive, pt. I. ch. I. § 8; Bingham, E. A. Bk. VIII. ch. VIII. § 6.}  At the latter end of the fourth century, we are told that Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, to keep the country people quiet, when they met to celebrate the festival of the dedication of the church of St. Felix, ordered the church to be painted with portraits of martyrs and Scripture history, such as Esther, Job, Tobit, &c. {Paulin. Natal. 9, Felicis; Bingham, Bk. VIII. ch. VIII. § 7.}

      Nearly at the same time, or a little earlier, Epiphanius, going through Anablatha, a village in Palestine, “found there a veil hanging before the door of a church whereon was painted an image of Christ or some saint – he did not remember which.  When he saw in the church of Christ an image of a man, contrary to the authority of Scripture, he rent it, and advised that it should be made a winding sheet for some poor man.” {Epiphan.  Epist. ad Johan. Hierosol. translated by St. Jerome. Ep. 60: Bellarmine (De Imagin. Lib. II. C. 9) argues that the passage is an interpolation.  But it is in all the MSS., and its genuineness is admitted by Petavius (De Incarnation. Lib. XV. C. 14, 4, 8).  See Bingham, as above.}  Here we have the strong testimony of a bishop and eminent father of the Church, not only against image worship, but even against the use of pictures in the house of God.

      At the end of the fourth century again, St. Augustine says that he knew of many who were worshippers of tombs and pictures and who practiced other superstitious rites.  But he says the Church condemns all such and strives to correct them as evil children. {“Novi multos esse sepulcrorum et picturarum adoratores, &c. ... quos et ipsa (Ecclesia) condemnat, et quotidie tanquam mains filios corrigere studet.” – De Moribus Ecclesiae, I. C. 34, §§ 74, 75, Tom. I. p. 713.}  He himself declares that it is impiety to erect a statue to God in the Church. {De Fide et Symbolo, C. VII. Tom. VI. p 157; Comp. De Consensu Evangelist, I. 16, Tom. III. pt. II. p. 11.}  He contends against the argument of the heathens that they only used the image to remind them of the being they worshipped, saying that the visible image naturally arrested the attention more than the invisible deity; and hence the use of such an outward symbol of devotion is calculated to lead to a real worship of the idol itself, even of the gold and silver, the work of men’s hands.  And then he answers the objection that Christians in the administration of the Sacraments had vessels made of gold and silver, the work of men’s hands.  “But,” he asks, “have they a mouth, and speak not? have they eyes, and see not? or do we worship them because in their use we worship God?  That is the chief cause of the mad impiety that a form like life has so much power on the feelings of the wretched beings as to make itself to be worshipped, instead of its being manifest that it is not living and so ought to be contemned,” {In Psalm. cxiii; Serm. II. §§ 4, 5, 6.} &c.

      From all this it is manifest that in the fourth century among ignorant Christians a tendency to pay reverence to pictures or images was beginning to appear in some parts of the Church, the Church herself and her bishops and divines strongly opposing and earnestly protesting against it.  Towards the close of this century and afterwards we hear of pictures (not statues) introduced into churches.  Yet these pictures were not pictures of our Lord and His saints, but rather historical pictures of Scripture subjects such as the sacrifice of Isaac, or of martyrdoms, or, as we saw from Paulinus, of Job and Esther, and other famous characters of old.  About the same time pictures of living kings and bishops were admitted into the church, and set up with those of martyrs and Scripture histories.  But as with the dead, so neither with the living was worship either probable or designed.  {See Bingham, E. A. Bk. VIII. ch. VIII. §§ 9, 11.}  However, danger of this kind soon arose.  By degrees not pictures only, but statues were brought in.  And in the sixth century we find that Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles, ordered all the images in the churches of his diocese to be defaced and broken; whereupon Gregory the Great writes to him, to say that he approved of his forbidding images to be worshipped, but that he blamed him for breaking them, as they were innocent of themselves and useful for the instruction of the vulgar. {“Quia sanctorum imagines adorari vetuisses, omnino laudavimus: fregisse vero reprehendimus,” &c. – Gregor. Lib. IX. Ep. 9; Bingham, as above; Jer. Taylor, as above.}

      In the eighth century arose the famous Iconoclastic controversy of Constantinople.  Philippicus Bardanes, the emperor, with the consent of John, patriarch of Constantinople, began by pulling down pictures from the churches, and forbade them at Rome as well as in Greece.  Constantius, Bishop of Rome, opposed him, and ordered pictures of the first six councils to be placed in the porch of St. Peter’s.  The controversy, thus kindled, raged during the reigns of several subsequent emperors, especially of Leo the Isaurian, and his son Constantine Copronymus, who were zealous Iconoclasts, and the Empress Irene, as zealous for the opposite party, who were called Iconoduli.  In the reign of Constantine Copronymus, a council was summoned at Constantinople, A. D. 754, called by the Greeks the Seventh General Council, but rejected by the Latins, which condemned the worship and all use of images.  In the reign of Irene, A. D. 784, the second Council of Nice was summoned by that empress which reversed the decrees of the Council of Constantinople and ordained that images should be set up, that salutation and respectful honour should be paid them, and incense should be offered; but not the worship of Latria, which is due to God alone.{In the VIIIth Session a profession of faith was read and signed by the legates and bishops, deciding that images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints, should be exposed to view and honoured, but not worshipped with Latria; but that lights should be burned before them and incense offered to them, as the honour so bestowed upon the image is transferred to the original.}  The decrees of this synod were sent by Pope Adrian into France to Charlemagne to be confirmed by the bishops of his kingdom, Charlemagne having also received them direct from Greece.  The Gallican bishops, having thus a copy of the decrees, composed a reply to them, not objecting to images if used for historical remembrance and ornament to walls, but absolutely condemning any worship or adoration of them. {“Dum nos nihil in imaginibus spernamus nisi adorationem ... non ad adorandum, sed ad memoriam rerun, gestarum et venustatem parietum habere permittimus. – Lib. Carol. Lib. III. C. 16.}  This work (the Libri Carolini) was published by the authority of Charlemagne and the consent of his bishops, A. D. 790. {The Caroline books are still extant.  The Preface may be seen in Mr. Harvey’s learned and useful work, Ecclesiae Anglicanae Vindex Catholicus.}  Charlemagne also consulted the British bishops, A. D. 792, who, abhorring the worship of images, authorized Albinus to convey to Charlemagne in their name a refutation of the decrees of the second Council of Nice.  In 794, Charlemagne assembled a synod at Frankfort, composed of 300 bishops from France, Germany, and Italy, who formally rejected the Synod of Nice, and declared that it was not to be esteemed the seventh general council. {See Dupin, Eccl,. Hist. Cent. VIII; Mosheim, Eccl. Hist. Cent. VIII. pt. 2, ch. 3; Usher, Answer to a Jesuit, ch. X; Bp. Bull, Corruption of Church of Rome, Works, II. p. 275, &c.; Palmer, On the Church, part IV. ch. X. § 4.}  It has been shown, indeed, that the Synod of Nice was not received in the Western Church for five centuries and a half; and it was very long before there was any real recognition of image worship in the West except in those Churches immediately influenced by Rome. {Palmer, as above.}

      In 869, the Emperor Basil assembled another council at Constantinople, attended by about one hundred Eastern bishops and the legates of Pope Adrian.  This confirmed the worship of images, and is esteemed by Romanists as the eighth general council.  Yet it is wholly rejected by the Eastern Church, and was evidently for a long time not acknowledged in the West. {Palmer, On the Church, pt. IV. ch. X. § 5.}  It was rejected by the next Council of Constantinople held A. D. 879 which itself also is rejected by the Western Church.

      The Council of Trent, which is supposed to fix the doctrines of the Roman Church, enjoins that “Images of Christ, the Virgo Deipara, and the saints, shall be retained in churches, and due honour and veneration given to them, not because any divinity or virtue is believed to be in them, for which they are to be worshipped, nor because anything is to be sought from them, or faith reposed in them, as by the Gentiles, who placed their hope in images; but because the honour which is paid to them is referred to their prototypes; so that by means of the images, which we kiss and bow down before, we adore Christ and reverence the saints, whose likeness they bear.” {Sess. XXV.  De Invocation, &c.  Sanctorum et Sacris Imaginibus.}

      2.  The worshipping of relics is so much connected with the adoration of images and invocation of saints that we may pass it over the more briefly.

      No doubt, there was an early inclination to pay much respect to the remains of martyrs.  We know from all antiquity that the custom prevailed of meeting at their tombs and celebrating the days of their martyrdom.  We find that the Smyrnaean Christians were disappointed at not being allowed the body of Polycarp, as many desired to be able to take it away.  Yet they indignantly repudiated the notion that they could worship it. {Martyr. Polycarpi, c. 17.}  The importance attached to the finding of the true cross by St. Helena is an example of a similar feeling.  As the bones of Elisha restored a dead man to life, so the ancients early believed that miraculous powers were often conferred on the dead bodies of the martyrs.  Such Gregory Nazianzen attributes to the ashes of St. Cyprian, and speaks of his body as a benefit to the community. {Orat. XVIII. Tom. I. pp. 284, 285.}  A little later Vigilantius, a Gaul by birth but a presbyter of the church of Spain, declaimed against the veneration which men had in his time learned to pay to the tombs and relics of the martyrs.  It is probable, that he charged his fellow Christians with practices of which they were not guilty; yet it is not unlikely that in the more rude and ignorant neighbourhoods, that which was at first but natural respect was even then approaching to mischievous superstition.  St. Jerome wrote fiercely against him, most distinctly and vehemently repelling the charge that Christians worshipped the relics of the saints.  “Not only,” he says, “do we not worship relics, but not the sun, the moon, angels nor archangels, cherubim nor seraphim, nor any name that is named in this world or in the world to come; lest we should serve the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever.  We honour the relics of the martyrs, that we may worship Him whose martyrs they are.  We honour the servants, that their honour may redound to their Lord’s.” {Hieronym.  Epist. 37, ad Riparium. Tom. IV. part II. p. 279.}  His contemporary, St. Augustine, seems to have been more alive than St. Jerome to the growing evil. He graphically describes and complains of the custom, then beginning, of people wandering about and selling relics, or what they said to be relics, of those who had suffered martyrdom. {“Alii membra martyrum, si tamen martyrum, venditant.” – De Op. Monach. C. 28, Tom. VI. p. 498.}

      Still it has been proved that in the early ages the Church never permitted anything like religious worship to be offered to the relics of the saints. {See on this subject Bingham, E. A. Bk. XXIII. cap. IV. § 8, 9: also (referred to by him) Dallaeus De Objecto cultus Religiosi, Lib. IV.}  The respect paid to them sprang from that natural instinct of humanity which prompts us to cherish the mortal remains and all else that is left to us of those we have loved and honoured whilst in life; and the belief of the sacredness and future resurrection of the bodies of Christians, joined with the wish to protect them from the insults of their heathen persecutors, added intensity to this feeling.  With the progress of image worship and of the invocation of the saints, grew (and perhaps still more rapidly) the undue esteem of relics to which sanctity seemed to belong, until at length the relics of saints were formally installed amongst the objects of worship and set up with images for the veneration of the faithful. {See Concil. Trident. Sess. XXV; Bellarmin. De Reliquiis Sanctorum, Lib. IV. &c.}

      3.  The Invocation of Saints.

      For this practice no early authority can be pleaded, but against it the strongest testimony of the primitive Christians exists.  They assert continually that we should worship none but God.  Thus Justin Martyr: “It becomes Christians to worship God only.” {τον Θεου μόνον δει προσκυνειν. – Apol. I. p. 63.}  Tertullian: “For the safety of the Emperor we invoke God, eternal, true, and living God ... Nor can I pray to any other than to Him, from whom I am sure that I may obtain, because He alone can give it.” {“Nos pro salute imperatorum Daum invocamus aeternum, Deum verum, Deum vivum ... Haec ab alio orare non possum, quam a quo me scio consecuturum, quoniam et ipse qui solus praestat.” – Apol. c. 30.}  Origen: “To worship any one besides the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, is the sin of impiety.” {“Adorare quem iam praeter Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum impietatis est crimen.” – Comment. in Epist. ad Roman. Lib. I. n. 16.  Comp. In Jesum Nave, Hom. VI. 3: “Non enim adorasset, nisi agnovisset Deum.”}  Lactantius complains of the extreme blindness of men (i.e. heathens), who could worship dead men. {“Homines autem ipsos ad tantam caecitatem esse deductos, ut vero ac vivo Deo mortuos praferant.’ – Instit. II. C. I.}  And Athanasius argues from St. Paul’s language (1 Thess. 3:11) that the Son must be God, and not an angel or any other creature, since He is invoked in conjunction with His Father. {νυν δε η τοιαυτη δόσις δείκνυσι την ενότητα του Πατρος και του Υιου ουκ αν γουν εύξαιτο τις λαβειν παρα τινος των άλλων κτισμάτων, ουδ άν είποι τις, δώη σοι ο Θεος και Αγγελος. – Contra Arian. Orat. IV.}

      In the circular Epistle of the Church of Smyrna, narrating the martyrdom of St. Polycarp which took place about A. D. 147, it is said that the Jews prevented the giving of the body to the Christians for burial, “lest forsaking Him who was crucified, they should begin to worship this Polycarp”; “not considering,” writes the Church of Smyrna, “that neither is it possible for us to forsake Christ, who suffered for the salvation of all who are saved in the whole world, the spotless One for sinners, nor to worship any other.” {ουδε έτερόν τινα σέβεσθαι. – S. Polycarpi Martyrium, C. 17; Coteler. Tom. II. p. 200.}

      No doubt, the early Christians, believing in “the communion of saints,” had a lively conviction that saints departed were still fellow worshippers with the Church militant, and thought that those in Paradise still prayed for those on earth. {e. g. Origen writes : “Ego sic arbitror, quod omnes illi, qui dormierunt ante nos, patres pugnent nobiscum, et adjuvent nos orationibus suis.  Ita namque etiam quendam de senioribus magistris audivi dicentem,” &c. – In Jesum Nave, Hom. XVI. 5.}  But it does not therefore follow that they considered that those who joined with us in prayer ought to be themselves addressed in prayer.  On the contrary, we have express evidence that those who believed the saints at rest to pray for the saints in trial, believed that they did so without being invoked.  So Origen, “When men, purposing to themselves things which are excellent, pray to God, thousands of the sacred powers join with them in prayer, though not themselves called on or invoked.” {ώστε τολμαν ημας λέγειν, ότι ανθρώποις μετα προαιρέσεως προτιθεμένοις τα κρείττονα, ευχομένοις τω Θεω, μυρίαι όσαι άκλητοι συνεύχονται δυνάμεις ιεραι. – Cont. Celsum, Lib. VIII. C. 64.}  Nay! he is here specially arguing against Celsus, who would have had men invoke others of inferior power after the God who is over all; and he contends that as the shadow follows the body, so if we can move God by our prayers, we shall be sure to have all the angels and souls of the righteous on our side, and that therefore we must endeavour to please God alone. {Cont. Cels. Lib. VIII. C. 64.}  In the same book he repeatedly denies that it is permitted us to worship angels, who are ministering spirits, our duty being to worship God alone.{Cont. Cels. VIII. num. 35, 57.}  And whereas Celsus had said, that angels (δαίμονες) belonged to God, and should be reverenced, Origen says, “Far from us be the counsels of Celsus that we should worship them.  We must pray to God alone who is over all, and to the only-begotten Son, the first-born of every creature, and from Him must ask that, when our prayers have reached Him, He as High Priest would offer them to His God and our God, to His Father, and the Father of all who live according to His word.” {Ibid. num. 26.  See the like argument, Cont. Cels. V. num. 4.}

      St. Athanasius observes that St. Peter forbade Cornelius to worship him (Acts 10:26), and the angel forbade St. John when he would have worshipped him (Rev. 22:9).  “Wherefore,” he adds, “it belongs to God only to be worshipped, and of this the angels are not ignorant, who, though they excel in glory, are yet all of them creatures, and are not in the number of those to be adored, but of those who adore the Lord.” {Athanas.  Cont. Arian. Orat. III. Tom. I. p. 394.}

      In like manner the Council of Laodicea, held probably about A. D. 364, {The date is uncertain, some placing it as early as A. D. 314, others as late as A. D. 372.} forbids Christians to attend conventicles where angels were invoked, and pronounces anathema on all such as were guilty of this secret idolatry, inasmuch as they might be esteemed to have left the Lord Jesus, and given themselves to idolatry. {Concil. Laodic. Can. XXXV.  Ότι ου δει χριστιανους εγκαταλείπειν την εκκλησίαν του Θεου και απιέναι και αγγέλους ονομάζειν και συνάξεις ποιειν·  άπερ απηγόρευται.  εί τις ουν ευρεθη ταύτη τη κεκρυμμένη ειδωλολατρεία σχολάζων, έστω ανάθεμα, ότι εγκατέλιπε του Κύριον ημων Ιησουν Χριστον, τον Υιον του Θεου, και ειδωλολατρεία προσηλθεν.}  Theodoret tells us that the reason why this canon was passed at Laodicea was because in Phrygia and Pisidia men had learned to pray to angels; and even to his own day, he says, there were oratories of St. Michael among them. {Theodoret, In Coloss. ii. and iii.; Usher, Answer to a Jesuit, ch. IX; Suicer. s. v. άγγελος.}

      We hear of another early example of an heretical tendency to creature worship which seems almost providentially to have been permitted in order that there might be an early testimony borne against it.  Epiphanius tells us that whereas some had treated the Virgin Mary with contempt, others were led to the other extreme of error, so that women offered cakes before her and exalted her to the dignity of one to be worshipped. {Haeres. 79.}  This, he says, was a doctrine invented by demons. “No doubt the body of Mary was holy; but she was not a God.”  Again, “The Virgin was a virgin, and to be honoured; yet not given us to be worshipped, but herself worshipper of Him who was born of her after the flesh, and who came down from Heaven and from the bosom of His Father.”  He then continues that “the words ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’ were spoken on purpose that we might know her to be a woman, and not esteem her as something of a more excellent nature, and because our Lord foresaw the heresies likely to arise.”  Again he says, “Neither Elias, though he never died, nor Thecla, nor any of the saints, is to be worshipped.” {ούτε τις των αγίων προσκυνειται.}  If the Apostles “will not allow the angels to be worshipped, how much less the daughter of Anna,” i.e. the blessed Virgin.  “Let Mary be honoured, but let the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be worshipped.  Let no man worship Mary.” {εν τιμη έστω Μαρία, ο δε Πατηρ, και Υιος και άγιον Πνευμα προσκυνείσθω, την Μαρίαν μηδεις προσκυνείτω.}  “Therefore though Mary be most excellent, holy, and honoured, yet is it not that she should be adored.” {και ει καλλίστη η Μαρία και αγία και τετιμημένη, αλλ ουκ εις το προσκυνεισθαι.}

      Thus early did the worship of the Virgin show itself, and thus earnestly did the Christian fathers protest against it. {Bellarmine quotes a passage from Athanasius (De Deipara Virgine, ad finem) which would, if genuine, prove that St. Athanasius sanctions the worship of the Virgin; but the tract is known to be spurious, and was evidently written after the rise of the Monothelite heresy.}

      Gregory Nazianzen flourished nearly at the same time with Epiphanius, towards the end of the fourth century.  Archbishop Usher says, that his writings are the first in which we meet with anything like an address to the spirits of the dead. {Usher, Answer to a Jesuit, ch. IX.}  It is worthwhile to see how this is.  First, then, let us premise that he expressly declares all worship of a creature to be idolatry.  He positively charges the Arians with idolatry, because they, not believing the Son of God to be fully equal and of one substance with the Father, yet offered prayers to Him. {Greg. Nazianz. Orat. XI. Tom. I. p. 669.}  It is plain, therefore, that any address made by him to the departed could not be intended to be of the nature of that inferior worship which the Arians offered to the Son, believing Him only the chief of the creatures of God.  Yet it is clear that he believed, though not with certainty, that departed saints took an interest in all that passed among their friends and brethren on earth. {Gk. – Epist. 201, p. 898.}  He had even a pious persuasion that they still continued as much as ever to aid with their prayers those for whom they had been wont to pray on earth. {Orat. XXIV. p. 425.}  And he ventures to think, if it be not too bold to say so, (ει μη τολμηρον τουτο ειπειν) that the saints, being then nearer to God, and having put off the fetters of the flesh, have more avail with Him than when on earth. {Orat. XIX. p. 288.}  In all this he does not appear to have gone further than some who preceded him; nor is there anything in such speculations beyond what might be consistent which the most Protestant abhorrence of saint worship and Mariolatry.  Let us then see how it influenced him in the addresses which he is supposed to have made to the departed.  In his first oration against Julian, speaking rhetorically, he addresses the departed emperor Constantius, “Hear, O soul of the great Constantius, if thou hast any sense or perception of these things, thou and the Christian souls of emperors before thee.” {Άκουε και η του μεγάλου Κωνσταντίου ψυχη, εί τις αίσθησις, όσαιτεπροαυτουθασιλέωνφιλόχριστοι. – Orat. III. p. 50.}  So, in his funeral oration on his sister Gorgonia, he winds up thus: “If thou hast a care for the things done by us, and pious souls have this honour of God, that they perceive such things, receive this our oration, in the place of many funeral rites.” {εί δέ τις σοι και των ημετέρων εστι λόγος, και τουτο ταις οσίαις ψυχαις εκ Θεου γέρας, των τοιούτων επαισθανεσθαι, δέχοιο και τον ημέτερον λόγον, αντι πολλων και προ πολλων ενταφίων. – Orat. XI. p. 189.}  Yet these addresses, so far from resembling the prayer in aftertimes offered to the saints, do in themselves effectually bear witness that no such prayers were ever at that time sent up to them.  In oratorical language, in regular oratorical harangues, Gregory addresses himself to the souls of the departed.  In one case he, as it were, calls on the soul of Constantius to witness; in the other he addresses his sister, and trusts that she may be satisfied with the funeral honours done to her.  But in both instances he expresses doubt whether they can hear him, and in neither does he make anything like prayers to them.

      All good things are liable to abuse; and the affectionate interest which the first Christians felt in the repose of the souls who had gone before them to Paradise, their belief that they still prayed with them and for them, no doubt, in course of time engendered an inclination to ask the departed to offer prayers for them, and so by degrees led to the Mariolatry and saint worship of the Church of Rome.  We have seen, however, the clearest proofs that nothing of the sort was permitted or endured in the first four centuries.  Later than that, we have distinct evidence in the same direction from those great lights of the Church, St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine.  The former protests against angel worship as the most fearful abomination, and attributes its origin to the inventions of the devil. {ο διάβολος τα των αγγέλων επεισήγαγε, βασκαίνων ημιν της τιμης. – Homil. IX. in Coloss.  See also Homil. V. VII. in Coloss.; Bingham, E. A. XIII. iii. 3.}  St. Augustine replies to a charge brought by the Manichees that the Catholics worshipped the martyrs, saying that Christians celebrated the memories of martyrs to excite themselves to imitation, to associate themselves in their good deeds, to have the benefit of their prayers; but never so as to offer up sacrifice (the sacrifice of worship) to martyrs, but to the God of martyrs.  “The honour,” he continues, “which we bestow on martyrs is the honour of love and society, just as holy men of God are honoured in this life; but with that honour which the Greeks call Latria, and for which there is no one word in Latin, a service proper to God alone, we neither worship nor teach any one to worship any but God.” {“Colimus ergo martyres eo cultu dilectionis et societatis, quo et in hac vita coluntur sancti homines Dei, quorum cor ad talem pro evangelica veritate passionem paratum esse sentimus.  At vero illo cultu, quae Graece Latria dicitur, Latine uno verbo dici non potest, cum sit quaedam proprie Divinitati debita servitus, nec colimus, nec colendum docemus nisi unum Deum.” – Contr. Faustum, Lib. XXI. C. 20, Tom. VIII. p. 347; Bingham, XIII. iii. 2.}

      Unhappily, some even of this early time, whose names are deservedly had in honour, were not so wise.  St. Jerome, the contemporary of St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine, gave too much encouragement to the superstitions which were taking root in his day.  Vigilantius, whatever his errors may have been, seems wisely to have protested against the growing tendency to venerate the relics and bones of the martyrs, and even called those who did so, idolaters.  St. Jerome repudiates indeed all idolatrous worship.  “Not only do we not worship and adore the relics of martyrs, but neither sun nor moon, nor angels, nor archangels, cherubim nor seraphim, nor any name that is named, in this world or in the world to come, lest we should serve the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever.”  But he earnestly defends the sanctity of the martyrs’ relics.  Vigilantius had argued that the souls of Apostles and martyrs were either in the bosom of Abraham, or in a place of rest and refreshment, or beneath the altar of God (Rev. 6:9).  But Jerome contends, that “they follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth (Rev. 14:4); and as the Lamb is everywhere present, so we may believe them to be; and as demons wander through the earth, can we argue that the souls of martyrs must be confined to one place?”  On the contrary, he thinks that they may frequent the shrines where their relics are preserved and where their memorials are celebrated.  He expresses belief in miracles wrought at the tombs of martyrs, and that they pray for us after their decease.  He defends the custom of lighting torches before the martyrs’ shrines, denying that it is idolatrous to do so. {Epist. 37, ad Riparium, Tom. IV. pt. II. p. 279.}  Here, though such language is far different from what we read in after-ages, we yet clearly trace the rise and gradual progress of dangerous error.

      The temptation to turn the mind from God to His creatures is nowhere more likely to assail us than in our devotions.  The multitude, converted from heathenism, who had all along worshipped deified mortals, readily lapsed into the worship of martyrs.  The noxious plant early took root, and though for a time the wise and pious pastors of the Church kept down its growth, still it gained strength and sprang up afresh; until in ages of darkness and ignorance it reached a height so great that, at least among the rude and untaught masses, it overshadowed with its dark branches the green pastures of the Church of Christ.

      It is unnecessary to trace its progress.  It grew steadily on, though still checked occasionally.  During the Iconoclastic controversy, one of the canons of the Council of Frankfort forbade not only image worship, but the invocation of saints (A. D. 794); which, however, had been upheld by the opposite party at the second Council of Nice (A. D. 787).

      Our Article especially condemns the “Romish doctrine” of invocation of saints, for which, of course, we must consult the decrees of the Council of Trent.  That council simply enjoins that the people be taught “that the saints reigning with Christ offer their prayers for men to God, and that it is good and useful to invoke them as suppliants; and for the sake of the obtaining of benefits from God through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is our only Redeemer and Saviour, to have recourse to their prayers.”  The calling this idolatry it declares to be impious. {“Docentes eos, sanctos una cum Christo regnantes orationes suas pro hominibus offerre, bonum atque utile esse suppliciter eos invocare, et ob beneficia impetranda a Deo per Filium ejus Jesum Christum, Dominum Nostrum, qui solus noster Redemptor et Salvator est, ad eorum orationes, opem auxiliumque confugere,” &c. – Sess. XXV.  De Invocatione Sanctorum, &c.}  The creed of the council has one article, “As also that the saints reigning with Christ are to be venerated and invoked, and that they offer up prayers for us to God, and that their relics are to be venerated.” {“Similiter et sanctos una cum Christo regnantes venerandos et invocandos esse, eosque orationes Deo pro nobis offerre, eorumque reliquias ease venerandas.” – Bulla Pii IV.  Super Forma Juraments Professionis Fidei.}

      This is the mildest statement of the doctrine.  Unhappily the practice has far exceeded it; and that too in the public and authorized prayers of the Romish Church.  It would be an irksome task to collect the many expressions of idolatrous worship with which the Blessed Virgin is approached; and they are too well known to make it necessary.

      It is desirable to observe the distinctions which Romanist divines make between the worship due to God and that paid to the Blessed Virgin and the saints.  They lay it down that there are three kinds of worship or adoration: first, latria, which belongs only to God; secondly, that honour and respect shown to good men; thirdly, an intermediate worship, called by them dulia, which belongs to glorified saints in general, and hyperdulia, which belongs to the human nature of Christ, and to the Blessed Virgin. {See Bellarmine, De Sanct. Beatit. Lib. I. cap. 12.}

      They determine, that the saints are to be invoked, not as primarily able to grant our prayers, but only to aid us with their intercessions; although they admit that the forms of the prayers are as though we prayed directly to them; as for instance in the hymn: –

Maria mater gratiae,

Mater misericordiae,

Tu nos ab hoste protege,

Et hora mortis suscipe.

They say, moreover, that the saints pray for us through Christ, Christ prays immediately to the Father. { Ibid. c. 17.}

      It has seemed unnecessary to say anything of the views concerning the various subjects of this Article as entertained by the different Protestant communions.  All the reformed bodies of Europe have agreed in condemning the belief in purgatory, image worship, and saint worship.  The Calvinistic bodies are more rigid than the Church of England and the Lutherans in their rejection of all outward symbolism and emblems in their worship and places of worship.  The Lutherans retain not only the cross, but pictures and the Crucifix in their churches; but, of course, they exhibit nothing like adoration to them.  The Church of England has retained the cross as the symbol of redemption, and has encouraged the architectural adornment of her churches, but she has generally rejected the Crucifix, and whatever may appear to involve the least danger of idolatrous worship.

Section  II – Scriptural Proof

      I.  1.  Purgatory.

      On this subject, and indeed on all the subjects of this Article, the burden of proof evidently lies with those who maintain the affirmative side of the question.  If there be a purgatory, and if saints and images be objects of adoration, there should be some evidence to convince us that it is so.

