Council of Trent also requires that any one who receives holy
orders must have a “title,” i.e. means of support. The chief
titles are poverty, i.e. solemn profession in a religious order,
patrimony and benefice. Holy orders are to be conferred on the
Ember Saturdays, on the Saturday before Passion Sunday or on
Holy Saturday (Easter Eve). The ancient and essential rule
that a bishop must be “chosen by all the people” (Can. Hipp.
ii. 7) has fallen into disuse, partly by the right of confirmation
allowed to the bishops of the province, partly by the influence
of Christian emperors, who controlled the elections in the capital
where they resided, most of all by the authority exercised by
kings after the invasion of the northern tribes and the dissolution
of the empire (see Church History).
Such in brief were the doctrine and use of the early churches, gradually systematized, developed and transformed in the churches of the Roman obedience. The Reformation brought in radical changes, which were on the whole a return to the primitive type. Calvin states his views clearly in the fourth book of his Institutes, cap. iii. Christ, as he holds, has established in His church certain offices which are always to be retained. First conies the order of presbyters or elders. These are subdivided into pastors, who administer the word and sacraments, doctors, who teach and expound the Bible, elders pure and simple, who exercise rule and discipline. The special care of the poor is committed to deacons. Ordination is to be effected by imposition of hands. The monarchical episcopate is rejected. This view of order was accepted in the Calvinistic churches, but with various modifications. Knox, for example, did away with the imposition of hands (M’Crie’s Knox, period vii.), though the rite was restored by the Scottish Presbyterian Church in the Second Book of Discipline. Knox also provided the Church of Scotland with superintendents or visitors, as well as readers and exporters, offices which soon fell into disuse. Nor do Scottish Presbyterians now recognize any special class of doctors, unless we suppose that these are represented by professors of theology. Independents acknowledge the two orders of presbyters and deacons, and differ from the Calvinistic Presbyterians chiefly in this, that with them the church is complete in each single congregation, which is subject to no control of presbytery or synod.
Luther was not, like Calvin, a man of rigid system. He refused to look upon any ecclesiastical constitution as binding for all time. The keys, as he believed, were entrusted to the church as a whole, and from the church as a whole the “ministers of the word and sacraments” are to derive their institution and authority. The form of government was not essential. Provided that the preaching of the gospel was free and full, Luther was willing to tolerate episcopacy and even papacy. Hence the Lutheran churches exhibit great variety of constitution. In Scandinavia they are under episcopal rule. The Lutheran Bugenhagen, who was in priest’s orders, ordained seven superintendents, afterwards called bishops, for Denmark in 1527, and Norway, then under the same crown, derives its present episcopate from the same source. Sweden stands in a different position. There three bishops were consecrated in 1528 by Peter Magnusson, who had himself been consecrated by a cardinal with the pope’s approval at Rome in 1524, for the see of Westirås, to which he had been elected by the chapter. J. A. Nicholson (Apostolical Succession in the Church of Sweden, 1880) seems to have proved so much from contemporary evidence. A reply to Mr Nicholson was made in Swedish by a Roman priest, Bernhard, to whom Mr Nicholson replied in 1887. Unfortunately Mr Nicholson gives no detailed account of the form used in consecration, and on this and other points fuller information is needed. We may say, however, that Mr Nicholson has presented a strong case for the preservation of episcopal succession in the Swedish Church.
If the Swedish Church has preserved the episcopal succession, it does not make much of that advantage, for it is in communion with the Danish and Norwegian bodies, which can advance no such claim. On the other hand, the Church of England adheres closely to the episcopal constitution. It is true that in articles xix. and xxxvi. she defines the church, without any express
reference to the episcopate, as a “congregation of faithful men in which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments be duly administered according to Christ’s ordinance,” and simply adds that the ordinal of Edward VI. for the consecration of bishops, priests and deacons, contains all that is necessary for such ordination and nothing which is of itself superstitious. The preface to the ordinal (1550) goes farther. Therein we are told that the threefold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons may be traced back to apostolic times, and in the final revision of 1662 a clause was added to the effect that no one is to be accounted “a lawful bishop, priest or deacon in the Church of England,” unless he has had episcopal consecration or ordination. The words “in the Church of England” deserve careful notice. Nothing is said to condemn the opinion of Hooker (Eccl. Pol. vii. 14. 11) that “there may be sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination made without a bishop,” or of the High Church Thorndike (apud Gibson on the Articles, ii. 74), who “neither justifies nor condemns the orders of foreign Protestants.” The church lays down a rule of domestic policy, and neither gives nor pretends to give any absolute criterion for the validity of ordination.
But while the Church of England has declined communion with non-episcopal churches, she has been involved in a long controversy with the Church of Rome on the validity of her own orders. It will be best to give first the leading facts, and then the inferences which may be drawn from them.
The English Church derives its orders through Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, who was consecrated in 1559 by William Barlow, bishop-elect of Chichester. We may assume that the rite employed was serious and reverent, and there is no longer any need to refute the fable of a ludicrous consecration at the “Nag’s Head” Anglican orders. tavern. We may further take for granted that Barlow was a bishop in the Catholic sense of the word. He had been nominated bishop of St Asaph in 1536, translated to St David’s in the same year, and to Bath and Wells in 1547. He also sat in the upper house of Convocation and in the House of Peers. Now if Barlow all this time was not consecrated—and so far the only form of consecration known in England was according to the Roman rite—he would have incurred the penalties of praemunire, let alone the fact that Henry VIII. would not have tolerated such a defiance of Catholic order for a moment. The registers at St David’s make no mention of his consecration, but this counts for nothing. No reference in the registers can be produced for many ordinations of undoubted validity. Parker thus was consecrated by a true bishop according to the Edwardine ordinal, i.e. he received imposition of hands with the words, “Take the Holy Ghost and remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is in thee by imposition of hands.” The corresponding form for the ordination of a priest was" Receive thou the Holy Ghost: whose sins thou dost forgive, " &c. These were the sole forms in use from 1552 to 1562.
Roman authorities have from the beginning and throughout consistently repudiated orders given according to the Edwardine ordinal. The case first came under consideration when Cardinal Pole returned to England early in Mary’s reign with legatine authority for reconciling the realm to the Holy See. In his instructions to the bishops (Burnet Collect., pt. iii., bk. v., 33; see also Dixon, Hist. Ch. of England, v. 238 seq.[1]) he clearly recognizes orders schismatical but valid, i.e. those conferred in Henry’s reign, and so distinguishes them by implication from invalid orders, i.e. those given according to the Edwardine book. In the former alone were " the form and intention of the church preserved." He could not doubt for a moment the utter invalidity of Edwardine ordinations to the priesthood. He knew very well that the theologians of his church almost without exception held that the handing over of the paten and chalice with the words, “Receive power of offering sacrifice,” &c., were the essential matter and form of ordination to the priesthood; indeed he published the decree of Eugenius IV. to that effect
- ↑ Compare also the article on Anglican orders in the Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. i., especially at p. 492.
