the laity is supposed as a præcognitum,' a principle of the institution. I end this with the words of the seventh general councilm: "It is manifest to all the world, that, in the priesthood, there is order and distinction; and to observe the ordinations and elections of the priesthood with strictness and severity, is well-pleasing to God."

SECT. VI.

1. As soon as God began to constitute a church, and fix the priesthood, which, before, was very ambulatory, and dispensed into all families, but ever officiated by the 'major-domo, God gives the power, and designs the person. And therefore Moses consecrated Aaron, "agitatus à Deo consecrationis principe," saith Dionysius"; Moses performed the external rites of designation, but God was the consecrator: τὴν ἱερατικὴν τελείωσιν ἱεραρχικῶς ἐτελεσιούργησε ὑπὸ τελετάρχη θεῷ. "Moses appointed Aaron to the priesthood, and gave him the order, but it was only as the minister and deputy of God, under God the chief consecrator."-" And no man taketh upon him this honour, but he that was called of God, as was Aaron," saith St. Paul. For in every priesthood, God designed and appointed the ministry, and collates a power, or makes the person gracious: either gives him a spiritual ability of doing something which others have not; or if he be only employed in praying and presenting sacrifices of beasts for the people, yet that such a person should be admitted to a nearer address and in behalf of the people, must depend upon God's acceptation, and therefore upon divine constitution: for there can be no reason given in the nature of the thing, why God will accept the intermediation of one man for many, or why this man, more than another, who, possibly, hath no natural or acquired excellency beyond many of the people, except what God himself makes, after the constitution of the person. If a spiritual power be necessary to the ministration, it is certain, none can give it but the fountain and the principle of the Spirit's emanation. Or if the graciousness and aptness of the person be required, that also being arbitrary, preternatural, and chosen, must derive from the divine election: for God cannot be prescribed unto by us, whom he shall hear, and whom he shall entertain in a more immediate address, and freer intercourse.

2. And this is divinely taught us by the example of the High-priest himself: who, because he derived all power from his Father, and all his graciousness and favour in the office of priest and mediator, was also personally chosen and sent, and took not the honour but as it descended on him from God, that the honour and the power, the ability and the ministry, might derive from the same fountain. "Christ did not glorify himself to become high-priest P." Honour may be deserved by ourselves, but always comes from others: and because there is no greater honour than 'to be ordained for men in things pertaining to God,' every man must say as our blessed High-priest said of himself, " If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is God that honoureth me."-For Christ, being the fountain of evangelical ministry, is the measure of our dispensations, and the rule of ecclesiastical economy: and therefore we must not arrogate any power from ourselves, or from a less authority than our Lord and Master did: and this is true and necessary in the gospel, rather than in any ministry or priesthood that ever was, because of the collation of so many excellent and supernatural abilities, which derive from Christ upon his ministers, in order to the work of the gospel.

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3. And the apostles understood their duty in this parti cular, as in all things else; for when they had received all this power from above, they were careful to consign the truth, that although it be ἀνθρωπίνη τάξις it is θεία χάρις, ̔a divine grace in human ministry,' and that although ἀπὸ ἀνθρώπων καθίσταται, yet οὐχ ἑαυτῷ τις τὴν τιμὴν λαμβάνει, that is, "he that is ordained by men, yet receives his power from God;" not at all by himself, and from no man, as from the fountain of his power: and this, I say, the apostles were careful to consign in the first instance of ordination in the case of Matthias "Thou, Lord, show, which of these two thou hast chosen :" God was the elector, and they the ministers; and this being

P Heb. v. 5.

q Heb. v. 1.

Acts, i. 24.

T

at the first beginning of Christianity, in the very first designation of an ecclesiastical person, was of sufficient influence into the religion for ever after; and taught us to derive all clerical power from God; and therefore by such means and ministries which himself hath appointed, but, in no hand, to be invaded, or surprised in the entrance, or polluted in the execution.