      The proofs from Scripture alleged in favour of purgatory are of two kinds: –

            (1) Passages which speak of prayer for the dead.

            (2) Passages which directly bear upon purgatory.

      (1) The passages alleged in favour of prayer for the dead are:

      2 Macc. 12:42–45: where Judas is said to have “made a reconciliation for the dead, that they might be delivered from sin.

      Tobit 4:17: “Pour out thy bread,” i.e. give alms to obtain prayers from the poor, “at the burial of the just, but give nothing to the wicked.”

      1 Sam. 31:13: “They took their bones and buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days.”  This fasting is supposed to have been for the souls of Saul and his son.

      1 Cor. 15:29: “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead?” that is, who fast and weep, being baptized in tears for the dead.

      2 Tim. 1:16, 18: “The Lord give mercy to the house of Onesiphorus ... The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day.”  Where it is contended that Onesiphorus must have been dead, for St. Paul, who prays for present and future blessings to other people, here evidently prays for the bereaved family of Onesiphorus, and for Onesiphorus himself, that he may be blessed at the day of judgment.

      In answer to all this we may say that the only clear passage in favour of prayer for the dead is from the apocryphal book of Maccabees which, not having the authority of Scripture, is merely of the force of Jewish tradition.  But how little Jewish traditions are to be regarded in proof of doctrine, our Lord’s condemnation of them is evidence enough.  It certainly may be argued from this that the Jews sometimes used prayers for the dead, which no doubt was the case.  But it would be very difficult to show that any sect among them believed in a purgatory.  Of all the passages from the canonical Scriptures, the last cited (from 2 Tim. 1:18) is the only one that has any appearance of really favouring prayer for the dead.  No doubt, some Protestant commentators (e. g. Grotius) have believed that Onesiphorus was dead.  But if it be so, St. Paul’s words merely imply a pious hope that, when he shall stand before the judgment seat “in that day,” he may “obtain mercy of the Lord,” and receive the reward of the righteous, and not the doom of the wicked.  There is certainly nothing in such an aspiration which implies the notion that he was, at the time it was uttered, in purgatory, and that St. Paul’s prayers might help to deliver him from it.  On the contrary, if the words be used concerning one already dead, they will furnish a proof from Scripture, in addition to the many which have been brought from antiquity, {See Section I. i. 1.} that prayer for the dead does not of necessity presuppose a belief in purgatory.  The early Christians undoubtedly did often pray for saints, of whose rest and blessedness they had no manner of doubt.  Hence it would be no proof of the doctrine of purgatory, even if fifty clear passages, instead of a single doubtful one, could be brought to show that the Apostles permitted prayer for the dead.

      (2) The passages which are brought as directly bearing on purgatory, are Ps. 38:1: “O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath; neither chasten me in Thy hot displeasure.”  “Wrath” is said to mean eternal damnation; “hot displeasure” to mean purgatory.

      Ps. 66:12: “We went through fire” i.e. purgatory) “and through water” (i.e. baptism); “but Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place:”

      Isai. 4:4: “When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning.” {Bellarmine cites Augustine (De Civit. Dei, Lib. XX. C. 25) as interpreting this of purgatory.  Augustine, however, does not interpret it of purgatory, but of that trial by fire which Origen and others after him supposed was to take place at the judgment day.}

      Isai. 9:18.  Mic. 7:8, 9.

      Zech. 9:11: “As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water.”  This is interpreted of Christ’s descent into hell, to deliver those who were detained in the limbus patrum.

      Mal. 3:3: “He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them,” &c.

      Matt. 12:32: “It shall not be forgiven him neither in this world, neither in the world to come”; i.e. evidently in purgatory, for in hell there is no forgiveness.

      Matt. 5:22: Our Lord speaks of three kinds of punishments, the judgment, the council, and hell.  The latter belongs to the world to come; therefore the two former must.  Hence there must be some punishments in the next world besides hell.

      Matt. 5:25, 26: “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.  Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.”  The last words show that the prison must be purgatory, a temporal, not an eternal punishment.  Otherwise, how would anything be said about coming out of it?

      1 Cor. 3:12–15: “Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.  If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.  If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”

      Luke 16:9, 23:42, are also quoted; but it is difficult to see how they can be made to bear on the question.  Also Acts 2:24, where our Lord is said to have “loosed the pains of death,” i. e. to have delivered the souls from limbus.  And Phil. 2:10, Rev. 5:3, which speak of beings “in Heaven and earth and under the earth.”  Where, “under the earth,” it is contended, must mean purgatory.

      These are all that are alleged by Bellarmine as proofs from Scripture that there is a purgatory between death and judgment. He adds, however, arguments from the fathers, whose sentiments have been already considered, and many from visions of the saints, which it will be unnecessary to consider. {Bellarmine, De Purgatorio, Lib. I. c. 3–8, &c.}  His principal argument from reason is that although sins are forgiven to all true penitents for the merits of Christ, yet it is as regards their eternal, not their temporal punishment; for we know that many devout penitents have to suffer the temporal punishments of their sins, though the eternal be remitted.  Thus natural death, which is the result of sin, the temporal wages of sin, befalls all men, those who are saved from, as well as those who fall into, death eternal.  So David had his sin forgiven him, but still his child died.  Eternally he was saved, but temporally punished.  Now it often happens that persons have not suffered all the temporal punishment due to their sins in this life; and therefore we must needs suppose there is some state of punishment awaiting them in the next. {Bellarmine, De Purgatorio, Lib. I. cap. 11.}

      It appears at first sight, to a person unused to believe in purgatory, almost impossible that such a doctrine could be grounded on such arguments.  If indeed the doctrine were proved and established on separate grounds, then perhaps some of the passages quoted above might be fairly alleged in illustration of it, or as bearing a second and mystical interpretation, which might have reference to it.  But what is fair in illustration may be utterly insufficient for demonstration.

      It is not too much to assert, that only one of the texts from Scripture cited by Bellarmine can be alleged in direct proof.  If he rightly interpret 1 Cor. 3:12–15, that may be considered as a direct and cogent argument; and then some of the other passages might be brought to illustrate and confirm it.  But if that were put out of the question, we may venture to say even Roman Catholic controversialists would find the Scriptural ground untenable.  The passages in St. Matthew (5:26, 12:32, “Thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing,” and, “It shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come”) may indeed be supposed to speak of temporal punishments in the next world.  But if they prove anything, they prove more than the Roman Catholic Church would wish, namely, that the pains of hell are not eternal; for it is evidently hell which is the punishment of unrepented and unpardoned sin.  Those who go to purgatory, are, on the showing of its own advocates, those who have received forgiveness of their sins but need the purgation of suffering either here or hereafter to fit them for Heaven.  The truth is that the words of our Lord indicate merely, first, that as a great debtor is imprisoned till he has paid the last farthing, so a man who is not delivered here from the burden of his sins must remain in punishment for ever, as his debt is too heavy ever to be paid off; and next, that he who sins against the Holy Ghost has never forgiveness; and it is added, “neither in this world, neither in the world to come,” to impress more forcibly both the fearfulness and the eternity of his condemnation.

      To recur, then, to 1 Cor. 3:12–15; Bellarmine himself quotes St. Augustine {De Fide et peribus, C. 15} as saying that it is one of those hard passages of St. Paul, which St. Peter speaks of as wrested by unstable men to their destruction, and which St. Augustine wishes to be interpreted by wiser men than himself.  If so, it is hardly prudent or modest to build such a doctrine as purgatory upon it.  Bellarmine himself recounts many different interpretations of the different figures in the passage as given by different fathers and divines.  That all the fathers did not interpret it of purgatory is most certain; for St. Chrysostom has already been quoted as interpreting it of eternal damnation.  But more than that, those fathers whose interpretation seems most suitable to the Romanist belief do not understand the passage of purgatory, but of a purgatorial or probatory fire, not between death and judgment, but at the very day of judgment itself, when all works shall be brought up and be had in remembrance before the Lord.  This has already been shown in the preceding section.  And indeed it is not possible justly to give an interpretation of the passage nearer to the Romish interpretation than this.  The expression “the day” is understood by all who interpret it of the next life to mean “the day of judgment”.  “The day” cannot certainly be well understood of the hidden and unrevealed state of the dead in the intermediate and disembodied state.  If, therefore, the passage refers to the next world at all, it must mean that at the day of judgment all works shall be revealed, and tried, as it were, in the fire.  Those who have built on the right foundation shall be saved; though, if their superstructure be of an inferior quality (whatever be meant by the superstructure), it shall be lost.  This might indeed be made to suit the doctrine of Origen, but is utterly inapplicable to the doctrine of purgatory.

      But even Origen’s doctrine it will not well suit if the context be fully considered.  St. Paul had been speaking of himself and Apollos, as labourers together in the work of evangelizing the world and building the Church (vv. 5–9).  The Church he declares to be God’s building (ver. 9), even a temple for the indwelling of the Spirit (ver. 16).  Now he says the only possible foundation which can be laid is that which has been laid already, even Jesus Christ, (ver. 11).  But the builders (i.e. ministers of Christ), in building the Church on this foundation, may make the superstructure of various materials, some building of safe and precious materials, gold, silver, and precious stones; others of less valuable or less durable, wood, hay, and stubble.  What then must be the meaning of this?  Clearly, either that in building up the Church, they may upon the foundation, Christ, build sounder or less sound doctrines, – or (which seems a still more correct interpretation of the figures) that they may build up soundly instructed and confirmed believers, or, by negligence and ignorance, may train less orthodox and steadfast Christians.  There is evidently nothing about the good or bad works of Christian men built on the foundation of a sound faith.  It is the good or bad workmanship of Christian pastors in building up the Church of Christ.  To proceed then: when the Christian minister and master builder has thus finished his work, the day will prove whether it be good or bad.  If his building be stable, it will endure, and he will be blessed in his labours and “receive a reward” (comp. 1 Cor. 9:17).  But if his superstructure be destroyed; if those, whom he has built up in the faith prove ill instructed and unstable, he will himself suffer loss, he will lose those disciples who would have been “his crown of rejoicing in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ at His coming” (1 Thess. 2:19); and even he himself will escape, as it were, out of the fire. {ως δια πυρος.  The expression is “so as by fire”, a proverbial expression for an escape from great danger.  See Grotius and Rosenmüller, in loc.}  It may be that the fiery trial means “the day” of judgment: for then all men’s works shall be manifested; and the building of the Christian pastor or Apostle shall be then proved good or evil by the characters and works of those whom he has converted and taught.  But, as whatever doth make manifest is called “the day,” therefore many think, and that with much ground of reason, that “the day” here spoken of was that day of trial and persecution which was awaiting the Church.  That day was indeed likely to prove the faithfulness of the converts, and therefore the soundness of the pastor’s building.  St. Paul often speaks of unsound teachers; and if they had built up unstably, the day of persecution was likely to reveal it, to show the hollowness of their disciples, and to cause them loss.  And such a trial would be “so as by fire.”  Elsewhere the term “fiery trial” is applied to persecution and affliction.  St. Peter speaks specially of the trial of faith by affliction, as being like that of gold in the furnace, the very same metaphor with that used here by St. Paul (1 Pet. 1:7); and again with the same meaning tells the Christians that they should not “think it strange concerning the fiery trial which was to try them,” but to rejoice, as it would the more fit them to partake of Christ’s glory.

      But whether we interpret the day and the fiery trial of persecution here or of judgment hereafter, there is no room in either for purgatory.  Purgatory is not a time of trial on earth, nor is it at the time of standing before the Judgment seat of Heaven.  Therefore it is not the fiery trial of St. Paul, nor is it the day which shall try of what nature is the superstructure erected by the master builders on the one foundation of the Christian Church.

      If then the texts alleged in favour of purgatory fail to establish it, we may go on to say that there are many which are directly opposed to it.  It was promised to the penitent thief, “Today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).  St. Paul felt assured that it was better “to depart, and to be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23), “to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8); having no apprehension of a purgatorial fire in the middle state; apparently laying it down as a principle concerning pious men, that whilst “at home in the body they are absent from the Lord”; and that they may be confidently willing to leave the body, that they may be with the Lord (see 2 Cor. 5:6–9).  Not one word about purgatory is ever urged upon Christians to quicken them to a closer walk with God.  All the other “terrors of the Lord” are put forth in their strongest light “to persuade men”; but this which would be naturally so powerful, and which has been made so much of in aftertimes, is never brought forward by the Apostles.  Nay!  St. John declares that he had an express revelation concerning the present happiness of those that sleep in Jesus, namely, that they were blessed and at rest.  “I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours” (Rev. 14:13).  When we couple such express declarations as these with the exhortations not to grieve for the dead in Christ, the general assurances concerning the blessedness of the death of the righteous, and concerning the cleansing from all sin by the blood of Christ, and then contrast them with the very slender Scriptural ground on which purgatory rests, it will be scarcely possible to doubt that that doctrine was the growth of after-years, and sprang from the root of worldly philosophy, not of heavenly wisdom.  Compare Luke 21:28, John 5:24, Eph. 4:30, 1 Thess. 4:13, &c.; 2 Thess. 1:7, 2 Tim. 4:8, 1 John 1:7, 3:14.

      2.  Pardons or Indulgences.

      The doctrine of pardons and the custom of granting indulgences rest on two grounds, namely, 1, purgatory, 2, works of supererogation.  Indulgences as granted by the Church of Rome signify a remission of the temporal punishment of sins in purgatory, and the power to grant them is supposed to be derived from the superabundant merits of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints.  It is argued by Romanist divines that (1) A double value exists in men’s good deeds, first of merit, secondly of satisfaction: (2) A good deed, as it is meritorious, cannot be applied to another; but, as it is satisfactory or expiatory, it can: (3) There exists in the Church an infinite store of the merits of Christ which never can be exhausted: (4.) And in addition to this the sufferings of the Virgin Mary (herself immaculate) and of the other saints, having been more than enough for their own sins, avail for the sins of others.  Now, in the Church is deposited all this treasure of satisfactions, and it can be applied to deliver the souls of others from the temporal punishment of sins, the pains of purgatory. {Bellarmine, De Indulgentiis, Lib. I. cap. II. 2, 3, 7.}  That such a power exists in the pope is argued from the command to St. Peter, “to feed the sheep of Christ,” and the promise to him of the keys of the kingdom, of authority to bind and to loose.  That the good deeds of one man are transferable to another is thought to be proved by the article of the Creed, “I believe in the communion of saints,” and by the words of St. Paul, “I will very gladly spend and be spent for you” (2 Cor. 12:15); “I endure all things for the elect’s sake” (2 Tim. 2:10); “I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the Church” {Ibid. Lib. I. c. 3.  The last-cited passage, Col. 1:24, was considered under Art. XIV.} (Col. 1:24).

      Both the doctrine of purgatory and that concerning works of supererogation have already been considered; and we have seen that they have no foundation in Scripture.  Hence the practice of granting indulgences, which rests on them, must necessarily be condemned.  The Romanist divines admit that indulgences free not from natural pains, or from civil punishments. {Bellarmin. Ibid. Lib. I. c.7.}  They never profess that they can deliver from eternal death.  Hence, if there be no purgatory, there can be no room for indulgences.

      If there be, as they state, an infinite store of Christ’s merits committed to the Church, one would think it needless to add the sufferings of the Virgin Mary and of the saints.  As to the claim to dispense the benefits of these sufferings, founded on the promise of the keys to St. Peter, I hope to consider more at length the whole question of binding and loosing, of retaining and remitting sins, and of the pope’s succession to St. Peter, under future Articles.  Suffice it here that we remember: 1 that there is no foundation for the figment of purgatory in Scripture, and that its gradual rise is clearly traceable; 2 that none of the saints, not even the Blessed Virgin, were free from sin, nor able to atone for their own sins; 3, that works of supererogation are impossible; 4, that therefore indulgences, partly derived from superabundant works of satisfaction performed by the saints, and having for their object the freeing of souls from purgatory, must be unwarranted and useless.

      II.  1.  The Worshipping and Adoration of Images.

      We can readily believe that the champions of image worship would find a difficulty in discovering Scriptural authority for their practice.  But it rather surprises us to learn that their whole stock of argument is derived from the old Testament; in which no sin is so much condemned as the worship, nay, even the making of idols.  The distinction between idols and images, it seems hard to understand.  That images may lawfully be placed in temples is argued from the fact that Moses was commanded to make the Cherubim of gold, and place them on each side of the mercy seat, (Ex. 25:18); and that Solomon carved all the walls of the temple “round about with carved figures of Cherubim” (2 Kings 6:29), and “he made a molten sea and it stood upon twelve oxen – and on the borders were lions, oxen, and Cherubim” (1 Kings 7:23, 25, 29). {See Bellarmine, De Ecclesia Triumphante, Lib. II. cap. IX; Controvers. Tom. II. p. 771.}  That the second commandment* does not forbid making images, but only making them with the object of worshipping them, is also contended; and thus far we have no reason to complain.  There may be a superstitious dread, as well as a superstitious use, of outward emblems.  No doubt, much as the Jew was bidden to hold idolatry in abhorrence, he was not only permitted, but commanded to place emblematical figures in the house of the Lord.  It is further said that the brazen serpent which Moses set up by God’s ordinance in the wilderness (Num. 21:8, 9) was an example of the use of images for religious purposes.  This was a figure of the Lord Jesus, the expected Messiah; and the wounded Israelites were taught to look up to it for healing and deliverance.  But beyond this it is said that the Jews actually did adore the Ark of the Covenant, and that in so doing they must have adored the Cherubim which were upon it.  And this most strangely is inferred from the words, “Exalt ye the LORD your God, and worship at His footstool; for He is holy” (Ps. 99:5); where the Vulgate reads, Adorate scabellum ejus, quoniam sanctus est; or, as some quote it, quoniam sanctum est. {See Bellarmine, De Ecclesia Triumph. Lib. I. C. XIII.  Lib. II. C. XII. Tom. II. pp. 708, 781.}

            {*The second commandment is joined with the first, according to the reckoning of the Church of Rome.  This is not to be esteemed a Romish novelty.  It will be found so united in the Masoretic Bibles; the Masoretic Jews dividing the tenth commandment (according to our reckoning) into two.  What the Roman Church deals unfairly in is that she teaches the commandments popularly only in epitome; and that so, having joined the first and second together, she virtually omits the second, recounting them in her catechisms, &c. thus, 1 Thou shalt have none other gods but me.  2 Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.  3 Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day, &c.  By this method her children, and other less instructed members, are often ignorant of the existence in the Decalogue of a prohibition against idolatry.}

      With every desire to feel candid towards those who are opposed to us, it is difficult to know how to treat such arguments as these.  We willingly concede that the iconoclastic spirit of the Puritans was fuller of zeal than of judgment; for if the figures of Cherubim were commanded in the temple, figures of angels and saints and storied windows in our cathedrals could scarcely be impious and idolatrous.  But when we are told that the existence of such symbols near the mercy seat involved a necessity that the Jew should worship them, we scarcely know whither such reasoning may carry us.  If the Cherubim in the temple were worshipped, why were the golden calves of Jeroboam so foully idolatrous?  It is mostly considered, that Jeroboam borrowed these very figures from the carvings of the sanctuary.  How could that be holy in Jerusalem which was vile in Dan and Bethel?  Nay! the sin of Jeroboam was specially that he made the calves to be worshipped; whereas in the temple they were not for worship, but for symbolism.  As for the brazen serpent, it was no doubt, like the Cherubim, a proof that such symbols are allowable; and was also the instrument (like the rod of Moses) by which God worked wonderful miracles.  But when it tempted the people to worship it, Hezekiah broke it in pieces (2 Kings 18:4) as thinking it better to destroy so venerable a memorial of God’s mercies than to leave it as an incentive to sin.

      The argument from Ps. 99:5, is the only one which Bellarmine (in many learned chapters on the subject) alleges in direct proof from Scripture that images are not only lawful, but adorable.  Even if the Vulgate rendering (adorate scabellum) were correct, it would be a forlorn hope, with which to attack such a fortress as the second commandment.  But the Hebrew (לַהֲדם הִשְׁתַּחֲווּ) is far more correctly rendered by the English version, “Bow down before His footstool.”  Though to fall down before God may be to worship Him, yet to fall down before his footstool is not necessarily to worship His footstool.  Hence the word may at times be properly translated “to worship”, but here such a translation is altogether out of place.

      In short, if the Roman Church had never approached nearer to idolatry than the Jews when they worshipped in the courts of the temple within which were symbolical figures of oxen and cherubim, than the high priest when once a year he approached the very ark of the covenant and sprinkled the blood before the mercy seat or than the people in the wilderness when they looked upon the brazen serpent and recovered, there would have been no controversy and no councils on the subject of image worship.  But when we know that the common people are taught to bow down before statues and pictures of our blessed Saviour, of His Virgin Mother, and of His saints and angels; though we are told that they make prayers, not to the images, but to those of which they are images, yet we ask, wherein does such worship differ from idolatry?  No heathen people believed the image to be their God.  They prayed not to the image, but to the god whom the image was meant to represent. {See this exactly stated, Arnob. adv. Gentes, Lib. VI.}  Nay! the golden calves of Jeroboam were doubtless meant merely as symbols of the power of Jehovah; and the people, in bowing down before them, thought they worshipped the gods “which brought them up out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 12:28).  But it is the very essence of idolatry not to worship God in spirit and in truth, but to worship Him through the medium of an image or representation.  It is against this that the second commandment is directed: “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven or earth, or under the earth – Thou shalt not bow down to it, nor worship it.”  And it is not uncharitable to assert, that the ignorant people in ignorant ages have as much worshipped the figure of the Virgin and the image of our Lord upon the cross, as ever ignorant heathens worshipped the statues of Baal or Jupiter, or as the Israelites worshipped the golden calf in the wilderness.  It must even be added, painful as it is to dwell on such a subject, that divines of eminence in the Church of Rome have taught unchecked that to the very images of Christ was due the same supreme worship which is due to Christ Himself, – even that latria, with which none but the Holy Trinity and the Incarnate Word must be approached. {See this proved by numerous passages from distinguished Romanists by Archbishop Usher, Answer to a Jesuit, chap. X. Dublin, 1624, p. 449.  “Constans est theologorum sententia” (says Azorius the Jesuit) “imaginem eodem honore et cultu honorari et coli, quo colitur id cujus est imago.” – Jo. Azor. Institut Moral. Tom. I. Lib. IX. cap. 9.}  Bellarmine himself, who takes a middle course, states the above as one out of three current opinions in the Church, and as held by Thomas Aquinas, Caietan, Bonaventura, and many others of high name; {De Eccles. Triumph. Lib. II. C. XX; Controvers. Tom. II. p. 801.  Thomas Aquinas says: “Sic sequitur quod eadem reverentia exhibeatur imagini Christi et ipsi Christo.  Cum ergo Christus adoretur adoratione latriae; consequens est quod ejus imago sit adoratione latriae adoranda.” – Sumna, pt. III. quaest. 25, Artic. 3.  See Usher, as above.} and though be himself considers the worship of latria only improperly and per accidens due to an image, yet he says that “the images of Christ and the saints are to be venerated, not only by accident or improperly, but also by themselves properly, so that themselves terminate the veneration, as in themselves considered, and not only as they take the place of their Exemplar.”*  If this be not to break one, and that not the least of God’s commandments, and to teach men so, it must indeed be hard to know how God’s commandments can be broken, and how kept.  Even enlightened heathenism seldom went so far as to believe the worship to be due properly to the idol itself, and not merely to its original and prototype.

      It is unnecessary to recite the Scriptures which speak against idolatry and image worship; they are so patent and obvious.  See for example, Exod. 20:2–5, 32:1–20.  Levit. 19:4, 26:1.  Deut. 4:15–18, 23, 25; 16:21, 22; 27:15, 29:17.  2 Kings 18:4, 23:4.  Ps. 115:4.  Isai. 2:8, 9; 40:18, 19, 25; 42; 44; 46:5–7.  Acts 17:25, 29.  Rom. 1:21, 23, 25.  1 Cor. 8:4, 10:7, 12:2.  1 John 5:21.  Rev. 9:20.

            {*“Imagines Christi et sanctorum venerandae sunt, non solum per accidens, vel improprie, sed etiam per se proprie, ita ut ipsae terminent venerationem ut in se considerantur, et non solum ut vicem gerunt exemplaris.” – Ibid. C. 21, p. 802.  He goes on to show that it should neither be said nor denied (especially in public discourses) that images should be worshipped with latria (C. XXII).  The images of Christ improperly and by accident receive latria (C. XXXIII).  He concludes by saying: “Cultus, qui per se, proprie debetur imaginibus, est cultus quidem imperfectus, qui analogico et reductive pertinet ad speciem ejus cultus, qui debetur exemplari.” – C. XXV. p. 809.}

      2.  Worshipping and Adoration of Relics.

      The arguments brought from Scripture to defend relic worship are – that miracles were wrought by the bones of Elisha (2 Kings 13:21), by the hem of Christ’s garment (Matt. 9:20–22), by “the shadow of Peter passing by” (Acts 5:15), by handkerchiefs and aprons brought from the body of St. Paul (Acts 19:12), – that the rod of Aaron and the pot of manna were preserved in the temple, – that it is said (in Isai. 11:10), “In Him (Christ) shall the Gentiles trust, and His sepulchre shall be glorious”; In Eum gentes sperabunt, et erit sepulchrum Ejus gloriosum. {Bellarmin.  De Eccl. Triumph. Lib. II. cap. III; Cont. Gen. Tom. II. p. 746.}

      The last argument is derived solely from the Latin translation.  The Hebrew, the Greek, the Chaldee, and other versions have “His rest,” or “His place of habitation shall be glorious.” (מְנֻחָתוֹ ανάπαυσις).  Even if it meant the sepulchre, which it does not, it would not follow that because it was glorious or honourable, therefore it should be adored.  There can be no question that God has been pleased to give such honour to His saints, that in one instance the dead body of a prophet was the means of restoring life to the departed, that in another, handkerchiefs brought from an Apostle were made instruments of miraculous cure.  But we have no instance in Scripture of the garments or the bones of the saints being preserved for such purposes.  All evidence from Holy Writ goes in the opposite direction.  The Almighty buried the body of Moses so that no man should know where it lay, Deut. 34:6; which seems purposely to have been done that no superstitious reverence should be paid to it.  The bones of Elisha, by which so wonderful a miracle was wrought, were not preserved for any purpose of worship or superstition.  The body of the holy martyr St. Stephen was by devout men “carried to his burial, and great lamentation was made over him”; but no relics of him are spoken of, nor of St. James who followed him in martyrdom.  Their bones were evidently, like those of their predecessors the prophets, left alone, and no man moved them (2 Kings 23:18).  The pot of manna and the rod of Aaron were preserved as memorials of God’s mercy; but no one can imagine any worship paid to them.  And the only relic to which we learn that worship was paid, namely, the brazen serpent, was on that very account broken in pieces by Hezekiah; and he is commended for breaking it (2 Kings 23:4), though of all relics it must have been the noblest and most glorious, reminding the people of their deliverance from Egypt, and giving them assurance of a still more glorious deliverance, to which all their hopes should point.  But the very first principle of Scripture truth is, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve” (Matt. 4:10).  And though by degrees a superstitious esteem for the relics of martyrs crept into the Church, yet we have clear evidence that for some time no undue honour was paid to them; and that when it was, the pious and learned, instead of fostering, strove to check the course of the error.  The contemporaries of St. Polycarp indignantly denied that they wished for his body for any superstitious purposes, or that they could worship any but Christ. {See especially Martyr. Polycarp. C. 17, referred to above.}  And St. Augustine reproved the superstitious sale of relics, which, by his day, had grown into an abuse. {Augustin. Tom. VI. p. 498.}  Yet the Roman Church has authoritatively condemned such as deny that the bodies of martyrs or the relics of the saints are to be venerated. {Concil. Trident. Sess. XXV. De Invocatione, Veneratione, et Reliquiis Sanctorum.}  And some of her divines have even sanctioned the paying of the supreme worship of latria to the relics of the cross, the nails, the lance, and the garments of the crucified Redeemer. {“Reliquiae crucis, clavorum, lanceae, vestium Christi, et imago crucifixi sunt latria veneranda.” – Joh. de Turrec.  In Festo Invent. Crucis, q. 3; Beveridge, on Artic. XXII.}

      3.  Invocation of Saints.

      The divines of the Church of Rome defend this practice as follows: –

      (1) Saints, not going to purgatory, go straight to Heaven, where they enjoy the presence of God.

      (2) Being then in the presence of God, they behold, in the face of God, the concerns of the Church on earth.

      (3) It is good to ask our friends on earth to pray for us; how much rather those who, being nearer God, have more avail with Him.

      (4) The Scripture contains examples of saint worship.

      (1) The first position is sought to be established from Scripture, thus, –

      The thief on the cross went straight to Paradise, i.e. to Heaven! (Luke 23:43).  “We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1, comp. ver. 4).  “When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive” (Eph. 4:8).  “Having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23).  “The way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing” (Heb. 9:8).  “Ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the general assembly of the firstborn who are written in heaven ... and to the spirits of just men made perfect” (Heb. 12:22, 23).  “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59).  White robes are given to the martyrs who cry from under the altar, i.e. the glory of the body after the resurrection (Rev. 6:11).  “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.  Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple” (Rev. 7:14, 15).

