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case, it is evidently unfavourable to the supposition of his consecration.

To remove these difficulties, it is said that as Barlow and Scory were bishops deprived of their sees, and, therefore not recognized by the law as such, it was more in accordance with the requisitions of the law, and more agreeably to the established order, that bishops who were in actual possession should be preferred to them. Although I am not by any means satisfied with this solution of the difficulty, I leave it to the judgment of the reader without further observation.

I trust that those who have weighed impartially the contents of this chapter, will not think the conclusions to which this examination of Barlow's episcopal character has led me, rash and unfounded. All are agreed that Barlow's consecration cannot be established by positive evidence; and may, at most, be inferred from the circumstances of his history. In other words; the fact is not CERTAIN: but according to the most sanguine advocates of English orders, HIGHLY PROBABLE! The circumstances principally relied on to establish the fact, are all, or, at least, many of them, liable to much controversy; and render it in my mind still more highly probable that the consecrator of Parker was never himself consecrated. The famous distich, by which the Episcopal Methodists are so perseveringly taunted, may, then, be applied, mutatis mutandis, to those very persons, who put the question :

"Our John on Coke his hands has laid,

But who laid hands on him ?".

156

CHAPTER XI.

On the form appointed to be used by the Ordinal of Edward VI.

Ar the period of the Reformation in England, in the reign of Edward VI., the forms by which bishops and priests had been theretofore ordained were altered, in order to adapt them to the new doctrines. These doctrines were, as I have already shown, highly derogatory to the powers of the ministry; the bishops, and of course, all their subordinates, were considered as little better than the King's" ecclesiastical sheriffs."* The substitution of the word "elder" instead of "priest," in Acts, c. xv. 2.; Ep. Titus, c. i. 5; 1 Tim. c. iv. 16; c. v. 17, 19; St. James, c. v. 14, in three different editions of the Bible, in 1562, 1577, and 1579, shows that not only was the idea of priesthood studiously kept out of view, but that these supposed translations of the Word were nothing more than the vehicle for the errors of men. "In nothing," says Dr. Milner, "does Cranmer's spirit of Presbyterianism appear so plain as in his form of consecrating bishops."Indeed, as the same distinguished divine has remarked, the form, as used previous to 1662, is just as proper for

* That this is not an exaggerated phrase, may be seen from the testimony of Heylin, in Chapter II., p. 29. Henry VIII. was in the habit of issuing commissions to the bishops, empowering them to consecrate churches. See Rymer, XIV. p. 767, et alibi.

the ceremony of confirming, or laying hands upon children, as it is for conferring the powers of the episcopacy. The form of ordaining priests, as will be hereafter shown, labours under a similar defect: but before proceeding to the examination of these forms, it may not be entirely useless, to make a few preliminary observations.

1. The Catholic Church does not believe that the effect of a valid form can be frustrated by the errors and disbelief of those who use it, or of the society in which it is employed. The Church has, accordingly, always admitted the validity of the ordinations of the Greek schismatical Church, because conferred by persons who themselves had been ordained, and, who, in conferring orders, preserve the ancient form of ordination. Hence, if she deems the English ordinations invalid, it must be, either because she denies the fact of their having been performed by a regularly ordained minister, or because she judges that the form used on the occasion is insufficient.

2. The Church has uniformly rejected the English ordinations as invalid. All the Catholic bishops of England, in the time of Queen Mary, unanimously condemned the form which had been introduced under Edward VI., and their decision was confirmed by the judgment of the Catholic world. We accordingly find that those bishops who had been consecrated according to that form, were regarded as invalidly consecrated; and even their civil acts were annulled by the courts of law, during the reign of that Queen. The Catholic doctors of those times regarded that form as invalid. This was publicly declared by Richard Bristow, in a book written in the year 1567, to which reference has already been made; and it has ever since been the sentiment of the Church, which has uniformly considered as mere laymen, whatever bishops,

ministers, etc., of the English clergy, have returned to her communion, and confers on them, as such, the orders of priesthood, etc., should they be disposed to embrace the ecclesiastical state. This was at length solemnly ordered by a decree of the Roman Inquisition, made in the presence of Clement VI., on the 27th of April, 1704.

The nature of the changes made in the form of ordination, and the grounds of the exceptions taken to it, by the Catholics of Queen Mary's time, are thus detailed by Dodd:

"was

"When this ordinal" (that of Edward VI.) examined, in the next ensuing reign of Queen Mary, it was declared to be insufficient and invalid, as to the purposes of consecrating a true ministry, both the bishops and parliament being of that opinion. The reasons, in general, of its insufficiency, were an essential defect, both as to the matter and form of the episcopal and sacerdotal orders. There was no anointing—a ceremony always made use of from the earliest times, without which the ordination was doubted, and, according to the common opinion, invalid. There was no porrection of instruments, another significative ceremony, generally esteemed to be essential. But, what was still of the greatest moment, there was no form of words, specifying the order that was conferred; and particularly no words or ceremony made use of to express the power of absolving and offering sacrifice. For these, and several other reasons, which I have distinctly mentioned in another place, all the orders conferred according to this new ordinal, were looked upon by the Catholics in Queen Mary's reign, to be null and invalid.”

* Dodd's Church History, quoted by the editor of Collier's Ecclesiastical History. Vol. 5, p. 301.

3. The rejection of English ordinations by the Church, is grounded solely on the insufficiency of the form; and not upon any historical fact, such as whether Matthew Parker was, or was not, consecrated by Barlow, or whether Barlow himself was, or was not, a regularly consecrated bishop. Whatever opinion may be formed on each of these much disputed facts,—and every Catholic is at perfect liberty to affirm or deny them,-still the judgment and practice of the Church is exclusively founded on the nature of the form, which, being insufficient of itself, suffices to invalidate the act of which it is so essential a part, no matter by whom performed.

4. The insufficiency of the form of Edward VI. has been constantly maintained by Catholic writers in their disputes with Anglicans; and seems to have been virtually acknowledged by the church of England itself. In the year 1662, while the Convocation of the clergy was sitting, a learned convert from Protestantism, the Rev. John Lewgar, published a tract on the ordination controversy, called Erastus Senior, in which he argued powerfully against the vague form of ordination, which had been, up to that time, used in the Anglican ordinations. These objections turned principally on the point, that there was nothing in the form of consecrating bishops, which expressed the office or character of the episcopacy; and that the form of the ordination of priests omitted what was the essence of the priestly character-the power to offer sacriWhether or not it was in consequence of his reasons, or from a general conviction of the defectiveness of the form theretofore used, or,-as Bishop Burnet affirms, to meet the objections of the Presbyterians; certain it is, that the Convocation CHANGED the

fice.

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