ture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church, -Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." This apparently justifies the assumption. In view of such a clear and explicit recognition of three Orders, such statements as that of the Britannica, seem to be flatly contradicted, and the common-place assertions of our ordinary Church text-books and Sunday School Manuals, amply vindicated. This is a mere cobweb. In fact it is only another instance of the widespread ignorance of the public in regard to the real history of this word "Order" and the evident unwillingness upon the part of most of our popular writers to enter into it. To begin with, the men who inserted this word into the Preface were not the Revisers of the Seventeenth Century at all, but the Reformers of the Sixteenth Century-the very men whom we know on “Catholic" authority did not regard the Episcopate as a distinct Order from the Presbyterate. How then do we explain the matter? The answer is simple, and known to every student of the subject. The Reformers did not mean by "Order" what is now technically understood by that word. As used by "catholics" and High Churchmen to-day, it signifies a class of Ministers specially set aside by Divine Command, and endowed with specific spiritual gifts peculiar to itself. It is in this sense only

• The Preface to the Ordinal was indeed expanded by the Revisers of 1662, but the word in question was not then introduced. It was placed in the very first Preface in 1549, and was repeated in each successive revision of the Prayer Book.

that it has, or can have, any bearing on the exclusive claims of the Episcopate, which is the matter under discussion. That is to say it is only in so far as the word "Order," when applied to the Episcopate, implies that the latter is endowed with certain inalienable gifts and functions, peculiarly and exclusively its own, and not shared in by the Presbyterate or any other, that it has any bearing on the question before us. Thus, the Episcopate, in the modern technical sense, is a Divinely differentiated department of the Ministry, to which has been exclusively committed the specific and inalienable powers of ordination and government, something to which neither of the other two Orders can lay claim. Hence, when the word is met with in the Ordinal or elsewhere, the modern advocate of this theory, hesitates not to read into it this common technical interpretation. While this is unquestionably the received interpretation of the word to-day, it had no such technical significance either in ancient days, or at the time of the Reformation, or at the time the Preface to the Ordinal was written. It was not the meaning of the Reformers who penned these lines or of those who revised the Preface in 1662. It is as foolish for any one to imagine that the Reformers placed this modern meaning upon the word, as it would be to imagine that they placed the modern meaning upon the word "prevent" when they used it in the Collect for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity. The one assumption is just as inexcusable as the other, for it is well known to scholars that the ancients, and the Reformers after them, used the word "Order" synonymously with the words "office," "grade,” "degree," "rank," etc. In short, they used it indifferently in reference to any distinction of ministerial function, whether of Divine or human authority. What we now refer to as the "offices" (not "Orders") of Archbishop, Archdeacon, Sub-Deacon, Reader, Exorcist, Acolyte, Door-Keeper, etc., were all designated by them indifferently as "Orders" of the Ministry. Says Jeremy Taylor, "it is evident that in antiquity, 'ordo' and 'gradus' were used promiscuously. Βαθμὸς was the Greek word, and for it the Latins used 'ordo'.... They are all of the same name, and the same consideration, for order, distance, and degree, amongst the fathers; gradus and ordo are equally affirmed of them all, " etc. (Episcopacy Asserted, Taylor's Works, vol. vii., pp. 121, 122.) It is this indiscriminate use of the word for practically any ecclesiastical office or function that has led to bewildering confusion, whenever the attempt is made by the uninformed reader to discover the opinions of the Fathers upon the subject. Thus some writers speak of two, some of three, some of five, seven, eight and even ten "Orders" in the Church. No conclusion is possible, therefore, from the mere use of the word itself in the writings of the ancients. We can only hope to settle the question before us by further inquiring what, out of all these "Orders," they regarded as primitive, necessary or essential in the Church. The utter futility of attempting to draw any conclusion from the mere use of the word

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itself, is nowhere more beautifully illustrated than in Bishop Jewel's famous Defence of the Apology which he wrote in behalf of the English Church. "St. Hierome," says he, "writing upon the prophet Esay, reckoneth only five Orders or degrees in the whole Church; the Bishops, the Priests, the Deacons, the Enterers or Beginners, and the Faithful: and other Order of the Church he knoweth none. Clemens saith, 'The mysteries of the holy secrecies be committed unto three Orders, that is, unto the Priests, unto the Deacons, and unto the Ministers;' and yet Deacons and Ministers, as touching the name, are all one. Dionysius likewise hath three Orders, but not the same; for he reckoneth Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. And, whereas, M. Harding maketh his account of four of the less or inferior Orders, meaning thereby Ostiarios, Lectores, Exorcistas, Acoluthos, the door-keepers, the readers, the conjurers, and the waiters or followers; his own Ignatius addeth thereto three other Orders, Cantores, Laboratores, Confitentes, the chanters or singers, the laborers, and the confessors.' Clemens added thereto Catechistas, the informers or teachers of them that were entering into the faith. A little vain book, bearing the name of St. Hierome, De Septem Ordinibus Ecclesiæ, addeth yet another Order, and calleth them Fossarios, that is, 'the Sextines,' or overseers of the graves. And, lest you should think that he reckoneth this Order as amongst other necessary offices to serve the people, and not as any part of the Clergy, his words be these: Primus

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in clericis Fossariorum Ordo est,'

'The first Order

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of the Clergy is the Order of the Sextines' etc. Likewise to the three greater Orders, Isidorus addeth another distinct and several Order of Bishops; unto whom agreeth Gulielmus Altisiodorensis and Gottofredus Pictaviensis, as appeareth by Johannes Scotus. Again, of the other inferior Orders St. Hierome leaveth out the Conjurers and waiters: St. Ambrose leaveth out the waiters and door-keepers: the Canons of the Apostles leave out Conjurers, Waiters, and Door-Keepers, all three together. In this so great dissension and darkness, what way will M. Harding take to follow? By Anacletus there be two Orders; by Clemens and St. Hierome three; by Hierome counterfeit seven; by others eight; by others nine; by others ten." (Id., pp. 272, 273.) From this it will be readily seen that, whatever the opinions of the ancients respecting the primitive or necessary degrees of the Ministry, nothing can be gathered concerning it from the mere use of the word "Ordo" in their writings, as they attached no technical significance to it, such as we are accustomed to do to-day. That the Reformers likewise employed it in this same general and ambiguous way, and that in the very article now before us (viz.: the Preface to the Ordinal) not only they, but the Revisers of 1662 after them used it likewise in the same broad and indifferent sense and not in the modern, technical sense in which our "Catholic" brethren are accustomed to employ it, should be obvious from the very passage in question. The very next line