      It is admitted that in the old Testament the saints, being as yet in the limbus patrum, and therefore not in Heaven, could not be prayed to;* but since Christ’s descent into Hell and resurrection from the dead, all who die in Him, if not needing to go to purgatory, go straight to glory, and therefore, reigning with Christ, may be invocated.

            {*“Notandum est ante Christi adventum qui moriebantur non intrabant in coelum, nec Deum videbant, nec cognoscere poterant ordinarie preces supplicantum.  Ideo non fuit consuetum in V.  Testamento ut diceretur, Sancte Abraham. ora pro me: sed solum orabant homines ejus temporis Deum.” – Bellarmine, De Eceles. Triumph. I. 12(?)}

      It must be remembered, that these arguments for the immediate glorification of the saints run side by side with arguments for a purgatory.  The latter is an absolutely necessary supplement to the former: without it, the Roman Catholic divines could not get rid of the force of the arguments in favour of an intermediate state.  The two must therefore succeed or fail together.  Now, it is unnecessary to repeat the arguments already brought forward against purgatory, or those (under Article III) in proof that souls go, not straight to Heaven after death, but to an intermediate state of bliss or woe, awaiting the resurrection of the dead.  All we need consider now is this.  Do the above texts of Scripture contravene that position?  The first proves that the thief went with our Saviour where He went from the Cross; that is, not to Heaven, but to Hades, to the place of souls departed, which, in the case of the redeemed, is called Paradise.  Our Lord went not to Heaven till He rose from the grave. {See above under Art. III.}  The second proves that when this body is dissolved, we may yet hope at the general Resurrection for a glorified body.  But the context proves clearly, that, between death and judgment, the souls of the saints remain without the body, in bliss, but yet longing for the resurrection. (See 2 Cor, 5:2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10).  The passage from Ephes. 4 only proves that Christ conquered death.  That from Phil. 1 shows that the disembodied spirit in Paradise is admitted to some presence with its Saviour; as does that from Acts 7.  Heb. 9:8, merely teaches that Christ is the way to Heaven, a way not manifested under the old Law.  Heb. 12 speaks of the Church as composed of the firstborn, whose names are in God’s book, and as having fellowship with the angels, and with departed saints, who have finished their course.  The first passage from the Apocalypse (6:11), if taken in its context (see Rev. 6:9), is a strong proof that even martyrs are in a state of expectant, not of perfect bliss; and if the white robes really mean the glorified body at the resurrection, then must we believe yet more clearly than ever that the very martyrs remain “under the altar” until the time of the resurrection of the just.  The second passage (from Rev. 7:14, 15) is probably a prophetic vision of the bliss of the saints, after the general judgment, and therefore plainly nihil ad rem.

      It is said by the Romanists that a few heretics have denied the immediate beatification of the saints, Tertullian, Vigilantius, the Greeks at Florence, Luther, Calvin; {See Bellarmine, De Ecclesia Triumphante, I. 1; Controv. Gener. Tom. II. p. 674.} and it is inferred that all the orthodox fathers have maintained it. {The testimonies in favour of it from the fathers are cited, Bellarmine, ubi sutra, Lib. I. C. 4, 5.}  Tertullian is here a heretic, though when he seems to favour purgatory, he is a Catholic divine.  But the truth is even their own divines have allowed that a very large number of the greatest names of antiquity believed that the saints did not enjoy the vision of God till after the general judgment.  Franciscus Pegna mentions, as of that persuasion, Irenaeus, Justin M., Tertullian, Clemens Romanus, Origen, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine, Lactantius, Victorinus, Prudentius, Theodoret, Aretas, (Ecumenius, Theophylact, and Euthymius. {Fr. Pegna, in part. II. Directorii Inquisitor. comment. 21, apud Usher, Answer to a Jesuit, chap. IX; who quotes also Thomas Stapleton to the same purport.}  And our own great Bishop Bull pronounces it to have been the doctrine of the whole Catholic Church for many ages “that the souls of the faithful, in the state of separation, though they are in a happy condition in Paradise, yet are not in the third Heaven, nor do enjoy the beatific vision till the Resurrection ... Nay, this was a doctrine so generally received in the time of Justin Martyr, that is, in the first succession of the Apostles, that we learn from the same Justin that there were none but some profligate heretics that believed the souls of the faithful before the Resurrection to be received into Heaven. (Dialog. cum Tryphone, pp. 306, 307. Paris, 1636).” {Bull.  Vindication of the Church of England, § XII.}

      Yet this immediate beatification of the saints is the very foundation of saint worship.  That can be but a slender foundation for so vast a superstructure which the first fathers and the greatest writers of antiquity (even out enemies being the judges) could not find in the word of God and did not believe to be true.  Conceding the utmost that we can, we must yet maintain that the evidence from Scripture is far more against, than in favour of this foundation, and that the first and greatest of the fathers utterly rejected it.

      (2)  If the first position cannot be established, of course the second must fall; though even if the first were granted, it does by no means seem to follow that the second would stand.  For even if saints departed always behold the face of God, it does not certainly follow that thereby they have the omniscience of God.  That they continue to take an interest in their fellow worshippers, children of the same Father, members of the same body with themselves, we may reasonably believe; but that they know all the prayers which each one on earth utters, even the secret silent prayer of the heart, we cannot at least be certain – or rather we should think most improbable.

      (3)  It is said that saints on earth pray for each other, and exhort one another to pray for them, (Heb. 13:18, James 5:16); why not then ask the saints in light to pray for us who, nearer the throne of God, have more interest with Him?

      Yet, who does not see the difference between joining our prayers with our brethren on earth, so through the one Mediator drawing nigh to God in common supplication for mercies and mutual intercession for each other, and the invocating saints above, with all the circumstances of religious worship, to go to God for us, and so to save us from going to Him for ourselves?  If, indeed, we could be quite certain that our departed friends could hear us when we spoke to them, there might possibly be no more evil in asking them to continue their prayers for us than there could be in asking those prayers from them whilst on earth, – no evil, that is, except the danger that this custom might go further and so grow worse.  This, no doubt, was all that the interpellation of the martyrs was in the early ages; and if it had stopped here, it would have never been censured.  But who will say that Romish saint worship is no more?

      In the Church of Rome, when it is determined who are to be saints, they are publicly canonized, i.e. they are enrolled in the Catalogue of Saints; it is decreed, that they shall be formally held to be saints, and called so; they are invoked in the public prayers of the Church: churches and altars to their memory are dedicated to God; the sacrifices of the Eucharist and of public prayers are publicly offered before God to their honour; their festivals are celebrated: their images are painted with a glory round their heads: their relics are preserved and venerated. {Bellarmine, De Ecclesia Triumph. I. 7.}  They are completely invocated as mediators between God and man; so that those who fear to go to God direct are encouraged to approach Him through the saints, as being not so high and holy as to inspire fear and dread. {One reason alleged in favour of saint worship is “Propter Dei reverentiam: ut peccator, qui Deum offendit. quia non audet in propria persona adire, occurrat ad sanctos, eorum patrocinia implorando.” – Alexand. de Hales, Summa, pt. IV. quaest. 26, memb. 3, artic. 5.  Vide Usher, ubi supra.}  Herein the very office of Christ is invaded, “the ONE Mediator between God and man” (1 Tim. 2:5); a High Priest, who can “be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,” and through whom we may “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:15, 16).  Nay, more than this, direct prayer is made to the saints for protection and deliverance; and even in prayer to God Himself, He is reminded of the protection and patronage of the saints. {“Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that Thy faithful, who rejoice under the name and protection of the most blessed Virgin Mary, may, by her pious intercession, be delivered from all evils here on earth, and be brought to the eternal joys of Heaven.  Through.” – “Coll. for the Feast of the name of B. V. Mary”; “Missal for the Laity,” published by authority of Thomas Bishop of Cambysopolis, and Nicholas Bishop of Melipotamus, Sept. 25, 1845.}  And we know that not only among the vulgar, but with the authority of the most learned and those canonized saints, prayers have been put up to the Blessed Virgin, to use a mother’s authority and command her Son to have mercy upon sinners.*  What support can all this derive from the injunctions to us in Scripture to pray for one another, and the assurances that “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much”?

            {*“Imperatrix et Domina nostra benignissima, jure matris impera tuo dilectissimo Filio Domino nostro Jesu Christo, ut mentes nostras ab amore terrestrium ad coelestia desideria erigere dignetur.” – Bonaventura, Corona B. Mariae Viginis.  Oper. Tom. VI.  “Inclina vultum Dei super nos: coge Illum peccatoribus misereri.” – Id. in Psalterio B. Mariae Virginis, Ibid.  See Archbishop Usher, as above, who gives many passages at length from Bernardin de Bustis, Jacob de Valentia, Gabriel Biel, &c., to the like effect.}

      (4)  Next it is alleged that Scripture contains positive examples of the worship of saints and angels.

      Bellarmine cites the following: –

      Ps. 99:5: “Exalt ye the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool; for He is holy,” (Adorate scabellum pedis ejus, quoniam sanctum est): a passage which has been already considered.  Gen. 18:2, 19:1, Abraham and Lot bow down to the angels.  Numb. 22:31, Balaam, when he saw the angel, “fell flat on his face.”  1 Sam. 28:14, “And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself.”  1 Kings 18:7, “And as Obadiah was in the way, behold Elijah met him, and he knew him, and fell on his face, and said, Art thou that my Lord Elijah?”  2 Kings 2:15, “When the sons of the prophets saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest upon Elisha: and they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him.”  Josh. 5:14, 15; when Joshua knew that he was in the presence of the Captain of the Lord’s host, “he fell on his face to the earth, and did worship.”  The angel did not forbid him to worship him, but said, “Loose thy shoe from off thy foot, for the place whereon thou standest is holy.”  Dan. 2:46, “The king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face, and worshipped Daniel; and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet odour to him.” {Bellarmin.  De Eccles. Triumph. I. 13; Cont. Gen. Tom. II. p. 708.}

      Now, in the first place, it is certainly not a little strange that whereas the divines of the Church of Rome tell us that no prayers were offered to the old Testament saints, because they were in the limbus patrum, and not in Heaven; {See Bellarmin.  Ibid. I. 19, as quoted above.} yet, in their Scriptural proof of saint worship, they bring all their arguments from the old Testament only.  There must be something rotten here.  And we need not go far to see what the ground of their preference for such a line of argument is.  The Eastern form of salutation to princes, honoured guests, and elders, was, and still is, a profound prostration of the body, which is easily construed into an act of religious worship.  Now Abraham and Lot evidently (from the context and from Heb. 13:2) did not know that the angels who appeared to them were angels.  They thought them strangers on a journey and exercised Eastern hospitality to them.  They perceived that they were strangers of distinction and exhibited Eastern tokens of respect.  Thus, “being not forgetful to entertain strangers, they entertained angels unawares.”

      The same may be said of all the above instances, except perhaps the last two.  Falling down at the feet was the common mode of respectful salutation, and that especially when favours were to be asked.  Thus Abigail fell at the feet of David (1 Sam. 25:24); Esther fell at the feet of Ahasuerus (Esth. 8:3); the servant is represented as falling at the feet of his master (Matt. 18:29).  This was no sign of religious worship.  Even Balaam, though he fell down before the angel, by no means appears to have worshipped him.  He fell down from fear and in token of respect.  The case of Joshua, when he met the Captain of the Lord’s host, may be different.  It is well known to have been the belief of many of the fathers, and of many eminent divines after them, that the Captain of the Lord’s host was the second Person of the Holy Trinity, the eternal Son of God. {See Justin M. Dialogus, p. 284; Euseb.  H E. I. 2.}  And it is certainly as fair to infer from the worship paid to him that he was God, as to infer from it that worship ought to be paid to any beside God.

      We are reduced then to one single instance, and that the instance of an idolatrous king, who soon afterwards bade every one worship a golden image.  He indeed appears, in a rapture of astonishment, to have fallen down to worship the prophet Daniel – not a glorified saint reigning with Christ – but one of those old fathers who had to abide after death in the limbus until our Lord’s descent to Hades should rescue them.

      But is there no instance in the new Testament?  The new Testament is ever the best interpreter of the old.  Are there no examples of the worship of saints or angels there?  The Roman Catholic divines have not adduced any; but their opponents cannot deny that there are some cases of such worship recorded, and those too of a worship which cannot be explained to mean merely bowing down in token of respect to a superior.

      One example is that of Cornelius: “as Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him, and fell down at his feet and worshipped him” (προσεκύνησεν).  This is very like the case of Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel; but with this advantage over it, that Cornelius was no idolater, and St. Peter was not a prophet of the old Testament, for whom the schoolmen tell us a limbus was in store, but the chief of the Apostles to whom the keys of the kingdom were committed, from whom the Roman Pontiff inherits his right to forgive and retain sins, and who (on their showing) at death was sure of passing straight to the highest kingdom of glory, thenceforth to reign with Christ, and to receive the prayers of the faithful.  How then does St. Peter, whose authority none will question, treat the worship of Cornelius?  “Peter took him up, saying, Stand up: I myself also am a man” (Acts 10:25, 26).

      We may remember another case somewhat similar, though not quite identical, when “the Apostles Barnabas and Paul rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out and saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? we also are men of like passions with you” (Acts 14:14, 15).  But perhaps we shall be told that it was latria not dulia, that the men of Lycaonia meant to pay to them.

      However, we are not confined to saint worship in the new Testament; we can discover manifest traces of angel worship too.  Twice, one whose example we may rarely refuse to follow, the blessed Apostle St. John, fell down to worship the angel, who showed him the mysteries of the Apocalypse.  The same word (προσκυνησαι) is used here as was used of Cornelius and St. Peter, and as is used (in the LXX) of Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel (προσεκύνησε, Dan. 2:46).  And what does the angel of God say to the Apostle?  “See thou do it not; I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren, that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God” (Rev. 19:10).  And again, “See thou do it not: for I am thy fellow servant ... worship God” (Rev. 22:9).

      These are cases as plain as any in the old Testament can be.  It is not very likely that St. John would have offered the supreme worship of latria to the angel.  Therefore, no doubt, all kind of worship was forbidden him.  And if only latria be forbidden, but dulia be a pious or necessary custom, it is certainly remarkable that neither the angel explained to St. John, nor St. Peter to Cornelius, nor St. Paul to the people of Lycaonia, the very important distinction between latria and dulia, the great sin of offering the former, and the great piety of offering the latter, to created but glorified intelligences; especially as the ambiguous word worship (προσκυνησαι) includes them both.  Moreover, as God’s revelations became successively clearer, and there is a gradual development of Divine truth, it is truly unaccountable that so large a germ of saint and angel worship as the Roman Catholics discover in the old Testament, should have developed into nothing more manifest than what we thus find in the new.  St. Paul, we know, earnestly warns his converts against “the worshipping of angels,” – and the word he uses (θρήσκεια) appears to comprehend all kinds of worship (Col. 2:18).  St. Paul was not a writer who neglected accurate distinctions, and we may fairly say he was as profound a reasoner and as deep a theologian as any human being, even under Divine revelation, was ever privileged to become.  But there is no question raised by him about dulia or hyperdulia.  It is simply “Let no man beguile you of your reward, in a voluntary humility, and worshipping of angels” (Col. 2:18).  It is a fearful thing to think that this voluntary humility and unauthorized worship of inferior beings may beguile of their reward those who should worship God only.

      One more instance is too pregnant to be omitted.  Once, and but once, in the history of the Bible do we hear that an angel claimed worship for himself.  And he claimed it of Him whose example in worship, as in everything else, we are bound to follow.  An angel of exceeding power once said to Jesus, “All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.  Then said Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve” (Matt. 4:9, 10).

Article  XXIII

Of Ministering in the Congregation.

      It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same.  And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have public authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.

De Vocatione Ministrorum.

      Non licet cuiquam sumere sibi munus publice praedicandi, aut administrandi sacramenta in Ecclesia, nisi prius fuerit ad haec obeunda legitime vocatus et missus.  Atque illos legitime vocatos et missos existimare debemus, qui per homines, quibus potestas vocandi ministros, atque mittendi in Vineam Domini, publice concessa est in Ecclesia, cooptati fuerint, et asciti in hoc opus.

Section  I – History

      After the Articles concerning the Church comes naturally this concerning the ministry.

      The wording of the Article demands some attention.  The first sentence is derived from the fourteenth Article of the Confession of Augsburg as drawn up in 1531.  That article runs: “De ordine Ecclesiastico docent, quod nemo debeat in Ecclesia publice docere, aut Sacramenta adininistrare, nisi rite vocatus.” {Sylloge, p. 127.  In 1540 we find the following clause added: “Sicut et Paulus praecipit Tito ut in civitatibus presbyteros constituat.” – Syll. p. 174.}

      In the XIII Articles, supposed to have been agreed upon between the English and German divines, (A. D. 1538,) the Xth Article is: “De ministris Ecclesiae docemus, quod nemo debeat publice docere, aut sacramenta ministrare, nisi rite vocatus, et quidem ab his, penes quos in ecclesia, juxta verbum Dei et leges ac consuetudines uniuscujusque regionis, jus est vocandi et admittendi.” {Then follows a declaration, that no bishop should intrude on another diocese, and that the wickedness of ministers hinders not the grace of the Sacraments. – Jankyns’s Cranmer, IV. Appendix, p. 286.}

      The twenty-fourth of the XLII. Articles of 1552, is worded exactly as our present twenty-third, and evidently only slightly changed from the above-cited Article of 1538. {The heading of the Articles both in those of 1552 and in those of 1662 is, Nemo in Ecclesia ministret nisi vocatus.}

      As it now stands, it contains two parts: –

      I.  That no one may assume the office of the ministry without a lawful call and mission.

      II.  That calling and mission can only be given by certain authorities who are the ministers of ordination.

      The latter portion of the Article is somewhat vaguely worded: the reason for which is easily traced to the probable fact that the original draught of the Article was agreed on in a conference between the Anglican and Lutheran divines.  It would have been painful to the latter, if a strong assertion of the need of episcopal ordination had been inserted, when they were debarred from episcopal regimen.  Hence it is but generally asserted that lawful calling can only be given by those “who have public authority in the Church to send labourers into the Vineyard.”  But then we may observe that the authority of the English Ordinal is expressly made the subject of Article XXXVI; and to see the force of the latter on our present Article we must have recourse to the Ordinal as expressing the mind of the reformers on this subject.

      One expression in this Article requires to be especially observed.

      In the Confession of Augsburg, the XIII Articles of 1538, and the Latin Articles of 1552, 1562, 1571, the word Ecclesia occurs twice.  But in the English translations this word is rendered Congregation.  To a modern reader, used to the language of Congregational dissenters, this translation has a different sound to that which it must have had at the time of the Reformation.  The ancient Church of the Jews is called “the Congregation of the Lord”.  The XIXth Article defines the Church as a “Congregation of faithful men,” &c.  Accordingly, the word Ecclesia, instead of being rendered Church, is rendered Congregation, meaning the whole Congregation of Christ’s people, i.e. the Church or Body of Christ.  The more modern idea of a Congregational election of ministers had evidently not suggested itself, or the word would have been avoided.

      We may now proceed to our history.

      I.  No one can question that very early in the Church there existed a distinction widely marked between the Clergy (κληρος, κληρικοι, Clerici) and the Laity (λαος, Laici).  The only doubt which can be raised is whether such a distinction was quite primitive or came in, in the second and third centuries, through the ambition of ecclesiastics.

      It is a most happy circumstance, that the very earliest of the Christian fathers, Clemens Romanus, the companion of St. Paul, has left us clear testimony on this head.  Giving instructions concerning the duty of Christians towards those who minister to God, he first adduces the examples of the Jewish economy in which the chief priest and the Levite have all their proper ministries, “and the layman is confined within the bounds of what is commanded to laymen.” {ο λαϊκος άνθρωπος τοις λαϊκοις προσταγμασιν δέδεται.  Clem. R. 1 In Corinth. C 40.}  He then goes on to say, “The Apostles have preached to us from our Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ from God.  Christ therefore was sent by God, the Apostles by Christ; so both were orderly sent according to the will of God ... Having received their commands ... and preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first-fruits of their conversions to be bishops and deacons over such as should afterwards believe, having first proved them by the Spirit.” {Ibid. c. 42.}  Then again, referring to the election of the seed of Aaron to the priesthood, in order to avoid contention {C. 43.} he continues: “So likewise our Apostles knew by our Lord Jesus Christ that there should contentions arise upon account of the ministry; And therefore, having a perfect foreknowledge of this, they appointed persons, as we have said before, and then gave direction, how, when they should die, other chosen and approved men should succeed in their ministry.  Wherefore we cannot think that those may justly be thrown out of their ministry who were appointed by them, or afterwards chosen by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church ... Blessed are those presbyters who, having finished their course before those times, have obtained a faithful and perfect dissolution; for they have no fear, lest any one should turn them out of the place which is now appointed for them.” {C. 44.}

      Here, in the very earliest of the fathers, we have plainly the distinction of clergy and laity, the clergy spoken of at one time as presbyters, at another as bishops and deacons; their mode of appointment in succession from the Apostles, and the duty of the people to be submissive and affectionate to them.

      Ignatius speaks in language so strong, of the necessity of obedience to bishops, presbyters, and deacons, that the very strength of the expressions has been the chief reason for doubting the genuineness of his epistles.  The seven shorter epistles, since Bishop Pearson’s able defense of them, have generally been admitted to be genuine.  The late discovery of a Syriac translation of three of them has again opened the question; their learned editor and translator contending that the Syriac represents the true text, and that even the shorter Greek epistles, which are longer than the Syriac, have suffered from interpolation.  This is no place to enter into a controversy of such extent; it is, however, satisfactory to find that the short Syriac epistles, as they contain the most important testimonies to the great doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation, {See for instance Ignatius Ad Ephes. C. 1, 9, 18 (19 in the Greek), Ad Polic. C. 3, where the Syriac has all the same remarkable expressions as the Greek.  See especially in the first passage Ephes. C. 1, αναζωπυρήσαντες εν αίματι Θεου [Syriac letters untranscribable]} so do they contain most strong and unmistakable language on the ministry and the three orders of the ministry: “Give heed to the bishop, that God also may give heed to you.  My soul be for those {Αντίψυχον εγω των υποτασσομένων, κ. τ. λ.} who are subject to the bishop, presbyters, and deacons: may I have my portion with them in God.” {Ignat. Ad Polyc. c. 6.}

      Irenaeus speaks distinctly of successions of presbyters in the Church, from the time of the Apostles; {Adv. Haer. III. 2.} says, that he was able to reckon up those who had been made bishops by the Apostles, and their successors even to his own time; {“Habemus annumerare eos, qui ab Apostolis instituti sunt Episcopi in ecclesiis, et successores eorum usque ad nos.” – III. 3.} and recounts the succession of bishops at Rome from St. Peter and St. Paul, and at Smyrna from St. Polycarp; {Ibid.} to which successions he attaches deep importance.

      Clement of Alexandria distinguishes the presbyter and deacon from the layman, {καν πρεσβύτερος η καν διάκονος, κάν λαϊκός. – Stromat. Lib. III. p. 552.} and the lay from the priestly. {Stromata, Lib. V. pp. 665, 666; where λαϊκος απιστίας is opposed to ιερατικη διακονία.}  He uses the term κληρος, clergy; {“Quis dives salvetur,” p. 959.} and speaks of the three degrees in the Church militant, of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, {Stromat. Lib. VI. p. 793.} which he compares to the angelic orders in Heaven. {See Bp. Kaye’s Clement of Alexandria, p. 463.}

      Tertullian bears testimony to the existence of a distinction between clergy and laity in his day; and charges the heretics with confounding the offices of layman and cleric. {“Alius hodie episcopus, cras alius: hodie diaconus qui cras lector; hodie presbyter, qui cras laicus.  Nam et laicis sacerdotalia munera injungunt.” – De Praescript. C. 41.}  The three orders of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, are enumerated together; {See the last passage; also De Fugâ, C. 11.} and he tells us that the chief priest, i.e. the bishop, had the right to baptize, as also had presbyters and deacons, but not without the authority of the bishop. {“Dandi (baptismum) quidem habet jus summus sacerdos, qui est episcopus; dehinc presbyteri et diaconi, non tamen sine episcopi auctoritate, propter ecclesiae honorem.” – De Baptismo, c. 17.}

      He speaks of receiving the Eucharist only from the presbyters. {“Eucharistiae sacramentum non de aliorum manu quam priesidentium sumimus.” – De Corona, 3.}  The office of the bishop was, according to him, of apostolic institution; and in the Catholic Church the successions of the bishops could be traced to the Apostles, as the succession at Smyrna from Polycarp, placed there by St. John, that at Rome from Clemens, placed there by St. Peter. {De Praescript. c. 32.}

      It is true that Tertullian claims for all Christians, that they are priests, and contends that in places where there are no clergy laymen may exercise the priestly offices, may baptize, and even celebrate the Eucharist.  But this is only in case of extreme necessity; his strong assertion of this is in a tract, written after he had seceded from the Church; and, even allowing the utmost possible weight to the passage, it does not prove the nonexistence of a distinct order of the clergy, but only that, in case of absolute necessity, that distinction was not to be observed. {De Exhort. Castitat. c. 7.  See also De Baptismo, c. 17.  And consult Bp. Kaye’s Tertullian, p. 224; and Bingham, E. A. Bk. I. ch. V. sect. 4.}

      Origen is very express on the office of the clergy, {See Homil. II. in Numer.; Homil. XIII. in Lucam.} on the power of the keys as committed to them, {In Matt.  Tom. XII. num. 14.} on the duty of obedience to them. {Homil. XX in Lucam.  “Si Jesus Filius Dei subjicitur Joseph et Mariae, ego non subjiciar episcopo, qui milli a Deo ordinatus est pater?  Non subjiciar presbytero qui mihi Domini dignatione praepositus est?”}

      We are now arrived at the Cyprianic age, when no one doubts that the distinction between lay and cleric was strongly marked and much insisted on.  Some have contended that the distinction was not from the first; but none can deny that by this time it was universally accepted.  Hilary the deacon, whose commentaries on St. Paul’s epistles are appended to the works of St. Ambrose, is indeed cited as saying that in the beginning in order to increase the Church the power to preach and baptize was given to all, but that when the Church spread abroad, a more regular constitution was ordained, so that none of the clergy were permitted to intrude into offices not committed to themselves. {“Ut cresceret plebs et multiplicaretur omnibus inter initia concessum est et evangelizare et baptizare et Scripturas in ecclesia explanare.  At ubi autem omnia loca circumplexa est ecclesia, conventicula constituta sunt, et rectores et caetera officia in ecclesiis sunt ordinata, ut nullus de clero auderet, qui ordinatus non esset, praesumere officium, quod sciret non sibi creditum.” – Hilar. Diac. In Epist. Eph. C. IV. v. 12.}  But this does not prove even that Hilary thought the distinction of lay and cleric not to be Apostolical.  It is most probable from the context, that by the word all, omnibus, he means not all the faithful, but all the clergy; who at first performed all sacred functions indiscriminately, but afterwards were limited according to their distinctions of bishop, presbyter, and deacon.  And even if he meant that all the faithful had at first a ministerial commission; yet still he clearly intended to fix the more regular constitution of the Church to the Apostolic age, before the close of which the Church might be said to have spread itself everywhere, and therefore needed regular establishment. {See Bingham, Book I. C. V. § 4, and Mr. Morrison’s note to his translation of Neander’s Church History, I. p. 252.}  So that this passage makes nothing against the Apostolical origin of the order of clergy and their distinction from the laity. {St. Jerome tells us the reason of the name κληρος, clerici, “Propterea vocantur clerici, vel quia de sorte sunt Domini, vel quia Dominus sors, id est pars, clericorum est.” – Ad Nepotian.  De Vita Clericorum, Tom. IV. Part II. p. 259.}

      So necessary did the fathers consider the office of the ministry, that St. Jerome tells us, “There is no Church where there are not priests.” {“Ecclesia non est, quae non habet sacerdotes.” – Dial. C. Lucifer. c. 8.}  And St. Chrysostom says, “Since the Sacraments are necessary to salvation, and all these things are performed by the hands of the priesthood, how, without them, shall any man be able to avoid the fire of hell, or to obtain the promised crown?” {Ει γαρ ου δύναταί τις εισελθειν εις την βασιλείαν των ουρανων, εαν μη όι ύδατος και Πνεύματος αναγεννηθη, και ο μη τρώγων την σάρκα του Κυρίου, και το αλμα αυτου πίνων, εκβέβληται της αιωνίου ζωης, πάντα δε ταυτα δι ετέρου μεν ουδενος, μόνον δε δια των αγίων εκείνων επιτελειται χειρων, των του ιερέος λέγω, πως άν τις τούτων εκτός, η το της γεεννης εκφυγειν δυνήσεται πυρ, η των αποκειμένων στεφάνων τυχειν; – Chrysost.  De Sacerdot.  Lib. III.}

      The opinions of Christians of all ages, and almost all sects, have been in favour of the necessity of a distinct call to the ministry, and of an order regularly set apart for the executing of that office.  Luther condemns it as an error invented by the devil that men should say that they have a talent from the Lord, and therefore must of necessity assume the office of preaching.  They should wait till they are called to the ministry.  If their Master wants them, He will call them; “If they teach uncalled, it will not be without injury to themselves and their hearers; for Christ will not be with them.” {“Qui non vocatus docet, non sine damno, et suo, et auditorum, docet, quod Christus non sit cum eo.” — Luther, In Galat. 1:1, Tom. V. p. 215.}  The Confession of Augsburg speaks of the ministry of the word and Sacraments as divinely instituted; condemns the Anabaptists, who teach that men can receive the Spirit, without the external word; and says that none may minister the word and Sacraments, not rightly called to it. {Confess. August. pars I. Art. V.  Syllog. p. 24, Art. XIV. p. 127.}  The Helvetic Confession of the Zuinglians declares the office of minister to be “ancient and ordained of God; not of recent, or of human ordination.” {Confess. Helvet. c. XVIII;  Syllog. p. 65.} Calvin says that “no one must be accounted a minister of Christ, except he be regularly called. ... If so great a minister as St. Paul dares not arrogate to himself to be heard in the Church, but because he has been ordained to this office by the Lord’s command, and faithfully discharges his duty, how great would be his impudence who should seek this honour destitute of both these qualifications!” {Calvin. Institut. IV.iii. 10.  See Palmer, On the Church, pt. I. ch. VIII.}

      The Church of England especially expresses her opinions in the Ordinal, where, besides the language of the Preface and the words of the Services themselves, it is ordered, that “There shall be a sermon declaring ... how necessary the order of priests is in the Church of Christ.”

