as any reflection upon the actual VALIDITY of other forms of Ordination, by enacting as a Proviso to Act XIV. Carol. II., that the King might still continue, at his discretion, to admit such Presbyterian Clergy when he deemed it advisable. We know that the King did act upon this proviso a short time afterwards; we know that the same has never been revoked, and is still therefore the Law; we know, yet further, that this Revision of 1662 is the last of any importance that has been made; we know, in other words, that all the Doctrinal principles re-affirmed at that time are still the established teaching of the CHURCH OF ENGLAND and this PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. Hence we know to-day that it is still the OFFICIAL DOCTRINE, both of the Church of England and our own, (of which any one can satisfy himself in a moment, who will glance at the Rubrics in the Ordinal) that only the "ORDERS" of PRIEST and DEACON are regarded as “NECESSARY OF CHRIST"-that Bishops are not "ORDERED," but only "CONSECRATED." To quote the Ninth Edition of the Britannica once more, "The Church of England expressly recognizes the Diaconate and the Priesthood, BUT NOOTHERS, as distinct ORDERS." We know, finally, that the Church's teaching thus OFFICIALLY determined regarding the VALIDITY of Presbyterian Ordination, is still OFFICIAL at this very hour, and that her repeated recognition of the various Protestant Organizations as true CHURCHES, a recognition extending even to particular churches, indicated by name, precludes all possibility of "Cath IN THE CHURCH olic" views and theories of these matters being regarded as OFFICIAL in this Church. Not only did the "exclusive" view of the Episcopate advanced by Bancroft and Laud fail of obtaining official recognition, but that it was not approved by Cosin, and the majority of the Revisers and other prominent churchmen of that period, and of the ensuing century, is clearly indicated from numbers of passages in their private works and letters many of which we have already cited. The truth is these "novel" opinions, after a certain period of agitation, were obscured and partially forgotten for the next hundred years or more, and it was not until the Oxford Movement of 1833 that they were resurrected and brought once more into prominence. Under the able leadership of Newman, Keble, Pusey, Manning, and others, these principles were not only reasserted, but they were developed far beyond the intent or even the imagination of their Seventeenth Century originators, and even the genius of Newman, the real philosopher of the movement, was unable to gain for them OFFICIAL On the contrary, instead of being accepted as a legitimate interpretation of the position of the Church of England, the Tracts were condemned by AUTHORITY. It was this very OFFICIAL REJECTION of the movement, that caused Newman, Manning, and a host of others, to leave the Church of England and enter the Church of Rome, where alone such doctrine could be vindicated. Yet, remember it is these very principles thus officially condemned by the Church at that time, that are held RECOGNITION. up now before us by "Catholics" as the OFFICIAL DOCTRINES of this Church. Ay, doctrines for which men, just one hundred years ago, felt constrained to leave the Church, are now proclaimed OFFICIAL and AUTHORITATIVE within it. A Bishop of the Church of England-a follower of the officially condemned opinions of Newman and Manning, has the temerity to challenge the Church to her face, publicly to admit that the authorized statements of her own Articles and other Formularies are OFFICIAL, and even presumes to demand that a fellow Bishop, who has had the audacity to enforce one of these Articles (Art. XXII.) particularly, who has stood loyally by the authorized teaching of the Anglican Reformers and their successors as to "the meaning and value of Episcopacy" (Eccles., Anglic., p. 20), and has, generally, in the name of "the true Protestant Religion established in the Church of England" (Laud himself) or, if you prefer, in the name of "the PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL Church of ENGLAND and Ireland" (Act of Parliament, 1828) sought earnestly "to protestantize the world" (Ecces. Anglic., p. 29)-shall be brought to trial for "HERESY"!! Finally, it is not only preposterous for "Catholics" to assume that they represent the true official attitude of this Church on all these disputed points. It is not only impossible for them to maintain that their view of the Episcopate, with its consequent corollaries regarding the validity of other forms of ordination, and the nature and extent of the Church Catholic, etc., - was the generally received or CATHOLIC doctrine prior to "the close of the Sixteenth Century" (the best "Catholic" authorities themselves being witnesses to the contrary). It is equally as absurd for them to imagine that their view of the Episcopate can be justified as either primitive, apostolic, or historically Catholic, by appealing to the results of modern scholarship. On the contrary it is notorious that the well-nigh unanimous verdict of modern scholars is antagonistic to the "catholic" theory. What we mean to assert is that this view of the Anglican Reformers, and their colleagues on the continent, so far from being obsolete to-day, so far from being the opinion merely of a few old-fashioned, unprogressive, out-of-date, Low Churchmen, and "the mass of ignorant, unenlightened Protestants," is, on the contrary, one of the best established facts with modern critics and theologians. Not only is it the unanimous opinion of the best Protestant authorities, but by far the greater part of our own Anglican scholars, and not a few even of the foremost Roman Catholic historians and theologians, now freely admit that the Episcopate as we have it to-day, is not the Episcopate of the primitive Church, but the result of a long process of development. The exclusive claims and pretensions now commonly made for it by "Catholics" and others, were absolutely unknown in apostolic times, and even for a long period thereafter. Among the large number of modern authorities who deny the "Catholic" theory respecting the origin of the Episcopate, its acceptance as a separate Order, etc., are the following: I Gieseler, Neander, Schaff, Herzog, Duchesne, Lightfoot, Hort, Sanday, Briggs, Lindsay, Fairbairn, Hatch, A. V. G. Allen, Auguste Sabatier, McGiffert, Harnack, Ramsay, Arnold, Whateley, Dean Stanley, Westcott, Ellendorf, Moule, Perowne, Goode, Jacob, Geo. P. Fisher, Dean Hodges, etc. In fact we might fill a volume with quotations from these modern authorities alone. We can not do more, however, than cite a few passages at random. Lightfoot, for example-by many regarded as the foremost of all Anglican scholars after stating the well-known fact that in the apostolic age Bishop and Presbyter were identical, goes on to say "Nor is it only in the apostolic writings that this identity is found. St. Clement wrote probably in the last decade of the first century, and in his language the terms are convertible. Towards the close of the second century the original application of the term 'Bishop' seems to have passed not only out of use, but almost out of memory. In the fourth century when the fathers of the Church began to examine the Apostolic records with a more critical eye, they at once detected the fact. Of his predecessors the Ambrosial Hilary had discerned the same truth. Of his contemporaries and successors, Chrysostom, Pelagius, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, all acknowledge it. Thus in every one of the extant Commentaries on the epistles containing the crucial passages, We do not attempt to give them in chronological order. The names themselves are enough to show the consensus of opinion for the past two hundred years. |