Page:The Eternal Priesthood (4th ed).djvu/281

"Moreover, by the grace of the Apostolic See three hundred years ago, it was ordained that the missionary priests in England, robbed of all maintenance by sacrilegious hands, might be admitted to sacred Orders on the title of mission, taking at the same time a truly apostolic oath for the good of the universal Church—in bonum universalis Ecclesia (which Alexander VII., in the Brief Cum circa juramenti vinculum, on the 20th of July 1660, explained with the required declarations)—so that they might bind themselves for ever, so far as in them lay, to seek and to save the sheep of the English nation. From that most constraining bond, when a cruel persecution, raged for so many years, arose and was strengthened that wonderful constancy and patience even unto martyrdom which is the crown and the glory of our clergy. Wherefore the Holy See, which still grants to the Bishops of England the faculty of ordaining their subjects on the title aforesaid, exhorts our missionaries that year by year they remember to renew the oath they have made on its anniversary (granting to them also a plenary Indulgence), and that they seriously meditate how great is the divine goodness shown to them in making them ministers of the Word to declare the wonders of His might and power; how imperishable a crown is prepared