      Since the Reformation, sects have arisen which underrate the necessity of the ministry and of a call to it.  The Anabaptists appear to have done this.  The latter Remonstrants, as represented by Episcopius, seem to have thought a fluency of speech and acceptableness to the congregation a sufficient mission. {See Episcop. Disp. 76. Thes. 4, 5; Remons. Conf c. 22, §1; Ford, On the Articles, Art. XXIII.}  The Quakers, and several fanatical sects, investing all Christians with ministerial authority, have abrogated all distinction of lay and clerical.  But these are not much to be considered in a history of religious opinions.

      II.  The Article next speaks of those ministers being lawfully called and sent, who derive their calling and mission from certain persons having public authority in the Church to call and to send.

      It is necessary then to consider whether there have always been certain persons invested with such public authority; who such persons were; and who are recognized as such by the English Church.

      It is the plain record of all antiquity, that ordination was anciently conferred by the highest order of the ministry.  This will probably be questioned by no one.  We have seen that St. Clement, the earliest Christian writer except those of the new Testament, speaks of the Apostles as having appointed successors to themselves in the ministry and government of the Church.  We have seen that Irenaeus speaks of a regular succession from the Apostles in the Churches, and that he counts up the succession in the Churches of Rome and of Smyrna.  A like testimony we have brought from Tertullian.  The farther we proceed, the clearer the evidence becomes that no ordinations took place except by those who thus succeeded to the ministry of the Apostles, deriving their orders in direct descent from them.

      The only difficulty which seems to occur is this.  In the new Testament it is conceded that Bishop (επίσκοπος) and Presbyter (πρεσβύτερος) were synonymous and convertible terms.  In after-ages we find them distinguished; the title Bishop being tied to the first, the title Presbyter to the second order of the ministry.  Theodoret {Comm in 1 Tim. 3:1.} and Hilary the deacon {Hilar. Diac. In Ephes. 4.} tell us, that “the same persons were originally called indiscriminately bishops and presbyters, whilst those who are now called bishops, were called Apostles.  But afterwards, the name Apostle was appropriated to such only as were Apostles indeed, and then the name Bishop was given to those who were before called Apostles.” {See Bingham, E. A. Book II. ch. II. § 1.}  The question is, Was this really the state of the case from the first, or is it the invention of a later age?  Were there always three orders of ministers? or originally but two, the aristocratical by degrees changing into a monarchical government?  There have been many (such as Blondel, Daillé, Lord King, &c.) who have asserted, that there were but two orders, presbyters and deacons; that by degrees, where there were several presbyters, one was elected to preside over the rest; but that he was no more distinct from them than the dean of a cathedral is from the rest of the chapter, or than the rector or vicar of a large parish is from the assistant curates and ministers of the various chapelries connected with it, – in short a ruling or presiding elder, but not a bishop.  By degrees, they say, these ruling elders arrogated to themselves to be a superior order to their brethren, and claimed exclusively that authority to ordain and to execute discipline, which had before been vested in the whole body of the presbytery.

      It is quite certain, that in the beginning of the third century, i.e. one hundred years after the Apostles, there existed in the Church the three orders of bishops, presbyters, and deacons. Thenceforward, in every part of the world whither Christianity had spread, no Church was to be found where bishops did not preside and ordain. They are well-known rules, that “ what has been religiously observed by the Apostolical Churches, must appear to have been handed down from the Apostles themselves.” {“Constabit id esse ab Apostolis traditum, quod spud ecclesias apostolorum fuerit sacrosanctum.” – Tertull. C. Marcion. Lib. IV. C. 5; cf. De Praescript. C. 17.}  And that, “ what is held by the Universal Church, and not ordained by any council, but has always been retained in the Church, is to be believed to have come down from Apostolical authority.” {“Quod universa tenet ecclesia, nec conciliis institutum, sed semper retentum, non nisi auctoritate apostolica traditum rectissime creditur.” – Augustin.  Adv. Donatist. Lib. IV. C. 24, Tom. IX. p 139.}  So then the burden of proof must lie with those who contend that a custom universally prevailing at a very early period was an innovation, and not a tradition.

      Let us, however, see whether the chain of evidence is not complete even from the Apostles.

      Clemens Romanus, it is true, mentions only bishops and deacons, and afterwards presbyters; from which it has been inferred that bishops and presbyters were still used indiscriminately for the same office, as in the new Testament.  Yet his epistle contains at least inferential proof of the existence of three orders at the time he wrote.  In the first place, he himself evidently writes with authority, as representing the whole Church in the great city of Rome.  “The Church of God, which is at Rome, to the Church of God which is at Corinth.” {Clem. 1 Ad. Cor. C. 1.}  This exactly corresponds with what we are told by Irenaeus and all subsequent testimonies, that Clement was bishop of Rome.  Then, in speaking of the ministry as ordained by the Apostles, when they themselves were about to depart, and enjoining the laity to be observant of it, he specially compares the Christian clergy to the three orders of the Levitical priesthood.  “The same care must be had of the persons that minister unto Him: for the chief priest has his proper services; and to the priests their proper place is appointed; and to the Levites appertain their proper ministries: and the layman is confined within the bounds of what is commanded to laymen.” {C. 40.}  This, be it observed, is exactly the language of later fathers.  In allusion to this resemblance the presbyters are constantly called sacerdotes; the bishop, summus sacerdos; the deacons, Levitae.  And it will facilitate our understanding of the whole question, if we bear in mind that, as the high priest was still a priest and only distinguished from the other priests by one or two points of official preeminence, so the fathers constantly speak of the bishop as still a presbyter (συμπρεσβύτερος, 1 Pet. 5:1), but as distinguished from the other presbyters by the power of ordination and jurisdiction.

      If we believe the seven shorter epistles of Ignatius to be genuine, they abound in passages concerning the three orders of the ministry so plain that no language can be stronger or more significant.{See Ign. Ad Ephes. 3, 4, 5, 6; Magnes. 2, 6, 13; Trall. 2, 7; Philadepha. 1, 4, 7, 10; Smyrn. 8, 12; Polyc. 6.}  If, on the contrary, we incline to receive the epistles of the Syriac version, not as abbreviated but as the genuine epistles, we have already seen that they contain a passage in which subjection to the bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and especially to the bishop, is most earnestly and solemnly enjoined. {Epist. ad Polycarp. C. 6, cited above.}

      In the account of the martyrdom of Ignatius, we are told that the cities and Churches of Asia sent their bishops, presbyters, and deacons to meet him. {Martyr. Ignatii, Coteler. II. p. 174.}

      Hegesippus (ab. A. D. 158) relates of himself that, as he was travelling to Rome, he communicated with many bishops, and especially speaks of having intercourse with Primus, the Bishop of Corinth.  He also relates the succession of certain bishops of Rome.  And speaks of Simon, the son of Cleopas, as second Bishop, of Jerusalem. {Ap. Euseb.  H. E. IV. 22.}  Here we find the three great cities, Jerusalem, Rome, and Corinth, in each of which there must have been several presbyters, yet still each presided over by a single bishop.

      Irenaeus undoubtedly calls the same persons by the name of bishops and presbyters; but we should be misled by the mere indiscriminate use of names if we concluded that therefore there was in his day no such thing as a church officer superior to the general body of presbyters.  On the contrary, we have already seen that he lays great stress on the power of tracing up the succession of ministers in the Churches unbroken to the Apostles; and this succession he traces, not by the whole body of presbyters in each, but by the single individuals at the head.  Thus, he says, the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul gave the bishopric of Rome to Linus, to him succeeded Anacletus, to Anacletus Clemens, to Clemens Evarestus, to him Alexander, then Sixtus, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Pius, Anicetus, Soter, Eleutherius.  In the like manner he speaks of a regular descent of the heads of the Church of Smyrna from Polycarp. {Irenae. Lib. III. C. 3.}  Here it is evident, that the regular ordination and succession of doctrine in the Church is maintained, not by parity of presbyters, but by successive ordination of chief pastors who in their turn had power to ordain others.

      It has been already mentioned that Clement of Alexandria considers “the degrees (αι προκοπαι) in the Church on earth of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, to be imitations of the angelic glory, and of that dispensation which is said to await those who live in righteousness according to the Gospel.  These, according to the Apostle, being raised into the clouds, will first minister (δικονειν), then, receiving an advancement in glory, be enrolled in the presbytery until they come to the perfect man.” {Stromat. VI. p. 793.  See also, Bp. Kaye’s Clem. Alex. p. 463.}  Here it is evident that Clement alludes to the existence of three orders in the ministry, which might successively be passed through, and which he fancifully considers like the progressive degrees of glory hereafter.  Elsewhere also he speaks of presbyters, bishops, and deacons, saying that there are various precepts or suggestions in the Scriptures pertaining to particular persons, “ some for presbyters, some for bishops, some for deacons,” {αι μεν πρεσβυτέροις, αι δ’ επισκόπος·  αι δε διακόνοις, κ. τ. λ. – Paedag. III. p. 309.} &c.

      The testimony of Tertullian has already been sufficiently adduced when we were on the subject of the distinction of clergy and laity.  He, more than once, enumerates the three orders. {De Baptismo, c. 17, De Fugâ, C. 11.}  In one instance he asserts that presbyters and deacons could not baptize without the authority of the bishop; {Ibid. C. 17, cited above.} challenges heretics to trace, as the Catholics could, the succession of their bishops to the Apostles; {De Praescrip. Haeretic. C. 32.} and complains that among heretics the offices of bishops, deacons, presbyters, and laics, were all confounded. {Ibid. C. 41, cited above.}

      Origen continually distinguishes between bishops, priests, and deacons.  Bishop Pearson {Vinciciae Ignat. ap. Coteler. Tom. II. pt. II. p. 320.} has quoted ten passages from his writings, in seven of which the distinction is plainly marked, and the three orders are expressly enumerated.

      All these writers lived within a hundred years of the Apostles.  St. John is said to have died A. D. 100, and Origen to have been born A. D. 186.  From the time of Origen the case admits of no question.  The first fifty of the canons of the apostles use the word bishop thirty-six times, in appropriation to him, that is the ruler or president of the church, above the clergy and laity; twenty-four times the bishop is expressly distinguished from the presbyter; and fourteen times indicated as having particular care for government, jurisdiction, censures, and ordinations committed to him.*  The first canon expressly enjoins, that a bishop be consecrated by two or three bishops.  The second, that a presbyter or deacon be ordained by one bishop.  The thirty-fifth forbids bishops to ordain out of their own dioceses.  The thirty-seventh decrees synods of bishops.  The thirty-eighth enjoins bishops to have the superintendence of all ecclesiastical affairs; and the thirty-ninth forbids presbyters and deacons to do anything without the knowledge of their bishop. {Beverigii Synodicom. Tom. I. pp. 1, 24–27.}

            {*See Bp. Taylor’s Episcopacy Asserted, Sect. XXIV.  All this occurs in the first fifty Canons, which are received as authentic, being quoted by the Council of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Antioch, and Carthage.  They were undoubtedly not apostolical, but are generally referred to the middle of the third century.  Bp. Beveridge thinks they were collected by Clement of Alexandria.  They seem to be appealed to as authority by Tertullian, Cyprian, Constantine the Great, Alexander of Alexandria, and Athanasius.  See Codex Canomum Eccles. Prim. illus. a Gul. Beveregio.}

      Having now reached the age of Cyprian, when the existence of a regular diocesan episcopacy is not questioned by the most skeptical; if we look back on the testimonies above cited, it is surely not too much to assert that for scarcely any of the undoubted events of ancient history does there exist anything like the weight of contemporary evidence that we have from the first, that in the first century after the Apostolic age there was a marked distinction between bishops, presbyters, and deacons; or that, if the names of bishops and presbyters were not always distinguished, there was still clearly a separation between the functions of the ordinary presbyter and those of the president, chief priest, or bishop of the Church.  There is nothing like such evidence for the existence of the laws of Draco, or the usurpation of Pisistratus, of the kingdom of Croesus, or the battle of Marathon, for the wars of Carthage, or the very being of such persons as Brennus, or Pyrrhus, or Hannibal.

      In the age of Cyprian (i.e. about A. D. 250), we have abundant evidence as to the state of the Church.  We know, for instance, that Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, had forty-four presbyters under him; {Euseb. VI. 43.} that Cyprian himself in like manner presided over a considerable body of presbyters.  The latter never hesitates to claim supreme authority, under God, over his presbyters and deacons; and complains bitterly if any of the presbytery give not due honour to him as their bishop. { See, for instance, Epistol. XVI. “Quod enim non periculum metuere debemus de offensa Domini quando aliqui de Presbyteris nec Evangelii nec loci sui memores, sed neque futurum Domini judicium, neque nunc sibi propositum episcopum cogitantes, quod nunquam omnino sub antecessoribus factum est, cum contumelia praepositi totum sibi vendicant?”}  The privileges of the presbytery were indeed carefully preserved to them; and we have no reason to believe that at this early period nearly so great an imparity prevailed as we afterwards meet with.  The dioceses were very small compared with their extent in modern times.  One bishop generally had the care of one large town and its immediate suburbs: whence the original name of a diocese was not διοικήσις (diocese), but παροικία (parochia), a word not expressing, as of late times, a single congregation or parish, but implying the whole town and its immediate neighborhood; that is, such a precinct or district as a single bishop could govern with the assistance of his presbyters. {See Suicer. s. v. παροικία; and Bingham, E. A. Bk. IX. C. 2.}  The power of bishops too over their presbyters was in early times limited in many ways.  The Council of Carthage (A. D. 348) ordained that three bishops should judge a deacon, and not less than six should censure a presbyter. {Concil. Carthag. I. Can. 11; see Bingham, Bk. II. ch. III. sect. 9.}  Presbyters were always looked on as assessors and counselors to their bishop. {Σύμβουλοι του επισκόπου, συνέδριον και βουλη της εκκλησίας. – Constit. Apostol. Lib. II. C. 28.}  Bishops weighed all things by common advice, and did nothing but after deliberation and with consent of their clergy. {“Quando a primordio episcopatus mei statuerim, nihil sine consilio vestro, et sine consensu plebis, mea privata sententia gerere.” – Cyprian, Epist. XIV; Op. Cyp. Epist. p. 38.  “Omni sent ad me perlato placuit contrahi presbyterium, qui et hodie praesentes fuerunt, ut firmato consilio, quid circa personam eorum observari deberet, consensu omnium statueretur.” – Cornelius Cypriano, Epist. XLIX; Op. Cypr. Epist. p. 92.  See Bingham, Bk. II. ch. XIX. sect. 8.}  Presbyters were considered as, equally with the bishops, invested with the dignity of the priestly office; {“Qui cum Episcopo Presbyteri sacerdotali honore conjuncti.” – Cyprian. Ad Lucian. Epist. LXI.  See Bingham, II. xix. 14.} and in the African Churches and the Latin, though not in the East, all the presbyters present assisted the bishop in the ordination of a presbyter, by laying their hands on his head. {It was so ordained by the fourth Council of Carthage, and there is a rule to the same purpose in the constitutions of the Church of Alexandria.  See Bingham, II. xix. 10.}

      Yet there is no example of ordination ever being entrusted to presbyters only.  On one occasion a presbyter of Alexandria named Colluthus pretended to act as a bishop, but a council of bishops assembled at Alexandria under Hosius (A. D. 324) declared his ordinations null and void. {Athanas. Opp. I. p. 732, Colon.  See Bingham, II. iii. 6; Palmer, On the Church, pt. VI. ch. IV.}

      Those who advocate the parity of bishops and presbyters appeal to the language of St Chrysostom and St. Jerome who undoubtedly maintained with great earnestness the dignity of the office of presbyter, and esteemed it very little inferior to the episcopate.  Yet their very words distinctly show that in one point, and that the point now in question, the bishop had a power not entrusted to the presbyter.  St. Chrysostom says, that “bishops excel presbyters only in the power of ordination.” {χειροτονία μόνη. – Hom. IX. in 1 ad Tim.}  And St. Jerome asks, “what does a bishop which a presbyter does not, except ordaining?” {“Quid enim facit, excepta ordinatione, episcopus, quod presbyter non faciat” – Epist. ad Evangelium, Ep. 101; Op. Tom. IV. pars II. p. 802.}  It is true that St. Jerome, arguing from the language of St. Paul to Timothy, contends that Episcopus and Presbyter originally designated the same office, and thinks that one was afterwards placed above the rest to avoid schism in the Church.  This, however, is evidently only his own private inference from Scripture.  He relates indeed that at Alexandria from the time of St. Mark to Heraclas and Dionysius the presbyters used to elect one from among themselves, and, having placed him aloft (in excelsiori gradu), saluted him Episcopus; as if an army should make a general (imperator), or a body of deacons an archdeacon. {Ibid.}  But we cannot infer from this, that St. Jerome means to say that there was no distinct consecration of the bishop so elected; for it is merely of the election, not of the ordination of their bishop that he speaks; and he simply adduces this as an instance of what he believed to be one of the ancient forms of episcopacy; namely, the appointment by the presbyters of one from among themselves to preside over them. {See Bishop Hall, Episcopacy of Divine Right, Pt. II. Sect. 15; Bp. J. Taylor, On Episcopacy, Sect. 32; Bingham, II. iii. 5; Palmer, On the Church, pt. VI. ch. IV.}

      Hilary the deacon says, that “the ordination of bishop and presbyters is the same, for both are priests; but the bishop is first; for every bishop is a presbyter, not every presbyter a bishop.” {In 1 Tim. iii. in Oper. Ambros.}  All this is true, except inasmuch as he says there is no difference between the ordination of a bishop and a presbyter; and this is evidently the private opinion (deduced from the language of St. Paul) of a person not much to be relied on, and who afterwards joined the Luciferian schism.  What he says in another place, {In Ephes. iv.  “Denique apud AEgyptum presbyteri consignant, si praesens non sit episcopus.”} that “in Egypt, even to his days, presbyters sealed (consignant), in the absence of the bishop,” does not mean that they ordained, but that they confirmed; and, no doubt, in the early ages, presbyters were sometimes permitted to confirm by delegation of the episcopal power. {See Bingham, Bk. XII. ch. II. sect. 2, 4; Palmer, pt. VI. ch. I. VI.}

      The only decided opponent of episcopacy in primitive times was Aerius, a presbyter of the Church of Sebaste, in Armenia, of the fourth century.  He had a quarrel with his bishop, Eustathius, and was thence led, among other errors, to declare that bishops and presbyters were altogether equal, and that a presbyter could ordain, as well as a bishop.  Epiphanius says, he was altogether an Arian heretic (Αρειανος μεν το παν).  His sentiments were wholly rejected by the Catholics, and his sect driven from all quarters of the Church; {Epiphanius, Haeres. 75; August, Haeres. 54.} it being a settled doctrine at that day that the order of bishops excelled the order of presbyters, “inasmuch as the order of bishops can beget fathers to the Church by ordination, but the order of presbyters can but beget sons by baptism.” {Epiphanius, Ibid.}

      The review, then, which has been taken of the primitive testimony, proves this: that in the earliest ages in every quarter of the world whither the Church had penetrated, whilst all Churches had their regular ministers of the two orders of presbyters and deacons, yet in every city there was one chief presbyter, presiding over the clergy of that city and its suburb (παροικία), and that to him was committed the power of ordination, or, in the language of the Article, he had “public authority given him in the Church, to call and send ministers into the Lord’s Vineyard.”  Whether he was to be esteemed of a different order, or of the same order, differing only in degree;* in any case, by universal consent, he was the minister of ordination.  Other presbyters, equally with him, received authority to teach, to baptize, to minister the Eucharist; but he only had authority to ordain.  Such authority was believed to have been derived to bishops from the Apostles.  And the principle on which their ordinations were deemed valid, was, not merely that they themselves had the priestly office, but that they had received authority (authority by regular episcopal descent) to give ordination and mission to others.

            {*The fathers, the schoolmen, and divines, both of the Roman and reformed episcopal churches, have seemed doubtful whether bishops and presbyters were of different degrees in the same order, or of different orders.  The distinction between presbyter and deacon has always been esteemed as greater than that between bishop and presbyter; the eminence of the bishop over the presbyter consisting chiefly in the power of ordination.  Mr. Palmer enumerates as advocates for identity of order, but inferiority of degree, Clemens Romanus, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Clemens Alexand., Tertullian, Firmilian, Jerome, Hilary the deacon, Chrysostom, Augustine, Theodoret, Sedulius, Primasius, Isidore Hispalensis, Bede, Alcuin, the Synod of Aix, in 819, Amalarius, Hugo S. Victor, Peter Lombard, Alexander Alensis, Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Scotus, Cajetan, Durandus, the Council of Trent, and many reformers of the 16th century.  Palmer, pt. IV. ch. I.}

      Those who maintain the validity of presbyterian orders do so on the ground that bishops were themselves but presbyters.  Those who maintain that episcopal ordination is necessary reply that even though bishops be themselves presbyters, yet they only, and not all presbyters alike, had the authority to ordain; and therefore that without them ordination could not take place.  This was the constant creed of the fathers and of the schoolmen after them.

      The Council of Trent, and the later writers in, the Church of Rome, have not greatly insisted on the three orders, but have generally classed together the first and second, bishops and presbyters, under the common name of sacerdotes, priests; influenced herein by the high importance which they attached to the priesthood, and by the disposition to reserve supreme episcopal authority to the pope.*  Yet they have never thought of permitting any but the bishop to administer ordination, which is by them esteemed a Sacrament of the Church; but have ever held bishops to be successors of the Apostles, superior to presbyters, and qualified, which the other clergy were not, to confirm and to ordain. {Vid. Concil. Trident. Sess. XXIII. cap.4.}

            {*The Council of Trent, Sess. XXIII. cap. 2, reckons seven orders of ministers, sacerdotes, diaconi, subdiaconi, acolythi, exorcistae, lectores, ostiarii.  The Council of Nice itself (Can. 3) had given the name of κληρος to others besides bishops, presbyters, and deacons; and the third Council of Carthage made a Canon (Can. 23) on purpose to confirm the title to them. (Bingham, I. V. 7.)}

      At the time of the Reformation, the Lutherans, meeting with nothing but opposition from the bishops, were constrained to act without them.  Yet Luther and his followers constantly acted under appeal to a general council.  The Confession of Augsburg fully conceded to bishops the power of the keys, i.e. of preaching the Gospel, of remitting and retaining sins, and of administering the Sacraments; {Confess. August.  De Potestate Ecclesiastica, Sylloge, pp. 151, 225.} and declared, that bishops should retain all their legitimate authority, if only they would not urge such traditions as could not be kept with a good conscience. {Ibid. pp. 157, 231.}  The Lutherans earnestly protested, that they much wished to retain episcopacy, but that the bishops forced them to reject sound doctrine, and therefore they were unable to preserve their allegiance to them; and they “openly testified to the world, that they would willingly continue the canonical government, if only the bishops would cease to exercise cruelty upon the Churches.”*

            {*“Episcopi sacerdotes nostros aut cogunt hoc doctrinae genus, quod confessi sumus, abjicere et damnare, aut nova et inaudita crudelitate miseros et innocentes occidunt.  Hae causae impediunt quo minus agnoscant hos episcopos nostri sacerdotes.  Ita saevitia episcoporum in causa est, quare alicubi dissolvitur illa canonica politia, quam nos magnopere cupiebamus conservere.  Ipsi viderint quomodo rationem Deo reddituri sint, quod dissipant ecclesiam.  Porro hic iterum volumus testatum, nos libenter conservaturos esse ecclesiasticam et canonicam politiam, si modo episcopi desinant in nostras ecclesias saevire.” – Apologia Confessionis, Art. VII. § 24.  See Bp. Hall’s Episcopacy, Int. Sect. 3.  The above passage is given at greater length in Dr. Wordsworth’s Theophilas Anglicanus, ch. XI.}

      The Calvinists, though in like manner rejecting their bishops, who would have bound them to Rome, declared themselves ready to submit to a lawful hierarchy.  Calvin said that those who would not submit themselves to such were deserving of any anathema.*  Even Beza thought it insane to reject all episcopacy, and wished that the Church of England might continue to enjoy forever that singular bounty of God. {“Fruatur sane ista singulari Dei beneficentia, quae utinam illi sit perpetua.” – Beza ad Sarav. apud Hall, Episcopacy, Sect. 4.}

            {*“Talem nobis hierarchiam si exhibeant in qua sic emineant episcopi, ut Christo subesse non recusent, ut ab tanquam ab unico Capite pendeant et ad Ipsum referantur: ... tum vero nullo non anathemate dignos fatear, si qui erunt, qui non eam reverentur, summaque obedientia observant.” – Calvin. De Necessitate Reform. Eccles.  See also Institut. IV. c. 10.  See Hall, as above.}

      John Knox himself was not a favourer of that parity of ministers which Andrew Melvill afterwards introduced into the Kirk of Scotland, but may be considered as, more or less, a witness for the distinction of bishops and presbyters. {Harington’s Notes on the Church of Scotland. ch. III.}

      In the English Church the primitive rule of episcopal ordination and apostolical descent has never been infringed.  The Article under consideration is the only authorized formulary, which seems in the least degree ambiguous.  The ambiguity, however, is not real but apparent only, as it is clearly stated that not all who are themselves ministers can ordain; but only those invested with public authority in the Church to send others into the Vineyard.  This is a complete description of a bishop, who is a chief presbyter invested over and above other presbyters with the power of sending labourers into the Vineyard.