4. This descended in the succession of the church's doctrine for ever. "Receive the Holy Ghost," said Christ to his apostles, when he enabled them with priestly power: and St. Paul to the bishops of Asia said, "The Holy Ghost hath made you bishops or overseers:"-" because no mortal man, no angel, or archangel, nor any other created power, but the Holy Ghost alone, hath constituted this order," saith St. Chrysostoms. And this very thing, besides the matter of fact, and the plain donation of the power by our blessed Saviour, is intimated by the words of Christ otherwhere: "Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the vineyard, that he will send labourers into his harvest." Now his mission is not only a designing of the persons, but enabling them with power; because he never commands a work, but he gives abilities to its performance: and therefore still in every designation of the person, by whatever ministry it be done, either that ministry is by God constituted to be the ordinary means of conveying the abilities, or else God himself ministers the grace immediately. It must of necessity come from him some way or other : Πᾶσα δόσις ἀγαθὴ καὶ πᾶν δώρεμα τέλειον ἄναθέν ἐστι.--St. Jamest hath adopted it into the family of evangelical truths, Πᾶν δώρημα τέλειον, and therefore πᾶν δώρημα τελειωτικόν. “Every perfect gift, and therefore every perfecting gift," which in the style of the church is the gift of ordination, " is from above;" the gifts of perfecting the persons of the hierarchy, and ministry evangelical:--which thing is further intimated by St. Paul"; "Now he which stablisheth us with you, εἰς Χριστὸν, in order to Christ and Christian religion, is God:" and that his meaning be understood concerning the βεβαίωσις αποστολικὴ of establishing him in the ministry, he adds *, καὶ χρίσας ἡμᾶς ὁ Θεὸς, " and he which anointeth us, is God, and hath sealed us with an earnest of his Spirit [unction], and coinsignation and establishing by the Holy Spirit:" the very style of the church for ordination, Τοῦτον ὁ Πατήρ ἐσφραγισενὁ Θεὸς, it was said of Christ, "Him hath the Father sealed," that is, ordained him the priest and the prophet of the world, and this he plainly spoke as their apostle and president in religion: "Not as lords over your faith, but fellow-workers;" he spake of himself and Timothy, concerning whose ministry in order to them, he now gives account : χρίσας ὁ Θεὸς, and σφραγισάμενος ὁ Θεὸς, God anoints the priest, and God consigns him with the Holy Ghost; that is the 'principale quæsitum,' that is 'the main question.'

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5. And therefore the author of the books of Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, giving the 'rationale' of the rites of ordination, says that the priest is made so δι' ἀνάῤῥησιν ‘by way of proclaiming' and publication of the person; signifying, "that the holy man that consecrates, is but the proclaimer of the divine election," but not by any human power or proper grace does he give the perfect gift and consecrate the person. And Nazianzen, speaking of the rites of ordination, hath this expression, "with which the divine grace is proclaimed:" and Billius renders it ill by 'superinvocatur.' He makes the power of consecration to be 'declarative;' which indeed is a lesser expression of a fuller power, but it signifies as much as the whole comes to; for it must mean, God does transmit the grace at or by or in the exterior ministry; and the minister is ἐκφαντορικὸς, 'a declarer,' not by the word of his mouth, distinct from the work of his hand; but by the ministry, he declares the work of God, then wrought in the person suscipient. And thus in absolution, the priest declares the act of God pardoning, not that he is a preacher only of the pardon upon certain conditions, but that he is not the principal agent, but by his ministry 'declares' and ministers the effect and work of God. And this interpretation is clear in the instance of the blessed sacrament, where not only the priest but the people do καταγγέλλειν ‘declare the Lord's

y John, vi. 27.

* Οὐχ ὅτι κυριεύομεν ὑμῶν τῆς πίστεως, ἀλλὰ συνεργοί ἐσμεν, &c.

* "Ὅτι ὁ φιλόθεος ἱεροτελεστὴς ἐκφαντορικός ἐστι τῆς θεαρχικῆς ἐκλογῆς· οὐκ αὐτὸς ἰδίᾳ

χάριτι τοὺς τελουμένους ἐπὶ τὴν ἱερὰν ἄγων τελείωσιν..

b

Νῦν δὲ κινδυνεύω τὰς δημοσίὰς ἀρχὰς εὐτακτοτέρας ὑπιλαμβάνειν τῶν ἡμετέρων, αἷς

ἡ θεία χάρις ἐπιφημίζεται. In Orat. in Laudem sui Patris.

death, not by a homily, but by virtue of the mystery which they participate. And, in the instance of this present question, the consecrator does declare power to descend from God upon the person to be ordained.

6. But thus the whole action, being but a ministry, is a declaration of the effect and grace of God's vouchsafing; and because God does it not immediately, and also because such effects are invisible and secret operations, God appointed an external rite and ministry, that the private working of the Spirit may become as perceived as it can be, that is, that it may, by such rites, be declared to all the world what God is doing, and that man cannot do it of himself; and besides the reasonableness of the thing, the very words in the present allegation do to this very sense expound themselves: for ἐκφαντορικός ἐστι and οὐκ ἰδίᾳ χάριτι are the same thing, and expressive of each other; the consecrator 'declares, that he doth not do it by collation of his own grace' or power, but the grace of God and power from above.

7. And this doctrine we read also in St. Cyprian, towards the end of his epistle to Cornelius: "ut Dominus, qui sacerdotes sibi in ecclesia sua eligere et constituere dignatur, electos quoque et constitutos sua voluntate atque opitulatione tueatur:" it is a good prayer of ordination, "that the Lord, who vouchsafes to choose and consecrate priests in his church, would also be pleased, by his aid and grace, to defend them whom he hath so chosen and appointed."-" Homo manum imponit, et Deus largitur gratiam: sacerdos imponit supplicem dextram, Deus benedicit potenti dextra," saith St. Ambrosed; "Man imposes his hand, but God gives the grace: the bishop lays on his hand of prayer, and God blesses with his hand of power." The effect of this discourse is plain; the grace and powers that enable men to minister in the mysteries of the gospel, is so wholly from God, that whosoever assumes it without God's warrant and besides his way, ministers with a vain, sacrilegious, and ineffective hand, -save only that he disturbs the appointed order, and does himself a mischief.