the Church, whilst all without distinction should be earnest in the pursuit of piety and innocence, the principal means of rendering homage to God; to those, however, who are initiated in the Sacrament of Orders, special offices belong, on them special functions devolve - to offer sacrifice for themselves, and for all the people - to instruct others in the law of God to exhort and form them to a faithful and ready compliance with its injunctions - and to adminster the Sacraments, the sources of grace. In a word, set apart from the rest of the people, they are engaged in a ministry the most sacred and the most exalted.
Having explained these matters to the faithful, the pastor will next proceed to expound those things which are peculiar to this Sacrament, that thus the candidate for orders may be enabled to form a just estimate of the nature of the office to which he aspires, and to know the extent of the power conferred by Almighty God on his Church and her ministers. This power is two-fold, of jurisdiction, and of orders: the power of orders has reference to the body of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist, that of jurisdiction to his mystical body, the Church; for to this latter belong the government of his spiritual kingdom on earth, and the direction of the faithful in the way of salvation. In the power of Orders is included not only that of consecrating the Holy Eucharist, but also of preparing the soul for its worthy reception, and whatever else has reference to the sacred mysteries. Of this the Scriptures afford numerous attestations, amongst which the most striking and weighty are contained in the words recorded by St. John and St. Matthew on this subject: "As the Father hath sent me," says the redeemer, " I send you: Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained;" [1] and again, " Amen, I say unto you, whatever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatever you shall loose on earth, shall be loosed also in heaven." [2] These passages, if expounded by the pastor from the doctrine, and on the authority of the Fathers, will shed considerable light on this important subject.
This power far transcends that which was given to those, who, under the law of nature, exercised a special superintendence over sacred things. [3] The age anterior to the written law must have had its priesthood, a priesthood invested with spiritual power: that it had a law cannot be questioned: and so intimately interwoven are these two things with one another, that, take away one, you of necessity remove the other. [4] As then, prompted by the dictate of the instinctive feelings of his nature, man recognises the worship of God as a duty, it follows as a necessary consequence, that, under every form of government, some persons must have been constituted the official guardians