      The first germ of this Article we have already seen in the Articles agreed on between the Lutheran and Anglican divines, A. D. 1538. {Cranmer’s Works, by Jenkyns, IV. p. 286.}  About the same year or soon after, a paper was written by Cranmer, De Ordine et Ministerio Sacerdotum et Episcoporum, in which the divine authority of priests and bishops, the superiority of bishops, and their succession from the Apostles, are strongly maintained. {Ibid. p. 300.}  The same kind of language is used in the Institution of a Christian Man, set forth nearly at the same time, or somewhat earlier. {Formularies of Faith in the Reign of Henry VIII. p. 101.}  In the year 1540, Henry VIIIth, in regard of a more exact review of the Institution of a Christian Man, appointed several learned men to deliberate about sundry points of religion and to give in their sentiments distinctly.  Seventeen questions were proposed to them concerning the Sacraments and ordination. {Strype s Cranmer, p. 110.}  All agreed, except one, that bishops had the authority to make presbyters; and almost all agreed that none besides had this power.  Their general opinion was, that a bishop further required consecration, though Cox thought institution with imposition of hands sufficient.  But at this time Cranmer appears to have been much wavering on the subject of ordination.  He had imbibed a very high notion of the Divine prerogative of Christian princes; and some of his answers indicate a belief that Christian kings as well as bishops had power to ordain ministers.  Still he adds, as if doubtful of the soundness of his position, “This is mine opinion and sentence at this present, which nevertheless I do not temerariously define, but refer the judgment thereof wholly to your majesty.” {See Jenkyns’s Cranmer, II. p. 98, where Cranmer’s answers are given.  All the replies are to be found in the Appendix to Burnet On the Reformation, and Collier’s Ecclesiastical History.  See also Jenkyns’s preface to his edition of Cranmer, I. p. xxxii. &c.}  Several of the other divines had afterwards a hand in drawing up the Liturgy and the Ordinal; and all had expressed opinions diametrically opposite to the Archbishop.  But the Archbishop’s own appears to have been only a theory hastily taken up, and as speedily relinquished, at a period when all opinions were undergoing a great revolution, and when the reformers were generally inclined to overrate the regal, and underrate the episcopal authority, since kings in most parts of Europe fostered, and bishops checked the progress of the Reformation.  It is to be observed that the Necessary Doctrine, which was the result of this review of the Institution of a Christian Man, contains the strongest language concerning “order” as “the gift or grace of ministration in Christ’s Church, given of God to Christian men by the consecration and imposition of the bishop’s hands,” and concerning a continual succession even to the end of the world. {See at length Formularies of Faith, p. 277.}  This was set forth A. D. 1543.  In 1548, Cranmer himself put out what is called Cranmer’s Catechism, which, though not written by him, was translated and published by his authority.  In this the Apostolical descent, Episcopal ordination, and the power of the Keys are strongly enforced and greatly enlarged upon. {See Cranmer’s Catechism. p. 193, &c. Oxford, 1829.}  Bishop Burnet remarks on it that “it is plain that Craniner had now quite laid aside those singular opinions which he formerly held of the ecclesiastical functions; for now, in a work which was wholly his own, without the concurrence of any other, he fully sets forth their divine institution.” {Burnet, History of Reformation, II. pt. 2.}  In 1549 Cranmer and twelve other divines drew up the Ordinal, where it is declared that “from the Apostles’ times, there hath been three orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church: Bishops, Priests, and Deacons”; it is said that none were admitted to them but “ by public prayer, with imposition of hands”; and it is enjoined that hereafter all persons to be ordained shall be admitted according to the form laid down in the Ordinal, which is nearly the same as that still used in the Church of England.  In 1552, the Reformatio Legum was published, the chief writer of which was the Archbishop.  In this again the three orders of bishop, presbyter, and deacon, are distinctly treated of.  For bishops are claimed the powers of jurisdiction and ordination, and all three orders are spoken of as evidently holding their offices on Scriptural authority and by Divine appointment. {Reform. Leg. Tit. De Ecclesia et Ministris Ejus. capp. 3, 4, 10–12.}  Cranmer therefore could only have entertained for a short time the peculiar opinions which in 1540 he unhappily expressed. {The question concerning Archbishop Cranmer’s remarkable expressions in 1540 and subsequent change of opinion is ably disposed of by Chancellor Harington, Succession of Bishops in the Church of England.  See also his Two Ordination Sermons. Exeter, 1845.}  It is only necessary to add that the Ordinal is expressly sanctioned and authorized, not only as part of the Book of Common Prayer, but by the XXXVIth Article;* and we may observe that not only is episcopal ordination enjoined by it, but in its present form it forbids that any shall hereafter be “accounted or taken to be a lawful bishop, priest, or deacon in the United Church of England or Ireland, or suffered to execute any of the said functions, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted thereunto, according to the form hereafter following, or hath had formerly episcopal consecration or ordination.”**

            {*The Church of England has always acted on the principles laid down in the Preface to the Ordinal, although many of her writers have shown consideration for the difficulties of the Continental Protestants.  It has been asserted by Mr. Macaulay, Hist. of England, I. p. 75, that “in the year 1603 the province of Cranterbury” (i.e. in Canon 55) “solemnly recognized the Church of Scotland, a Church in which episcopal ordination was unknown, as a branch of the holy Catholic Church of Christ.”  This statement has been clearly disproved by Chancellor Harington, who has demonstrated that at least a titular episcopacy then existed in Scotland, and that there was “a full determination to restore a regularly consecrated episcopacy.”  See a Letter on the LVth Canon and the Kirk of Scotland, by E. C. Harington, M. A. Rivingtons, 1851.}

            {**The following writers may be consulted by the student, both as containing the arguments for episcopacy and the succession of ministers, and as showing the judgment of the great Anglican divines on the subject.  Hooker, Bk. VII; Hall, Episcopacy of Divine Right; Taylor, On Episcopacy; Chillingworth, Divine Institution of Episcopacy; Leslie, On the Qualifications to administer the Sacraments; Potter, On Church Government; Bingham, E. A. Bk. II; Palmer, On the Church, Part VI.}

Section  II – Scriptural Proof

      We may proceed, as in the last section, to show that, –

      I.  There is a regular order of ministers in the Christian Church set apart for sacred offices, and that no one may assume their functions except he be lawfully called and sent.

      II.  There are regular ministers of ordination to whom public authority is given to send labourers into the Vineyard.

      I.  The example of the old Testament priesthood is clearly to the point.  One out of the twelve tribes was set apart for sacred offices in general, and of that tribe one whole family for special priestly ministration.

      It is said truly that the priesthood, and especially the high priesthood, was typical of Christ.  He is the great High Priest over the House of God.  Therefore, it is argued, all other priesthood has ceased.  It is however equally true that the kings and prophets of old were as much types of Christ as were the high priests.  Christ is our Prophet, Priest, and King.  Yet still it is lawful that there should be kings and prophets under the Gospel, for we read of many prophets in the Church (Acts 2:17, 11:27, 13:1, 15:32, 21:9, 10.  1 Cor. 12:28.  Eph. 4:11); and we are specially enjoined to “honour the king” (1 Pet. 2:17).

      In one sense, doubtless, there are no such prophets, kings, or priests now, as there were under the Law.  Kings were then rulers of the theocracy, vicegerents of God in governing the Church of God.  Prophets were sent to prepare the way of Him who was to come.  Priests offered up daily sacrifice of propitiation, in type of the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.  So, in such a sense, are there now neither prophets, priests, nor kings.  But as the coming of the King and Prophet has not abolished the kingly or prophetic office, so the coming of the Great High Priest has not of necessity done away with all priestly functions in the Church, but only with such as of their own nature belonged to the typical and ceremonial dispensation.  Nay! we may fairly argue that as sacred things in the old Testament needed the ministry of consecrated officers, so the still more sacred things of the new Testament would be likely to need the attendance of those specially set apart.  And, without controversy, the Gospel and the Sacraments are greater and more sacred than the Law and the sacrifices; and hence, “if the ministration of death ... was glorious,” we could easily imagine that the “ministration of the Spirit would be rather glorious”; that “if the ministration of condemnation was glory, much more would the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory” (2 Cor. 3:7, 8, 9).  In the old Testament the Priests were appointed, first to minister in the sacrifices, and then to teach the people (Lev. 10:11.  Deut. 33:10.  Hagg. 2:11.  Mal. 2:7).  We still need the ministration, not of sacrifices but of Sacraments; and the instruction of the Church is at least as necessary as the instruction of the Jews.

      It is said, however, that all Christians are priests, and that a distinct ministry is therefore needless and inconsistent (see 1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 1:6, 5:10).  But it is to be observed that wherever Christians are said to be priests, they are also said to be kings.  We know that the kingly character, which Christ bestows on His people, has not abolished monarchy; why should their priestly character have abolished ministry?  Besides which, the very passages in the new Testament in which Christians are called a “royal priesthood,” “kings and priests,” are absolute quotations from the old Testament, where the very same titles are given to all the people of the Jews.  “Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation” (Exod. 19:6).  The Septuagint Version of Exodus and the Greek of St. Peter are almost the same.  The one did not forbid a special priesthood in Israel; the other therefore cannot disprove a ministry in the Church.  It was indeed argued on one occasion that the sanctity of the whole congregation made it useless to have priests at all. {Numb. 16:3: “Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them; wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the LORD?”}  But how far the argument was safe the sequel showed, when the earth swallowed up Korah and his company, and fourteen thousand of the people died of the plague because they had listened to his reasoning (Num. 16:32, 33, 45–49).  It is difficult to see, where the difference lies between this statement of Korah and the modern denial of a Christian ministry on the ground that all the Christian Church is a holy and spiritual priesthood; and it is difficult to understand what can be, if this be not, the “gainsaying of Core,” so strongly rebuked by St. Jude (ver. 11).

      Now it was foretold by Isaiah (66:21) that when the Gentiles were brought in, that is in the days of the Church of Christ, some among them should be taken “for priests and for Levites.”  This looks much like a prophecy of a ministry to be established under the Gospel, with some analogy to that under the Law.  Accordingly, our blessed Lord, even during His own personal ministry, whilst the Great High Priest was bodily ministering on earth, appointed two distinct orders of ministers under Himself, first, Apostles (Matt. 10:1), secondly, the seventy disciples (Luke 10:1); and this with evident reference to the twelve tribes of Israel, and the seventy elders among the Jews.  He gave them power to preach the Gospel (Matt. 10:7.  Luke 10:9), to bless those that received them (Matt. 10:12, 13.  Luke 10:5, 6), to denounce God’s judgments on those that rejected them (Matt. 10:14.  Luke 10:10, 11).  He assured them, that he that received them received Him, that he that despised them despised Him (Matt. 10:40.  Luke 10:16).  And He further endued them with miraculous powers because of the peculiar exigencies of their ministration.  Moreover, He promised to give them the keys of the kingdom, that they might bind and loose; i.e. excommunicate offenders and absolve the penitent (Matt. 16:19, 18:18).  All this was whilst He Himself went in and out among them as the chief minister of His own Church.  When He was about to suffer, He instituted one of the Sacraments of His Church and gave especial authority to the Apostles to minister it (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24, 25; compare 1 Cor. 10:16); it being apparent from the statement of St. John that they had before received authority, not only to preach, but to baptize (John 4:2).  At last, when He had risen from the dead, He gave fuller commission to those who were now to be the chief ministers in his kingdom, to go forth with His authority to preach and to baptize (Matt. 28:19).  He said unto them, “Peace be unto you: as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.  And He breathed on them, and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:* whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained” (John 20:21, 22, 23).  He enjoined them to feed His sheep (John 21:15, 17).  Lastly, He promised to be “with them alway, even to the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20).  Then He left the Church, thus organized with Apostles and elders; and ten days afterwards sent down the miraculous, enlightening gifts of the Spirit, the more fully to qualify His chosen ministers for the work which lay upon them.  Acqordingly, the Apostle says, “When He ascended up on high, He gave gifts unto men, ... He gave some (as) Apostles, and some (as) prophets, and some, evangelists, and some, pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the Body of Christ” (Eph. 4:8, 11, 12, &c.).

            {*”The Holy Ghost,” for the work of the ministry, the ordaining influences of the Spirit.  It could not have been the ordinary operations of the Spirit, for they had been long living under them; nor was it the miraculous baptism of the Church with the Holy Ghost, which did not come upon them till the day of Pentecost, Acts 2:1.}

      The ministry so constituted continued to work.  The college of Apostles was perfected by the addition of Matthias (Acts 1:26).  The Apostles preached, baptized, broke bread, (i.e. ministered the Holy Communion) and governed the Church.  Afterwards, believers multiplying, and the Apostles and elders not having leisure to attend to the secular affairs of the Church, they ordained the third order of deacons, whose ordination was performed by laying on of hands; and so they also were then empowered to preach and to baptize (Acts 8:5, 12, 13, 38), though not to perform some functions peculiar to the Apostles (Acts 8:15–17).

      Thenceforward we find baptism, breaking of bread, and preaching, ever performed by regular ministers, Apostles, elders, deacons.  The Apostles, as they go on their missionary journeys, “ordain them elders in every Church” (Acts 14:23).  The “elders” meet with the Apostles in solemn council about the affairs of the Church (Acts 15:2).  When St. Paul takes leave of the Churches, he sends to the “elders” and addresses them with the exhortation, “Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the Church of God which He hath purchased with His own Blood” (Acts 20:17, 28).  We find from the inscriptions of the Epistles that the settled Churches had “bishops and deacons” (Phil. 1:1).  St. Peter exhorts the “elders” of the Church to “feed the flock of God” (1 Pet. 5:1, 2).  St. James bids the sick to send for the “elders of the Church to pray over them” (James 5:14).  St. Paul speaks of himself and other Christian pastors, as “ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1).  He exhorts Archippus to take heed to the ministry, which he had received of the Lord, to fulfill it (Col. 4:17).  Especially, we find in his Epistles to Timothy and Titus that towards the end of his own Apostleship he appointed others, who had previously received the gift of God by the laying on of hands (1 Tim. 4:14.  2 Tim. 1:6), that they might, as the Apostles had hitherto done, “ordain elders in every city” (Tit. 1:5.  1 Tim. 1:3, 5:21, 22, &c).  Directions are given for proving, examining, and commissioning elders, presbyters or bishops, and deacons, which was to be done by the laying on of the hands of those chief ministers, themselves thus apostolically sent.  (See 1 Tim. 3:1–13, 5:21, 22.  Tit. 1:5–7, &c).  The elders so ordained were esteemed worthy of double honour, especially if they ruled well and laboured in the word and doctrine (1 Tim. 5:17).  And the Church is exhorted to obey those whom had thus “the rule over them, and who watched for their souls, as they that must give account” (Heb. 13:17).  Thus we find, that a regular ministry was established, ordained after a set form, by laying on of the hands of Apostles or other chief ministers empowered by them; that they preached and administered the Sacraments; that they were called ministers and stewards of God’s mysteries; that they were urged faithfully to fulfill their ministry, and that the people were urged to attend to them and respect them.  Those who sent them forth were exhorted to be careful and circumspect how they ordained them.

      Now, all this proves that this public office not only existed, but was not to be undertaken except by persons lawfully called and sent.  St. Paul reasons that the Jewish priesthood could not be undertaken except by him “that is called of God, as was Aaron” (Heb. 5:4).  He even adds, that “Christ also glorified not Himself to be made an High Priest” (ver. 5).  But the Gospel ministry was more glorious than that of the Law; “for if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory” (2 Cor. 3:9).  Hence we reasonably should conclude that it too could not be self-assumed.  And we find accordingly that the Apostles ask, “How shall they preach except they be sent?” (Rom. 10:15); that they highly estimate the importance and difficulty of the office, saying, “Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:16); that they dissuade people from rashly seeking to intrude into it (James 3:1); and that, so far from considering all Christians as equally ministers of Christ, they ask, “Are all Apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers?” (1 Cor. 12:29).  On the contrary, they plainly teach us that the Church is a body in which God ordains different stations for different members, some to be eyes, others ears, some hands, others feet; all necessary, all to be honoured, but some in more honourable place than the rest.

      II.  The new Testament contains evidence that, besides the ordinary ministers, namely, presbyters and deacons, there were always certain chief presbyters who were ministers of ordination, having authority to send labourers into the Vineyard.

      Under the Law, besides the ordinary priests and Levites, there was always the high priest, and therefore three orders or degrees of ministry.  When our blessed Lord Himself was upon earth, He ordained two orders of ministers under Himself, the Apostles and the seventy disciples.  Here again was a threefold cord, Christ answering to the high priest, the Apostles to the priests, the seventy to the Levites.  But our Lord was to depart from them; and for the future government of His Church we find a promise that “in the regeneration” (i.e. in the new state of things under the Gospel of Christ, the renovation of the Church) the twelve Apostles should “sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28).  “What are the twelve tribes of Israel, but the whole Church of God?  For whereof did the first Christian Church consist, but of converted Jews?  And whither did our Saviour bend all His allusions, but to them?  They had their twelve princes of the tribes of their fathers (Numb. 1:16).  They had their seventy elders, to bear the burden of the people (Numb. 11:16, 17).  The Son of God affects to imitate His former polity, and therefore chooses His twelve and seventy disciples to sway His evangelical Church. {Bishop Hall’s Episcopacy, Sect. 2.}

      Thus, when the Saviour in body departed from them, He left behind Him twelve Apostles to sit on the thrones or seats of government in the Church, and under them seventy elders to act with them, as their fellow labourers and assessors.  (See Acts 15:22, &c).  Soon after the ascension the Apostles were moved to appoint a third order, the order of deacons.  And thus once more the number was complete, resembling the number of the Aaronic ministry, and embracing, 1, Apostles; 2, elders; 3, deacons.  The former two were appointed and ordained by the Lord, the third was from the Apostles.*

            {*[The statements of this paragraph must, I think, be taken with some modification.  There is no evidence in the New Testament that the seventy of the Gospels became, ipso facto, the presbyters or elders of the Apostolic Church.  That those elders may have been selected from that body is highly probable.  There is patristic authority to prove it.  But the same authority asserts that the seven deacons were also selected from the seventy; a thing which would be inexplicable, had the seventy been made presbyters by our Lord.  (See the passages cited in Archbishop Potter On Church Government, p. 48, Am. ed.)

            What is certain is, that Paul and Barnabas “ordained them elders in every Church” which they founded in their first missionary journey (Acts 14:23); following, herein the example of the mother Church of Jerusalem (Acts 11:30), and furnishing a pattern for all Churches.  The institution of the order is not recorded, as that of deacons is.  Its existence, however, is certain, and so the main argument remains untouched. – J. W.]}

      Whilst the Lord Jesus was present with them, He alone ordained.  (See Matt. 10.  Luke 10.  John 20. &c.)  After His ascension (except in the cases of St. Matthis and St. Paul, who were constituted to the Apostleship by Christ Himself) the Apostles acted as the ministers of ordination.  (See Acts 6:3, 6; 14:23.  2 Tim. 1:6.  Tit. 1:5).  Under them we find continual mention of two orders of ministers, presbyters or elders, (who are also called bishops,) and deacons.  (Acts 20:17.  Phil. 1:1, &c.)  The Apostles in all things undertook the government of, and authority over the Churches, giving directions to the inferior ministers and superintending them.  (See Acts 15, 19:1–5, 20:17–35.  1 Cor. 4:16–21, 5:3–5.  2 Cor. 2:9, 10; 10:1–14; 12:20, 21, &c.)  It is very true that the Apostles speak, when addressing the elders, with brotherly kindness, calling themselves fellow elders (συμπρεσβύτεροι, 1 Pet. 5:1); but no one can question their own superiority to them; and when they are mentioned together, they are distinguished as “the Apostles and elders” – a phrase occurring three times in Acts 15.  But the time was to come, when the Apostles should be taken from the Church, as their Lord had left it before.  Did they then make provision for its government after their departure, and for a succession to themselves, as ministers of ordination?  The Epistles to Timothy and Titus plainly answer this question.  Timothy and Titus had themselves been presbyters, ordained by (2 Tim. 1:6), and companions of St. Paul.  Towards the end of his own ministry, and when his own apostolical cares had largely increased, he appointed them to take the oversight of two large districts, the one of Ephesus (where we know there were several elders or presbyters, Acts 20:17), the other of Crete, famous for its hundred cities.  In these respective districts, he authorized them to execute full apostolical authority, the same kind of authority which he himself had exercised in his own larger sphere of labour.  They were to regulate the public services of the Church (1 Tim. 2:1, 2, &c), – to ordain presbyters and deacons by the laying on their hands (1 Tim. 3:1–14, 5:22.  Tit. 1:5), – to provide that sound doctrine should be taught (1 Tim. 1:3, 3:15, 4:6, 16; 2 Tim. 1:13, 2:14.  Tit. 1:13) – committing carefully to faithful men the office of teaching, which they had themselves received from the Apostles (2 Tim. 2:2), – to execute discipline, honouring the diligent (1 Tim. 5:17) – hearing complaints and judging those complained of (1 Tim. 5:19, 20, 21, 24) – admonishing those that erred (Tit. 1:13), but excommunicating those that were heretical (Tit. 3:10).  All this power is committed to them as a solemn charge to be accounted for before God, and as a commandment to be kept without spot, unrebukable, to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 1:18, 5:21, 6:13.  2 Tim. 4:1); and grace for this ministry is specially said to have been given them by the putting on of the hands of the Apostles (2 Tim. 1:6).

      Now, here is the case of two persons placed in a position previously occupied by none but the Apostles, with special power of jurisdiction and ordination.  Before this, we find no such powers in any but the Apostles.  Now we find them committed to Timothy and Titus.  Is it not plain that, as our Lord left the Apostles with chief authority over His Church, having elders and deacons under them, so now the Apostles, themselves about to depart, leave Timothy and Titus, and others like them, with the same authority which they themselves had received from Christ?

      It is only necessary in order to complete the chain of evidence that we observe what we meet with in the Revelation of St. John.  There, seven great Churches are written to; one of which is the Church of Ephesus, of which we know that there were many elders there, and that afterwards Timothy was appointed as chief minister over them all.  Each of these Churches is addressed through one presiding minister, who is called Angel, a name of the same import as Apostle.  And these angels are compared to stars, placed to give light to the Churches (Rev. 1:20).  Can we doubt then, that there was in each of these Churches one person, whose ministry was superior to the rest, as Timothy’s had been to that of the presbyters and deacons under him?

      The evidence therefore of the new Testament seems clear and uniform that there ever existed three orders of ministers: First, (1) Our Lord, (2) the Apostles, (3) the seventy.  Secondly, (1) the Apostles, (2) the elders, (3) the deacons.  Thirdly, (1) Persons like Timothy and Titus, called angels by St. John, (2) the elders, presbyters, or bishops, (3) the deacons.  Moreover we find that in all these cases ordinations were performed by the first order of these ministers by the laying on of hands; except where our Lord Himself ordained, when He did not lay on His hands, but breathed on His disciples (John 20:22).

      The only arguments of any weight which are urged against the above appear to be the following:

      1.  Bishops and presbyters are in Scripture convertible terms, which shows that their subsequent distinction was an invention of the priesthood.

      The answer to this has been already given in the words of Theodoret.  The second order of ministers, whose general and proper designation was elders or presbyters, are in a few instances called by St. Paul Episeopi, bishops, or overlookers.  The first order were called Apostles, and, by St. John, Angels.  There are obvious reasons why these two latter names should have been afterwards considered too venerable to be given to ordinary ministers; and hence the name bishop, originally used to designate the overlookers of a flock, was afterwards appropriated to those who were overlookers of the pastors.  But the bishops of aftertimes “never thought themselves and their order to succeed the Scripture, Επίσκοποι, but the Scripture Απόστολοι.  They were διάδοχοι των Αποστολων, the successors of the Apostles.” {Bentley, On Freethinking, p. 136, quoted by Wordsworth, Theoph. Anglic.}

      2.  A second argument is that in Acts 13:1–3 Barnabas and Saul are said to have been ordained by some who were not Apostles.

      This was no ordination, but merely a setting apart for a special labour; which was done, according to the pious custom of early days, with fasting, prayer, and imposition of hands.  (Comp. Acts 14:23.)  That it was no ordination appears from the fact that St. Paul was made an Apostle by our Lord, at the very time of his conversion.  See Acts 26:17, where our Lord constitutes him an Apostle to the Gentiles.  The words are, εις ους νυν σε αποστέλλω.  And St. Paul himself always declares that he had his ministry “not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father” (Gal. 1:1).

      3.  It is said again, Timothy was ordained “with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery” (1 Tim. 4:14).

      It is certain, however, that bishops and presbyters are not so different, but that a bishop is still a presbyter, though all presbyters are not bishops.  So Apostles were still presbyters, (1 Pet. 5:1); though all presbyters were not Apostles.  Hence, the presbytery may have in this case consisted only of those of the first order.  At all events, St. Paul took part in Timothy’s ordination, for in 2 Tim. 2:6 he speaks of the grace of ordination as given to Timothy, “by the putting on of his (St. Paul’s) hands.”  Hence, Timothy was certainly not ordained by presbyters only, without the presence, and laying on of hands of an Apostle.  It may have been thus early permitted to presbyters to join with Apostles in laying on of their hands at the ordinations of other presbyters, as it has since been in the Western Church; but this at least gives no sanction to mere presbyterian ordination.

      We must conclude then with Hooker, “If anything in the Church’s government, surely the first institution of bishops was from Heaven, even of God.” {Hooker,VII. V. 10.}  And with Bp. Hall, “What inevitable necessity may do, we now dispute not,” yet “for the main substance,” episcopacy “is utterly indispensable, and must so continue to the world’s end.” {Bp. Hall’s Episcopacy, Pt. II. Sect. 22.}

Article  XXIV

Of speaking in the Congregation in such a tongue as the people understandeth.

      It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the Primitive Church to have Publick Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.

De loquendo in Ecclesia lingua quam populos intelligit.

      Lingua populo non intellecta, publicas in Ecclesia preces peragere, aut Sacramenta administrare, Verbo Dei, et primitivae Ecclesiae consuetudini plane repugnat.

Section  I – History

      The Article itself appeals to the custom of the primitive Church.  The testimony of the fathers we must naturally expect to find only incidentally; for unless the custom of praying in a strange tongue had prevailed in early times, the idea would probably never have occurred to them, and so they would not be likely to say anything against it.  There are however several important proofs to be found that such a custom did not prevail, but that prayers were offered up in the churches in the vernacular tongue.

      Greek, Latin, and Syriac were languages spoken by the great bulk of the nations first converted to Christianity; and therefore the earliest liturgies and translations of the Scriptures were sure to be in these tongues.  But moreover, the Egyptians, Ethiopians or Abyssinians, Muscovites, Armenians and others, had liturgies in the vernacular. {See Usher, Historia Dogmatica de Scripturis et Sacris Vernaculis, cap. VIII. sect. V, where he proves this from the confession of eminent Romanist divines.}

      The sacred Scriptures were early rendered into the tongues of the nations which had been converted to the faith.  Even before the coming of Christ, we know that the Scriptures were translated into Greek for the Alexandrian Jews, and into Chaldee for the Jews of Palestine to whom their original Hebrew had become obsolete.  Under the Gospel the Syriac translation of the new Testament is by many ascribed to the age of the Apostles; at all events, it is a very early work.  Latin versions were scarcely, if at all, posterior to the Syriac.  Thus the numerous tribes which spoke Greek, Latin, or Syriac, had from the beginning the Scriptures, as well as the common Prayer of the Church, in languages understood by them.  Moreover, there were very early versions into the Coptic, Sahidic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Armenian, Gothic, Sclavonic, and Anglo-Saxon; a fact too well known to require proof. {See Bingham, E. A. Bk XIII. ch. IV. § 5; Horne, Introduction to Scriptures, II. pt. I. ch. II.}

      Again, we have evidence from the writings of the fathers, that the custom of the primitive Christians was that the whole congregation should join in the responses and in the singing of psalms and hymns; a custom which proves that both the psalms and the liturgies must have been in intelligible dialects. {See Usher, as above, cap. VIII. sect. IV; Bingham, E. A. Bk. XIII. ch. IV. sect. II.}  For instance, St. Cyril writes, “When the priest says, “Lift up your hearts,” the people answer, “We lift them up unto the Lord”; then the priest says, “Let us give thanks unto the Lord,” and the people say, “It is meet and right.” {Catech. Mystagog. V.}  St. Chrysostom says, that “Though all utter the response, yet the voice is wafted as from one mouth.” {Homil. in 1 Cor. xiv; Homil. XXXVI. juxta fin.}  And St. Hilary speaks of people standing without the Church, and yet able to hear the voice of the congregation within, offering up prayer and praise. {“Audiat orantis populi, consistens quis extra ecclesiam, vocem; spectet celebres hymnorum sonitus; et inter divinorum quoque sacramentorum officia responsionem devotae confessionis accipiat.” – Hilar.  In Psalm. lxv; Usher, ubi supra.}  So the emperor Justinian in one of his laws especially enjoins bishops and presbyters in public prayers and Sacraments to speak, not secretly, but with such a voice as may be well heard by the people. {Justinian, Novell. 137.  See Usher, as above.}

      But, beyond all this, we have plain testimonies of the fathers that both the Scriptures were read and the prayers offered in a tongue intelligible to the assembled multitude.  Justin Martyr says that among the early Christians, “the commentaries of the Apostles and writings of the prophets were first read; and then, when the reader had ceased, the president made an oration exhorting the people to remember and imitate the things which they had heard.” {Apolog. I. p. 98.}  Such an exhortation would have been useless if the language in which the writings of the Prophets and Apostles were read had not been a language familiar to the congregation.  There is a well-known passage in Origen, {Origen.  C. Celsum, VIII. 87.} where he asserts, that, “the Greeks used Greek in their prayers, the Romans Latin, and so every one in his own language prays to God, and gives thanks, as he is able: and the God of all languages hears them that pray in all dialects, even as if all spake with but one voice.”  From Jerome we learn that sometimes more than one language was used in the same service, because of the presence of men from different nations.  He says that “at the funeral of Paula, the Psalms were sung in Grenk, Latin, and Syriac, because men of each of those languages were there.” {Hieron. Ad Eustochium, Epitaphium Paulae Matris, juxta fin.  Tom. IV. Part II. p. 687.}  Indeed, eminent schoolmen and Roman Catholic divines, as Lyra, Thomas Aquinas and Harding, have fully allowed that in the primitive Church prayers were offered up in the vulgar tongue, that the people might be the better instructed. {Lyra, in 1 Cor. 14:17; Aquinas In 1 Cor. xiv. Vol. XVI. fol. 84; Harding, Contra Juellum Art. 3, sect 28.  See Usher, as above; Jer. Taylor, Dissuasive, pt.  I. ch. I. sect. 7; Bingham, Bk. XIII, ch. IV.}

      The way in which the use of a dead language for public worship came in is pretty obvious.  The Romans, as masters of the western world, strove to impose their own language on their colonial subjects.  Thus the common tongue of Europe was Latin.  The ecclesiastics were in constant connection with Rome, the centre of civilization, the chief city of Christian Europe.  Thus the language most generally understood became too the language of liturgical worship.  By degrees, out of the ancient Latin grew the French, the Italian, the Spanish, and other dialects.  Still the old Latin liturgies were preserved, and for a long time were with no great difficulty understood.  By this time the clergy throughout the western Church had become still more closely united to Rome.  More too of mystery had grown over men’s minds with regard to the Church’s sacred ordinances.  Hence all things conspired to make the clergy willing to leave in the language of the central city the prayers of the distant provinces.  And thus the change, which became needful when men’s languages had changed, was never effected.  A feeling too that, as the Church was one and yet universal, so there should be but one universal tongue in which her prayers and praises should go up to God, lent a colouring of piety and poetry to the old custom of having Latin liturgies.  And so till the Reformation no efficient attempt was made to reform what many must have deemed an error, and to make the worship of God, to people as well as priests, a reasonable service.

      When this question came to be discussed in the Council of Trent, it was forbidden by an anathema to say that the mass should not be celebrated in any but the vulgar tongue, or the consecration not performed in a low voice. {Sess. XXII. Can. 9.  See also Sarpi, Hist. of the Council of Trent. p. 540.}  And though in modern times some prayers are offered in the churches of the Roman communion in tongues understood of the people, yet the mass is never celebrated except in Latin, both to avoid profanation, and lest the very words which are supposed to have been used from the beginning should lose any of their force or sacredness by translation.

Section  II – Scriptural Proof

      It is not likely that there should be very much said in Scripture on this subject.  The Bible seldom suggests, even to condemn, errors into which men had never fallen.  Certainly, however, we can find no trace among the Jews of the use of prayers in an unknown tongue, nor yet among the Apostolic Christians.

      The only case in point appears to be that of the exercise of the gift of tongues among the Corinthian Christians.  The purpose for which that miraculous power was conferred was evidently that the Gospel might be preached by unlearned men to all nations, peoples, and languages.  Some of the Corinthian converts, having received the gift by the laying on of the hands of the Apostles, used it to ostentation, not to edification, speaking in the congregations in languages not understood by those who were present.  St. Paul rebukes this in the 14th chapter of his first Epistle, and there incidentally shows that prayer in a tongue not intelligible to the congregation is contrary to the due order of the Church and the will of God.  This is especially observable in verses 14–17: “If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful.  What is it then?  I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also; I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.  Else, when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing that he understandeth not what thou sayest?”  So again ver. 19: “In the Church I had rather speak five words with my understanding that by my voice I might teach others, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.”  And ver. 28: “If there be no interpreter, let him” (i.e. the person who can speak only in a tongue unknown to the hearers) “keep silence in the Church, and let him speak to himself and to God.”

      All these arguments seem as clearly against having liturgies in a dead language as against the custom which had grown up in the Church of Corinth of using the gift of tongues when there was none to interpret them.  Prayer is to be with the understanding, not with the spirit only.  Prayer and thanksgiving are not to be offered publicly in words, to which the unlearned cannot say Amen.  A man may pray in such words in private to God, but not publicly in the Church.  The reason assigned is, “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints” (ver. 33).  And the general rule laid down is, “Let all things be done to edifying” (ver. 26).

      No arguments from expediency seem fit to be set against such decisions of the Apostles.  Now the only arguments of any weight for retaining Latin in the Liturgies are arguments from expediency.  For instance, it is said, Latin is a general language, and so, well for the whole Church to use.  But it is more true to say that it is generally unknown than that it is generally known; for it is only the learned in all lands that understand it; the masses of the people (who have souls to be saved as well as the more instructed) do not understand it anywhere.  It is said that the holy services are kept from profanation by being veiled in the mystery of a difficult tongue.  But it is surely more profanation when people mutter sacred things or listen to them being muttered without understanding them than when they reverently and intelligently join with heart and mind in solemnizing them.  It is said again, that the use of the dead language fixes and preserves the sacred services, so that words used from Apostolic times are still used by the Church,and the mass is celebrated in the same syllables in which it was said by the primitive bishops.  This, if extended to the whole service of the mass, is not strictly true; for the Roman missal does not actually agree with the various primitive liturgies, which primitive liturgies have considerable varieties among themselves.  If the statement be confined to the very words of consecration; then surely we ought to use, not Latin, but Greek, in which these words are to be found in the new Testament.  If these be any virtue in the very words themselves, we are no nearer the original, if we say, Hoc est Corpus Meum, than if we say, This is My Body.

      In short, the custom of having prayers in an unknown tongue appears to have originated in a kind of accident, but to have been perpetuated by design.  It originated in the Latin becoming obsolete in Europe, and the prayers not being translated as the various European dialects grew up.  It was then found to be a means of keeping up mystery, and so priestly power; and therefore it was preserved.  But it is evidently without authority from Scripture, or from the primitive Church.

Article  XXV

Of the Sacraments.

      Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God’s good will towards us, by the which He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our Faith in Him.

      There are two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel, that is to say, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord.

      Those five commonly called Sacraments, that is to say, Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and extreme Unction, are not to be counted for sacraments of the Gospel, being such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the Apostles, partly are states of life allowed in the Scriptures, but yet have not like nature of Sacraments with Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, for that they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God.

      The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them.  And in such only as worthily receive the same they have a wholesome effect or operation: but they that receive them unworthily, purchase to themselves damnation, as St. Paul saith.

De Sacramentis.

      Sacramenta a Christo instituta, non tantum sunt notae professionis Christianorum, sed certa quaedam potius testimonia, et efficacia signa gratiae atque bonae in nos voluntatis Dei, per quae invisibiliter Ipse in nos operatur, nostramque fidem in se non solum excitat, verum etiam confirmat.

      Duo a Christi, Domino nostro in Evangelio instituta sunt sacramenta, scilicet, Baptismus et Coena Domini.

      Quinque illa vulgo norninata Sacramenta; scilicet, Confirmatio, poenitentia, ordo, matrimonium, et extrema unctio, pro sacramentis evangelicis habenda non sunt, ut quae partim a prava apostolorum imitatione profluxerunt, partim vitae status sunt in scripturis quidem probati, sed sacramentorurn eandem cum Baptismo et Coena Domini rationem non habentes, ut quae signum aliquod visibile, ceu caeremoniam a Deo institutam non habeant.

      Sacramenta non in hoc instituta sunt a Christo, ut spectarentur aut circumferrentur; sed ut rite illis uteremur, et in his duntaxat, qui digne percipiunt, salutarem habent effectum: Qui vero indigne percipiunt, damnationem (ut inquit Paulus) sibi ipsis acquirunt.

      The main substance of this Article is taken from the XIIIth Article of the Confession of Augsburg, the very words of which are adopted in the first part of it. {“De usu Sacramentorum docent; quod Sacramenta instituta sint, non modo ut sint notae; professionis inter homines, sed magis ut sint signa et testimonia voluntatis Dei erga nos, ad excitandant et confirmandam fidem in his qui utuntur ... proposita, &c.” – Confess. August. Art. XIII.}  The Articles agreed on between the Anglican and Lutheran reformers in 1538 had one Article (the IXth) to the same purport; though that went on to speak of Infant Baptism. { Cranmer’s Works by Jenkyns, IV; Appendix, p. 285.}  The XXVIth Article of 1552 contained nearly the same statements as the present XXVth; but had no reference to the seven Sacraments.  It asserted that the wholesome effect of the Sacraments was not ex opere operato, “of work wrought.”  Moreover, there was the following sentence in it by way of introduction, which is almost in the words of St. Augustine: “Our Lord Jesus Christ hath knit together a company of new people with the Sacraments, most few in number, most easy to be kept, most excellent in signification, as is Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.” {The words of St. Augustine are: “Sacramentis numero paucissimis, observatione facillimis, significatione praestantissimis, societatem novi populi colligavit, sicuti est Baptismus Trinitatis nomine consecratus, communicatio Corporis et Sanguinis Ipsius; et si quid aliud in Scripturis Canonicis commendatur.” – Epistol. 54, Op. Tom. II. p. 124.  He uses nearly the same words, De Doct. Christ. Lib. III. C. 9, Tom. III. pars I. p. 49.}

      We may divide the Article, as it now stands, into four heads.

      I.  Concerning the number of the Sacraments of the Gospel.

      II.  Concerning their efficacy.

      III.  Concerning their proper use.

      IV.  Concerning their worthy reception.

      The whole Article is introductory to the six next in order after it, and is rather concerned with definitions than aught else.  And as such I purpose to consider it.

      I.  The word Sacrament (Sacramentum) is an ecclesiastical, rather than a Scriptural term.  It is used indeed in the Latin translations for the Greek word μυστήριον, mystery.  Yet the technical use of both these terms in the Christian Church is rather patristic than Apostolical.  The original meaning of the word Sacramentum was (1) anything sacred, hence (2) a sacred deposit, a pledge, and (3) most commonly, an oath, especially the military oath, which soldiers took to be faithful to their country and obey the orders of their general.  Whether the first or the last and ordinary sense of the word was the origin of the ecclesiastical usage of it may be a question.

      The earliest application of the term to anything Christian is to be found in the well-known letter of Pliny the younger to the emperor Trajan; in which he speaks of the Christians as wont to meet together on a certain fixed day, before sunrise, when they chanted hymns to Christ as to God and bound themselves by a Sacrament not to commit any sort of wickedness. {“Adfirmabant autem, hanc fuisse summam vel culpae suae, vel erroris, quod essent soliti, stato die, ante lucem convenire, carmenque Christo quasi Deo dicere secum invicem; segue Sacramento non in scelus aliquod obstringere, sed ne furta, ne latrocinia, ne adulteria committerent, ne fidem fallerent, ne depositum appellati abnegarent.” – Plin. Epist. 97.}  It is possible, that the word Sacrament here meant simply an oath.  Yet since Pliny reported it, as the Christians had told it to him, it is probable enough that he used the very word which he had heard from them, and that they used it in the Christian and technical sense, howsoever Pliny may have understood it.  It is generally supposed that its application in this passage was to the Supper of the Lord. {See Waterland, On the Eucharist, ch. I.}

      In Tertullian, the earliest of the Latin fathers, we find the notion of the military oath applied to the Christian’s baptismal vow to serve faithfully under the banner of the cross.  “We were called to the warfare of the living God, when we made answer according to the words of the Sacrament (in Sacramenti verba respondimus).  No soldier goes to war with luxuries,” {Ad Mart. 3; conf. De Spectaculis, 24; De Corona, 13; De Idololatria, 6, &c.  Cf. Hieronym. Epist. I. ad Heliodorum: “Recordare tyrocinii tui diem, quo Christo in baptismate consepultus, in sacramenti verba jurasti.” – On the Baptismal Profession, see Bingham, XI. vii. 6.} &c.

      This, however, is an exception to the rule.  The commoner use of the word is either for a sacred rite in general, an outward sign of some more hidden reality – or else for certain particular, more exalted rites of the Gospel and the Church.  It has, in short, a more extended and a more restricted force.  In its more extended sense it signified little more than a religious ordinance or a sacred sign.  Thus Tertullian, speaking of the charges of infanticide brought by the heathens against the Christians, says that Christians were charged with “the Sacrament of infanticide”.  {“Dicimur sceleratissimi, de sacramento infanticidii.” – Apolog. 7.}  He calls our Lord’s anointing by the Holy Ghost, Sacramentum unctionis. {Adv. Praxeam, 28; see Bp. Kaye, Tertullian, p. 358.}  St. Cyprian speaks of the many Sacraments contained in the Lord’s Prayer. {“Qualia autem sunt, fratres dilectissimi, orationis Dominicae sacramenta, quam multa, quam magna breviter in sermone collecta.” – Cypr.  De Oratione Dominica, T. 142.  Oxford, 1682.}  He calls the three hours of prayer “a Sacrament of the Trinity.” {“Horam tertiam, sextam, nonam, sacramento scilicet Trinitatis.” – Ibid. E. 154.}  He says, the manna was “a Sacrament of the equality with which Christ diffuses His gifts of light and grace upon His Church; and that the Red Sea was a Sacrament (i.e. a divinely ordained figure) of baptism.” {Ibid.  Epistol. 69, at. 76, E. 187.}  Accordingly, we hear some of the ancients speaking of the two great ordinances of Baptism and the Eucharist, not as each but one Sacrament, but as each containing two Sacraments.  In Baptism the two Sacraments were the water and the chrism which was anciently used after it.*  In the Eucharist, the two Sacraments were the bread and the wine.  Thus St. Cyprian twice speaks of regeneration as to be obtained by the reception of both Sacraments; where the context shows that the two Sacraments mean the washing of water and the imposition of hands, considered as parts of the one ordinance of Baptism. {“Tunc demum plene sanctificari, et esse Filii Dei possunt, si sacramento utroque nascantur,” &c. – Epist. LXXII. E. 196, Cf. Ep. LXXIII. p. 207.  See also Bingham, XII. i. 4.}  And so Isidore speaks of four great Sacraments, namely, Baptism and Chrism, the Body and the Blood of Christ. {“Sunt autem sacramenta, baptismus et chrisma; corpus et sanguis Christi.” – Isidor. Origin. Lib. VI. C. XIX. apud Bingham, ubi supra.}

            {*Immediately after baptism in the early ages followed the unction or chrism, and confirmation, or the laying on of hands.  So Tertullian: “Exinde egressi de lavacro perungimur benedicta unctione.” – De Baptismo, 7.  “Dehinc manus imponitur, per benedictionem invocans, et invitans Spiritum Sanctum.” – C. 8.  Confirmation was anciently considered part of baptism, and followed on it immediately.  See Bingham, XII. 3; Suicer, s. v. χρίσμα, II. 1534; έλαιον, I. 1077; and Hooker, Bk. V. ch. 66.

            Confirmation was sometimes delayed from the difficulty of obtaining the presence of a bishop at the time of baptism; but unction seems to have been always administered with baptism.  “Ungi quoque necesse est eum, qui baptizatus sit, ut accepto Chrismate, id est, unctione, esse unctus Dei, et habere in se gratiam Christi possit.” – Cypr.  Epist. LXX.  E. 190.

            The custom of anointing after baptism was retained by our reformers in the first Service Book, though omitted in the second.  The following was the form prescribed.  “Then the priest shall anoint the infant upon the head, saying, Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath regenerate thee by water and the Holy Ghost, and hath given thee remission of all thy sins, He vouchsafe to anoint thee with the unction of His Holy Spirit, and bring thee to the inheritance of everlasting life.  Amen.” – Two Liturgies of Edw. VI.  Oxf. 1838, p. 334.

            Confirmation was not considered essential to the receiving of the Holy Ghost in baptism, but was “only a sacramental complement.” – See Hooker, V. ch. LXVI. § 6, and St. Jerome, as cited there.}

      The use of the term Sacrament then was very different among the fathers from its ordinary use amongst us.  Yet therewas with them also a more restricted use of the term; and there is abundant proof that the two great Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist were markedly separated from, and preferred before, all other sacraments or ordinances.  It is observed that Justin Martyr in his first apology, (see pp. 93, 97,) when giving an account of the Christian religion and of its rites, mentions only Baptism and the Supper of the Lord.  Tertullian uses the word Sacramentum with the common laxity of the early writers, yet he specially applies it to Baptism, which he calls Sacramentum Fidei, {De Anima, I.} Aquae, {De Baptismo, I, 12.} Lavacri, {De Virgin. Veland. 2.} and to the Eucharist, which he calls Sacramentum Eucharistiae. {De Corona, 3.}  He does not seem to have applied it to any of the five Romish Sacraments, except to marriage, concerning which he specially alludes to the Latin translation of Eph. 5:32, where μέγα μυστήριον is rendered magnum Sacramentum. {De Jejuniis, 3.  See Bishop Kaye’s Tertullian, p. 358.}  The same is the case with the later Latin fathers.  St. Augustine, when contrasting the Sacraments of the Law with those of the Gospel, speaks of the former as many, but the latter as very few, and then enumerates only Baptism and the Communion: in one passage adding, “and if there be any other commended to us in the Canonical Scriptures”: but in another, instancing only Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. {In the one passage, Epist. 64, given above, he says: “Sicuti est baptismus Trinitatis nomine consecratus, communicatio corporis et sanguinis ipsius, et si quid aliud in Scripturis Canonicis commendatur.”  In the other passage, De Doctrina Christiana, Lib. III. C. 9, he says simply: “Sicuti est baptismus et celebratio Corporis et Sanguinis Domini.”}  In like manner, speaking of Adam and Eve as types of Christ and the Church, he says that “As from the side of Adam when sleeping sprang Eve, so from the side of Christ sleeping on the Cross flowed the Sacraments of the Church” (Sacramenta Ecclesiae profluxerunt), i.e. the two Sacraments typified by the water and the blood. {In Johann. Evang. cap. IV. tract. XV. Tom. III. pars 2, p. 409.}  Elsewhere he says, “The water and the blood which flowed from the side were the twin Sacraments of the Church (Ecclesiae gemina Sacramenta), the water in which the bride is purified, the blood with which she is endowed.” {“Percussum est enim latus Ejus, ut evangelium loquitur, et statim manavit sanguis et aqua, quae sunt Ecclesiae gemina sacramenta; aqua ex qua est sponsa purificata, sanguis ex quo invenitur esse dotata.” – De Symb. ad Catech. 15, Tom. VI. p. 562.  This latter book is not certainly Augustine’s; though the Benedictine editors consider this genuine, and the three tracts which follow it spurious.  The like sentiments occur often St. Augustine.  See Serm. CCXIX. C. 14; In Vigiliis Paschae, quoted under Art. XIX. Sect. I.}

      The same thing is observable among the Greeks.  Though they use the word mystery, as the Latins do Sacrament, for any sacred sign; yet baptism and the Eucharist are markedly distinguished from all other ordinances.  Ignatius speaks of them as the two rites which may not be celebrated without the bishop’s authority. {Smyrn. VIII.}  St. Cyril couples “the holy mysteries of baptism,” and the “spiritual and heavenly mysteries” “of the Holy Altar,” as those things for which the catechumens were trained. { Cateches. XVIII. 14.    }  St. Chrysostom joins together Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as the two ordinances necessary to salvation.  “If none can enter into the kingdom of Heaven except he be born again of water and the Spirit, and if he who eateth not the Flesh of the Lord nor drinketh His blood is cast out of life eternal, and if these things are performed by the hands of the priests,” {De Sacerdot. III.} &c.  So he speaks, almost in the same terms with St. Augustine, of the blood and water from our Saviour’s side as typifying the two mysteries or Sacraments by which the Church is constituted. {εξηλθε δη γαρ ύδωρ και αιμα.  ουκ απλως, ουδε ως έτυχεν, αυται εξηλθον αι πηγαί·  αλλ επειδη εξ αμφοτέρων τούτων η εκκλησία συνέστηκε·  και ίσασιν οι μυσταγωγούμενοι δι ύδατος μεν αναγεννώμενοι, δι αίματος δε και σαρκος τρεφόμενοι.  εντευθεν αρχην λαμβάνει τα μυστήρια.  Homil. in Johann. 85, Tom. II. p. 915.  Elsewhere he speaks of the blood and water being εις τύπον των μυστηρίων, for a type of the Sacraments. – Tom. V.  Homil. CXVIII.}  In which expressions he is followed, nearly word for word, by Theophylact. {Ουχ απλως ταυτα γίνεται,  αλλ επει τη εκκλησία η ζωη δια τούτων των δύο γίνεται και συνίσταται, δι ύδατος μεν γεννάμεθα, δι αίματος και σώματος τρεφόμεθα.  Theophyl.  In Johannis, cap. XIX.  See Suicer, s. v. μυστηριον.}

      With whatever latitude therefore the word mystery and Sacrament are used in their general acceptation by the fathers, there is still a higher and more special signification in which they are applied to the two great ordinances of the Gospel instituted by Christ Him self. {It should be added that both mystery and Sacrament were κατ εξοχην applied to the Eucharist.  See Suicer, as above, and Waterland, On the Eucharist, ch. I.}

      As for the number seven insisted on by the Church of Rome, we cannot find it in the writings of the fathers.  Peter Lombard is said to have first devised it in the twelfth century, and from him it was adopted generally by the Schoolmen. {Lombard Sentent. Liv. IV. dist. II. § I.}  It was laid down with authority in a decree to the Armenians, sent from the Council of Florence 1439, which runs only in the name of Pope Eugenius. {Decret. Evgen. Papae IV. ad Armenos ap. Labb. Concil. Tom. XIII. p. 534.}  It was then confirmed by the provincial Council of Sens, otherwise called the Council of Paris, A. D. 1528; {Can. X; Labb. Concil. Tom. XIV. p. 454.} after that, by the Council of Trent, A. D. 1547. {Sess. VII. Can. I.  See Archbishop Bramhall, Answer to M. De la Milletiere, Bramhall’s Works, I. p. 55.  Oxf. 1842.}  It finally stands as part of the Creed of Pope Pius IV. {See Sylloge Confessionum, p. 4.}

      The confessions of all the reformed Churches speak of but two Sacraments of the Gospel. {See Luther’s Catechismus Major, Opera, Tom. V. p. 636; Sylloge Confessionum, pp. 75, 127, 277, 349, 376.}  In England, the Articles about Religion and the Necessary Doctrine, put forth in Henry VIIIth’s reign, in 1536 and 1543 respectively, retain the notion of seven Sacraments.  Even the first book of Homilies, A. D. 1547, speaks of “the Sacrament of matrimony,” and that immediately after speaking of the “Sacrament of baptism”.  {First Part of the Sermon of Swearing.}  Cranmer’s Catechism speaks of three Sacraments as instituted by Christ, baptism, absolution, the Lord’s Supper. {Cranmer’s Catechism, p. 183.  On the effect of Absolution, see p. 202.}  But the final judgment of the reformed Church of England appears first in this Article; secondly, in the language of the Catechism where Sacraments are defined as outward signs of inward grace, “ordained by Christ Himself,” and are said to be “two only as generally necessary to salvation”; and thirdly, in the second book of Homilies the words of which are so much to the purpose that we may well refer to them here: “As for the number of them, if they should be considered according to the exact signification of a Sacrament, namely, for the visible signs, expressly commanded in the New Testament, whereunto is annexed the promise of free forgiveness of our sins, and of our holiness and joining in Christ, there be but two: namely, baptism and the Supper of the Lord.  For, although absolution hath the promise of forgiveness of sin; yet by the express word of the new Testament it hath not this promise annexed and tied to the visible sign, which is imposition of hands.  For this visible sign (I mean laying on of hands) is not expressly commanded in the new Testament to be used in absolution, as the visible signs in baptism and the Lord’s Supper are: and therefore absolution is no such Sacrament as baptism and the communion are.  And though the ordering of ministers hath His visible sign and promise, yet it lacks the promise of remission of sins, as all other Sacraments except the two above-named do.  Therefore neither it, nor any other Sacrament else, be such Sacraments as Baptism and the Communion are.  But in general acceptation the name of a Sacrament may be attributed to anything, whereby an holy thing is signified.  In which understanding of the word the ancient writers have given this name, not only to the other five, commonly of late years taken and used for supplying the number of the seven Sacraments; but also to divers and sundry other ceremonies, as to oil, washing of feet, and such like; not meaning thereby to repute them as Sacraments in the same signification that the two fore-named Sacraments are.  Dionysius, Bernard, de Coena Domini, et Ablut. pedum.” {Homily on Common Prayer and Sacraments.}

      In this passage we see clearly our own Church’s definition of a Sacrament, and the points of difference between ourselves and the Romish divines.  The Homily defines a Sacrament of the Gospel to be “a visible sign expressly commended to us in the new Testament, whereunto is annexed the promise of free forgiveness of our sins and of our holiness and joining in Christ.”  This closely corresponds with the words of the Catechism: “An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us, ordained by Christ Himself, as a means whereby we receive the same” spiritual grace, “and a pledge to assure us thereof.”  And again, the definition of this XXVth Article is of similar significance: “Sacraments ordained of Christ be ... certain sure witnesses, and effectual (efficacia) signs of grace and God’s goodwill towards us by the which He doth work invisibly in us.”

      Now this definition does not exclude matrimony, confirmation, absolution, and orders, from being in some sense Sacraments; but it excludes them from being “such Sacraments as baptism and the Communion.”  No other ordinances but baptism and Communion have an express sign ordained by Christ Himself, and annexed thereto the promise of free forgiveness of sins,” and “of inward and spiritual grace given to us.”  Therefore these have clearly a preeminence over all other ordinances, and may therefore κατ εξοχην be called Sacraments of the Gospel ; being also the only ordinances which are “ generally necessary to salvation.”

      It seems hardly needful to enter on a full consideration of each of the five Romish Sacraments here.  Four out of the five the Church of England admits, at least in a modified form.  This Article declares them to be “such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the Apostles, partly to be states of life allowed in the Scriptures.”  Matrimony is especially to be called a “state of life allowed in the Scriptures”.  It is possible, that orders and confirmation may be so called also.  Yet orders, confirmation, and penance or absolution, as the Roman Church administers them, are mixed with some superstitious ceremonies.  Hence perhaps they, as well as extreme unction, may be considered in the Article, to have “grown” (in their Roman Catholic or mediaeval form) “of the corrupt following of the Apostles.”

      1.  Confirmation in the primitive Church followed immediately on baptism, and as above noted was made ordinarily a part of baptism.  Tertullian and Cyril of Jerusalem both speak of the catechumens as first receiving baptism, and then immediately on their coming out of the water, receiving chrism and imposition of hands. {Tertullian, De Baptismo, 7, 8, quoted above.  Cyril.  Catech. Myst. III. 1. Υμιν ομοιως αναβεβηκόσιν απο της κολυμβήθρας των ιερων ναμάτων εδόθη χοίσμα – See Bingham, XII. i. 1; Suicer, s. vv. σφραγίς [? printer’s ink imprecise], χρίσμα.}  The separation of confirmation from baptism arose sometimes from the difficulty of obtaining the presence of a bishop, sometimes from the reconciling of heretics who were confirmed but not rebaptized, and latterly from the deferring the confirmation of infants; it being thought good that though baptized they should delay their confirmation till they were trained and seasoned for serving as soldiers in the army of Christ. {See Hooker, Bk. V. lxvi. 7.}  The result has been that after the first ages confirmation became a separate rite from baptism, and we still continue it as such, believing that so it is more fit for edifying.

      2.  Ordination we esteem, scarcely less than does the Church of Rome, as an appointment of Christ Himself.  We believe that God gives grace for the office of the ministry to those who receive it aright.  We observe that though our Lord commanded no particular sign, yet the Apostles always used the laying on of hands.  But with regard to the inward grace, we read not that forgiveness of sins or personal sanctification were promised to its right reception, but rather the Holy Ghost for the work of the ministry.  Therefore, although we retain it as essential for the maintenance of a rightly constituted ministry in the Church, yet we place it not on a par with the two Sacraments of baptism and Communion: which are the means of obtaining and increasing spiritual life to our souls, and of binding together the company of God’s people in one. {“In nullum nomen religionis sive verae sive falsae coagulari homines possunt, nisi aliquo signaculorurn vel sacramentorum visibilium consortio colligantur.” – August. C. Foustum, XIX. 11.  See Wordsworth, Theophil. Anglic. ch. VIII.}

      3.  Matrimony is not so much a Sacrament of the Gospel as “an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency”; it is neither a badge, “by which Christian men are discerned from others, which be not christened”; nor is it a means whereby pardon of sins and inward sanctification are conveyed to us by the Spirit of God.  Hence again, though like other sacred ceremonies it may be called a Sacrament and anciently was so called, it comes not under our definition of a Sacrament of the Gospel.  In the Epistle to the Ephesians (v. 32), St. Paul does indeed say concerning it, “This is a great mystery”; or rather (Το μυστήριον τουτο μέγα εστίν), “This mystery is great.”  The Latins have translated his words magnum est Sacramentum; and so it has been argued that matrimony is specially called a Sacrament.  It is plain, however, that St. Paul’s meaning is merely this.  The marriage of Adam and Eve (and indeed marriage in the general) was esteemed by the Jews, and is constantly spoken of in the new Testament, as a figure, type or mystery of the union and marriage betwixt Christ and his Church.  The fathers all seem to understand it so.  Tertullian says that Adam’s calling Eve “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh” was a great Sacrament concerning Christ and His Church. {“Nam etsi Adam statim prophetavit, magnum illud sacramentum in Christum et Ecclesiam: Hoc nunc os ex ossibus meis,” &c. – De Anima, c. 11.  See also De Exhort. Castitat. c. 5.}  St. Chrysostom understands it that marriage was an allegory of Christ’s union to His Bride, the Church.  “That it was something great and wonderful, Moses, or rather God, intimated.  For the present, however, saith he, I speak concerning Christ, both that He left the Father, and came down, came to the Bride, and became one Spirit.  For he that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit.  And he says well, It is a great mystery.  And then as though he were to say, nevertheless the allegory does not destroy affection, he adds, Let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself.” {Chrysost.  In Ephes. 5:32, Homil. XX.}  So too Theodoret and Theophylact {Theodoret and Theophylact, ad hunc locum.  See Suicer, s. v. μυστήριον.  See also Hammond and Whitby On Ephes. 5:33.  Macknight has an excellent note on the passage.} explain it, namely, that the Apostle speaks of marriage as a mystery or allegory of Christ and the Church.

      4.  Penance in the Church of Rome consists of three parts: confession, absolution, and satisfaction.  The origin of it was in the early penitential discipline of the Church.  In the primitive ages when baptized Christians had committed grievous sins, they were placed for a time in the position of penitents.  Their discipline consisted of three parts: namely, 1, confession; 2, separation from the Church; 3, absolution.

      At first it appears that confession was made publicly by the offender in the face of the Church, and was probably an humble acknowledgment of sins which already had given offence to the company of believers. {See Tertullian, De Poenitentia, C. 9, 10; Augustin. Homil. XLIX. 3, Tom. V. p. 1054.}  Yet very early it was commended to penitents to seek out for themselves a wise spiritual adviser to whom they should confide their more secret offences that, if he judged it expedient, such offences might afterwards be confessed in the face of the congregation. {So Origen: “Tantummodo circumspice diligentius cui debeas confiteri peccatum tuum .. Si intellexerit et praeviderit talem esse languorem tuum qui in conventu totius Ecclesiae exponi debeat et curari, ex quo fortassis et caeteri aedificari poterunt, et tu ipse facile sanari,” &c. – Origen In Ps. xxxvii. Homil. 2.}  In process of time the bishops appointed a regular officer or penitentiary, to hear these private confessions, and to judge whether they should be made public or not.  Socrates says this officer was first appointed for the restoration of those who had lapsed in the Decian persecution; {Socr.  H. E.  Lib. V. C. 19.} though Sozomen thinks such a minister must have been necessary, and so in existence from the first. {Sozomen, Lib. VII. C. 16.}  The duty of this penitentiary was, to inquire into the nature of the penitents’ offences, to prescribe to them certain modes of humiliation, and if needful a public acknowledgment of their sins; and then to give them absolution. {Ibid.}  In course of time, a scandalous offence having been confessed to a presbyter in the Greek Church, which produced a public excitement, Nectarius, Bishop of Constantinople, was induced to abolish the office of penitentiary. {Socr.  Sozom.  Ibid.}  St. Chrysostom was the immediate successor of Nectarius.  It appears from his writings, that public confession still continued to be a part of discipline; {Epist. ad Innocent.  Tom. III. p. 517; In Epist. ad Ephes.  Hom. III.  Tom. XI. p. 23; In Epist. ad Egrae. Hom. IV.  Tom. XII. pp. 48, 49.} although we have reason to think that the congregation was not always informed of the exact nature of the crimes for which the penitent was suffering penance and confessing guilt, but only that they knew them to be great and deadly offences. {August.  In Symbol. ad Catechumen.  Lib. I. C. 15.}  This much, however, we learn from the writings both of St. Chrysostom and of his great contemporary, St. Augustine, that the Church in their days did not consider private confession of private sins essential to salvation, but only the public confession of public scandals necessary to the discipline of the Church.  “What have I to do with men,” says St. Augustine, “that they should hear my confessions?” {“Quid mihi ergo est cum hominibus, ut audiant confessiones meas, quasi ipsi sanaturi sint omnes languores meos?”  Confession.  Lib. X. C. 3, Tom. I. p. 171.}  “I do not compel you,” says St. Chrysostom, “to discover your sins in the presence of men.  Unfold your conscience before God, show Him your wounds, and from Him seek healing.” {Ουδε γαρ εις θεατρόν σε άγω των συνδούλων των σων ουδε εκκάλυψαι τοις ανθρώποις αναγκάζω τα αμαρτήματα·  το συνειδος ανάπτυξον έμπροσθεν του Θεου και αυτω δειξον τα τραύματα, και παρ αυτω τα φάρμακα αίτησον.  Chrysost.  De Incomprehensibili Dei Natura, Hom. V. § 7, Tom. I. p. 490.}

      Leo the Great, who was Bishop of Rome, A. D. 440, is said to have been the first innovator on the penitential discipline of the Church, for he forbade sins which had been confessed to the priest to be published in the Church, deciding that private confession was sufficient for the clearing of the conscience of the offenders. {Leo.  Epist. 136, ad Episc. Campan.}  Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury in the seventh century, is said to have been the first who altogether abolished public penance for private sins. {“Theodorus, homo graecus, primus aperte morem sustulit publice de criminibus occultis poenitendi.” – Morinus De Adininist. Poenitent. X. 17, 2, quoted by Marshall in Penitential Discipline, ch. III. § I.}  Redemption of penance also by pecuniary fines became, in process of time, a common practice, which some also refer to Theodore as the originator. {Marshall, ch. III. § 2.}  Along with private confession grew the custom of private absolution. {Ibid. § 3.}  And afterwards the form itself of absolution became more peremptory and authoritative, {Ibid. § 4.} till at length auricular confession, followed by absolution and satisfaction, was elevated to the full dignity of a necessary Sacrament.  The Council of Trent anathematizes all who deny it to be truly and properly a Sacrament, instituted by Christ Himself, {Sess. XIV.  Can. I.} and necessary to salvation jure divino, or who say that the method of confessing secretly to the priest alone (which the Church Catholic has observed from the beginning) is alien to Christ’s institution and of human invention. {Can. VI.}

      The reformed Churches have generally abolished auricular confession as obligatory and sacramental.  The Lutherans indeed still retain it as a regular part of Church order and discipline.  The Augsburg Confession declares concerning confession that it is right to retain private absolution in the Church, but that it is not necessary in confession to enumerate every individual sin. {Conf. August. Art. XII; Sylloge, p. 173.}  Calvin also recommended both private confession to a pastor, and private absolution when needed for the remedy of any special infirmity; but he says it should not be made obligatory upon all, but only commended to such as need it. {Institut. Lib. III. C. IV. §§ 12, 14.}  Our own reformers appear to have taken the same wise and moderate view.  Ridley, the greatest light of the English Reformation, writes shortly before his death: “Confession unto the minister, which is able to instruct, correct, comfort, and inform the weak, wounded, and ignorant conscience, indeed I ever thought might do much good in Christ’s congregation, and so, I assure you, I think even to this day.” {Letter to West, dated from Bocardo, in Oxford, April 8, 1554; Leetters of the Martyrs, p. 30.  London, 1837.}  So the second part of the Homily of Repentance, after condemning the auricular confession of the Church of Rome, says, “I do not say, but that if any do find themselves troubled in conscience, they may repair to their learned curate or pastor,” &c.  The exhortation to the Communion bids those, who cannot quiet their own consciences, come to the curate, “or some other discreet and learned minister of God’s word, and open his grief, that by the ministry of God’s holy Word he may receive the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly council and advice, to the quieting of his conscience, and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness.”  In the service for the Visitation of the Sick it is enjoined on the minister that he shall move the sick person “to make a special confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter”; and a form of absolution is appointed to be used after such confession to those who “humbly and heartily desire it”.  Thus the Church of England provides for all troubled consciences the power of relieving themselves by making confession of guilt to their pastor or “any other discreet and learned minister,” and so gives them comfort and counsel; but does not bind everyone of necessity to rehearse all his private sins to man, nor elevate such useful confession into a Sacrament essential to salvation. {The student is especially referred for a history of this subject to Marshall’s Penitential Discipline, ch.II. III.}

      The question concerning the power of the keys as exercised by the ministers of God may well be reserved to a future Article.  It may be sufficient to observe here that the chief Scripture ground for private confession is to be found in the language of St. James, chap. 5:14–16.  There the Apostle counsels the sick to send for the presbyters of the Church who are to pray over them; and it is promised that such prayers shall be especially effectual for the pardon of sins.  It is then added, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.  The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (ver. 16).  And this is illustrated by the efficacy of the prayers of the prophet Elijah, at whose intercession rain was first withheld, and then given again.  The context in which all this occurs, compared with the promise given by our Lord to His ministers (Matt. 18:18. John 20:23), and with the custom of the Church from the earliest times, has been ever considered as a ground for the practice continued in the Church of England that the sick should be especially visited by the clergy, should be moved to confession of sins, and should look to the prayers of the minister as means for obtaining from God pardon, grace, and if it be His will, restoration to health and strength. {See Dr. Hammond on this passage of St. James.}

      There can be no doubt that a distressed conscience may be soothed and guided by confidence in a spiritual adviser.  Most people, much in earnest, and much oppressed with a sense of sin, have yearned for such confidence.  Hence the Church should always afford to the sin-stricken soul the power of unburdening itself.  But, on the other hand, whatever tends to lead people to substitute confession to man for confession to God, and to make the path of repentance less rugged than the Gospel makes it, must be dangerous.  Such is the systematic and compulsory confession of the Church of Rome, followed as it is by absolution and penance, which too often seem to speak peace to the soul, perhaps before its peace is sealed in Heaven.  The penitent finds it far easier to unburden his soul to the priest, than to seek, day and night, with broken spirit, for pardon from God: and, when he has once confided his griefs to his spiritual guide, he easily substitutes that guide’s counsels for the dictates of his own conscience: and no counsels from without can speak as fearfully as the whispers of remorse within.  Hence the danger of healing the wound lightly, – of substituting false peace for that peace which can come only from a true penitence, and from the sense of God’s pardoning love through Christ.  Confession has been well called “the luxury of repentance.” {Taylor’s Notes from Life.}  Access to it is not to be denied to the dying, the perplexed, or the broken-hearted; but it is to be feared for the morbid spirit, and still more to be feared as a mere routine of ordinary life, as a salving over of the conscience stained by sin, and seeking an easy deliverance from its warnings and reproofs.

      5.  Extreme Unction is an ordinance concerning which we differ from the Church of Rome more than on the other four.  We admit the proper use of confirmation, confession, orders, and matrimony; but extreme unction we neither esteem to be a Sacrament nor an ordinance of the Church at all.  As used in the modern Church of Rome, it implies unction with olive oil, blessed by the bishop, and applied by the priest to the five senses of the dying man.  It is considered as conveying God’s pardon and support in the last hour.  It is administered when all hope of recovery is gone, and generally no food is permitted to be taken after it.

      The Roman Catholic controversialists can find no primitive authority for this ordinance, except that of Pope Innocent the First, in the fifth century. {See Bellarmine, De Extrema Unctione, cap. IV.}  In a letter to Decentius {Epist. I ad Decentium. C. 8.} he answers a question, whether the sick might be anointed with oil, and whether the bishop might anoint?  He replies that this might be done, arguing from the language of St. James.  But, if extreme unction were then a Sacrament of the Church, it is impossible that one bishop should have asked this question of another; or, if he did, that the other should not at once have reminded him that it was a well-known sacrament of immemorial usage. {See Burnet on this Article.}  This is the only authority from patristic ages that the Romanist divines can bring.

      They insist, therefore, the rather on the authority from Scripture.  That authority, however, is but slender.  When our Lord sent out His Apostles and gave them power to “heal the sick”, “they anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them” (Mark 6:13).  Here unction was evidently an outward sign similar to that used by our Saviour, when He made clay and put it to the blind man’s eyes.  It was connected with the miraculous power of healing.  That power lasted for some time in the Church.  Accordingly, St. James desires the sick to send for the elders of the Church, to whom the miraculous gifts were mostly committed, and enjoins that with prayer for the pardon of sins should be joined anointing with oil, in order to the restoration of health; that as the Apostles used unction upon those whom they healed, so the elders of the Church, who had the gift of healing, should do likewise.  “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the Church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up “ (James 5:14, 15).  Here the end of the anointing appears to be that “the Lord should raise him up.”  Now this exactly corresponds with the miraculous cures of the early ages, but not at all with the extreme unction of late times.  Extreme unction is only administered when recovery is hopeless.  St. James enjoined unction with the special object of recovery.  So long then as miraculous powers remained in the Church, it was reasonable that anointing of the sick should be retained; but, when those powers ceased, it was reasonable that the unction should cease also.

      It was very natural, however, that when the miraculous powers began to decline, the custom of anointing, which at first had reference to bodily diseases, should still be continued with reference to spiritual maladies.  Yet we cannot trace clearly the transition.  The use of oil connected with real or supposed miracles is frequently alluded to; but it is not till late that there occurs any clear reference to it as a religious or sacramental rite.  Innocent III at the end of the twelfth century is quoted by Bellarmine next to Innocent I. {Bellarmine, Ibid.  Bellarmine indeed refers to Origen, Hom. II. in Levit.; Chrysostom, De Sacerdot. III. &c.; but he acknowledges that he only refers to them as quoting the words of St. James, not as speaking of the Sacrament of extreme unction, of which they certainly do not speak.  To anything farther he can call no witness, after Innocent I before Alcuin.}  His witness is, no doubt, plain enough.  A still fuller confirmation of extreme unction is given by Pope Eugenius in the Council of Florence; at which, it will be remembered, there was an intention of reconciling the Greek with the Latin Church. {Decretum Eugenii ad Armen. ubi supra.}  The Greeks still practise unction, but do not esteem it a Sacrament.  At the Council of Trent there were four canons passed, declaring extreme unction to be a Sacrament, instituted by Christ, conferring good, remitting sins, and comforting the infirm. {Sess. XIV.}

      The English reformers retained a form of anointing the sick in the first Service Book of Edward VI; though it does not appear that they attributed any sacramental efficacy to it, but merely allowed it to be used “if the sick person desired it,” with a prayer for pardon of sins and restoration of bodily health. {Two Liturgies of Edward VI. p. 366.}  Crammer had long before, A. D. 1540, expressed his opinion that there was no ground in Scripture or antiquity for considering the number of the Sacraments to be seven; and especially had pronounced, that “Unction of the sick with oil to remit venial sins, as it is now used, is not spoken of in Scripture, nor in any ancient author.” {See “Questions and Answers on the Sacraments,” Works, II. pp. 100, 103.}  The second Service Book entirely omitted all reference to unction in the service for the Visitation of the Sick.

      The merits of the question rest entirely on the two following points of inquiry: 1. Is the passage in St. James to be considered as Apostolical authority for the institution of a Sacrament in the Church? or has it reference to the cure of bodily disease?  2. Is the doubtful answer of Pope Innocent I in the fifth century sufficient ground for believing that extreme unction had prevailed from the first? or, on the contrary, do the deep silence of his predecessors and his own hesitating reply argue plainly that they “had no such custom, neither the churches of God”?  Roman Catholics answer affirmatively to the former of these alternatives.  Reformed Churches undoubtingly adopt the latter.

      Having thus considered what the Article says (I) concerning the number of the Sacraments, we have paved the way for the rest of its statements.  Limiting the name Sacrament to Baptism and the Eucharist, we have merely to consider (II) what are the benefits we receive by; (III) what is the right use of these two ordinances; and (IV) who are their proper recipients?

      II.  The efficacy of the Sacraments.

      This question must be discussed more particularly in the XXVIIth and XXVIIIth Articles.  To speak generally on it now, we may observe that the doctrine of the fathers on this subject was very clear and strong from the very first.  Ignatius speaks of a Christian’s baptism as his spiritual armour, {το βάπτισμα υμων μενέτω ως όπλα. – Ad Polyc. VII.  This passage is in the Syriac version.} and, concerning the Eucharist he writes, “If a man be not within the altar, he is deprived of the bread of God.” {Ad. Eph. V.}  “I desire the bread of God, which is the Flesh of Christ, and as drink I long for His Blood, which is love incorruptible.” {Ad Rom. VII.  This passage also is in the Syriac.}  The Epistle of Barnabas, which though probably not written by the companion of St. Paul, is doubtless one of the earliest remains of Christian antiquity, speaks of “That baptism, which brings forgiveness of sins,” and says, “That we go down into the water full of sins and pollutions, but come up again bringing forth fruit.” {Epistol. Barnab. C. 12.}  Justin Martyr, in his account of the Christian Sacraments, speaks of men as “regenerated” and receiving remission of sins in the water of baptism, {Apol. I. p. 93.} and as receiving in the Eucharist, not “common bread and common drink,” but “the Flesh and Blood of the incarnate Jesus.” {Ibid. p. 97.}  Irenaus is as clear on both the grace of baptism and the reception of Christ in the Eucharist. {See Lib. I. C. 18; Lib. III. C. 19; Lib. V. C. 2. &c.}  Tertullian speaks of the “blessed Sacrament of water, in which, washed from the sins of our former blindness, we are liberated to life eternal”; in which we “as fish are born, after the pattern of our Ιχθυς, Jesus Christ.” {De Baptismo, C. 1.  “Nos pisciculi, secundum ιχθυν nostrum Jesum Christum, in aqua nascimur.”  Alluding to the word ΙΧΘΥΣ containing the initial letters of our Lord’s Name and titles, Ιησους Χριστος Θεου Υιος Σωτηρ.}  In the Lord’s Supper he speaks of feeding on the Body and Blood of Christ, that our soul may be fattened of God. {De Resurr.  Carnis, C. 8.}  These are all writers of the first century from the Apostles.

      It would keep us needlessly long if we were to go through all the writers of the early ages.  It may fairly be said that with one voice they proclaim their belief that great spiritual blessings are to be obtained by all faithful recipients, both in baptism and in the Supper of the Lord.  The grace of the former they call remission of sins, regeneration, illumination; {φωτισμος. – See Suicer. s. h. v.} the grace of the latter they call the Body and Blood of Christ.  In both they looked to receive Christ; in both they hoped for pardon of sins and the presence of the Spirit of God.  The full meaning of these phrases we shall have to consider in the following articles.  Let it suffice here to refer to the pregnant words of St. Augustine, in which he contrasts the Sacraments or ordinances of the Law with those of the Gospel; a change having been made, by which the Sacraments have become “easier, fewer, more healthful.”  “The Sacraments of the new Testament,” he says, “give salvation, whereas those of the old Testament only promised a Saviour.” {Sacramenta N. Testamenti dant salutem; Sacramenta V. Testamenti promiserunt Salvatorem.” – Enarr. in Ps. lxxiii. §2, Tom. IV. p. 769.}  Here we have the view of evangelical Sacraments which pervades all Christian antiquity, namely, that they differ from the ordinances of the old Law in this; the ordinances of the old Law were but pledges of future blessings, not means to convey them; but the Sacraments of the Gospel not only promised Christ, but to those who receive them in faith they are means whereby God gives Christ to the soul.

      We read, however, of some early heretics who denied the grace or the necessity of the Sacraments.  Irenaeus ascribes to some of the Gnostics the error of saying that outward and material sacraments were unnecessary, so the soul were illuminated; {Haeres. I. C. 18. p. 91.  Edit. Oxon. 1702.} an opinion consistent enough with the ultra-spiritualism of that sect, which made all excellence to consist in spiritual enlightenment, and esteemed all matter to be evil and the source of sin.  One of the errors for which St. Jerome attacked Jovinian, was that he altogether separated baptism by the Spirit from baptism by water, saying that a man who had been baptized by the Spirit would never sin after, but that if he sinned again, it was a proof that he had received only water-baptism but not spiritual baptism. {Heironym. Adv. Jovinianum. Lib. II. Tom. IV. pt. II. p. 193.}  The Manichees, like the Gnostics, and probably on the same principles, believing baptism to have no efficacy, never administered it to their converts. {August.  De Haeres. C. 46; Bingham, E. A. Bk. XI. ch. II. sect. 4.}  The Messalians were a sect of mystics who are described as devoting themselves wholly to prayer and avoiding even labour for their bodily necessities. {Epiphan. Haeres. LXXX; Augustin. Haeres. LVII.}  It appears that they had a very low esteem of the Sacraments, so that Theodoret accuses them of denying any efficacy whatever to baptism; {Theodoret. Haeret. Fab. Lib. IV. C. 10.} though there is some reason to think that he has exaggerated their errors. {See Bingham, E. A. Bk. XI. ch. II. sect. 5.}  It is probable enough that wherever mysticism prevailed, such a disregard of external ordinances would prevail also.  Those medieval sects which derived their errors from Gnostic or Manichean sources, would naturally underrate Sacraments as having material elements, which such heretics regarded as essentially evil.  Accordingly, we learn that the Paulicians in the ninth century refused to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, and probably in like manner rejected outward baptism. {See Mosheim, E. H. Cent. IX. pt. II. ch. V.  Also Bingham, E. A. Bk XI. ch. II, sect. 4.}  The Bulgarians and Albigenses are said to have sprung from the Paulicians; and though it is difficult to arrive at the truth concerning the tenets of these persecuted sects, we may yet probably infer that one of their errors was an underrating of the value of baptism and the Eucharist.

      The time, however, for these subjects to be most fiercely contested would naturally be the period of the Reformation.  We must leave the discussion on Transubstantiation, which agitated the Church in the Middle Ages, for the Articles which treat expressly on the Lord’s Supper.  Suffice it here to observe that the school authors in their investigations concerning sacramental efficacy were led not merely to insist on the value of the Sacraments as means in the use of which God’s Spirit works, but also to lay town the principle that the Sacraments are so in their own nature vehicles of grace that ex opere operato from the mere fact of their administration they convey Christ to the soul.  Such a reception of Christ may not indeed be always to salvation; nay, it may be to condemnation; but still the Sacrament administered always brought with it a spiritual grace.  This doctrine was fixed as the doctrine of the Roman Church by the decrees of the Council of Trent.  They anathematized all, who deny that the Sacraments contain grace, {Sess. VII. Can. VI. “Si quis dixerit, sacramenta novae legis non continere gratiam, quam significant ... anathema sit.”} or that this grace is conferred by them ex opere operato. {Sess. VII. Can. VIII.  “Si quis dixerit per ipsa novae legis sacramenta ex opere operato non conferri gratiam ... anathema sit.”}

      All the reformed, whatever differences may have existed between them on these subjects (and such differences were sufficiently great), appear to have much objected to the statement of the opus operatum.  To them such a statement seemed to imply, not that Sacraments were means through which God was pleased to work, and which He had promised to bless, but rather that they were of the nature of magical incantations which, however carelessly administered, could not be separated from their effects upon the soul.  The very elements therefore became the objects of adoration.  The water of baptism was in itself holy and the source of holiness; the consecrated wafer was the Body of the Son of God.  Extremes generate extremes: and we learn that the anabaptists and other fanatics were led to such extravagance of opposition to the extravagance of Romanism as impiously to mock the blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist; so that “railing bills against it were fixed upon the doors of St. Paul’s Cathedral and other places, terming it Jack in a box, The Sacrament of the halter, Round Robin, and such like irreverent terms.” {Ridley’s Life of Ridley, p. 216, referred to by Dr. Hey on this Article.}

      Among the continental reformers, Zuinglius, Luther, and Calvin adopted three different views of the Sacraments.

      Zuinglius rejected sacramental grace entirely.  He held Sacraments to be bare signs, outward tokens of Christian profession, but in no sense means of grace.  He defined a Sacrament to be “an external symbol, by which we testify what we are, and what is our duty, just as one who bears a national costume or badge testifies that he belongs to a particular nation or society.” {“Sacramentum quid] Sacramentum ergo ... symbolum externum, quo quales simus, et quodnam sit officium testamur, significat.  Ut enim, qui crucem gestat albam, sese Helvetum esse, et posthac semper fore testatur,” &c. – De Baptismo, Zuinglii Opera, 1581, Tom. I. fol. 60.}  And again, “A Sacrament is the sign of a sacred thing; when therefore I speak of the Sacrament of Christ’s Body, I mean no more than that bread which is the figure and type of Christ’s Body.” {“Sacramentum quid] Sacramentum est sacrae rei signum.  Cum ergo Sacramentum Corporis Christi nomino, non quicquam aliud, quam panem, qui Corporis Christi pro nobis mortui figura et typus est, intelligo.” – De Coena Domini, Opera, Tom. I. folio 274.}

      Luther, on the contrary, maintained the great importance and spiritual efficacy of the Sacraments. “ We can lay it down as a rule,” he writes, “ that where are the Eucharist, Baptism, the Word, there is Christ, remission of sins, and life eternal.” {In Genesin. C. IV.  Opera, Tom. VI. fol. 62.}  In the Eucharist it is well known that he believed that with the consecrated bread and wine there are delivered to the recipient the very Body and Blood of Christ; the elements not being transubstantiated, but the Body of Christ being consubstantially united with them. {Of this more under Art. XXVIII.  Meanwhile, see his treatise De Sacramento Altaris, Tom. I. fol. 78; Catechisms Major, Tom. V. p. 640.}  Of the other Sacrament he taught that as man is born naturally full of sins, so in baptism he is born spiritually, regenerated, justified.  His sins are buried there, and righteousness rises instead of sins. {“Quemadmodum enim mater illo carnali partu plenum peccatis puerum et irae filium edit, ita baptismus edit spiritualem partum, et regenerat nos, ut justificati simus filii gratiae.  Sic peccata in baptismo demerguntur, et emergit pro peccatis justitia.” – De Sacramento Baptismi, Tom. I. fol. 72.}  “St. Paul,” says he, “teaches that baptism is not a sign, but a clothing in Christ, yea, that Christ Himself is our clothing.  Wherefore baptism is a most potent and efficacious rite.” {“Docet ergo Paulus baptismum non signum, sed indumentum Christi, immo ipsum Christum indumentum nostrum esse.  Quare baptismus potentissima ac efficacissima res est.” – In III. cap. Ad Galat. Tom. V. fol. 370.}

      Calvin took a kind of mean between Luther and Zuinglius.  Concerning Sacraments in general, he writes that “though they are figures, yet not naked and empty figures, but having their truth and substance united to them; not only representing, but offering grace.  We ought never to separate the substance of the Sacraments from the Sacraments themselves.  We ought not indeed to confound them, but to rend them asunder is absurd.”  {“Figuris igitur et signis, quae sub oculorum sensum cadunt, ut naturae nostrae imbecillitas requirit, ostenditur: ita tamen ut non sit figura nuda et simplex, sed veritati suae et substantiae conjungitur ... Sed hoc adjungemas, Sacramenta Domini nullo modo a substantia et veritate sua separari oportere.  Ea quidem ne confundantur, distinguere non tantum convenit, sed etiam omnino necessarium est.  Sed ita dividere ut alterum sine altero constituatur, absurdissimum.” – De Cana Domini, Calvini Opuscula, pp. 133, 134.}  The word is joined to the external sign, and hence Sacraments have their efficacy ... Christ breathed on His Apostles, and they received not His breathing only, but the Spirit of God.  Wherefore? but because Christ had promised?  So in baptism we put on Christ, we are washed in His Blood, our old man is crucified, that the righteousness of God may reign in us.  In the sacred Supper we are fed spiritually by the Body and Blood of Christ.  Whence so great effects but from the promise of Christ, who effects and makes good by His Spirit what He testifies by His Word?”*  In regard to the grace received by infants in baptism, it is probable, as we shall see hereafter, that Calvin’s predestinarian theory materially influenced his views.  But as regards adult recipients both of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, he clearly taught that to the faithful God gives, in the one remission and regeneration, in the other the real but spiritual presence of Christ’s Body and Blood.  On the question of the Eucharist especially he differed from the Romanists in that he rejected transubstantiation, – from the Lutherans in that he rejected consubstantiation, – from the Zuinglians, in that he maintained a real presence of Christ, though he held that presence to be spiritual, not carnal.**

            {*“Observent lectores externo et visibili symbolo simul verbum conjungi, nam et hinc sacratnenta vim suam mutuantur: non quod in voce, quae auribus personat, inclusa sit Spiritus efficacia; sed quia a testimonio Verbi pendet eorum omnium effectus, quae ex sacramentis percipiunt fideles.  Flat Christus in Apostolos: hi non flatum modo sed Spiritum quoque recipiunt.  Cur? nisi quia illis Christus promittit?  Similiter in Baptismo Christum induimus, abluimur Ejus sanguine, crucifigitur vetus homo noster, ut regnet in nobis Dei justitia.  In sacra Coena spiritualiter Christi carne et sanguine pascimur.  Unde tanta vis, nisi ex Christi promissione, qui Spiritu Suo efficit ac praestat quod verbo testatur.” – Calvinus In Evangelium Johannis, C. XX. V. 22.}

            {**“Necesse est igitur nos in Coena vere Corpus et sanguinem Christi recipere ... quemadmodum panis in manu distribuitur, ita Corpus Christi, ut Ejus participes simus, nobis communicari.” – De Coena Domini Opuscula, p. 134.

            “Caeterum hoc imprimis tenendum, ut carnalis omnis imaginatio excludatur, animum oportere sursum in coelos erigere, ne existimemus Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum eo dejectum esse ut in elernentis corruptilibus concludatur.” – Ibid. p. 147.}

      The Calvinistic communions, including the English Puritans and Non-Conformists, have generally followed Zuinglius rather than Calvin in their Sacramental theory; though by no means agreeing with the former on many other points of theology.

      The Anglican reformers have sometimes been charged with Zuinglian sentiments concerning the Eucharist.  On this subject, however, it is capable of evident proof that they symbolized not with Zuinglius, but with Calvin, though not deriving their views from him.  On baptism their language is stronger not only than Calvin’s, but even than Luther’s.  But of their views concerning these two Sacraments separately we must reserve the consideration for the present.  Meanwhile, let us observe a few of their statements on Sacraments in general.

      We have already noticed their language in this XXVth Article, that Sacraments are “effectual signs of grace, by the which God doth work invisibly in us.”  We have compared the language of the Homily, in which Sacraments are defined to be “visible signs expressly commanded in the new Testament, whereunto is annexed the promise of free forgiveness of sins, and of our holiness and joining in Christ.”  We have seen that the Catechism uses terms of the same significance, calling Sacraments “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace,” which grace is not merely promised, but “given unto us”; saying also that they were “ordained by Christ Himself” to be not only “a pledge to assure us” of that grace, but also “a means whereby we receive the same.”

      In like manner Nowell’s Catechism, a semi-authoritative document, has the following: “How many Sacraments hath God ordained in His Church?  A. Two: Baptism, and the Holy Supper, which are commonly used among the faithful.  For by the one we are born again, and by the other we are nourished to everlasting life.” {See the Enchiridion Theologicum, I. pp. 313, 314.}  Jewel’s Apology, a similar authority, having denied the Romish doctrine of Transubstantiation, adds: “But when we say this, we lower not the nature of the Lord’s Supper, nor teach it to be a mere frigid ceremony, and that in it nothing is done, as some calumniously say that we teach.  For we assert, that Christ truly exhibits Himself present with us in His Sacraments; in baptism that we may put Him on; in the Supper that we may feed on Him by faith and in Spirit, and from His Cross and Blood have everlasting life: and this we assert to be done, not coldly and perfunctorily, but in very deed and truth.” {Enchiridion Theolog. I. p. 129.}  The Reformatio Legum again condemns those who would take the Sacraments “for naked signs and external marks, whereby the religion of Christian men may be discerned from others.” {“Pro nudis signis et externis tantum indictis.” – Reformatio Legum, De Haerisibus, C. 17, quoted by Hey.}  And to refer once more to the Homilies, “The sermon for repairing and keeping clean the churches” speaks of the house of God as that “wherein be ministered the Sacraments and mysteries of our redemption.  The fountain of our regeneration is there presented to us; the partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ is there offered unto us; and shall we not esteem the place where so heavenly things are handled?”

      It may seem needless to add private testimonies of the individual reformers.  Yet the names of Cranmer and Ridley stand justly so much at the head of our Reformation that we may well hear one word from each of them.  Cranmer, in his Answer to Gardiner, writes “Likewise when he (the minister) ministereth to our sight Christ’s holy Sacraments, we must think Christ crucified and presented before our eyes, because the Sacraments so represent Him, and be His Sacraments, not the priest’s.  As in baptism we must think that, as the priest putteth his hand to the child outwardly and washeth him with water, so must we think that God putteth to His hand inwardly and washeth the infant with His Holy Spirit, and, moreover, that Christ cometh down upon the child and apparelleth him with His own Self.  And as at the Lord’s holy table, the priest distributeth wine and bread to feed the body, so must we think that inwardly by faith we see Christ feeding both body and soul to eternal life.” {Cranmer;s Works, by Jenkyns, III. pp. 553, 554.}  “In all ages,” says Ridley, “the devil hath stirred up some light heads to esteem the Sacraments but lightly, as to be empty and bare signs.” {Works, Parker Society, p. 114.}  “And as all do agree hitherto in the aforesaid doctrine, so all do detest, abhor, and condemn the wicked heresy of the Messalonians, which otherwise be called Euchites, which said that the holy Sacrament can do neither good nor harm; and do also condemn those wicked anabaptists, which put no difference between the Lord’s table and the Lord’s meat and their own.” {Ridley’s Works, Parker Society, p. 9.}

      It is not necessary to pursue the history of this subject to more modern times.  The Quakers and some other sects have not only undervalued Sacramental grace, but actually have rejected all use of the Sacraments.  The foreign Protestants, with the exception of the Lutherans, seem mostly to adopt Zuinglian opinions; as have the generality of dissenters among ourselves.  In the English Church those who have formed their theological views for the most part on the Puritan model have taken in general low ground on the Sacraments, especially on the Sacrament of baptism, whilst the opposite school have zealously maintained the reality and importance of Sacramental grace.  The period of Bishop Hoadley and the Bangorian controversy has been pointed to as an era from which lower sacramental doctrines have been very commonly admitted among churchmen.  In the present day it is painfully known to every one with what fierceness the flame of discord has burst forth on the subject of those very ordinances of grace which were instituted by Christ on purpose to bind together in one fold and one flock the blessed company of all true believers.

      III.  Concerning the proper use of the Sacraments, the Article says, –

      “The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them.”  This sentence alludes to the elevation and procession of the host in the Church of Rome; and as a similar statement is made with more direct reference to those customs in Article XXVIII we may reserve the consideration of the question for the present.  Thus much only we may remark, that the Tridentine definition that “the grace of the Sacraments is contained in the Sacraments” naturally led to the adoration of the elements themselves: whereas the doctrine that Sacraments have no efficacy of their own nature, but are ordinances of God, which He is pleased to honour, and by which He has promised to work, will lead to a reverent esteem and diligent use of them, but not to a superstitious veneration of the mere instruments.  This is the difference between Rome and England.

      IV.  The last question treated of is the worthy reception of the Sacraments.

      “In such only as worthily receive the same, have they a wholesome effect of operation; but they that receive them unworthily, purchase to themselves damnation, as St. Paul saith.”

      This statement also is virtually repeated concerning baptism in Art. XXVII and still more clearly concerning the Eucharist in Art. XXIX.

      Highly as the fathers speak, and often with no expressed reservation or restriction, concerning sacramental grace and the potency of the Sacraments, yet, when occasion offers, we may always observe that they did not so tie the grace to the ordinance as to believe that the impenitent and the unbelieving would benefit by it.  Origen, though plainly speaking of remission of sins and the gift of God’s Spirit as the grace of baptism, yet observes that “all are not Israel that are of Israel; nor are all baptized with the Spirit who are baptized with water ... Some who have received baptism have been unworthy to receive the Holy Spirit.  Simon had received baptism, but as he came with hypocrisy for grace, he was rejected from the gift of the Spirit.” {In Numeros, Homil. III. num. 1.}  Again, he says that all persons washed with water were not washed to salvation.  It was so with Simon Magus.  And, accordingly, he urges on catechumens to prepare themselves diligently for baptism, lest they receive the water only, not the Spirit of God.  “He who is baptized to salvation receives water and the Holy Spirit; but Simon, not being baptized to salvation, received water, but not the Spirit of God.” {In Ezekiel, Hom. VI. num. 5.  See Lumper De Vita et Scriptis Origenis, Art. XIII.}

      Tertullian says, he denies not that the pardon of sins is assured to those who are baptized, but yet he says, we ought to labour that we attain that blessing.  God suffers not the unworthy to come to His treasures.  “Some,” he remarks, “think that God must make good His promises, even to the unworthy, and would make His liberality a slavish obligation.”  But Tertullian himself plainly indicates his belief that baptism to such unworthy recipients would not be the fountain of life, but rather symbolum mortis, the mark of death. {De Poenitentia. C. 6.}

      Just in the same spirit, St. Cyril in the preface to his Catechetical Lectures; in which, though he speaks very excellent things of the blessings of baptism and Communion, yet he warns against unworthy approach to them, and diligently prepares his catechumens for worthy reception of them.  He begins by propounding to them the sad example of Simon Magus.  “Simon Magus,” says he, “of old came to the laver.  He was baptized but not illuminated.  He washed his body with the water but enlightened not his heart with the Spirit.  His body descended and rose up again, but his soul was not buried with Christ nor raised again with Him.” {Cyril. Hierosol. Praefatio Cateches. I.}  He then goes on to speak of the man without the wedding garment, and to bid them beware of such conduct as his.  He tells them they have full time for preparation.  “If,” he adds, “thou remainest in evil purpose, he who warns thee will be blameless, but look not thou to receive grace.  The water will receive thee, but the Spirit will not receive thee.” {Ibid. III.}

      Just so St. Augustine: “All the Sacraments are common, but not the grace of the Sacraments to all.  The laver of regeneration is common to all baptized in the name of the Trinity; but the grace of baptism is not common to all.  For heretics and false brethren in the Catholic Church have the same baptism.” {In Ps 77, Tom. IV. pp. 816, 817.}  “The Sacrament is one thing, the grace of the Sacrament another.  How many eat of the altar, and die, aye! and die by eating.  Wherefore saith the Apostle, He eateth and drinketh condemnation to himself.” {In Johann. cap. 6. Tract XXVI. Tom. III. pars. II. p. 498, c.}  “If, therefore, thou wilt know that thou bast received the Spirit, ask thine own heart, lest perchance thou hast the Sacrament but not the virtue of the Sacrament.” {In Epist. Johann. cap. IV. Tract VI. Tom. III. pars II. p. 868, f.  Compare p. 840, c.  See also De Civitate Dei, Lib. XXI. cap. 25. Tom. VII. p. 445, seq.}

      The Scholastic disputes concerning the grace of the Sacraments originated the theory of the opus operatum.  The Sacraments were thought to be so completely vehicles of grace that they themselves contained and conveyed the grace which was proper to them.  Thus the elements in the Eucharist were believed to be changed into the substance of Christ’s Body and Blood; and by whomsoever the bread and wine were received, by the same the Body and Blood of Christ were eaten and drunk.  To the unworthy indeed the reception was not to salvation, but to condemnation; yet still it was a real receiving, not only of the Sacrament, but also of the grace of the Sacrament.  So Simon Magus was believed to have received, not only baptism, but the grace of baptism, yet not to life but to death.  He was said to have been regenerated by baptism, but regenerate to a greater condemnation.  The fathers’ expressions were made to bear this meaning when they speak in glowing terms of the blessings to be expected in the reception of the sacrarnents.*  But a hundred such strong statements can never be fairly alleged against a single sentence occurring in qualification or explanation of them.  How often soever it be said that baptism is regeneration, and the Eucharist a feeding upon Christ’s Body and Blood; a single statement that this is true only of worthy recipients is sufficient to prove that such a qualification is always to be understood.

            {*Thus St. Augustine is supposed to have asserted that Simon Magus received the Holy Ghost in baptism.  He is speaking of the many gifts which a man may receive, and yet lack charity; he continues, “Respice ad munera ipsius Ecclesiae.  Munus sacramentorum in baptismo, in eucharistia, in caeteris sanctis sacramentis; quale munus est?  Hoc munus adeptus est et Simon Magus.  Prophetia quale munus est?  Prophetavit et Saul malus rex,” &c.  S. Augustin. In Ps. ciii. Serm. I. 9. Tom. IV. p. 1136.  It does not appear to me that anything in this passage is inconsistent with a belief that the grace of the Sacrament may be withheld from the impenitent.  At all events, such a vague statement can never be pressed against such positive statements as those given above from the same father.  In one passage indeed he leaves it as a kind of open question, whether Simon Magus was regenerated to greater condemnation, or whether he was born of water, but not of the Spirit.  He seems to incline to the latter alternative. – De Baptismo. c. Donatist. Lib. VI. C. 12. Tom. IX. p. 169.}

      The Roman Church, however, has adopted the theory of the opus operatum and stamped it with synodal authority.  Yet in the very canon which asserts that the Sacraments contain grace, it is added, that “they confer grace on those who do not place a bar.” {Concil. Trident.  Sess. VII. can. VI.  “Si quis dixerit sacramenta novae legis non continere gratiam, quam significant, aut gratiam ipsam non ponentibus obicem non conferre, anathema sit.”}

      If it were not added soon after {Ibid.  Canon VIII.} that the “Sacraments confer grace, ex opere operato,” we might believe that the Tridentine fathers did not materially differ from the statements of our own reformers; to place a bar being much the same as to receive unworthily.

      The reformers all strongly opposed the doctrine of the opus operatum.

      The Lutherans, who of all the reformed bodies were considered to hold the highest view of the Sacraments, yet plainly rejected the belief that grace was inseparably tied to the reception of them.  Luther complains that the schoolmen and the papists dreamed of virtue infused into the water of baptism; but he held the gift of the Spirit to the baptized to result from the promise of God to them, but that the water was still but water. {See Laurence’s Bampton Lectures, Note on Sermon VII. pp. 157, 158.}  So, though by the doctrine of consubstantiation Christ’s very Body would be received with the bread, yet, as the bread is not said to be changed into Christ’s Body, it is possible that by the unworthy the bread alone might be eaten, but the Body and Blood might not be communicated.  In this, as in many respects, consubstantiation is much different from transubstantiation; since according to the latter the substance of the bread and wine is utterly annihilated, and nothing remains but the substance of the Body and Blood, so that all who receive the Sacrament must receive by it the very substance of Christ.

      It is unnecessary for the present to say more concerning our own reformers’ views of this subject; they are plainly expressed in this and the following Articles; and we shall hear more of them under Art. XXVII and XXVIII.

Article  XXVI

Of the Unworthiness of the Ministers, which hinders not the effect of the Sacrament.

      Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ’s, and do minister by His commission and authority, we may use their ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in receiving of the Sacraments.  Neither is the effect of Christ’s ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God’s gifts diminished from such as by faith and rightly do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them; which be effectual, because of Christ’s institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men.

      Nevertheless, it appertaineth to the discipline of the Church, that inquiry be made of evil Ministers, and that they be accused by those that have knowledge of their offences; and finally being found guilty, by just judgment be deposed.

De vi Institutionum Divinarum, quod eam non tollat nialitia Ministrorum.

      Quamvis in ecclesia visibili, bonis mali semper sunt admixti, atque interdum ministerio verbi et sacramentorum praesint, tamen cum non suo, sed Christi nomine agant, ejusque mandato et auctoritate ministrent, illorum ministerio uti licet, cum in verbo Dei audiendo, tum in sacramentis percipiendis.  Neque per illorum malitiam effectus institutorum Christi tollitur, aut gratia donorum Dei minuitur, quoad eos qui fide et rite sibi oblata percipiunt, quae propter institutionem Christi et promissionem efficacia sunt, licet per malos administrentur.

      Ad Ecclesiae tamen disciplinam pertinet, ut in malos ministros inquiratur, accusenturque ab his, qui eorum flagitia noverint, atque tandem justo convicti judicio deponantur.

Section  I – History

      It is natural, in treating of the doctrines contained in this Article, to begin with the question concerning heretical baptism which agitated the primitive Church.  Tertullian denies that the heretics administered Christian baptism at all, because they did not believe in the same God nor the same Christ with the Christians.  Hence the rebaptizing of heretics was not, according to him, a repetition of the one baptism; for their former baptism was, strictly speaking, not Christian baptism at all, being baptism into a different faith from that of the Gospel. {Tertull.  De Baptismo, c. 15.}  The same rule seems to be laid down by the Apostolical Canons, the 46th canon commanding the deposition of any “bishop, presbyter, or deacon, who admitted the baptism or sacrifice of heretics” (comp. canons 47, 68).  In the famous dispute between Stephen, Bishop of Rome, and Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, the latter, and the African bishops who were with him, denied the validity of baptism by heretics and schismatics also.  The baptism of heretics, Cyprian, like Tertullian, held to be baptism into another religion than the Gospel, into the faith of another God than the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Hence, he concluded that such baptism must be void. {Cyprian, Epist. 73, Jubaiano Fratri, p. 203.}  But, moreover, the baptism of schismatics appears to have been rejected by the African bishops; because according to the interrogation in baptism, (“Dost thou believe in the life eternal, and remission of sins in the Holy Church?”) they held that remission of sins could not be given but in the Church. {Epistola Synodica Numidis Episcopis, de Rebaptizandis Haereticis in Epistol. Cypriani, Epist. 70. p. 190.}

      Stephen, Bishop of Rome, took the directly opposite view, admitting all baptism, whether by schismatics or heretics, so it was with water in the name of the Trinity; and such has been the rule of the Latin Church ever since.  The Greek Church has taken a middle course, rejecting heretical, but admitting schismatical baptism.

      This was quite a different question from that on which this Article is treating.  But in the controversy the African Church used language as if they thought that one reason why heretics could not administer baptism aright was because they themselves had not the grace of baptism, and so could not bestow it on others.  “What prayer,” they ask, “can a sacrilegious and impious priest offer?  As it is written, God heareth not sinners; but who worships Him and doth His will, him He heareth.  And who can give what he hath not? or how can a person perform spiritual offices, who hath himself lost the Holy Spirit?” {Ibid. p. 191.}  Such a statement, which must be considered as obiter dictum, was perhaps naturally put forth as one among other arguments, without having been maturely weighed or traced out to all its consequences.  When, however, in the fourth century arose the famous schism of the Donatists, more was made of it than might at first have been intended.  The Synodical letter in which that statement is made was addressed to certain bishops of the Numidians.  Now the Donatist faction arose among the Numidians.  It originated in an opposition to the election of Caecilianus into the see of Carthage.  His opponents, the Numidian bishops, accused his consecrator, Felix, of being a traditor (i.e. one who in Diocletian’s persecution had delivered up the sacred writings to the heathen magistrates to be burned); and hence they denied that his consecration was valid; for a bishop in deadly sin could not confer the grace of ordination. {See the History of the Donatists, Mosheim, Cent. IV. pt. II. ch. V.}  The length to which this controversy went was very great.  The Donatists (as they were called from their chief leader Donatus) became a large and influential sect, having no fewer than 400 bishops of their own.  They refused all communion with the African Church, of which Caecilianus was the chief bishop, and even rebaptized those who came over to their own faction.  They naturally referred to the authority of Cyprian and his contemporary bishops, and made the most of their statements concerning the invalidity of heretical baptism.

      The controversy which thus arose hinged much on the question with which we have now to deal.  The Donatist writers (Petilianus, Parmenianus, Cresconius) appear to have maintained the invalidity of the acts of those ministers who were in deadly sin; and seemed almost to deny the position that a true church can contain “the evil mingled with the good.”  Augustine and Optatus were their chief opponents; and some of the most valuable treatises of the former were called forth by this dispute.

      Augustine lays it down as a rule that ministers do not confer remission of sins, or the grace of the Sacraments, but that the Holy Spirit confers them through their ministry. {“Satis ostenditur non ipsos id agere, sed per eos utique Spiritum Sanctum.” – Contra Epistolam Parmeniani, Lib. II. C. 11.  Tom. IX. p. 41.        }  The remission of sins is given by virtue of the Sacraments, not by the merit of him who ministers them. { De Baptismo contra Donatistas, Lib. IV. C. 4, Tom. IX. p. 124, a.}  “It matters not to the integrity of baptism, how much the worse he is who ministers it.  For there is not so much difference between the bad and the worse, as between the good and the bad.  Yet when a bad man baptizes, he gives no other thing than a good man gives.” {“Nihil interest ad integritatem baptismi, quanto pejor id tradat.  Neque enim tantum interest inter malum et pejorem, quantum interest inter bonum et malum: et tamen cum baptizat malus, non aliud dat quam bonus.” – Ibid. Lib VI. C. 24, p. 174, f.}  Still he seems to agree in some measure with Cyprian; for he says that heretical baptism, although it be real baptism, yet tends not to salvation, but to destruction. {Ibid.  Lib. V. C. 22, p. 156, b.}

      St. Chrysostom bears a like testimony in the Greek Church at the same time.  “It is not just,” he writes, “that those who approach by faith should receive hurt from the symbols of our salvation through the wickedness of another.” {Ου δίκαιον ην δια την ετέρου κακίαν εις τα σύμβολα της σωτηρίας ημων τους πίστει προσίοντας παραβλάπτεσθαι. – Homil. LXXXVI in Johannem.  See Suicer. Tom. II. p. 383.}  So again, “God uses to work even by unworthy persons, and in no respect is the grace of baptism injured by the life of the priest.” {νυνι δε και δε αναξίων ενεργειν ο Θεος είωθε, και ουδεν του βαπτίσματος η χάρις παρα του βίου του ιέρεως παραβλάπτεται. – Homil. VIII in I ad Corinth.  This passage is quoted by Bp. Beveridge on this Article.}

      Isidore of Pelusium is very clear to the same effect: “If a wicked man approaches the altar and unholily handles sacred things, he shall bear his punishment, but the altar receives no contamination.” {Isidor. Pelus. Epist. 340, Lib. III; Suicer, ubi supra.}  “He that is baptized receives no damage from the symbols of salvation, if the priest be not a good liver.” {ο τελούμενος ουδεν παραβλάπτεται εις τα σωτηριωδη σύμβολα, ει ο ιερευς μη ευ βιους είη, αλλ αυτος μεν παντώς. – Epist. 37, Lib. II. Suic. II. 1083.}

      There can be no greater obstacle to the progress of religion than inconsistency in its professors, and especially in its ministers. The earnest and enthusiastic naturally sigh for a state of things which shall be free from all such blemishes, and picture to themselves a Church, the members of which shall be all sincere, and its ministers holy. They ill endure that the tares shall grow up with the wheat until the harvest. The Montanists, the Cathari, and later, the Anabaptists, were of this spirit. In the Middle Ages the ill-living of the lower class of friars appears to have been a great cause of scandal to the laity, and a principal ground for the cry of reformation. We know that Wickliffe and his followers inveighed loudly against such corruption ; and it is probable enough that much was said at that period concerning the damage that might occur from the ministrations of ungodly men. The council of Constance (Sess. viii.) condemned the errors of Wickliffe, contained in forty-five propositions ; the fourth of which imputes to him the doctrine that “ a bishop or priest in mortal sin cannot ordain, baptize, or consecrate.” The Council of Trent (Sess. xiv. De Poenit. cap. 6) decrees, in like manner, that those are in error who contend that the power of absolution is lost by wicked priests ; for they exercise this power as Christ’s ministers and by virtue of their ordination.

      Whatever may have been the popular feeling on this subject among the advocates of reformation in general, there is no doubt that the Anabaptists (in conformity with their general principle that the whole Church should be pure and sincere) {Mosheim says, they taught that “the Church of Christ ought to be exempt from all sin.” – Cent. XVI. sect. III. pt. II. §§ 5, 17.} held the impropriety of receiving Sacraments from ungodly ministers. {See Reformatio Legum de Haeresibus, C. 15, which is cited by Hey.}

      The foreign reformers, however, like the English, rejected these notions of the necessity of personal holiness in the minister to the validity of his ministrations.  The VIIIth Article of the Confession of Augsburg is the original of this XXVIth Article of our Church.  It was a little modified in the Vth of the Articles agreed on between the Anglicans and Lutherans in 1538, which contains a paragraph nearly word for word the same as the former part of our present Article.  The Article stands now exactly as it did in 1552.*

{*Confession of Augsburg.

ART.  VIII

A. D. 1531.

            Quanquam Ecclesia proprie sit congregatio sanctorum et vere credentium; tamen cum in hac vita multi hypocritae et mali admixti sint, licet uti sacramentis quae per malos administrantur, juxta vocem Christi, “sedent Scribae et Pharisaei in Cathedra Mosis,” &c.  Et sacramenta et verbum propter ordinationem et mandatum Christi sunt efficacia, etiamsi per malos exhibeantur.

            Damnant Donatistas et similes, qui negabant licere uti ministerio malorum in ecclesia, et sentiebant ministerium malorum inutile et inefficax esse.

A. D. 1540.

            Cum autem in hac vita admixti sint Ecclesiae multi mali et hypocritae, qui tamen societatem habent externorum signorum cum ecclesia, licet uti sacramentis, quae per malos administrantur, juxta vocem Christi, &c.

Portion of the Vth Article of 1538.

            “Et quamvis in Ecclesia secundum posteriorem acceptionem mali sint bonis admixti, atque etiam ministeriis verbi et sacramentorum nonnunquam praesint; tamen cum ministrent non suo, sed Christi, nomine, mandato et auctoritate, licet eorum ministerio uti, tam in verbo audiendo quam in recipiendis sacramentis, juxta illud, ‘Qui vos audit, me audit.’  Nec per eorum malitiam minuitur effectus, aut gratia donorum Christi rite accipientibus; sunt enim efficacia propter promissionem et ordinationem Christi, etiamsi per malos exhibeantur.”

      It has been thought that, besides what we have been considering, the Roman Catholic doctrine of “Intention” may have been aimed at.  This, however, does not appear probable.  The Lutheran Article especially mentions “The Donatists and others like them”; and the state of the Church at the time of the Reformation, the disaffection of the laity to the clergy, the scandals said to exist in the lesser monasteries, the irregular lives of the mendicant friars, the ignorance of some among the reformed clergy, the springing up of Anabaptist sentiments, – all these things sufficiently point out a reason and necessity for such an Article as the present.  The Roman doctrine of Intention is indeed of most “desperate consequence”.  If no Sacrament is valid unless the priest intends that it should be so, then we know not whether our children be baptized, our wives married, our communions received, or our bishops consecrated.  And this last question has been made much use of by the Church of Rome against the Church of England.  It is urged that a bishop or presbyter who has a defective view of the grace of the Sacrament cannot rightly administer it, because he does not intend to convey the full grace of that Sacrament.  The bishops, for instance, who consecrated Archbishop Parker and others in the reign of Elizabeth, had a defective view of the effects of ordination and of the power of the clergy; they therefore did not intend to give, nor the consecrated ministers to receive, the full grace and privileges of the priesthood.  Hence those ministers were not rightly consecrated.

      This Article was not originally directed against this error, but it virtually and in effect meets it.  Plainly, the relying on the intention of the minister results from a sort of belief that the minister himself is the depositary of grace and can dispense that grace of his own will.  If then, in outwardly ministering a Sacrament, he does not intend to confer the benefits of the Sacrament, they will not be conferred.  Such seems the rationale of the doctrine of Intention.  This Article, on the contrary, truly sets forth that the clergy minister the Sacraments, not “in their own name, but in Christ’s, and do minister by His commission and authority”; and that the Sacraments be “effectual because of Christ’s institution and promise, though they be ministered by evil men.”  So then, it is not because ministers will or intend to bestow grace, but because Christ has ordained to give grace through their ministry.  If then they rightly administer, and we rightly receive the ordinance, we need not consider what is the mind of the priest, since it is not in the power of man’s intention to frustrate the gracious purposes of God.  Were it otherwise, no Church could be sure of its orders, no Christian of his baptism.  For none can tell whether in Rome, or Greece, or England, that some careless or some malicious bishop may not have been indifferent, or opposed to the conferring of ordination, and so the whole line of succession have been cut off, and all the orders of the Church invalidated.  None can tell that an evil minister may not secretly have cursed his infant, whilst outwardly invoking a blessing on him, and so his baptismal privileges may have been annulled.  But if we believe Christ’s Sacraments to be blessed, and Christ’s ministers to have authority, not as themselves indued with grace, but as instruments, whereby God pours it down upon us, then we need not fear to lose the treasure, though the vessel be but earthen and itself fit only to be burned. {The Council of Florence (Instr. Armenor. Concil. Tom XIII. p. 585) and the Council of Trent (Sess. VII. can. XI) require only an implicit intention in the minister, i.e. to do what the Church doth, or what Christ instituted.  But this distinction; which seems to have some justice in it, is easily drawn out so as to save themselves, and yet to enable them to condemn us.  The student may refer to Abp. Bramhall, Protestants’ Ordination Difended, V. p. 210, Lib. of Anglo.-Cath. Theology.}

      The concluding paragraph in the Article lays it down that inquiry ought to be made of evil ministers; and that if they are found guilty, they should by just judgment be deposed.  There is not need of much history here.  From the first, such discipline prevailed, and has prevailed in every Church and sect.  Thus the twenty-fifth of the Canons of the Apostles enjoins, that “a bishop or priest found guilty of fornication or perjury shall be deposed.” {Beveridge, Synodicon, Tom. I. p. 16.}  The twenty-seventh commands that a bishop or priest who strikes one of the faithful be deposed. {Ibid. p. 17.}  The ninth canon of the first Council of Nice forbids that any be advanced to the order of presbyter who have been previously guilty of any grievous sin; and if it be found out afterwards that he had so shined, he is to be deposed. {Ibid. p. 70.}

      But so patent and obvious has been this custom of the Church to inquire concerning scandalous ministers, to remove them that have erred, and, if possible, to forbid the ordination of the undeserving, that it is needless to enlarge on it.  Of course, there have been times of laxer, and times of stricter discipline; but all times and all Churches have admitted the principle.

Section  II – Scriptural Proof

      1.  The first statement of the Article is, that “In the Visible Church the evil are ever mingled with the good.”  We saw something of this under Article XIX.  It is clearly proved by our Lord’s comparison of His kingdom to a field, in which tares and wheat grow together till the harvest (Matt. 13:24–30, 37–43), to a net containing fish of every kind, that is, both the wicked and the just (Matt. 13:47–50); to a marriage feast where some have the wedding garment, some have not; all, “both bad and good,” having been gathered into it (Matt. 22:10, 11).  So St. Paul compares the Church to a great house “in which there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earth, and some to honour, and some to dishonor” (2 Tim. 2:20).  These arguments are so conclusive as, according to St. Augustine, to have converted even the Donatists. {See Pearson, On the Creed, Art. IX. p. 344, who quotes Augustine, lib. post collationem, c. 9, 10.}

      The Article adds, that “sometimes the evil have chief authority (praesint) in the ministration of the word and Sacraments.”  We need go no further than Judas for proof of this.  Our Lord Himself gave all the same authority to him that He gave to the rest of the Apostles; and yet He knew, when He chose him, that he was a devil (John 6:70, 71).  And so, later in the new Testament, we read of Diotrephes (3 John 9), and others, who, though ministers of God, were not men of godliness.  Our Lord Himself describes especially the character of some who should be made “rulers over his household, to give them meat in due season,” but who should “smite their fellow servants, and eat and drink with the drunken,” and who at last should be “cut asunder, and have their portion with the hypocrites” (Matt. 24:45–51).

      2.  It should hardly need much argument to prove that that ministry which Christ permitted in His Church may lawfully be used by His people.  If He ordained Judas, we may use the ministry of such as Judas and yet not lose blessing.  And so He taught us, “The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say and do not” (Matt. 23:2, 3).  And the Apostles plainly teach that not holiness in the minister, but God’s blessing on their ministry, is the cause of good to His Church and growth to our souls.  It was not by their “own power and holiness” that they made the lame to walk; but “His name through faith in His name” (Acts 3:12, 16).  Paul may have “planted, and Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.  So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase” (1 Cor. 3:6, 7).  Paul and Apollos were but “ministers, by whom men believed, even as the Lord gave to every man” (ver. 5).  Great and glorious as the ministration was (2 Cor. 3:7, 8), yet the treasure was in “earthen vessels, that the excellency might be of God, and not of” them (2 Cor. 4:7).

      3.  Still, though we do not believe that God’s ordinances lose their effect, because unworthy hands administer them, yet it is obviously to be much desired that those who minister in holy things should themselves be men of holiness.  If ungodly members should be excommunicated, much more should ungodly ministers be deposed.  For not only do such hinder the free course of the Gospel, and offend weak brethren; but the torch of truth and holiness is most surely lit and handed on by those in whose heart it is burning and bright.  The old Testament teaches that “the priests should be clothed with righteousness” (Ps. 132:9); and that the Lord “will be sanctified in them that come nigh Him” (Lev. 10:3).  In the new Testament, besides general instructions concerning discipline, there are special instructions concerning the discipline of the clergy.  These are mostly to be found in the Epistles to Timothy, who, as bishop, has directions given him concerning the importance of “laying hands suddenly on no man” (1 Tim. 5:22), concerning the mode of receiving an accusation against an elder (ver. 19), and as to how he was to rebuke those that sinned (ver. 20).  This is a matter too plain to be insisted on; the common instincts of our nature and the universal practice of Christians consenting render argument unnecessary.